Elemental Gearbolt (US) All Chalices & All Fairies

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Smraedis Arcade Superplays

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Published on October 25, 2018 7:00:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgwANIOpXFs

Game:

Elemental Gearbolt (1997)

Duration: 46:36

9,518 views

155

Here is a video showing how to get all the secret chalices and fairies, how to score highly on the US version Elemental Gearbolt, Alfa System's PS1 RPG style light-gun game.

Elemental Gearbolt was released in 1997 in Japan, but when Working Designs took the game and released it in US/Canada (but not Europe). They not only translated the game, but they ramped up the difficulty by a great amount, most likely because they held a competition where the top scorer won $10,000. WD apparently held competitions at events using this game too. The game has had an interest because of an "assassin's case" that was also given out as prizes, which has recently become desirable.
There is a big storyline to the game compared to other light-gun games, with the game directed by Rintaro and features cutscenes made by MadHouse. The US version thankfully supports the Guncon, which I used for this video.

There are 3 weapons you can switch from, a strong fire shot, called Blaze Phoenix, a wide lighting shot, called Thunder Tiger, and a rapid-fire water shot, called Water Snake (I'll just call them fire/lightning/water as it's easier). All types have pros/cons, but the fire shot is the strongest and best to clear the game with, the lighting shot is the best for scoring, most of the time. The water shot is only really needed for collecting some of the secrets. There is no reloading, however, there is a cool-off period between shots, which makes the game a lot harder. Switching weapons scores 10 points.

To score high, the main strategy is to maintain a 100% accuracy combo as long as possible, alongside staying on Level 1 as far as possible into the game. There is a multiplier applied to the value of everything shot in the game. It can go up to x5 through comboing, and then to x10 while on Level 1, after getting to 50 hits and using the fire shot. If you use the lightning shot, you score less per hit, but enemies take more hits, resulting in a greater score yield.

The US Version adds secret chalices, which was applied to the contest they held, to win, you had to collect all 12 of them, they require different shot types to reveal and collect (thankfully there is a guide on GameFAQs which says the correct shot type for them all). You can see the first one is collected with the fire shot at 03:35, the second with the lightning shot at 04:40. This is one of the only ones with the lightning shot that is easy to keep the combo going and collect the bonus. Even when you know where they all are, and how to collect them, they are still a real pain to pick up, sometimes they just don't seem to want to be collected.

The Trade Off system is an interesting idea. At the end of every stage, you can exchange the points scored on the stage for experience, which increases your health and seemingly weapon power, or you can apply it on bonus points, which would double your stage score if you put 100% of it on points. The health is counted as 100 for a big piece, 20 for the smaller pieces. There is no rank (dynamic difficulty) in this game, all enemy patterns are fixed and are always the same. Before enemies attack, there is a shrinking box signaling that you are about to be attacked. Sometimes this box appears way too late, but you can learn which ones to shoot early.

Putting it all on points would keep your current Level, so the in-game multipliers would stay the same too. It is very difficult to do a full clear on Level 1, the safe strategy is to go to Level 4 if you cannot clear a stage, or to Level up as much as possible when first learning the game. I go to Level 4 for the last stage, as it is very easy to take more damage than the Level 1 health at this point. The point sacrifice isn't so much either. Continuing increases your Level by 1 and reduces your score by half, restarting the current stage.

For maxing out the score, there is a TAS that mainly uses the fire shot the whole way through, but collects no secret chalices, but with 100% comboing throughout, still scores 29.1m. The winner of the contest scored 49.7m, there were 7 scores in total over 40m. This shows that people had learned to use the lightning shot to score more. The secret chalices locations and methods were put in gaming magazines in the US and posted on the internet back then too. I feel that 50m is possible, but it would be very hard to do it, and get all the chalices too, as they like to break combos.

Elemental Gearbolt likes to switch resolution at some periods and is a bit of a pain for capturing for me at least, so apologies for any blips in the sound and picture problems, and hope my gameplay makes up for it!

Thanks for watching!


If you liked this video, maybe you would like my Die Hard Trilogy: Die Harder video, another PS1 light gun game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40RMztgXK0s

00:00 - Intro
02:11 - Act 1
07:00 - Act 2
13:51 - Act 3
20:12 - Act 4
27:30 - Act 5
34:06 - Act 6
39:54 - Ending

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