Super Spy Hunter (NES) FAQ/Walkthrough version 1.0.0 by schultw.andrez@sbcglobal.net (anti spam spoonerism) Please do not reproduce this FAQ for profit without my prior consent. If you write a polite e-mail to me referring to me(and this FAQ) by name, then I will probably say OK. But if I ignore you that means no--and I am bad about answering e-mail. Sorry. ================================ OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROLS 3. STRATEGIES 4. WALKTHROUGH 5. CHEATS 6. VERSIONS/CREDITS ================================ 1. INTRODUCTION Well, I probably wouldn't be writing for this game without the GameFAQs bounty contests. SSH is an interesting game but not an especially good one. It's a take-off on the famous arcade game I never particularly liked. You're in this car and you can shoot other cars running around. There are helicopters and stuff too. Eventually you get to a big boss that really should kick your butt unless you're really careful. So you have a lot of repetition before a boss fight where you need to swerve around a lot. But along the way you get a lot of neat power-ups. And you get to play as a boat and a plane in some parts, too. Super Spy Hunter has a lot of cool ideas but often takes a while to get going. While I like the boss fights, the parts to get there drag on and are repetitive. Nevertheless, since they are not too bad to address, I did so. However, for maximum fun I would recommend working with the cheats. They won't save you from the one-and-done hits, but they'll help you just be able to crash through the game before it gets too unfunny. If you play with cheats, it's like being in a pretty cool spy movie, so why not take a spin? 2. CONTROLS Up makes you go faster. Down makes you go slower. It can bring you to a stop. Going faster leaves you more vulnerable to what's ahead and less vulnerable to what's behind: slower, vice versa. You'll probably want to hold down B at all times, which fires. A turns the turrets. Left/right do what you expect. Start pauses. You can hold B and A down at the same time, too. This sprays pretty nicely. 3. STRATEGIES First, obey the traffic signs. It's pretty much fatal not to. They say go left, go right, stop or slow down. Jump means you'll want to go fast. (!) means there's something really to watch. It's no crime to slow all the way down in many parts of the game. If you don't have auto-aim, then guns are tricky to use. Rotating them is tricky and depends on what is coming next. It's okay to crash into enemies--just don't hit a wall or you'll lose life points. Here is how to handle power ups: (L) gets you four blocks of life--beyond two power ups this is useless. (1UP) gets you an extra car. (P) is a shot power up (R) is recharge (C) is cannon control toggle (B) lets you use a bomb to destroy all enemies for a while (G) lets you use a guy who will swing around and lash out to kill your enemies (O) puts oil behind you, making enemies swerve. (P) is the best, and (L) is not necessary. (C) is useful after level 1. (G) is fun but not really critical. Wait for the vans to change to the right letter before blasting them. Early on you will need to direct all your firepower at them. (C) + (P) makes (O) obsolete. You lose a fire power-up when you die. The maximum is 4. There are two types of trucks: PCRL (red) and OTB 1-up (blue). 4. WALKTHROUGH I won't always tell you how to adjust your guns. If something comes from behind, shoot downwards. If something tough is ahead, fire ahead. If playing on an emulator, save your state frequently even with cheats, because power-ups are cumulative. This walkthrough assumes you don't restart on getting killed, which saps your power-ups at game over. 4-1. SCENE 1 With all these helicopters, start with guns at 60 degrees to the top. Go slowly for a tight right turn then a left turn. There'll be another small left turn and you'll start going over water. An enemy will come from behind and while you'll ignore him, you'll want to shoot the truck ahead of you. It gives a power-up designated by a letter that changes every second. Move up to get the truck, and then go moderately fast for the power-up, which will go up off the screen and come back to you. The bridge curves here. You'll go under a bridge and then face a blue van. Past that are guns that fire four at a time. Go moderately slow and after they fire for the fourth time, go forward. You can pick them off with guns, but you don't get any points for it, so don't kill yourself. There'll be another powerup, then two guns as the right half of the bridge is damaged. Then a gun, then the left half damaged, then a power up and a gun on each side. Stay to the right. You need to keep turning right, and it's best to go at medium speed. Crank it up to full speed when you see the Jump icon. A 30 degree angle to spray should mow down the boats ahead. The boats aren't terribly tough. They come in groups of four, and you can shoot their missiles. Go slowly to stay within the light blue lines. Then after getting back on land, you need to go quickly for two jumps. After this you have a go at the suspension bridge. It's a bit tougher not to hit the edges but you should soon get the rhythm of how it swerves back and forth. Watch for blue cars behind. They are much more dangerous than the missile firing helicopters. The helicopters' missiles will go off the bridge, but the cars will drill you. Soon you'll get to a curve in the road with a "stop" sign. For this, you will not necessarily need to stop, but go slowly as you'll need to steer onto a small ramp to the left. Then you must steer over trucks that move a bit, but if you go slowly, you can hit the next small ramp to the left. This leads to the first boss. It is not too hard. You'll have time to focus your guns forward. Basically you'll have a truck with copters on the side. I disagree with the boss FAQ on GameFAQs as I was able to stay at the very bottom and fire away for starters, and that gave me a big jump. You can kill the copters, but if you take out the truck, the copters will go down, too. Just auto-fire at the truck until it starts to go down. Then loop around to the top. You could, if you wanted, fire down at the truck, but you don't need to. You just need to loop to the bottom to fire away again. If you can move up a little, then that will help a lot when you loop around. Just remember that the truck can crush you into a wall, so it's best to loop around it. The truck will get destroyed, and you'll have to shoot it some more after it spawns more helicopters, but that is really the same thing. The final incarnation is probably the toughest. You must shoot this gun that slowly follows you around the battlefield. His bullets go on a diagonal and you want to go left when at the bottom, right when at the top to avoid its bullets. Here swiveling your guns to fire down at the top is really useful as you can get in several extra hits, and he cannot fire missiles above him. He can fire them down when when you are below him. You want to stay in the center at the top so you can sneak right to avoid the bullets--they are going up/right so that you can avoid them. You will probably take a few hits by accident, but you should be able to trash the gun. Okay, that's scene 1 complete. Things get stickier in scene 2. 4-2. SCENE 2 Here's an early chance to pick up the lock-on cannon and some power-ups. You'll have a few drill cars coming behind you, but they should not be a challenge. The guns on the side are for decoration, too. By now you may be fully powered-up, so if the trucks don't show a "P," don't worry about them. There are some force fields pushing you left and right through the mountains, but stay in the center and you should be okay. After two waves of this, you're back on the road. Go off to the right--don't worry about the power truck, as left takes you back to the fork in a bit--then go right at the next branch too. Be prepared to tilt back left after each fork, so don't go too fast. Ahead you have sinkholes. You should go medium-fast through them. Steer away from the center of every big sinkhole you find, accelerating forward and to the side if you look like you might get really stuck. You can curve around and accelerate forward, but the big risk is running into the center--which will kill you. You may have to sacrifice some power ups from trucks. The boss is up next. You can fire away at the center for all it's worth. Without auto-fire, tilt things at 30 degrees. Fire away and slowly move up and down. You may have to move left and right below the H-vehicle. Then blow the enemy away. You may take some damage, but you can also go to the side when the H comes down to the bottom. Then it is easier to avoid all the shots. Then go to the other side. You can basically goad the H-vehicle to one side then escape to the other--then shoot it there and when it starts to come down, go to the other side. You can continue this until you knock out the two front guns, then you can fire at them in the middle of the H. Then you need to blast the center of the H, not touching the sides, then blast the light and stay close. Back up and fire at the missiles when they start to hone in on you. 4-3. SCENE 3 Shoot the two cars nearby, then wait for the truck to come so you can shoot it for what you want. Then start firing away--planes behind mean you may have to steer left or right to start. Two more cars, then planes behind, then a powerup truck. More cars and planes--keep guns trained behind and go slowly--and eventually after a power truck you have a red vehicle behind, which you should gun down with your firepower. You can block it out so it does not get ahead of you to shoot. Take your time following the signs but the merges should not affect you, so don't worry about them. Just keep positioning yourself ahead of the planes whe possible so the missiles miss. Take the right passage when both arrows pop up. There'll be two tanks leaving fire behind, and you should hit the one in your lane. The other can be killed, but it's easy to avoid. Take the right branch again and you'll get two power trucks. There'll be trucks with cargo that falls off. Hit the cargo and it bursts into flames. So you have to see where the cargo falls off. Shooting it makes no difference in the speed stuff falls off, but it's one more distraction. So stop shooting for a moment. A turn right and helicopters signal the end of this. Helicopters on each side may be nasty to your autopilot, so be sure to move up and down a lot to avoid their bullets. A (G) powerup is useful here. You'll blast airplanes from behind while swerving left and right for a bit, but it's not hard. When you're almost used to it, a power up truck will appear. Take the right passage at the turn. After a bit more swerving, the next boss. This boss is not too bad. Just shoot at the center, and when a light appears, move to the side. Then shoot that until something appears--and go back to the center. Eventually you'll kill all five guns firing down. Then you must shoot the panels behind them. You shouldn't have much of a problem avoiding the bullets. Once the red eye in the center turns blue because you shot it a lot, you need to avoid the side lasers. So move up and down based on where they are. Once a laser appears, jump to the top/bottom til they reach the top/bottom and repeat til the blue eye gets destroyed. 4-4. SCENE 4 This is a speed wave. You will want to train your guns behind you til you get a C powerup. Then the enemies behind will go down. Choppers from the side may present a problem until then, too. After that you can pretty much stay in the middle and blast away. You have a few enemies to avoid, and you'll want to stop firing when the trucks with cargo come by. Once you're by them, fire away again. For the jumping, you don't need to go fast at all. Just shoot the enemies down and eventually a long vertical line will appear in the middle of the screen. You can wait for it to get bigger, and when it stops, just land somewhere in the middle. You can just sweep left and right and fire away, and when 3 small helicopters and a big one appear, work away at them and try to land near the center. It's hard to miss. Be willing to take a hit, because if you miss, you die. After a few rounds of this the screen goes grey and you have your boss fight. You should try to cross up the boss so you are to its left when it is going right and vice versa. You should also figure out how it bounces up and down--there's some anticipation here but it should not be hard to figure out. Just fire away and you can do so safely from long range, though straight horizontal shots are useless. It's also useful to cross the enemy vertically if/when you can. You need to gun down the top and bottom defenses and then there'll be a break. The eyeball in the center will start shooting, and you will need to walk around slowly to kill it. Your best bet is to get a big distance vertically between it and you so you can slowly tap right/left to gun it down. However, if you have more than 4 health, you can just sit in the center and blast away from below and you should win. Given that avoiding the enemy is not too bad for the first bit, and you should have more than 4 health, this is not unreasonable. If you wish to get fancy, you have to shoot dead center and avoid a lot of missiles. 4-5. SCENE 5 A boat wave to start. The nasty little gunner boats can shoot you, so you need to mix up speeds and swerve well away from them, and the bombs are absolutely deadly, so take a hit instead of running into them. After this you have some boats where it's best to move diagonally to avoid the missiles. While you can shoot the boats down, try to stay away from the latest boat to arrive, then swerve diagonally to avoid the missiles--you can't shoot them-- and the bomb buoys. A bit more of this and you get to a cove where you disembark from your boat. On land, you get a power-up then a few helicopters then a bunch of cars coming from behind you can mow down. There'll be trucks that just drop their cargo whether you shoot them or not. Pairs of drill cars may come from behind, so don't go too fast and be prepared to swerve left/right so they don't pinch you. You'll get onto a ratty bridge and turn into a plane. This part plays like Raiden for Dummies if you have full power- ups. Here the (C) powerup changes between big missiles and small guided ones. You want the small guided ones. Watch out for enemies coming from behind and don't stay at the very back. Missiles are slow enough to avoid with quick diagonal maneuver, and you have smart missiles of your own. When in doubt, go forward a bit to lure enemies from behind forward, then get behind them. You can also take enemies out of the picture by scrolling far left or right. The playfield is more than a screen wide, but enemies disappear once they're not in sight. Stay in the center of this horizontal continuum, roughly, to maximize the possibilities here. Boss planes are not bad as you should always be able to sneak through the bullets if you stay all the way back after killing some initial boat-gunners from below. You'll face two quick ones in a row. A third is after several helicopters. Then after a long stretch of gunners and choppers, you get another boss plane, a power-up and a boss plane in quick order. The next part, a meteor scene, is very trivial if you hold down the fire button. It's good for powering up, recharging etc., so target your power-ups for that. Get two life boosts, a recharge, and you are ready for the final boss, where you just have to avoid enemies firing at you. Or at least shoot their missiles down. You will want to avoid the swinging chains at the front of the ship, too, though you might always want to see them. 4-6. SCENE 6 You don't get any auto-aim here for the first bit. So just avoid the enemy trucks where stuff falls off automatically. Go to the center when you see the Atari sign and slow down. Move across when the platform slides into place so you can get by. Keep aim focused behind and shoot the power up truck a couple times, then blast it when it turns to C. It's worth a few hits from the drillers to get started right. Planes will come from behind you. When the jump appears, go almost but not fully at full speed. Stay in the center horizontally when possible--the jump lanes will just barely work if you do. They alternate from left to right. When you get the (!) ahead, slow down and avoid the eyes. If you hit one, slow down immediately and the laser beams ahead take 3 seconds on, .75 off...so you need to be careful to either avoid the eye or creepup to the edge--then blast through. Wait and learn the timing before you do. Sometimes eyes appear in the center, and sometimes you'll have two at the sides. The best way to go through all this is slowly, though a car length off-center allows you to swerve to the left or right depending where the eye is. Eventually you'll get to a jump area. Restock life and such with the next few power-up cars. Then you can just stand in the center and blast away, avoiding the bullets. Just pick off the guns as before. Auto-locking is disabled so you want to have guns at 30 degrees. The next guy you get is the eyeball on the wire. Get the control power-up so you don't have to rotate your guns. You will also have to deal with the eyeball going very fast once you breach the initial defenses--which are as before. Loop around a lot. Time it with how the screen shakes, and the bullets will always be behind you. Then get the regeneration power-up for the final boss. Be patient here and keep to the spacey side and shoot at an angle. You can also shoot at the enemy from above, but don't shoot from right below--the energy beam will take you out. He has 500 or so hit points but is not tricky, so even if you're pushed against the side once, he shouldn't take long. When you get to the edge and he is closing in on you, the ray down will stop long enough for you to sneak through. Then this guy blows up and leaves a rocket shuttle with a blue eye. You can stand a bit left and a ship length below him and fire away, and you'll start to damage him. If he moves too far down, go to the top. The key is avoiding the blue circles around him. You can shoot the little blue circles, too, so there's little risk here. Until he turns red. Then the red discs are missiles and you need to duck. Then you still need to stay on the long side of the rocket, which fires down a lot, but you can often go over the top. It's a bit trickier with all those missiles, but you just need to realize that you can't shoot the rocket all the time and it'll take a bit longer than you think. Now enjoy the final bit and the credits. 5. CHEATS GameFAQs has three cool cheats for extra lives, maximum power, and even a Pong mini-game. I refer you there for them. Here is more nuts and bolts stuff for the hex editor types out there. 0x40 = horizontal 0x65 = power up (up to 4) 0x68 = power up in reserve 00 = none 01 = oil 02 = roving destroyer 03 = 04 = bomb 05 = spiked wheels 06 = 08 = 0x74 = # of lives 0x7a = # of health bars(1 = 1 hit) 0x7b = life bar(10 = 1 hit) 0x93 = what you have 20 = 40 = auto aim 0x40f = boss HP 0x41f, 42f, etc = HP for other parts of boss End of FAQ Proper ================================ 6. VERSIONS/CREDITS 0.2.0: sent to GameFAQs 8/24/2009, through scene 1. 0.5.0: sent to GameFAQs 8/24/2009, through scene 3. Hooray for lunch breaks! 1.0.0: sent to GameFAQs 8/25/2009, complete. Hooray for save states, emulator speed ups, etc.! Thanks to the usual GameFAQs gang, current and emeritus. They know who they are, and you should, too, because they get/got some SERIOUS writing done. Good people too--bloomer, falsehead, Sashanan, Masters, Retro, Snow Dragon/Brui5ed Ego, ZoopSoul, War Doc, Brian Sulpher, AdamL, odino, JDog, Lagoona, Da Hui, StarFighters76 and others I forgot. OK, even Hydrophant in his current not-yet-banned message board incarnation. I am not part of his gang, but I want him to be part of mine. Thanks to SaintKnight for his original FAQ. I did the writing without looking at his guide, but I am sure his ideas seeped into this guide.