Game Mechanics – How to Play

Controls
Arrow keys – Move
N – Shoot Left
M – Jump
< - Shoot Right > – Dash
F5 – Pause

I recommend using a joypad if you have one, particularly since you can reconfigure the buttons to something more reasonable, unlike with the keyboard controls. I’ve had trouble shooting upwards whilst moving left/right using the keyboard as well – in that it doesn’t seem to work. It works fine with a joypad, and makes things rather more doable.

You can also dash by tapping left or right twice should you wish, as well as dashing mid-air. Its also possible to do a second jump whilst mid-air, though like most of these things it can only be done once. You can also crouch, though it doesn’t give you much benefit to do so.

There’s two choices of shooting methods selectable from the character select screen. Wimps will go for auto – you just need to hold down the button to send a stream of bullets flying constantly, whilst releasing the button will automatically lock-on to anyone walking across the background. Manual will only fire a short spout of bullets when the fire button is pressed, meaning you have to repeated tap the fire button to shoot. To lock-on in manual mode you need to hold-down the shoot button, and release to shoot.

You can’t, however, shoot straight upwards. Pressing shoot whilst pressing up will shoot at a diagonal in the direction you press the shoot button in. You can, however, jump on characters heads without taking damage (and its essential to know this if you want to beat some of the later bosses).

Watch out for the red birds – they drop power ups. The powerups available are:-
“Shot” – Powers up your regular attack for a limited number of shots
“Invisible” – Makes you unshootable (or untargetable, at least) for a short while
“Recover” – Refills your health
“Laser” – Power up to your lock-on attack, giving you extra shots
“Bonus” – Gives you a bunch of extra points

Anything else which is dropped by anyone else (stars, cake, fruit, etc) are just for extra points.