Game:

Hagane: The Final Conflict (1994)

Duration: 10:34

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This stage was tough. I showed a little of the practice session in another video, but practiced alot more yesterday. Maybe another hour and a half ontop of what was shown.

You will see my lives are at zero on the final boss form, so that run almost failed.

The final form of the last boss is the main challenge once I learned the rest of the stage. Its deceptive because the platforming is more finnicky than it appears. Especially when it comes to jumping close to edges. You will often just fall even when you hit jump. You have to keep up with the final boss to hit it, or you will lose. Any mistakes can make it very difficult to keep pace with it, as it ascends.

If you get hit at all by the flame thrower statues you will likely get knocked off the ledge and lose pace with the boss. You can still get back but it can often lead to a chain reaction of fuck ups.

Most of my techniques here are self explanatory by watching the video but Ill explain my tactic for the final boss. I practiced the final boss form for over an hour I believe. It took a while to get comfortable with the platforming here and get into a rhythym.

My plan was to save up all the screen clearing bombs I could by not using them on the bosses or hard parts. I did use one on a very easy boss, because I forgot that I had to hit it in the head with the bombs. Basically just aim the bombs a little higher. Thats because I practiced this yesterday and didnt remember everything exact.

Once I got to the final form I got above the boss as quickly as I could and while doing so, slashed with the sword whenever I could to take out the first set of heads on the boss. To clear out some enemies and take out the first row faster I used 2 of my 4 bombs.

I then saved the other two and used them on the upper heads, got up to where they were and slashed them.

Not really much to explain but the main thing that helped me was to save my bombs for this end part and then unleash them when I was confident in the run. I died maybe 3 or 4 times on this part , in this run, its just edited out. I did not use the bombs on those attempts because I wanted to use them when I was confident I could finish the job. Keep in mind bombs dont go away when you die, and can accumulate. Use this info to save them up and beat the rest of the level without bombs, if you are having trouble with the final form.

Deaths edited out. This run took about 22 minutes with all the deaths. You do get some 1 ups in the levels. Unfortunately I did not get the respawning 1-Up at the beginning of the final boss form, that I kept getting in practice. That allowed me to infinitely fail on the final form and keep getting the 1-ups. This time I had to do it without that. Any naked 1-ups that you see exposed and sitting on the screen in a specific area will always re-appear when you die. That can give you infinite chances to beat certain parts , aslong as you get back to the 1-up. The ones that come out of enemies you kill seem random, but they also seem to become locked in during a particular run. I would always get a 1 up from the same enemy on the final form of the last boss in one of my practice runs, for example. However that did not happen on my legit run.

The game loops and I believe that may be the hard mode of the game. Maybe I will try a run of that too at some point. I saved state just in case I want to revisit this game. Great game.

Stay tuned !!