Kyuiin

Kyuiin Instructions

Kyuiin (the name conjurs the sound of a vacuum cleaner) is yet another addition to the fine crop of shooting games brought to from Japan, and it promises to be one of the more unique titles in the lineup. So now it’s time to get ready! Read on and learn how to save the Storybook World with the aid of your Magic Flying Vacuum Cleaner! You heard us right, Magic Flying Vacuum Cleaner.

Menu Translations (left to right, then top to bottom)

1-player mode: Guide your hero through 6 side-scrolling shoot-em-up, suck-em-up, spit-em-back-out, stages right out of the storybook in an adventure that could ONLY come out of Japan.

2-player mode: Grab a friend for the 2-player adventure and compete for the highest score in a mode that sucks twice as hard!

Options: Change the options… Yeah.

Options menu translations

Sound Mode: Swap between Stereo (if you’re playing on a PSP, you got this) and Mono (if you’re playing this on the PS3 on a really old and/or cheap TV, but you probably aren’t).

Sound Test: Listen to one of the games’ numerous-ish musical tracks.

Lives: Set the amount of lives you start with. You can have 3, 4 or 5 of ‘em.

Controls

Control Pad: Change Selection (in menus), Move Character (in-game)

Square Button: Backfire

X Button: Fire (in-game), back (in menus)

Circle Button: Fire Garbage Cannon (in-game), accept (in menus)

How to Play: If you’ve played a shooter before, you probably know how to play this game. If you haven’t, or just wanna find out more about the peculiarities of a game where you ride on a Magic Flying Vacuum Cleaner, then keep reading.

The basics of the game are similar to the basics of (almost) all shooters. The screen scrolls automatically as you shoot your way through wave after wave of enemies until the end of the level, at which point you blast a boss. You have a limited number of lives, and (fortunately) an unlimited number of continues.

The primary way in which this game differs is that you can deal with enemies by either shooting them, or just sucking them up. You are riding a MAGIC FLYING VACUUM CLEANER, after all. At the front of your cleaning conveyance is a short hose and standard sucking attachment. If an enemy or projectile that CAN be sucked up touches the attachment, it will be sucked down into the (apparently) bottomless dustbag of your Magical Flying Vacuum Cleaner and subsequently disposed of. Sucking up enemies also recharges the use of your Garbage Cannon.

Getting hit once will destroy your hose and sucking attachment, making your Magical Flying Vacuum Cleaner just a Magical Flying… thing. It also downgrades your weapon to just a basic, weak pea-shooter and opens you up to getting your means of transportation and cleaning up after yourself destroyed if it gets hit again. IF you get hit, there will usually be a Repair kit (it looks like a medkit with the Red Cross on it) floating by shortly. Collect it to repair your Magic Flying Vacuum Cleaner, or just get a Weapon Power-up if there are any on-screen at the time.

The Garbage Cannon is your special weapon for this game. When fired, the Garbage Cannon sends everything you’ve sucked up flying back at the enemy, along with a massive energy beam that destroys almost anything and everything it hits and grants you invincibility for as long as it continues to fire. Unfortunately, you get absolutely zero points for anything that gets destroyed by the cannon. The number of remaining uses and level of charge you have for the Garbage Cannon are shown at the bottom of the screen, next to your number of remaining lives. The charge meter indicates how close you are to getting another use of the cannon, whereas the color indicates the strength of the current shot, with green being the weakest, then blue, then red. The higher the power level of the current blast, the longer the cannon will continue to fire and the wider of an arc it will cover.

Your standard weapon is a forward-firing gun that shoots stuff that LOOKS like dustbunnies. True Japanese ingenuity! This can be swapped for one of multiple Special Weapons, which can in turn be upgraded through 3 power levels by collecting more of the same type of icon. Upgrading the weapons makes them do more damage, but doesn’t provide any visual change to the shots you fire so you kinda have to keep track of that yourself. The special weapons are as follows:

• Vulcan (Red circle with a blue ‘V’ in it): Your standard 3-way shot.
• Laser (Blue circle with a yellow ‘L’ in it): A blue laser that will follow your craft vertically and continue to fire through enemies it hits.
• Homing (Orange circle with a green ‘H’ in it): A stream of homing projectiles that fire in a helix pattern normally, but will home in on any nearby enemies.
• Rapid (Green circle with a yellow ‘R’ in it): a constant stream of projectiles coming far faster than the standard gun can produce.

The last weapon you have is the Backfire. It’s actually the power cord for your Magical Flying Vacuum Cleaner. It fires straight backwards then retracts back into your ship. It’s range is short and there aren’t that many enemies that come up from behind you, but it deals a LOT of damage if you connect with it and destroying an enemy with it nets you a nice bonus.

Tips & Tricks

The difficulty menu pops up at the start of each game. The option on the left is Easy Mode, the option on the right is Difficult Mode.

If you’re going for a high-score, remember that dealing with enemies in different ways will net you differing amounts of points. Try and experiment to find what disposal method nets you the highest score.

Inhaling projectiles will only fill up a tiny amount of the Garbage Cannon’s charge meter. Suck up enemies in order to fill that thing up!

You are invincible while firing the Garbage Cannon. Take advantage of this if you get hit in order to safely grab the repair kit (or at least last until it shows up).

There is a way to quickly determine if an enemy can be sucked into your MAGICAL! FLYING! VACUUM! CLEANER! or not. Enemies that can be inhaled will trail little blue sparkles, whereas enemies that can’t won’t.