THE CAVE OF SHOOTING - 2004

BUTTONS
	Normal fire button (shot), hold it down and you slow down. In addition the hitbox of Reco will be displayed.
	Bomb.
	Autofire, hold it and you move fast, tap it to bank child counters (explained below) .

WEAPON TYPES
When a power up item is released it will have a small timer beside it, when the timer expires it changes to the next power up type. It will always start on the type selected at the beginning of the game.
Type	Symbol	Ship Speed	Shot Width
		Medium	Medium
		Slow	Wide
		Fast	Narrow

OPTIONS
Options are small helper ships that follow your ship. Up to 4 may be carried at once. If you hold down the normal fire button the options will form around your ship and create a strong & centralized attack. If you use the autofire button (by holding it down or tapping it) they will act as described below. When an option is released it will have a small timer beside it, when the timer expires it changes type.
Symbol	Type	Description
	Trace	Options follow your ship and your ship's movement.
	Formation	Options align themselves with your ship and spread out creating a wide range of fire.

This mode is Toaplan style with fast aimed bullets. The main counter which appears next to Reco
is just a gem counter. Every time you grab a gem it shows how many you have picked up so far.

Maniac and Ultra share the same scoring method. Ultra is similar to Maniac except there are a lot more bullets!

The main counter is used as a score multiplier. The idea is simple -- keep it high. When you shoot enemies, it goes up. When you stop shooting them, it goes down, very fast. Destroying some enemies gives you a few frames to pick up the chain. Some drop immediately.

As enemies are on screen, they take off X amount from the counter for each frame (this is the red number you see on each enemy).

The closer you are to an enemy, the higher the frequency at which you hit it and the higher the counter goes.The increment with each hit is determined by your shot type. W being the lowest & S being the highest. With S-Power enemies die much quicker. See the Counter table below for details.

Enemies are invincible for a set amount of time upon entering the screen. This allows you to continue the chain without killing them too fast.

As you get options, you will get an extra counter on each enemy for each option hitting that enemy. This is known as the child counter. I.e. if you have 2 options, with both lasers hitting an enemy, you will have two child counters, in addition to the normal counter. Then each time you hit the enemy by tapping your C shot your main counter goes up by an increment of each child counter. So if you have 4 child counters with a value of 250 each, each tap of C will add 1000 to the main counter. This technique of hitting an enemy using the options and gaining child counters is commonly known as banking.

Tap A slowly on large enemies such as midbosses to raise the overall counter faster than by just holding A or C. Each time you tap A the values of the child counters are added to the overall counter. The child counters will continue to increase as you do this.

Tap C as fast as you can once the child counters are high enough to give a benefit (normally over 500 each). This enables the "skyrocket" effect, which adds the child counter values to the overall counter very quickly (much faster than tapping A), however the child counter values rapidly reduce in the process.

The child counters act differently on the bosses. They effect the counter, and ultimately the score, but tapping autofire here here doesn't increase the main counter. You can still score, but it's a lot of work for almost zero reward in the big picture

COUNTER TABLE
This table describes how the counter is incremented with respect to the different power modes. Close is point blank or on top of an enemy. Normal is everywhere else. The FirePower variable indicates how many power ups you have received. FirePower starts with a value of 1. StageNumber is the current stage you are on, it starts with a value of 1.
Type	Symbol	Proximity	Formula
		Normal	FirePower + 1 + (5 - StageNumber)
		Close	FirePower + 3 + (5 - StageNumber)
		Normal	FirePower + 0 + (5 - StageNumber)
		Close	FirePower + 1 + (5 - StageNumber)
		Normal	FirePower + 3 + (5 - StageNumber)
		Close	FirePower + 18 + (5 - StageNumber)

Credit: EOJ, GaijinPunch, rtw, Slateman & zebraairforce