I dont get it... how do you upgrade?
also, theres a list of stuff on the right, but I dont know how to change which one is selected.

Wow, last time I played this was about 5 years ago. I'll elaborate what I understood at that time.

The left (blue) bar is your attack power, you can increase it by pressing 'A', but it eats up more energy.

The middle bar is your energy (yellow is max energy, red is current) - it charges over time and by pickups. If you destroy those engine-ish things (shown in the picture), a drop with a ring around it appears which increases max energy.

The right bar (purple), think of it like a Gradius system. It corresponds with the powerups shown on the bottom right screen, and can be changed by pressing 'S'.

Upgrading works when you 'select' something on your upgrade bar, and you have enough current energy at that level (ie: upgrade bar at lvl 2 for Flash, you have the red energy at lvl 2). If you press 'X' (homing laser), and have enough power, you get the upgrade and your max energy decreases. Unfortunately I *think* that you have to fill the blue vertical bars up all the way to actually use it.

Unfortunately I didn't play it that long after I figured out the system. It was pretty fun at first, but when you get the "Evolution" power up to upgrade your ship (which you essentially need to later), you start out with nothing and you pretty much end up dodging everything while trying to have energy to destroy those engine things.

I may try it again later if someone finds an easier way to "evolve". Well, hope that helps.

thank you so much for that explanation! Ugh. I knew I was missing out on some stuff. all those icons and all.

Found it years ago on The Underdogs. Nice little shmup.

Fish>
Thanks! I didn't have time to read the instructions yesterday, the controls I posted were what I had figured out from playing it long enough to realize I was enjoying it.

Also is it really that old? This is a newer, updated version that was released just a few days ago, I had no idea the game had been around that long before this.

You don't need to fill the blue bars all the way up to use upgrades. The blue bar is just an attack power selector, and it governs how many bullets you shoot/how much shooting drains your energy. You can set it up to 4 and still have the energy bar recharge while you are shooting - gathering the necessary energy to upgrade is actually easier if you set it to 2 and try to kill as many enemies as you can, because most of the enemies drop energy recharge pickups.

With enough skill, you can evolve to one of the three final ship types after two levels. Just grab the evolution upgrades as soon as possible, and don't waste too much energy killing the big ships if your max energy is already maxed out.

i must say, this is a lot more fun now that i get it.
thanks fish!

Has this game been updated or something? It's really old.

FhnuZoag:
I was talking about the "levels" of the upgrade (located to the right of the purple bar). Sorry for the bad explanation.

Well I gave it a try again. For some reason it feels a lot more forgiving after Evolving and deaths (because it's a newer version or perhaps I'm just better at games now?). There's 8 stages in the "first" loop and then another 8 for the "second". The main scoring aspect of the game are the score "upgrades".

Here's part 2 of what I was able to figure out regarding upgrades:

After obtaining the upgrade, you actually have to "bomb" again to actually activate it. For example, if you get the "Multi-A" upgrade, it won't actually occur until you bomb again (hence my confusion before). However, the score, 1up, and "flash" are instant. Now onto explanations of what I believe the power ups are. Note (??) denotes that I'm not sure:

Flash: "bomb" now clears bullets on screen. Unsure of what levels of it does.
F-Bit: "bomb" also sends out a "Flash-Bit". It'll send out pulses that'll clear bullets every now and then. Level increases amount that can be deployed.
Multi-A: "bomb" gives you an option that follow you, level does same.
Multi-B: "bomb" gives you an option that stay on a side. (I may have the pattern switched with Multi-A)
Multi-LV(??): Increases Multi attack level.
S-Wave: "bomb" also sends a wave from ship that damages enemy.
S-Laser-N: increases "bomb" lasers by 1.
S-Laser-POW: I'm assuming it's power level for bomb.
1up, score, and evolution are pretty self-explanatory.

Who cares if it's old, I've never heard of it and had a few minutes of fun.

I hadn't realized it was so old. It's showing up on several of the Japanese sites I watch for new games, so I thought it was recently updated with new stuff.

But, even if it is old there are a lot of people that missed it the first time, so it's all good, I think. Never hurts to revisit stuff :).

This is pretty damn good. Can't really get past level 6/7-ish, though. I get the evolution upgrades twice on the first two levels, then get my ass handed to me with the Sylph-II, regardless of the upgrades chosen.