Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams (TBCD) - Walkthrough Version 1.12 Copyright Dec/16/2008 by Apathy000 savage_clown@hotmail.com Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Game Story III. Options IV. Basic Controls / What's on Screen V. Powerup System VI. On Crystals VII. End Level Point Calculation VIII. Strategies / Tips IX. Enemies X. Bosses / Strategies XI. Stage 1 XII. Stage 2 XIII. Stage 3 XIV. Stage 4 XV. Stage 5 XVI. Stage 6 XVII. Stage 7 XVIII. Endings XIX. Cheats and Codes XX. Copyright I. Introduction What drew me first to Cotton was the anime-like style of how everything is portrayed. What kept me interested was the interesting powerup system, the amusing story, and it just being a fun shooter to play. Since this was released for the Turbo CD you can be assured you are getting CD quality music, which is another plus. You will not regret playing through Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams. II. Game Story An evil mist covered the entire world and somehow snuffed out the day. An innocent (maybe) witch walks in a forest and comes upon a fairy crying in the woods. The witch does not care that the world is covered in darkness. The only thing she wants is a Willow. To eat it. The fairy begs the witch to restore the world, but the witch does not care. When the fairy, promises the witch the Willows in return for her help the witch enthusiastically begins her quest III. Options At the starting screen if you press Select you can set two things. Life - You can choose from 1 to 5 lives Text - You can choose English, Chinese, or Japanese text IV. Basic Controls / What's on Screen 1. Controls Press Fire - fires bullets Press Bomb - drops bombs Holding Fire - Use magic if you go it Holding Bomb - Shoots out your fairy(s) Holding Fire and Bomb - If you have a magic available, this will use an entirely new magic depending on the magic color. Select - Pause Turbo - Switch to Turbo **Recommended state when you are not using magic 2. What's on Screen a. Lives - In the upper right are trophies. These represent how many lives you currently have. Does not continue to add trophies after you go past 5 lives. You can have more than 4 lives it does not show it. b. Magic - On the bottom right you have your magic. A little picture shows whether it is a blue or red magic. You can only carry 4 max. c. Bullet Level - The bar on the bottom of the screen gets filled as you get crystals and do damage. As the bar gets repeatedly filled, this increases the size and amount of crystals beside the bar until you reach the max bullet level. Refer to the Powerup System section for more details. d. Points - The points are located in the upper left section of the screen. Every 20,000 points you get another life. V. Powerup System 1. Bullets - Max level is 13 On the bottom of the screen there is a bar that fills as you damage enemies and gain crystals. At level 1 to bar is miniscule and will not take much to fill it, and advance to level 2. As your level increases so does the amount of damage/crystals you have to give/attain. When you start at level 1, there is a tiny blue crystal. This crystal reflects your current bullet level. The crystal gets bigger until you reach level 4, and then you get another crystal next to your bar. When you get 4 large crystals next to your bar and it looks like the bar will not grow any larger, then you have reached level 12. When you fill the bar up on last time, and the four crystals combine into one enormous one, then you have reached 13, the highest you can attain. I like how they made the most unlucky number into the most lucky. Kind of appropriate for Cotton being that she seems to be a witch. Each level adds more/bigger forward bullets that Cotton can use. However, leveling in this game is extremely difficult. Getting to any level beyond level 6 requires you to defeat at least one stage without dying. When you die your current level is halved. The only silver lining is that they use a ceiling function on the result, so that if you have level 13, then your level will drop to 7. But if you can get level 13, Cotton becomes a weapon of mass destruction that can waste any number of enemies in front of you. **Orange Crystal increases your bar the most.** 2. Bombs Bombs are a weapon you do not want to be without, and the more powerful you make them the easier this game will be. You can upgrade your bombs by touching the multi-colored circle-like object that floats up and down on the screen after some enemies are destroyed. The bombs have a nice little feature that if you hold the back button, Cotton will toss the bombs down at a shallower angle. This is very useful on the level 6 mini boss. It really is a shame that when you die all your bomb powerups disappear, because when they get up they kick a ton of butt. level 1 - starting - one bomb, very slow frequency of fire level 2 - two bombs level 3 - adds a red bomb that shoots out along the ground. level 4 - adds another red bomb that moves along the ground 3. Fairies Fairies are a constant companion of Cotton. Good thing to, otherwise this game would be much harder. Cotton always has at least one fairy as a companion, but you can get up to 4. You can add a fairy by destroying an enemy that carries a fairy cast in metal. When you die with more than 1 fairy than one sacrifices itself and kills all the enemies on the screen before your resurrection. You can control the position of each fairy in your retinue through your movement. Controlling the fairies was extremely well done in my opinion since it is easy and intuitive once you see how they move. Each fairy has three main attack abilities. 1. Shoots a bullet about once every half-second. 2. If it touches an enemies it will cling to them and cause damage until they are dead or off screen. The damage is pretty significant if you are firing while it is clinging, because your little fairy will fire as well. 3. They can be shot forward by holding the bomb button. They cling to the enemy and damage them. Note that they do not perform this behavior on mini- bosses or bosses. 4. Magic When enemies die they sometimes drop a crystal. These crystals are the key to using magic. There are only two types of magic and they are given by a blood red crystal and a blue crystal. The blood-red crystals give a flame dragon that shoots out straight in front of you. The blue crystal gives you an awesome long lasting, powerful, lightning attack. The flame dragon is weaker and less lasting, the lightning. What makes magic so incredibly useful in this game is the fact that while you are using the spell you are INVINCIBLE. Since this game is a shooter you can just imagine how useful this is. Unfortunately you can only carry 4 spells at a time, but that is still a very good amount. When you get a crystal that is either blue or blood-red you need to know that they added to your queue of four spells. Each magic you get is added to the queue, and the magic that was first in is the first to leave. This means that if you accidentally get a fire magic then you will have to get 4 other blue magics to get rid of the flame magic. Every once in a while you come across a large crystal. If you change the crystal's color to that of blue or blood-red, then you will receive 2 magics dependent on the color. There is an even bigger crystal, which I dub the UBER- Crystal. This gives you a bunch of experience points toward your bullets, and full blue/red magic if you get either of those. You can perform a combination attack with the fairy when you have a magic. Hold the fire button, and then hold the bomb button. This will make your fairy float around you and change the color of the pre-magic sparkles around Cotton to several colors other than red. Casting the magic this way will do something other than simply shooting it out in a line in front of Cotton. Look at the later section for more details. And so to sum up all you need to know: 1. Blue crystals give Lighting magic, and this has a long invincibility time when cast. When used in combination with a fairy (look at later section) this will make a blue bubble appear around you. 2. Blood-Red crystals give Flame Dragon magic that does fairly low damage, and has low invincibilty time when cast. Use the fire magics in combination with the fairy to make yourself invincible for a long time and to set the fairy on fire. This combination magic is the strongest in the game. 5. Combination Magic with a Fairy You can perform a combination attack with the fairy when you have a magic. Hold the fire button, and then hold the bomb button. This will make your fairy float around you and change the color of the pre-magic sparkles around Cotton to several colors other than red. Casting the magic this way will do something other than simply shooting it out in a line in front of Cotton. 1. Fire and Fairy - Flaming Fairies This combination attacks sets your fairies on fire and makes them fly around Cotton. It is extremely powerful and can kill just about any boss or miniboss in two to three uses. Unfortunately you cannot shoot the flaming fairies due to the rules, BUT you can ram them repeatedly into various objects. These various objects quickly die from contact with the flaming fairies. This combination magic is the strongest in the game, and it also makes you invincible for the entire duration fo the spell. Use the red magic as the color to perform this magic. 2. Lightning and Fire - Shield The shield combination magic is the least useful magic in the game. Using this will make a bubble appear around Cotton. This will prevent Cotton from taking damage, but it is very limited. After a second or two or ramming or being shot the shield will go away. The shield is also timed to disappear after something like 5 seconds anyway! I see no reason to use this in favor of the Lightning Magic, which not only makes you invincible for about the same time period, but it also kills all the enemies you can shoot. Use the blue magic as the color to perform this magic. **Without Incidental the Supreme Pimp's hint, I would not have known about this combination technique. VI. On Crystals Crystals drop from enemies fairly randomly in Cotton. Sometimes it is necessary to kill a whole wave of a certain type for it to drop one crystal. Crystals have four colors Blue, Blood Red, Yellow, and Orange. You can change the colors of these crystals by shooting them. I suggest using individual bombs so you can stop shooting once you see your desired color (which is probably blue). The Blood Red crystals give you flame magic, and the Blue crystals give you Lightning magic. And all the other colors give you experience points towards your next level of bullets. Every once in a while you come across a large crystal. If you change the crystal's color to that of blue or blood- red, then you will receive 2 magics dependent on the color, and if it is a non- magic color then you just get experience toward the bullets. There is an even bigger crystal, which I dub the UBER-Crystal. This gives you a bunch of experience points toward your bullets, and full blue/red magic if you get either of those colors. Orange Crystals are a good choice to go with since they give a lot more to your buller level than any other crystal. It seems they give 2 to 3 times more toward your bullets than the others. Yellow Crystals are the worst crystals. They give little to the bullet level, and they do not give any type of magic. It is best to try to shoot or bomb them into a different coloring. The best thing to do with crystals is to use them to get 1UPs. By getting a blue or blood red crystal when you have all 4 slots filled with some magic, allows you to receive 1,000 bonus points. Every 20,000 points you will get a 1UP. Even though the screen only shows 4 trophies representing your lives (if you have that many), you can hold many more lives than just 4. VII. End Level Point Calculation When you defeat a boss there is a little bonus round, where you can accumulate a few thousand points. There will be little tiles that fall from the top of the screen. The light colored ones are worth 100 each. The darker tiles are each worth 500. The lighter colored ones are all added to your score en masse shortly after the tiles stop falling, but the darker ones are added immediately. After the tiles stop falling a little screen with a barely clothed fairy announces the points that will be added to your score. Here you can see that you get 1,000 points for each magic that you have in your inventory. This is another incentive to defeat bosses without using all your magic. After all is said and done you can make a pretty good killing. You should easily be able to get around 10,000 points just at the end of the round! And since an extra life costs 20,000 points it is common to get enough for your next life. The game will add your extra life at the start of the next level. VIII. Strategies / Tips 1. Keep trying for the magic crystals so you get 1,000 points for every magic crystal you get when you already have all 4. Every 20,000 points gives you a 1Up. 2. In stage 4 before the fire mini boss you can get an UBER gem. 3. Stay away from the edges of the map, because enemies fly in quickly. 4. Always try to get the blue crystal for its lightning magic, and the blood red crystal for its combination magic. 5. You can time the Mini Bosses out. Useful for the crab mini-boss if you are having trouble eliminating the last one. 6. Try to keep as many crystals in play as possible until you can get them to the color you want. 7. For each Level the game allows you to continue for two continues, your current one and a new one. IX. Enemies Archer - One of the most annoying enemies in the game. It shoots a red arrow either forward or in an arc. The red arrow is quite hard to see on Level 6, because the background has a lot of red in it. Bat - They just fly straight forward. Easy meat. Bird - Fly together in packs and move in fixed paths. Sometimes there is a lone one that will fire shots at you. Blue Devil - This comes on screen and throws a spear straight forward. Chimera - A tough enemy with a decent amount of health. It tries to smash into while shooting fireballs. Cloud - These are placed to get in your way for the most part. They always drop something when they are killed. Dwarf - They throw an axe in an arc towards you. Use bombs for best effect. Eyeball - Floats around in the level. Very easily killed. Fish - Only appears in water (duh). It shoots bubbles upward that block your shots. Fire Dragon - Large amount of health, and a fast bullet make these tough opponents. Flying Cutter - These fly all over the place, but only in a straight line. Ghost - Homes in on your position. Wants to make its scythe meet your face. Grass Woman - Starts out on the ground, jumps up, and spreads shots in many directions. Not many of them in the game. Imp - Has a giant eye that shoots a laser beam forward. It them raises the beam straight above it. Stack o' Wood - These things are un-killable, but you can knock their parts back so you can go past. Sword Fairy - These fly on screen and release a small blue wave which moves forward quickly. Turtle - Lots of health combined with shots that spray out make this a difficult enemy to kill. Bypassing them is probably best. Weird Metal Head - It usually carries various objects. You get 3,000 points if you kill it when it carries nothing. If it carries a fairy, and you kill it, a multi-colored acorn looking object will fall down below it. If you can catch that you get a whopping 5,000 points. These enemies are immune to your fairy's clinging attack. Zombie - It shoots its head at you, and boy does it make a good homing missile. Kill these as soon as you see them. The head can still kill even after it stops chasing you and falls to the ground. X. Bosses / Strategy 1. In Need of Heads Find a safe spot in the upper left corner of the screen and keep shooting until it dies. The safe spot is easy to find. Stay near the upper left corner and dodge one shot, then you have found it. 2. Evil Dead Wannabe Shoot it with lightning magic once the head comes off. You want to kill the hands and the head because they are very dangerous. Then just shoot the body. Watch out because the body will jump forward. Also be kind of careful of the extra long neck that extends from the main body. 3. Silly Centipede! Tricks are for Kids! The centipede has two difficult moves. The first is that it fires a small homing fuzz ball at you that has a lot of health. The second is spikes that shoot straight up from the ground, and then retract. Stay in the upper left corner and keep blasting the centipede with magic. It will take all four shots to kill it, and maybe a few other normal shots. If you have enough fire power you could also stay on the left edge and just keep shooting the boss and the little enemies it fires at you. 4. Sphinx in the Face First Form - Stay in the upper left corner and avoid the dwarfs and the bats that it vomits at you. Do not use any magic here. Second Form - Use magic to obliterate the snake out of the lion's mouth. This guy uses homing fireballs and these are extremely hard to dodge. The only way to beat this without dying is magic. 5. Grabby Green a) Hover Cotton over the boss's tongue. You cannot be harmed there, from its giant hands or form the shots it fires from its mouth. Then just bomb it until it dies. b) This is the second harder way to defeat him. Stay to the left edge of the screen and as far down as possible. The boss's shoot three waves of shots. The first will miss. The second would hit you if you stay still, so move slightly up, then move back down to avoid the third shot. 6. Lava Dragon a) The poor man's way of victory is to stay all the way left down and keep firing until it dies. You are almost untouchable in that position. You will probably die once or twice in that position, but it does seem to be the most effective. b) Stay to the left of the screen, but keep using magic whenever the dragon fires fireballs at you. Dodge if you run out of magic, but it should not be a problem. b) Yet another way to kill it is to hover above the head and bomb the dragon from the top of the screen. But you will need to move above the body to avoid its upward fireballs. 7. The Ultimate Fairy The enemy boss appears directly in front of you every time it reappears. Go to the center of the screen then move slightly to the right. The boss will appear near the right screen. This is good because it will give you room to maneuver from her spiraling death heads. XI. Stage 1 The first level is not a level that will cause anyone to get a game over. However there are a few surprises that will most likely kill you if this is your first time playing. The first surprise is the Mini Boss. It rushes onscreen fairly quickly and will try to hit you with the spinning rocks. Blast that sucker with magic to kill it. The second surprise is a bird that is standing on the ground. This bird will shoot a shot at you unlike most of its kind. The third surprise is the Imp. The green imp shoots a large laser forward and slowly points it up. Blast it with magic if you are at a loss as to how to dodge. The boss is very easy. Stay in the upper left area and find the safe area between its shots, and shoot it to death. Mini Boss - Rock This the largest mini boss in the game. It has a bunch of rocks that spin around its core. One lightning magic takes care of this guy. Boss - In Need of Heads Find a safe spot in the upper left corner of the screen and keep shooting until it dies. The safe spot is easy to find. Stay near the upper left corner and dodge one shot, then you have found it. XII. Stage 2 The second stage increases the difficulty quite a bit. The Flying Cutters fly on stage from behind as well on this stage. The second stage just has more stuff than the first level. The Mini Boss is more like a boss than anything else, and probably should just be shot with magic until it dies. You need to watch out for the archer's and their hard to see arrows. But by far the hardest part is before the boss with ghosts trying to ram you along side zombie heads. Try to kill the zombies as soon as they come on screen or you will most likely be dying far more then you would like. I find it amusing that the boss is pretty much the easiest part of the level. Mini Boss - Creepy Tree This mini boss can be a real pain, because it has a massive amount of health, and it is shooting tiny seeds which turn into trees all over the place. I suggest just blasting this guy with magic until it dies. If you only use your normal shot you will probably not be able to kill it until the fight times out, and the level progresses. Boss - Evil Dead Wannabe Shoot it with lightning magic once the head comes off. You want to kill the hands and the head because they are very dangerous. Then just shoot the body. Watch out because the body will jump forward. Also be kind of careful of the extra long neck that extends from the main body. XIII. Stage 3 The third stage does not really have anything that is overly difficult. Make sure to keep your magic inventory full and keep away from the sides and you should be fine. The Mini Boss can quickly be killed with magic, so no trouble there. However there is one tough part before the boss where you may want to use magic once to clear it out from all the enemies. The boss is easy if you use all your magic on it, but it could be tough if you fail to stock up on it. Mini Boss - Flame This boss is not hard at all. It moves along the bottom and jumps every few seconds spraying fire everywhere near it. Stay reasonably far away from it and keep shooting. Magic will deal with it quite quickly. Silly Centipede! Tricks are for Kids! The centipede has two difficult moves. The first is that it fires a small homing fuzz ball at you that has a lot of health. The second is spikes that shoot straight up from the ground, and then retract. Stay in the upper left corner and keep blasting the centipede with magic. It will take all four shots to kill it, and maybe a few other normal shots. XIV. Stage 4 This is where the difficult starts increasing again. Lots of enemies all over the place combined with a restricted space to dodge and a tough boss makes this quite a hard level. You really should be using magic every once in a while if you are in a pinch. However you must makes certain that you get to the boss with full magic, otherwise its second form will eat you for breakfast. Mini Boss - George Shoot the plant with 2 magic blasts to eliminate this extremely easy mini boss. Boss - Sphinx in the Face First Form - Stay in the upper left corner and avoid the dwarfs and the bats that it vomits at you. Do not use any magic here. Second Form - Use magic to obliterate the snake out of the lion's mouth. This guy uses homing fireballs and these are extremely hard to dodge. The only way to beat this without dying is magic. XV. Stage 5 The first half of this level has a high chance of giving you a game over, because of the mini boss. Even though the first half is much tougher than anything yet encountered in the game, you NEED to be able to bring at least two magics to kill one of the Red Crabs. If you do not you will need to try to time them out. After the mini boss you are nearly free of this level. You do not need to conserve your magic for the boss, since you can park your broom right above its tongue and bomb it until it dies. Mini Boss - Red Crabs 1) Blast one of the crabs with all your magic and kill it. It should take 2 blue magics and a couple of shots to finish off. Then it becomes much easier to kill the remaining one. 2) Timeout - This is the desperate and boring method of continuing the level. Stay on the rock to the right of the screen on the bottom. It is the safest spot by far. However, if the bottom crab stops right at the edge of the left screen its shot will be able to hit you. This event is very rare however. Boss - Grabby Green a) Hover Cotton over the boss's tongue. You cannot be harmed there, from its giant hands or form the shots it fires from its mouth. Then just bomb it until it dies. b) This is the second harder way to defeat him. Stay to the left edge of the screen and as far down as possible. The boss's shoot three waves of shots. The first will miss. The second would hit you if you stay still, so move slightly up, then move back down to avoid the third shot. XVI. Stage 6 If you are going to fail anywhere in the game it will be on this level. Tough fire dragons are commonplace along with archers, chimeras, and clouds. If you can get your bombs to max level you will have a much easier time of beating this. Otherwise you will be struggling to identify the archer's red arrows and the fire dragon's red fireball (did I mention the background is mostly red?). The mini boss is hardly a challenge, but the section after him is. The section before the boss is very hard. You will truly have to resist using your magic too much here. You will be wanting those magics for the boss. Mini Boss - Twins At the start of the mini boss there are several Weird Metal Heads on the ground and Clouds hovering around. It is important that you destroy them ASAP. To defeat the mini boss you need to move in a circular motion around one half of the screen. The two mini bosses start out on ground, on opposites sides of the screen. They fire a shot diagonally upward, walk forward, and jump off screen. When the reappear on the sides of the screen the pattern repeats. If you stay near the left side of the screen and hold back (to make the path of the bomb shallower) you can bomb them when they appear there after they jump. Then just avoid their jumping, and they will die eventually. Boss - Lava Dragon a) The poor man's way of victory is to stay all the way left down and keep firing until it dies. You will probably die once or twice in that position, since every once in a while a fireball will sneak in. b) Stay to the left of the screen, but keep using magic whenever the dragon fires fireballs at you. Dodge if you run out of magic, but it should not be a problem. b) Yet another way to kill it is to hover above the head and bomb the dragon form the top of the screen. But you will need to move above the body to avoid its upward fireballs. XVII. Stage 7 Boss - Ultimate Fairy This entire level is solely dedicated to the final boss. The final boss appears directly in front of you every time it reappears. Go to the center of the screen then move slightly to the right. The boss will appear near the right screen. This is good because it will give you room to maneuver from her spiraling death heads. After its defeat you can go enjoy and the ending :). XVIII. Endings You can get two different endings. 1) The first one is the first time beaten through. 2) The second ending is when you beat the GO EXTRA game after you have beaten it through once. You will have to use the lives and continues left over from first time though. XIX. Cheats and Codes 1) Level Select (Up to Level 4) ** verified Press Select at the title screen to bring up the options screen. Then, highlight exit. Next, press Down, 2, 2, Left, 1, Right, Select. You will hear a chime, the letters in the background will turn red, and a stage select option will appear. In the game you will normally have 4 continues, but with the code you can start the game at Level 1 with 9 continues. When you put in the code it will modify your amount of continues depending on the level. For every level you skip will decrease your new continue amount by 1. At Level 1 you get 9 continues, at Level 2 you get 8 continues, at Level 3 you get 7 continues, and at Level 4 you get 6 continues. From http://cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/008/008724.html#439788 XX. Copyright Dec/16/2008 by Apathy000 aka Michael Zacka This may not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of copyright. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. Sites that have my permission to use this guide are gamefaqs.com.