Released in April 1989, The Guardian Legend featured an innovative combination of shmup stages with Zelda-style exploration. The game also features a female protagonist, which was rare for Nintendo games. It turns out the world of Naju is teeming with evil creatures and is hurtling towards Earth. Your mission is to activate the self-destruct mechanisms on Naju before it reaches Earth.
Best time: Single-segment 1:03:12 by Tom 'rdrunner' Votava on 2005-09-20.
Author's comments:
First of all, there are 21 "corridors" (shooter-style levels) in the game, but the only ones that are required to complete the game are 1-10 and then 21. This is not completely obvious when you're playing the game for the first time.
Corridors 11-20 are a waste of time. Completing them simply gives you power-ups, most of which are not all that useful. Plus, many of the exact same upgrades can be found by simply walking around in the "RPG" phase of the game.
The only special weapons worth collecting are the two laser-saber weapons (think "Star Wars"...VERY powerful!) and the Fireball (for a certain pesky bosses). Each of these can be upgraded through up to 3 levels of power, but it's not necessary to max out all of them. You need at least one maxed-out weapon to defeat the last bosses with any kind of speed though.
As far as other items go, I collected most of the life-ups (blue happy-faces), weapon-chip-upgrades (red happy-faces), and weapon/armor power-ups. I did however leave out one of the armors, which can only be retrieved by doing Corridor 20. This was risky, as it makes the final boss more difficult. Warning to anyone trying to improve this run: Any less armor would be suicide! Try sacrificing the other items first.
Enjoy! :)