PrinceWatercress plays GG Aleste - Part 1 of 8

The One Credit Classics vertical shmup favorite makes its way to the PrinceWatercress channel!

Here, we play through the rounds one by one and break them down, starting with Round 1.

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Here's the story, according to the instruction manual and the Aleste Wiki:

Year 2065 AD. After the failure of the first Integrated Earth State to advance into the outer planets, a huge mobile weapons army suddenly appeared in the jet-black space. They challenged the Integrated Earth State and destroyed the SDF (Space Force).

"We have taken control of the Earth. Your future lives are forfeit!"

Calling themselves "Moon Child", they conquered Earth and captured a few remaining SDF soldiers who were sent to a colony under construction. While most soldiers are overtaken by despair, some still do not give up hope... A teenage girl and a genius pilot, Ellinor Waizen...

The special fighter GG Aleste, developed specially for her, was secretly brought into the colony by the development team led by Ellinor's grandfather Seft Waizen. Ellinor now heads into the void where the battle awaits, piloting the GG Aleste to save the Earth.

Normal mode is just a normal game. Special mode, however, has enemies shooting revenge bullets at you after you kill them. This can make a no-death run really hard to do. I play on Normal mode for now.

Round 1

The D-Pad lets you fly around in eight directions, while Button 1 lets you fire your weapon. You start out with a single bullet machine gun (or a tic-tac gun, as I call it) and a laser.

There are gray and green cylinders you can shoot down to pick up P Chips. The P Chips will power up your machine gun, but you'll need a lot to go from single to double to triple and then to arrow shot, the last of which fires at a slight angle and does the most damage. There are also six special weapons, and they are as follows:

S: Spread - This fires a shot that flies forward before exploding and sending shots forward. Since it doesn't fire right away, this is the one weapon you'll probably have the hardest time dealing with, even when it's fully powered-up.

W: Wave - This shoots a three way shot that you can use to take out enemies from an angle.

N: Napalm - This shoots out an explosive shot that can take out multiple enemies in its wake.

L: Laser - You start with this one. The laser goes through enemies while hitting them, allowing you to take out multiple enemies in a straight line.

H: Homing - This shoots out a homing shot that chases after a nearby enemy. You can take out multiple enemies at one time once this thing is fully powered-up.

D: Defensive - This places a shield around the ship, and the shield revolves around you. If any enemies or enemy projectiles touch the shield, they get vaporized. You still need to be careful with this weapon, as projectiles still have a chance to get past the shield and hit you. When powered-up, this weapon also shoots beams made out of the shield itself, and these beams can also tear through enemies.

The enemies tend to spawn on the side 

Enemies worth mentioning are:

• the the ships that split up into two parts that fly around
• the ships with the green cores that teleport in and fly around in formation
• the small green Gundam-like enemies that fire tiny blue lasers that can get around the shield of the D weapon pretty darn easily
• the enemies that teleport in from the bottom of the screen (H takes care of them)
• all those turrets on the ground

The red circle with a P in it powers up your secondary weapon. Be sure to pick them up; you definitely want a powered-up secondary weapon.

To beat the first mini-boss, stay away from it when it fires at you, then line yourself up with it and shoot it for a second before moving away again. To beat the second mini-boss, line yourself up with it and fire at it with everything you've got. Don't forget that you can shoot down the green fireballs.

The third boss is a wall at the end of the space station. Wait for the walls to stop moving and avoid the bullets, then shoot at the core when they stop. You can shoot down the green bullets, thankfully.

To beat the boss, shoot at the laser cannon at the front when it's moving, and stay away from it when it stops so you don't get blasted. For the second phase, shoot at the face, and watch out for the green bullets and the missiles that both fire straight down. As long as you're paying attention, you can easily dodge those as well as the bullets.