It's been a while since I played an unlicensed NES game...and hoo boy, is this game a quaint one. It's a clone of [i]Contra[/i], albeit not a very good one. A jumps, B shoots, D-Pad moves left and right and ducks and aims and whatnot.
You start with six hits, but the game only lets you have to five of them while refilling health after you get hit. You also have three lives, and there's no way of knowing how to get extra lives. I just know that you can if you can destroy enough enemies.
Stage 1
Aside from the soldiers and their bullets, you'll also have to shoot things that fly around in triangular patterns. You'll need to shoot them down for the weapons that they drop, and they'll constantly bother you throughout the game. You start with a rocket launcher (which looks like a knife, which is why I call it the knife at first), but you can also get a three-way shot as well as a shotgun that does more damage with its single shot. Sadly, it's hard to tell the last two apart, so I just grab a gun and hope I get the three-way shot. If you get shot enough times, however, you'll go back to the rocket.
The circle with the smaller circles around it gives you temporarily invincibility. This is good in case you don't want to jump over the lumps of pizza dough that are actually landmines, which instantly kill you if you run into one. Hearts will refill one hit point if you pick one up. Power-ups disappear almost as quickly as they show up, so you'd better be ready to nab them!
Also, enemies turn into demons shortly before they're wiped off the screen from being shot. I'm not sure why.
There is a boss at the end of every stage. To beat the first boss, avoid the firepower from both the cannon above and the turret below as you shoot at the turret in the wall. The turret fires slow-moving arrows regularly, while the cannon shoots down an orb that travels across the floor when it lands, so you'll need to be ready to jump over both at the same time. Once the turret is down, you can take out the cannon.
Stage 2
For this stage, you'll need to the upper path for most of the stage, but you'll eventually need to make your way back down. The worst thing you'll have to deal with on the upper path is the soldiers that throw wrenches flashing funky colors at you (which reminds me of Final Fantasy 6), but once you're forced down there, you'll have to deal with all of the spiked crushers that you avoided previously, and sometimes moving past those can be hit or miss.
If you get stuck on the upper path from not going down, you'll die if you jump over the wall. The game takes it as you looping from the top of the screen to the bottom and instantly offs you, as if the game is saying "Next time, drop down, dumbass!"
As you make your way towards the end, gently tap the A button to jump low and get up the stairs without getting hit by any obstacles. You'll also have to be super close to the flames in order to jump over them without taking damage once, and that can also be touch and go.
The boss is a set of gears that fires smaller gears at you that travel across the floor when they land. Jump over the gears and shoot at the brown cores of the two gears in front of you. When you take one down, that's fewer gears you'll have to jump over. Once the other one goes down, it's on to Level 3.
Stage 3
This is where the game starts getting a little harder.
You'll have to deal with a lot of tanks and turrets. You'll need to duck to shoot down the tanks and avoid their bullets, but you'll need to alternate between jumping and dodging when you barely have enough room between the bullets to begin with.
The flames have really suspect hitboxes that extend further to the sides than you would think, just like in Stage 2. Be careful when jumping over them.
You'll want the three-way shot throughout this stage. The spires with the diamonds at the top shoot downwards in random directions, but if you have the three-way shot, you can take them down from a distance.
The boss is a missile launcher. Avoid the missiles by standing under the high ones and ducking under the low ones, and hit the turret at the top. This is dead easy if you still have the three-way shot at this point. Hold Right on the D-Pad after the boss is defeated to move on to Stage 4.
Stage 4
There will be a lot of rolling balls, scorpions, humanoid enemies and pterodactyls coming at you from the right. The balls and the pterodactyls will dive in from the right, while the humanoids and scorpions just move towards you. Keep heading right and keep shooting. There will be plenty of opportunities to get invincibility and health here compared to the last stage.
To beat the skull boss, jump over the blue skulls that it spits out and shoot it in the eye.
For some reason, if you move to the left while jumping in this boss battle, you will suddenly drop straight down.
Stage 5
Watch out for the jetpack guys, as they will fly up and down as they approach you. As for the red enemies that crawl on the ground, you'll need to duck down to get rid of them.
Get the machine gun for this stage; you'll have a much longer range to work with.
As for power-ups, you'll be getting plenty of invincibility and health pick-ups. Pick up as many of both as you can, because you're going to need them to get through this stage.
To defeat the computer boss, shoot at the mouth that is blasting out the sound waves. The sound waves alternate between traveling straight to the left and traveling downwards to the left. You'll get just the latter after you do enough damage.
Stage 6
Hey, an amusement park!
Jump over the rocks as well as the guys in the background wearing pink and black. The latter enemies cannot be destroyed, and they will throw projectiles everywhere, and the rocks are easily dispatched only if you have the three-way shot.
To defeat the boss, you'll need to avoid the sound waves that move up and down as you shoot the face in the mouth. I made this battle a lot easier than it actually was.
Stage 7
The plants on the ground that stay one in place can be destroyed, but the bubbles coming out of the ground cannot. Also, the flying enemies are little pink circles with smiley faces, which is rather odd compared to what we've fought throughout the rest of the game.
You can ride the platforms across the water, but if you hold Up to aim up, you will not move with the platform and you will die. Refrain from fighting flying enemies until you reach the other side.
Keep jumping and shooting forward on the bridge so that enemies do not catch you off guard.
Human enemies show up near the end, but they're easy to deal with.
The boss here is a tree that shoots fireballs. Once again, you'll need to keep jumping and shooting it in the mouth to get through yet another boss battle.
Stage 8
You just have a boss battle here, and that's it.
Head right and get close to the left side of the column immediately, and keep jumping and shooting at the Sphinx's mouth while avoiding the blue balls that are going all over the place. You want to make it so that the Sphinx on the right also does not spit projectiles at you. The more distance you have, the less you'll have to jump over to avoid.
Once that left Sphinx is defeated, head to the right so the mouth on the other Sphinx starts moving, then head all the way to the left. Again, the more distance, the better. If you have any gun power-ups, you'll have more distance to work with. The three-way gun is the best, since you don't have to worry about aiming as much.
After you beat both Sphinxes, you'll get the ending: a picture of a weird looking medal with three portraits above it while a butchered version of March Militaire No. 1 by Franz Schubert plays briefly. You'll then go back to the title screen. You just beat Silent Assault, but whether you're proud of it or not is another matter.
