Just found out there is a 4th power up: The super bomb arrow!

What does it do?

when shooting the bomb arrow, it's kill all the enemies on the screen, same as the "?" item. it would reset after going to the next level.

How to get it?

You will get it if you manage to kill 4 enemies with one shot, so you would need the "S" power up to through multiple enemies. The easiest way is to way for the spawn on the bridge. For some reason it doesn't make any sounds.

I would look more into the "?" item logic in the code and look at the sprites but I don't think there is another option to get it

For the new coming runner, I've made a series of videos to go through each level. It's the first time I'm doing a tutorial, I miss some details but I would be happy to hear your feedbacks or hear about things your want to know more about.

Here is the twitch collection: https://www.twitch.tv/collections/oLN7iEvd9RZv3w

I got in a situation where the boss started to blink right at the beginning of the fight.

it happens when killing the enemies right before entering the end screen zone. Looks like the boss cannot be destroyed earlier, maybe just a fun glitch?

in the round 5 I was shooting around the gate (big rock) to get protected when I notice the gate explodes earlier than usual.

The game allow the player to destroy the gate with regular bullet (M-60) right after the 16th enemy killed. it takes 16 shots, it's faster than waiting for the blinking gate. for example on level 3, instead of killing 28 enemies at the end screen, now we can kill 16 of them and rush to the gate to destroy it. it's the case for other level and over all it's a lot of time saving, around 1 minute!

Why is that? maybe it was intended, it's in the japanese release (Ashura). I will double check the japanese manual but if not there it's either a secret/easter egg or a bug left by the devs

Probably the first glitch found so far!

When a dropping dynamite explode right after a tank is exploding, this dynamite get teleport and doesn't explode anymore.

I didn't look in details yet but looks like both explosions has the same RAM address but since the tank explosion was first, it override the behavior of the dynamite, or it's getting mixed.

Here is a clip of the glitch happening

Going through the game code using the Emulicious , I discover how the spawn works on the game. I've post more details in tasvideos.org: https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/23111

First things to know, the game would only allow max 4 enemy spawn on the screen. That means a spawn can be skipped if there are no spawn slot available.

The game split the levels in 30 vertical sections and each sections are splitted into 8 sub sections. each round has some hardcoded spawn defined in the ROM, every time there is a vertical progress (sub-section changed) the game would check if there is a spawn in that table and if a slot is available.

Other time, it's a random spawn with a basic enemy, for instance enemy type 14 for round 1. The spawn slots would always be filled, there a very small time between a slot a free and a new spawn

The Spawn table has been put in a spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JMGR7M0yEuznjJpkRyIYJlGb-e69qx5x_0drpwkoW-U