Air Date: February 10, 2019
In this video I revisit shatterhand on the original Nintendo console and manage to get through the entire game without losing a life. I wanted to mention that some of the areas I have done better in previous play-throughs but I decided to forge on with the progress. I will touch upon those in the strategy section below.
Out of consideration for viewers who might only want to see my progress at various areas I have included a timestamp for each stage. You will notice that my strategy takes the stages in a slightly different order.
As you will notice, I tend to stick to one particular type of robot, with the exception of any accidental power up matches. I like the grenade robot because it if versatility in almost all situations. You get this combination by gathering all three “Beta” robot blocks. When you get another set of matching beta blocks you get the power suit for your character which can definitely help in a lot of the boss battles and troublesome spots.
Now to the strategy portion which, for me, involves stage order and the acquisition of robot blocks in certain quantities. The initial factory stage should be a breeze and you have the opportunity to arrive at the shogun type boss with a fully powered up suit. This makes the fight pretty simple. You just have to stay on the ground and fire away at him until he backs up and jumps on the wall. At this point jump over the volleys of projectiles and position yourself to attack when he hops back down in the center of the room.
The next stage I grab is the refinery (stage B) because it makes a nice easy stage to gather up robot blocks and have two extra in reserve if you get all of these in the stage. The reserves carry over to the next stage selection unlike the power suit or robot itself. The wall hanger boss here has a very easy pattern which makes the fight a guaranteed victory once you get his pattern down.
Since we have two reserves and our punch power up still active, if you didn’t sustain a whole lot of damage, I choose to go after what I consider that hardest stage in the selection screen. This would be the ravaged city ( Stage F). This stage usually makes or breaks the no death run, so I decided to tackle it sooner than later with the punch and reserve block power ups. As I progress through the stage I gather three more blocks. In this run my robot died while going up the elevator area and I had to settle for the plain grenade bot for the battle instead of the desired power suit.
The Submarine (Areas C) is pretty straight forward where I gather all of the robot blocks and then kill the two Gemini robot bosses. In the filtration plant (Stage D) I choose to save the final power suit robot block until right before the marine boss because he has a good bit of hit points. This takes us to Anti-gravity research center (Stage E) and the gravity boss. This is another stage where you will want to preserve the power suit for the final boss. There are exactly two power ups after you get through the vertical fence climbing section so plan accordingly as you enter the areas where gravity changes. I normally get the final robot block in the final red gravity area and then do a mad dash for the boss platform, gathering the punch power up and extra life in the process.
This leads us to the final missile command (stage G). I would advise watching the video for this portion to see how I handle the robot blocks. Basically I try to get the suit on my way to the second battle with the ninja boss and then let it run out so I can get one reserve block before getting to the gravity section. On this run my robot died before getting to the gravity boss. However if you can keep him alive and get the power suit, it makes the battle quicker. In my scenario I used the grenade bot to keep the boss at bay during the battle. Once you re-battle the bosses from Areas A, E, and F you reach the final climb in the missile silo to Gus Grover. The cool thing is that there are exactly 6 robot blocks here and the ability to continue from this point if you die. Using the same strategy as before I climb to the top only opening the blocks I need to get two reserves, saving the final one until the top. This is just encase I lose the robot during my climb and have to back track. With the power suit Grover is very simple. In this run I had to pelt away with my normal attacks a little after the power suit expired, but it is possible to beat him with the suit intact and also with your bare hands.
After beating General Grover, I let the ending play and then enter my high score, which seems to give you an extra million for the final battle in cases where you did not use a continue.