The Guardian Legend Any% Speedrun Guide

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The Guardian Legend Any% Speedrun Guide
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by vaxherd (latest update: 2024-02-15)


I've written this guide to give an overview of speedrunning techniques
for The Guardian Legend and describe the any% route used in the current
world record run. There are in fact a number of possible routes through
the game using different weapons, all of which complete the game in
similarly quick fashion; feel free to experiment and find what works
best for you.


Overview and Controls
---------------------
The Guardian Legend is a unique-for-its-time mix of Zelda-style overhead
adventure and shoot-em-up action. You play as the Guardian, an android
capable of transforming between human and fighter-ship forms, and your
goal is to explore the planetoid Naju, defeat the bosses guarding 10
self-destruct mechanisms, and destroy Naju before it destroys Earth.

The game world consists of a 24x24-screen walkaround labyrinth and 23
autoscroller "corridors" (10 required corridors numbered 1-10, 10
optional corridors numbered 11-20, and 3 unnumbered corridors comprising
the intro and final escape segments). Gameplay consists of exploring the
labyrinth to find powerup items, special weapons, and the entrances to
the corridors, then entering the corridors and defeating the boss at the
end of each. Corridors 1-10 each have a gimmick blocking the entrance;
these will be mentioned in the route notes. Each numbered corridor
(including optional corridors 11-20, though those are all skipped in the
any% route) also gives an item as a reward for completing it.

Only the central portion of the labyrinth (Area 0) is open at the
beginning of the game; the rest, divided into 10 areas according to the
number of the corridor inside, is blocked off by locked warp panels,
each requiring a particular key to pass through. The keys are awarded on
finishing specific corridors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9), and each key
opens up one or two new areas. It ends up being fastest to do all
corridors in numbered order, but (for example) it's entirely possible to
explore Area 8 before attempting Corridor 7.

The D-pad on the controller moves the Guardian in 8 directions. TGL uses
proper diagonal movement and tracks subpixels, so moving diagonally is
no faster or slower than moving horizontally or vertically (but see
under Movement Tech below). The Guardian's speed is 1.4 pixels per
frame (1 frame is 1/60th of a second), increasing to 1.8 pixels/frame at
shield level 5 or higher.

The B button shoots the Guardian's main gun. Holding B down allows
repeat firing, but the rate is extremely slow until you get the first
rapid-fire item, so it's better to mash B until that point. (Repeat-fire
rate starts at 5 shots per second, and rapid-fire items increase it to
12, 15, 20, 30, then 60 shots per second.) Only 4 total player shots are
allowed on screen at once, and if a special weapon is active, it uses up
1 (or 2, in some cases) of those slots, reducing the number of regular
shots you can shoot. The width and speed of the shot increases based on
your current chip count.

The A button shoots the Guardian's current special weapon. The Guardian
can collect up to 12 different special weapons, each of which has a
different effect or attack pattern, though most of them are not very
useful in the speedrun. With one exception (Enemy Erasers), special
weapons use "chips" as ammo; chips are also used to purchase items from
shops in the labyrinth. The Guardian can carry a maximum of 50 chips at
the start of the game, which can be increased by picking up Red Landers.

The Select button opens the in-game menu, showing a map of the
walkaround area and the Guardian's current status and available special
weapons. Holding Select also activates a couple of hidden features, most
notably cutscene skip (details below).

The Start button pauses the game, and is also used to restart after game
over. Pressing Start before the Guardian's death animation completely
disappears from the screen will still pause the game, so don't start
mashing too soon when deathwarping.

TGL includes a password system which can be used to save and resume a
game (like Metroid, for example). There are various "save rooms"
scattered throughout the labyrinth which will give you a password for
your current game state. Uniquely, the game will also let you check
what you wrote down by entering it then and there, which is a nice
solution to the problem of making sure you wrote the password down
correctly. This naturally has no relevance to the speedrun, except
possibly for practice if you don't have a way to make save states, but
casual playthroughs can extend over many hours depending on how
extensively you explore and how cautiously you play, so it's convenient
for casual players.

There's also a secret password "TGL" (or "eierujii" in the Japanese
version, from "ALG" -- "Another Legend of Guardic", an English
translation of the Japanese title "Guardic Gaiden") which starts the
game in a special shooting-only mode, omitting the labyrinth and instead
awarding special weapons and other powerups based on your score. While
scoring itself works the same way as usual, the game has a separate
"item score" counter in this mode which is shown at the end of each
corridor and used for the powerup check. This counter omits score gained
from bosses (and actually penalizes you 10 points for every 64 frames,
or roughly 1 second, that you spend in each boss fight), so you can't
simply farm score on bosses to get more powerups; you have to instead
maximize your score in the corridor itself. This makes TGL mode good for
score-attack runs. (For the curious, my record is 984240 points after
corridor 10, the last point at which the item score is displayed.)


Movement Tech
-------------
As noted above, TGL uses "proper" diagonal movement, so that when moving
diagonally, the Guardian's horizontal and vertical speeds are reduced by
a factor of square-root-of-2. The game also tracks subpixels to 1/256th
of a pixel, so there is no benefit to techniques like "stutter-stepping"
seen in other games; the Guardian always moves the same number of
subpixels per frame. (In fact, because of rounding error, diagonal
movement is about 0.5% slower than horizontal or vertical movement, but
this works out to only 1 pixel per screen width or height, so there are
no cases in which it would be faster to move in cardinal directions.)
Consequently, you should always move in the straightest possible line to
your target.

TGL does not use the Guardian's regular hitbox for detecting collisions
against walls; instead, it checks whether a single pixel (roughly, the
center of the top edge of the shadow circle) would hit a block or wall,
and stops the Guardian at that point. Because of this, it's not always
obvious where the Guardian has to walk in order to get around an
obstacle; it may take some practice to get a good feel for positioning.

In some cases, the Guardian can get stuck moving diagonally past the
corner of a wall. Pressing diagonally against a wall is slower than
walking normally in any case, so you should generally give corners a
bit of space when walking past them.

When entering a corridor, you should always be on the lowest possible
pixel which will trigger entering the corridor, since the animation of
the Guardian jumping into the gate ends as soon as she goes off the
bottom of the screen. If you look at the light gray tile immediately
below the gate, you can see two short dark gray lines on the right edge;
line up the bottom pixel of the Guardian's shadow with the lower gray
line. Usually you won't have enough time to line up exactly, in which
case it's better to be slightly above the pixel (so you enter
immediately) instead of below it.

In ship form, the Guardian's hitbox is normally twice as wide as in
humanoid form, but it gets a bit narrower while the Guardian is moving
left or right, matching the "banking" animation of the ship. This
applies even when the Guardian is at the edge of the screen, and can be
especially useful to avoid dying if Optomon traps you at the edge of the
screen with a seaweed strand.

When finishing a corridor, always move to the top of the screen before
losing control during the fanfare, since the exit animation has the
Guardian fly up to the top of the screen before going back down.


Health and Zero-Health Hitbox
-----------------------------
The Guardian starts out with 64 points of health, shown below the screen
as a blue bar divided into boxes of 8 points each. This health actually
represents the strength of the Guardian's shield, which you can see as a
circle around the Guardian when she gets hit; going down to zero is not
an immediate game over, but means that the shield is gone (and so the
next hit *is* game over).

Health is increased 8 units (1 box) at a time by finding Blue Landers
or by reaching certain score levels: 30k, 100k, 500k, and each million
points up to 9M. Either of these (as well as Red Lander pickups) also
completely refills both health and chips. Refills from score are used to
avoid farming on two bosses; see Score Routing below.

The Guardian is invincible whenever her health is changing, whether from
healing or damage. The speedrun makes heavy use of this to kill bosses
more quickly.

An important side effect of being at zero health is that the Guardian's
hitbox (normally 24x24 pixels in ship form, 12x24 pixels in humanoid
form) shrinks to 8x8 pixels, the "zero-health hitbox". This makes it
much easier to dodge enemies and their shots, but it also makes it much
harder to pick up item drops, especially in autoscroller sections when
the screen is scrolling quickly. Many a run has been lost to missing a
health pickup because of the zero-health hitbox.


Weapon Damage
-------------
The Guardian's standard gun deals 1 damage per hit at the start of the
game. There are three "gun" items available in the game, which increase
the Guardian's attack level; at levels 2, 3, and 4, regular shots deal
2, 3, and 5 (not 4) damage.

There are also "shield" items which reduce the damage taken by the
Guardian. Damage is simply divided by the shield level, so going from 1
to 2 shields halves damage taken by the Guardian, but going from 6 to 7
shields only cuts an additional 14%. (The current world record route
only goes up to shield level 6, because level 7 doesn't add enough
additional safety to be worth the time it takes to get.)

Special weapon damage varies by weapon; some are based on the Guardian's
current attack level, while others have fixed damage per special weapon
level.

If a non-boss enemy hits the Guardian, the enemy also takes damage (the
same amount as would be dealt by the standard gun). It can sometimes be
convenient to damage boost through enemies to kill them rather than
shooting them down, especially when score routing.

Bosses have a number of unique features with respect to damage:

- Bosses only take damage from special weapons on every 8th frame
(regular shots are unaffected by this rule). Aside from limiting the
number of hits taken, this also affects where the Guardian has to be
positioned to hit bosses with the Saber and Cutter Lasers; see under
Special Weapons below.

- Damage to bosses is capped at 5 per hit. This also doesn't affect
regular shots, which max out at 5 damage in any case, but it severely
limits the damage done by some special weapons; for example, damage from
a level 1 Fireball is reduced to less than 1/3 of its usual amount.

- Bosses take no damage at all from contact with the Guardian.

- When a regular shot hits a boss, it spawns an explosion animation
which uses up that shot slot, so you can't shoot a new shot until the
animation finishes (about 20 frames). There are a few regular enemies
that also have this effect, which you can identify by the "bloop" sound
that the shots make when they hit the enemy.


Special Weapons
---------------
Special weapons other than Enemy Erasers consume chips either per use or
over time (once per second). For weapons which consume chips over time,
the game has an internal counter which starts at 60 and is decremented
once per frame per projectile (thus *twice* per frame for Back Fire,
Area Blaster, and Cutter Laser). When the counter hits zero, chips are
consumed and the counter is reset to 60, or to 120 for Back Fire / Area
Blaster / Cutter Laser. Thus it's possible to use those three weapons
for 1/2 second, or other time-based weapons for 1 second, after a
deathwarp without using up any chips.

Most special weapons at level 3, as well as Fireball at level 2, will
destroy shots, lasers, and other projectiles in addition to enemies.

Special weapons deal their set amount of damage every frame to enemies
touching the projectile's hitbox. However, some special weapons' shots
have limited "health", in that they will disappear after registering
enough hits on enemies or walls. As an extreme case, the Guardian's
regular gun shots only have a health of 1, so they disappear as soon as
they hit something (with a few exceptions, such as the bubble shooters
in Corridors 1 and 2). Level 1 Fireball (128 health) is a notable
example in that the limited health allows shooting fireballs into bosses
much more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

"ATK" in the descriptions below indicates that the special weapon does
the same amount as (or a multiple of) the Guardian's regular gun damage.

The Saber and Cutter Lasers differ from other special weapons in that
they are actually divided in half, with the near half and the far half
active on alternating frames. This is particularly relevant to the
8th-frame hit mechanic for bosses, because frames on which bosses are
vulnerable are always near-half frames for these weapons -- thus you
have to get close to the bosses in order to damage them.

**Multibullets** (1/3/10 chips/sec, ATK damage) - Rapid-fires large
energy balls in any of 8 directions, controlled by the D-pad. Not useful
in the speedrun, or even casually for that matter. Probably just a
holdover from Zanac.

**Back Fire** (1/5/40 chips/sec, ATK damage) - Shoots energy waves
diagonally left and right behind the Guardian. At higher levels, the
waves have larger hitboxes and move faster. Not used in the speedrun,
but can be useful as a substitute for Cutter Laser if you're not
comfortable getting close to bosses. (I used this on the bouncy flower
minibosses and the final boss as a casual player.)

**Wave Attack** (3/7/20 chips/sec, 1/2/6 damage) - Shoots an energy wave
ahead of the Guardian. Not used in the speedrun.

**Bullet Shield** (3/6/30 chips/sec, ATK damage) - Spawns an energy ball
that circles the Guardian. This can absorb projectiles even at level 1.
Not used in the speedrun, but can be helpful casually for beginning
players.

**Grenade** (2/5/20 chips/use, 16/32/48 damage) - Launches a grenade
that explodes a short distance from the Guardian. Not used in the
speedrun; particularly useless against bosses because of the damage cap
and the 8-frame rule.

**Fireball** (4/12/30 chips/use, 16/24/32 damage) - Shoots a fireball
ahead of the Guardian. At level 1, this is a small ball which disappears
after registering a few hits; at levels 2 and 3, it's a larger ball with
infinite health that also destroys projectiles. Level 1 is used on
several early bosses, and some routes use level 2 later in the game.
See also Fireball Invincibility under Basic Strategies and Techniques.

**Area Blaster** (1/8/120 chips/sec, ATK damage) - Spawns two energy
balls that seek out enemies. The balls move faster and have greater
health at higher levels. Not used in the speedrun.

**Repeller** (3/10/30 chips/use, 4/7/10 damage) - Shoots a fireball
which takes a spiral path ahead of the Guardian. Not used in the
speedrun, but can serve as a good backup on Optomon if you're not
comfortable with fireball strats.

**Hyper Laser** (4/6/30 chips/sec, 1 damage) - Shoots two lasers ahead
of the Guardian, with a wider range at higher levels. Not used in the
speedrun, but can be good in casual play for beginners despite the low
damage output. (I successfully used this on Optomon and Grimgrin when I
first played the game.)

**Saber Laser** (4/8/30 chips/sec, 2x/4x/8x ATK damage) - Deploys a
sword-like laser in front of the Guardian. Used frequently in the first
half of the speedrun.

**Cutter Laser** (5/10/35 chips/sec, 2x/4x/8x ATK damage) - Deploys two
sword-like lasers to the left and right sides of the Guardian. Used
frequently in the second half of the speedrun.

**Enemy Eraser** (1 EE/use) - Kills all enemies on screen instantly,
except bosses and some other strong enemies. Each use causes an 8-frame
delay. Unlike other special weapons, EEs have a separate ammo pool,
which can be refilled with EE item pickups found in the walkaround area,
as corridor rewards, or as item drops. Used at specific points in the
speedrun to avoid lag, and for farming health/chip drops (see EE Farming
under Basic Strategies and Techniques).


Item Drops
----------
Item drops in TGL are not random, but are instead based on a hidden
"drop counter". Each enemy and projectile has a "drop score" which is
added to the drop counter when the enemy is killed (some enemies and
most projectiles have a drop score of 0, so they can't drop any items).
When the drop counter reaches certain thresholds, the enemy that pushed
the counter over drops an item:
   - 50: heart (refills 5 boxes of health)
   - 80: red chip (refills 2 boxes of health and 500 chips)
   - 100: blue chip (*)
   - 140: heart
   - 180: heart
   - 220: red chip
   - 230: red chip
   - 256: special (see below) and reset counter to zero
(*) Blue chips restore 1/4 box of health and 20 chips in the labyrinth,
    but 1 box of health and 10 chips in corridors, perhaps because of a
    last-minute design change that only got applied in one of the two
    modes. In any case, it's usually not worth your time to go after
    these, but see Infinite Blue Chips below for a way to (ab)use them.

When an item drops, the counter is reset to that threshold, so any
extra drop points from the enemy that dropped the item are lost.

The 8th item in the sequence cycles through four different drops: first
a red chip, then an energy tank (full health refill), then another
energy tank, and finally an Enemy Eraser ammo refill. If you haven't
collected any Enemy Erasers from the labyrinth or as a corridor reward
(the speedrun picks up the first EEs at the Corridor 5 reward), that
drop turns into another energy tank.

In corridors, the drop animation will travel forward a short distance
before actually spawning the item box. This is important to keep in mind
in cases when the screen stops scrolling (such as the Defense System in
Corridor 0 or at the end of a boss battle), because if the item spawns
at the top of the screen, you won't be able to grab it.


Score Routing
-------------
As mentioned above, reaching certain score levels will give the Guardian
an extra box of health and refill all health and chips. The current WR
route takes advantage of this to avoid needing to farm health or chip
drops on Red Grimgrin (Corridor 8) and the final boss. However, this
requires paying close attention to the score throughout the run and
adjusting strategies on the fly to stay close to the target score.

Since the score routing is designed to get level-ups at specific points,
being ahead of the score target is just as bad as being behind. That
said, it's generally easier to recover from too much score than too
little score, since you can just dodge enemies to avoid points, but the
score route already takes most of the points available so there's not
much backup if you need more. As a rough guide, I've successfully hit my
Red Grimgrin target when going into Corridor 8 anywhere from 5k (5000
points) behind to 20k ahead.

Score routing is not required to successfully complete a run, or even to
get a good time; it only helps make a couple of boss fights faster and
safer. If you don't score route, there's an alternate path between
Corridors 7 and 8 which picks up an extra Red Lander for 400 more chips
at a net cost of about 27 seconds; see the "1600 chip route" version of
the Area 7 -> Area 8 notes.

Specific score targets are listed in the route details. (As a side note,
I adjusted these targets slightly after reflection on my most recent
record run; particularly in the endgame, my comments in the run of being
at too high a score are based on lower score targets which I've since
revised upward.)


Basic Strategies and Techniques
-------------------------------
**Block Clip**: The fast walking speed gained from upgrading to shield
level 5 (four Shield item pickups) enables a glitch in which the
Guardian can clip horizontally through a 1-tile-wide column of blocks
in the labyrinth. If you move diagonally toward the seam between two
blocks in such a column, eventually the Guardian will clip through them.
Some blocks work better than others, possibly due to subpixel alignment.
Clipping does not work vertically or through multiple columns of blocks.
(Coincidentally, the program bug which enables this glitch is also the
cause of getting stuck when diagonally walking against a wall.)

**Body Checking**: The near-far flickering nature of the Saber and
Cutter Laser weapons means that if you move far enough into a boss's
hitbox with the weapon active (see Special Weapon Invincibility below),
the laser will only be in the hitbox for 1 out of every 2 frames, and
the Guardian's regular gun shots can damage the boss on the "far"
frames. If there aren't any regular gun shots colliding with the boss on
such a frame, the Guardian will take damage, thus the "body checking"
moniker. (Because of special damage rules, bosses don't take any damage
from the Guardian herself, so be sure to shoot the regular gun to take
advantage of this mechanic.) Among other benefits, this allows cutting
1 cycle off the Teramute (Corridor 4) and Glider (Corridor 6) fights.

**Cutscene Skip**: When entering or exiting a corridor, a short cutscene
plays showing the Guardian changing between humanoid and ship form. If
you hold the Select button, the cutscene will be skipped, saving about
6 seconds each time -- thus about 2 minutes over the course of a run.
Select also opens the menu, so you need to either open the menu once and
hold Select after closing it (good when you need to change special
weapons anyway), or press Start twice to quickly pause and unpause, then
press and hold Select during the "unpause" sound effect. In an ideal run
you should keep Select held down rather than using the pause-unpause
method, but this can be awkward depending on the type of controller
you're using (I recommend the "dogbone"-style controller included with
the AV Famicom).

**Deathwarping**: When you continue after game over, you respawn in the
last save room you passed through (or in the central room with the "If
you are reading this message..." text, if you haven't yet visited a save
room). The speedrun makes heavy use of deathwarping to avoid having to
walk all the way out of one labyrinth area to get to the next one.
Continuing also refills your health and resets your special weapon to
"NO USE" (nothing equipped), but everything else is unchanged, including
score (so dying in a corridor generally kills score route), chips, and
EEs (so dying on the final boss can leave a run uncompletable, or at
least force you to spend several minutes getting extra Red Landers or
backup EE ammo).

**EE Farming**: When you use an EE, the game looks at all objects on the
screen, checks if they're vulnerable to EEs, and kills them if so. As it
happens, the explosion of an enemy being defeated or a shot hitting a
boss (which is also an "object" as far as the game is concerned) is
treated as vulnerable to EEs, and while it doesn't give any score, it's
worth 1 drop point. This means that instead of just using a single EE to
clear out enemies and score their drop points, you can spam several EEs
in quick succession, and each explosion which hasn't already spawned a
drop will give you 1 more drop point for each EE you use. With enough
projectiles on the screen, you can spam a dozen or so EEs to get 4 or 5
drops at once. In cases like the final boss where there aren't many
projectiles on the screen, you can add to the count by hitting the boss
with some regular gun shots (or even another special weapon, if you can
switch back and get the EE off quickly enough) and spawn drops from the
explosions of those shots.

**Fireball Invincibility**: The level 2 Fireball moves at the same speed
as the Guardian's fast walking speed (1.8 pixels/frame), so once you get
to shield level 5, you can shoot a fireball while walking and remain
inside its hitbox as long as you don't change direction. This combined
with special weapon invincibility (see below) makes the Guardian
completely unhittable, thus trivializing much of the labyrinth. This is
not used in the world record any% run, but if you route in a second
fireball upgrade (such as the one in Area 6), you can use this for
safety in later walkaround areas, especially Area 10.

**Infinite Blue Chips**: Blue chips on the ground in the labyrinth (as
opposed to blue chips from enemy drops) are slightly glitched such that
if two blocks are diagonally adjacent and a blue chip is lying on the
opposite side of the touching corners from the Guardian, trying to walk
through the touching corners will get the health and chip boost from
picking up the blue chip but not actually clear the blue chip from the
map, so you can pick it up again every frame. The speedrun makes use of
this to restore health after Corridor 6.

**Lag Reduction**: As in many NES games, the game will start to lag
(slow down) when many objects are on the screen. Different objects cause
different amounts of lag, but one significant contributor is the
Guardian's standard gun. It can be tempting to just hold down the B
button when lots of enemies are around, but this can add a surprising
amount of time to the run; for example, in the final boss fight alone,
holding B through the entire fight adds 7-8 seconds of lag. It is of
course better to suffer lag than to take damage and lose much more time
to farming health drops, but try to avoid shooting the Guardian's gun
when you don't need to.

**Quick Exit**: After fighting a miniboss in the labyrinth, an item will
drop and a short fanfare will play. The game prevents you from leaving
the screen while the fanfare is playing, but if you grab the item and
leave the screen before the fanfare starts, you can skip it entirely,
saving about 3 seconds. Without fast walking speed, quick exits are only
possible out the top and bottom, and (with a *very* short window) out
the left side; the right side is too far away from the item drop
position. Quick exits are possible in all directions with fast walking
speed.

**Quick Menu**: If you press Select to open the menu, then hold a
direction and Start during the menu-open delay (about half a second),
the special weapon cursor will move one space in the direction you're
holding and the menu will close on the first possible frame. For
example, holding up (or down, if you haven't collected Grenades) when
the cursor is on "NO USE" will select Saber Laser. If you need to move
two squares in one direction (such as left twice from Saber Laser to
Fireball before picking up the Area Blaster), you can hold that
direction but not Start, then press Select again at least one frame
after the menu opens; the cursor will move once when the menu opens,
then again when it closes.

**Special Weapon Invincibility**: Enemies can only collide with one
"player object" per frame, whether that's the Guardian herself or a
weapon shot. Special weapon shots have the highest priority, followed by
regular weapon shots, with the Guardian at lowest priority. As a result,
if a special weapon projectile is touching an enemy, (1) the Guardian
won't take damage from that enemy, and (2) regular shots will pass
through that enemy. This is used on almost every boss to safely get
close enough to use special weapons. The flip side is that if the
special weapon leaves the enemy's hitbox for even one frame, the
Guardian will take damage (see Body Checking above for why this can
actually be beneficial).

**Text Advance**: If you hold Select in a message room (including
shops), pressing B will advance the text past the end of the current
message and let you read the other messages in the game. This has no
relevance to the speedrun except in that you'll probably notice it at
the shop next to Corridor 4 if you switch subweapons before reaching
the shop and keep Select held down. This also triggers the only known
gameplay difference (such as it is) between the Japanese and English
versions of the game, in that in the English version, if you advance
past the last message it starts over at the first one, while in the
Japanese version, it starts filling the screen with junk.

**Triple Purchase**: If you hold Start while in a shop with three items,
you'll be able to buy all three (assuming you have the chips for them)
instead of just one. This is not used in the any% speedrun, but 100%
takes advantage of it.


Things to Watch Out For
-----------------------
**Death Softlock**: If you open the menu on the same frame the Guardian
dies, the game will softlock. If this happens, it's usually when you're
trying to switch to EEs to farm health on a boss, so try not to wait
until the last moment before farming. This is the only known serious bug
in the game. (This glitch was also observed happening when opening the
menu after closing the password screen while warping out from a save
room, courtesy of LackAttack.)

**Deleted Drops**: If an enemy dies while partly offscreen, any item it
was supposed to drop may fail to spawn, causing the item to be skipped.
This is particularly noticeable with the flying mushrooms in corridor 3,
where you can miss a drop by killing a mushroom at the very edge of the
screen.

**Endless Laser**: For enemies in corridors which fire lasers, sometimes
a laser will extend itself to the top of the screen just as it scrolls
off the bottom. This does not happen often on the any% route, but 100%
usually has to deal with it in Corridor 14. There is no way to fix these
(other than using a special weapon like level 3 Cutter or level 2
Fireball to destroy the laser outright), but typically the glitch goes
away on its own after a few screens' worth of scrolling.

**Leftover Bullets**: Normally, killing a boss also destroys all other
enemies and projectiles on the screen. But if a boss spawns a projectile
on the same frame you kill it, that projectile doesn't get destroyed.
This is especially important to keep in mind for Optomon, who you
usually fight with zero health, and the final boss, who shoots very
quickly in his final phase. It's entirely possible (and has happened!)
for the final boss to kill a run during the victory fanfare -- indeed,
the current 49:26 WR run had to dodge a leftover missile to avoid this
fate. For an example on Optomon, see: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/14967241


Other Glitches
--------------
**Corridor 7 Entry**: The gimmick for unlocking Corridor 7 is described
in the game as "enter the corridor room several times", but the actual
check in the game's code requires that you enter four times _from the
same warp panel_ (specifically, it requires that the last 7 screen
transitions are in opposite directions, i.e. left/right or up/down).
I've occasionally seen this confuse new players who cycle between the
two room exits over and over and can't get the corridor to unlock.

**Laser Damage**: All laser-type projectiles are set to a default damage
of 1 (1/8 of a health box). This may or may not be intentional for cases
such as Eyegore (the corridor 9 and 10 boss), but is almost certainly a
bug with respect to the Hyper Laser subweapon. Hyper Laser is coded to
deal 2 damage per frame at level 1, 4 damage at level 2, and 16(!) at
level 3, but because of wrong code order in the Hyper Laser setup code,
the damage is reset to the default of 1, making the subweapon mostly
useless.

**Message Screen Corruption**: This Japanese-version-specific glitch is
a minor bug with the hidden feature allowing you to read all text in the
game by holding Select and repeatedly pressing B in any message room
(see Text Advance above). If you advance past the last message in the
game (the Corridor 10 hint), the screen will get corrupted; this does
not appear to affect gameplay itself, but things like the status bar can
become unreadable. This glitch was fixed in the English release.

**Stuck Gate**: If you use an Enemy Eraser in the gate room for any of
Corridors 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10, it destroys the invisible object which
controls the gate opening. This has particularly been noted to trip up
casual players trying to follow the "use a special weapon" hint for
Corridor 6. Leaving and re-entering the gate room fixes the glitch.


=============
Route details
=============

Corridor 0
----------
Score target: 7500 at turret pairs

Timing starts when you gain control of the Guardian (SDA timing), which
is 0.78 seconds (47 frames) after pressing Start at "NEW GAME".

The game starts off with a short autoscroller section leading up to one
of the worst bosses in the run from a speedrunning perspective. Use the
autoscrolling part of the corridor to set up for a heart drop on the
boss; you can either count kills after the blue chip drop (all enemies
are 2 drop points, except the orange diamonds which are 3, so 8-10 kills
is usually good) or aim for a score target as an approximation (on my
route, I look for 7200 to 7500 points when entering the final segment
with 4 pairs of turrets). If you dodge the flying rocks up to the first
rock circle and then shoot everything, you should get the blue chip drop
around the end of the third rock circle.

The first heart will drop while the screen is still scrolling very
quickly, so if you're not comfortable grabbing it, you can instead aim
to pick up the heart after the blue chip (at 140 drop points) and prime
the following heart for the boss fight.

Don't get the drop counter too close to the heart drop because if you
spawn it while shooting down the small turrets in the corners, it can
drop off the top of the screen and leave you unable to grab it.

Never try to shoot down the spinners. They have 128 health, so they
take 128 shots to destroy at attack level 1, and they deal 4 boxes of
damage per hit. They do give 1000 points and 8 drop points, so they're
useful later when you can actually destroy them. For now, just say no.

BOSS: Defense System (8 HP x 11, 4 HP x 4)

The Defense System is 11 large and 4 small turrets shooting a constant
barrage of bullets. The turrets are only vulnerable when they are firing
at the Guardian, making the fight considerably less trivial than it
might otherwise seem. The most important thing in fighting it is to not
miss, because each shot that doesn't hit a turret (or a turret shot)
uses up a shot slot until the shot goes off the top of the screen.

Generally, you always want to start by taking out the two small turrets
in the top left corner, since they open up early. After that, just try
to keep shooting at turrets which are open, and watch for the heart
drop. When you do grab the heart, you'll have 40 frames of invincibility
from the health refill, so you can attack more aggressively for a
moment.

Exact strats for the Defense System are largely a matter of personal
preference. One effective strategy (and the one that I use) is to shoot
right between two columns of turrets, because the shots will hit turrets
in both columns and there's less risk of a shot missing everything. The
timing of the turrets is consistent, so you can also look for a movement
pattern that always puts you in front of an open turret.

Played casually, the Defense System is not actually all that difficult,
since the bullets will spawn item drops you can use to keep your health
up. Killing it quickly, however, is much more challenging because you
don't want to waste time shooting the bullets; the more aggressively you
focus on the turrets, the more bullets will hit you and the quicker
you'll die. Probably around 80% of my own runs die here just because I'm
not willing to take a slow split this early in the run.


Area 0
------
OPTIONAL: Go right from the first room (message room) and take the
rapid-fire upgrade from the item box. This costs about 9 seconds but
saves you from having to mash the B button up to the middle of Area 2.
I always take this because I like to be nice to my hands.

Go down twice from the first room to the "S" room, then left twice. Pick
up the Saber Laser from the item box. Go left then up, ignoring the
miniboss. Continue up through the "W" room and take the Red Lander from
the next room. Go up once more, then left into the Corridor 1 gate room.
During the warp animation, quick-menu to Saber Laser (left 1), and hold
Select after closing the menu to skip the entry cutscene for Corridor 1.

The gimmick for opening Corridor 1 is to shoot the gate. Move next to
the gate and hold A and B to hit it with both Saber and regular shots to
open it more quickly. The gate can't actually be hit until 1 second
after you enter the room, so don't start shooting too early or you'll
miss a few hits while your stray shots travel across the rest of the
room. (As a guide, it takes about 1 second to reach the center of the
gate if you walk straight out of the warp panel.)

There are several corridors, including Corridor 1, in which you can keep
holding the Select button through the entire corridor to skip the exit
cutscene. I've marked these with "(hold Select)" next to the corridor
name in the notes. If you don't feel comfortable holding Select
throughout the entire corridor, you can instead use the pause-unpause
method to skip the cutscene at the end of the corridor.


Corridor 1 (hold Select)
----------
Score targets: 47k after bubble shooter trio, 71k at boss

Corridor 1 is something of a "tutorial" corridor, giving new players a
chance to get used to TGL's shooting mode with a wider variety of
enemies than the rocks and turrets in corridor 0. As such, enemies are
spread relatively thinly, and the corridor itself is rather slow-paced;
in fact, Corridor 1 is the longest corridor in the game aside from the
final boss rush, clocking in at almost three and a half minutes.

If you're not score routing, you can do pretty much anything you want
here, as long as you make sure to reach the boss with full health. Also
be careful to avoid lag; TGL is generally good at not lagging even with
many sprites on the screen, but larger enemies, such as the fish when
they turn sideways, can start lagging the game if too many are on screen
at once.

If you are score routing, you'll want to scrounge as much score as you
can from the enemies in the corridor. This obviously means shooting down
everything you can, but it also means farming shots off of enemies such
as the plant turrets and trench diggers by not killing them until
they're about to go off the screen. Some particularly noteworthy cases
include:

- Bubble shooters: There are a few large bulb-shaped plants which shoot
colored bubbles. The bubbles take 2 hits to kill with level-1 attack
power, but they're worth 200 points each, so line up right next to the
plant and try to shoot as many bubbles as you can. But be careful not to
get too close to the plant itself; the plant does no contact damage on
its own, which means your shots will pass through the plant and keep
damaging it on every frame, and you'll kill it too quickly if you're not
careful. (You do want to kill the plant before it goes offscreen,
though, since it's worth 500 points.)

- Trench diggers: These red eyeball-like enemies pop up out of the
ground and start moving forward, digging trenches in the ground as they
go and shooting tiny tadpole-like things at the Guardian. The tadpoles
are worth 100 points each, so you should leave the trench diggers alive
as long as you can. The trench diggers won't immediately disappear off
the bottom of the screen, but will instead keep digging forward for a
set distance, so make sure not to kill them early.

The end of the corridor is marked by a rapid-fire string of fish on both
sides of the screen followed by a pair of bubble shooters in the middle.
The fish will quickly lag the game if you let them turn sideways, so
take them out as they spawn; on score route, also kill the trench digger
when the fish start spawning. If you're on score route, you should get a
heart drop here, so be sure to pick it up if you're not at full health.

Note that after the bubble shooters, there's about 20 seconds of empty
time before the boss.

BOSS: Fleepa (80 HP)

Fleepa repeatedly swoops down toward the Guardian, spawning small
"tadpole" projectiles like those from the trench diggers. The tadpoles
can make Fleepa a challenge for casual players, but it dies quickly to
the Saber Laser. For an even faster kill, body-check Fleepa as much as
your health will allow. A good kill will take Fleepa out as it returns
to the top of the screen on the second bounce.

If you didn't hold Select through the entire corridor, don't forget to
skip the exit cutscene.


Area 1
------
Take the Corridor 1 reward (Repeller) and exit through the top warp
panel. If you finished Fleepa with 0 health, remember that the
zero-health hitbox means you have to walk closer to the item to grab it.

After leaving the Corridor 1 room, walk up 1, left 3, down 3, and right
1 room to a miniboss. Beware of the blue and green "volleyball" enemies
on the first screen and a few screens farther in, since both of them
will deal multiple boxes of damage to the Guardian. There's no need for
the item box (Back Fire) that's sitting on the ground along the way, but
you can use it on the Blue Walker miniboss if you want (see below).

MINIBOSS: Green Crab (32 HP, Fireball). This enemy walks up and down the
screen to line up with the Guardian, occasionally shooting a fountain of
bubbles which arc roughly toward the Guardian's position. If you stand
on the right side of the boss, the bubbles will never hit you; but this
particular version of the crab miniboss will die to the Saber Laser
before it even gets a shot off. Kill it, take the Fireball and exit
down. You should be able to get a quick exit unless the crab spawned at
the edge of the screen.

Take the Cutter Laser from the item box in the room below the miniboss,
then head roughly northwest (up 1, left 1, up 1, left 2, up 1, left 1,
up 1) and take the warp panel on the right, leading to the Corridor 11
room. When returning to the blue/green volleyball room, it's safer to
move as far left as you can on the screen below before moving up to
trigger the screen transition, so you don't risk damage from the
volleyballs if they spawn on the left side of the screen.

Warp up out of the Corridor 11 room, then go left and up to a miniboss.
Quick-menu to Fireball (left 2) during the boss alarm.

MINIBOSS: Blue Walker (48 HP, Red Lander). This is a surprisingly nasty
enemy which follows the Guardian along cardinal directions, shooting
small indestructible bullets which do 2 boxes of damage. Three Fireball
shots (sometimes two, if you can get in enough regular shots as well)
will take it out, but if you shoot on cardinal directions, there's a
risk that the fireball will survive passing through the miniboss and
you'll have to wait several seconds for it to go offscreen. If you
shoot diagonally, the fireball should always die inside the miniboss,
allowing you to immediately shoot another one.

If you're not comfortable with Fireball strats, an alternative is to
take the Back Fire from the item box in the blue/green volleyball room
on the way to the crab miniboss and use that instead. Note that if you
do pick up Back Fire, you'll need to use a 2-step instead of 1-step
quick menu when switching from NO USE to Fireball later.

Grab the boss reward, return to the screen below the miniboss (taking
the quick exit if possible), and deathwarp. Note that contact damage
from the Guardian will kill a single enemy before the Guardian herself
dies; try to group two or more enemies together so you don't have to
walk in search of a second one. The volleyballs do more damage than the
small spiders.


Area 2
------
After deathwarping, you'll be in the message room at the center of the
labyrinth. Walk left 3 rooms to the "W" room, then down 1 and left 1.
Go through the warp panel to a save room, then down from the save room
into Area 2.

From the entrance, go down, left, up, left, and down again to the room
with the gate for Corridor 12. Ignore it and continue down out of the
corridor room, then down and right to a miniboss. Quick-menu to Fireball
(right 1) during the boss alarm, and keep holding Select until you reach
Corridor 2 so you can skip the entry cutscene without needing an extra
pause.

MINIBOSS: Blue Crab (64 HP, attack powerup). Similar to the green crab
in Area 1, but this one has more health and fires faster, so it will get
off some bubbles before it dies. Make sure to stand on the right side
(if possible) to avoid damage, cook it with fireballs, grab the reward,
and exit back to the left.

If the crab spawns near the center of the screen, it's possible to get a
quick exit, but the timing is very tight.

From the miniboss room, go left 3 rooms and take the Rapid Fire powerup,
then continue left 2 more rooms to the bottom-left corner of the area.
Go up 3 rooms and right 1 to a miniboss.

MINIBOSS: Blue Walker (48 HP, Red Lander). Identical to the one in Area
1, but this time we have an attack powerup, so the miniboss should
consistently go down in two fireballs. With level 2 attack, you can also
use Saber combined with body-checking for a very fast kill as long as
you're close to full health; this is a good option if you're not
comfortable with shooting fireballs diagonally, but it's slightly slower
than an optimal fireball kill after taking menuing into account.

Continue right 2 more rooms, take the Blue Lander from the item box,
then go down 1, left 1, and down through the warp panel to the Corridor
2 room. Be careful of the red volleyballs, which do massive damage like
the blue and green ones. Note that you can grab the Blue Lander by
shooting along the top edge of the bottom row of blocks, since the item
box's hitbox extends slightly below the other blocks -- this saves the
time of having to shoot down through the bottom blocks after picking up
the Blue Lander.

Note that it's possible to take the reverse path around this loop of
rooms, doing Corridor 2 before getting the Red and Blue Landers and then
deathwarping right after fighting the miniboss. By my timing, this is
about half a second slower than doing Corridor 2 last, but you can still
get a good time with either path.

The gimmick for opening Corridor 2 is to touch each of the 4 red panels
surrounding the gate. Any part of the Guardian's hitbox counts, so touch
the top panels with the Guardian's head and the bottom panels with her
feet to open the gate as quickly as possible.

If you're not holding Select, remember to skip the entry cutscene.


Corridor 2 (hold Select)
----------
Score targets: 85k on entry, 93k after plant quads, 115k after bubble
shooters, 143k at boss

This corridor is a bit busier than Corridor 1 in terms of enemy
placement, but still not a significant challenge. The fish, plant
turrets, and bubble shooters from Corridor 1 make a reappearance; now
that we have attack level 2, the bubbles go down in one hit, making it
much easier to farm score. There's also a second type of bubble shooter
which flies across the screen; it's only worth 200 points, so on score
route, it can sometimes be worth it to just let it fly offscreen and
farm its bubbles (also 200 points) instead.

For score route, you'll want to farm points as in Corridor 1. The
bubble shooters are the biggest source of score, but also try to take
out as many of the flying starfish as possible in the second half of
the corridor.

There are three pairs of bubble shooters marking the end of the
corridor. Plan to be at high but not full health (7-8 is usually a good
place to be) for a quicker deathwarp after the corridor.

BOSS: Crawdaddy (144 HP)

Crawdaddy floats up and down the screen, shooting small lobsters at
the Guardian. As with Fleepa, the fight can get a bit ugly if you let
the projectiles stack up, but special weapons will make quick work of
it. Start the fight with the Guardian overlapping Crawdaddy's eyes,
then press and hold A and B just before the boss solidifies, and
follow the boss's movement up and down. Special weapon invincibility
will keep you safe for most of the fight; you'll take a few boxes of
health on the downswing as the second fireball leaves the boss's
hitbox, but unless you started the fight with very low health, you
should be fine. You can adjust the fireball timing on the fly to take
extra damage if you went into the fight with full health.


Area 2 -> Area 3
----------------
After completing Corridor 2, exit up and deathwarp on the red
volleyballs.

From the Area 2 save room, take the warp panel on the right to Area 0,
then go right and down, and take the warp panel down to the Area 3 save
room.


Area 3
------
Exit the save room down, then go down, left, down 2, and left 3 rooms,
passing through the Corridor 13 room into Corridor 3.

OPTIONAL: Instead of going straight into Corridor 3, continue going down
and pick up the shield powerup and Red Lander before the corridor
instead of after. This costs about 20 seconds but makes Optomon slightly
safer, since seaweed strands do "only" 4 boxes of health instead of 8.
You can also use the Cutter Laser on the Corridor 3 boss to recover much
of that time; see the notes below.

The gimmick for opening Corridor 3 is... to wait... and wait... and
wait. The gate opens 21 seconds after entering the room, so use the time
to line yourself up on the perfect entry pixel, dance around, whatever
grabs your fancy.

Quick-menu to Fireball (right 1) or Cutter Laser (left 1) during the
entry animation, depending on your choice of boss strategy.


Corridor 3
----------
Score targets: 151k on entry, 166k at first rock ring

This corridor starts to introduce some more difficult enemies, notably
including the "pomegranates" which show up near the end of the level and
explode into 16 projectiles if you don't destroy them quickly enough.
Damage as a whole starts to ramp up here, since the game expects you to
have picked up at least one shield powerup before entering the corridor.

The corridor starts out with 6 plant turrets. On score route, if you're
behind target, you can farm the plant shots by running into them for 200
points each; the shots do 1 box of damage, so the first heart drop will
recover the damage from 5 shots.

The next set of plant turrets is accompanied by small blue ships which
shoot at the Guardian. The blue ships' shots look identical to the plant
turret shots, but they're actually trolls which do twice as much damage
and only give you 10 points. You can tell them apart because the blue
ships' shots move in straight lines, while the plant turrets' shots arc
up and back down. If you see a blue ship shot approaching and you can't
dodge it, it's better to eat a plant turret shot and use the damage
invincibility to boost through the blue ship shot.

The blue ships are followed by two rock circles and another set of plant
turrets. If you didn't take the shield powerup, you should get the two
consecutive heart drops (at 140 and 180 drop points) by the end of the
plant turrets. This is important to keep in mind because you generally
won't have enough drop points to wrap around past the three red chips to
the next heart, so you'll only have 6 boxes of healing before the boss.
If you got the shield powerup early, the rock rings will only have 4
instead of 16 rocks, so the second heart may come a bit later.

Next up is a section of falling rocks which ends in three pomegranates
sitting on the ground. You need to be near the top of the screen in
order to get enough shots on the pomegranates to kill them before they
explode, but the closer you are to the top, the greater risk that you
get hit by a falling rock, and you absolutely want to be at full health
for the boss. Be especially careful after picking up the third red chip,
since you won't have any more healing if you get hit.

The corridor ends with one more set of plant turrets. You can safely
stay on one side and just destroy the turrets there.

BOSS: Optomon (256 HP)

Optomon is the boss that says, "You think you're good at this game? I
LAUGH IN YOUR FACE." I suspect every new TGL player gets stuck here for
a good long while; I myself spent two weeks as a casual player trying to
find a workable strat before I ended up at Hyper Laser (which,
ironically, is the lowest-damage special weapon). In the speedrun,
Optomon is the first gatekeeper of the run, the first boss that will
really test your movement.

Optomon has two forms of attack: he shoots bubbles from his eye which
deal 2 boxes of damage, and he drops long strings of seaweed which do
8(!) boxes of damage. Touching Optomon himself also does 8 boxes of
damage. (With the shield powerup, these are reduced to 1 box and 4 boxes
respectively.) The shots move in a straight line toward the Guardian's
position when the shot was fired, and the seaweed strands fall down the
screen in a straight line either slowly or quickly.

At first glance, Optomon seems like a highly random boss with no good
strategy except to pray for good RNG, but in fact the only random
element is the speed of the seaweed strands; the timing of both the
strands and the bubble shots is constant, so you can learn movement
patterns which will avoid them. If you want to play it safe, you can
stay near the bottom of the screen, time fireball shots to hit Optomon,
watch out for fast seaweed strands, and be careful not to get trapped
against the edge of the screen by a slow strand where you might not be
able to avoid bubbles or a fast strand.

However, TGL runner Mattrick_ developed a clever strategy in which we
go right up to Optomon and spam fireballs in his face (well, eye). It
turns out that a level-1 fireball will expire while still within
Optomon's hitbox (if it doesn't go out the side), so as long as you
hold the A button to keep shooting fireballs, special weapon
invinicibility will protect you from damage from Optomon himself, though
not from seaweed. The pattern I use is to start at the right edge of
Optomon's sprite, hold A and B just as the boss solidifies, and lead
Optomon's movement (moving just ahead of him so he can't get ahead of
the fireballs) until the second time he reaches the left edge of the
screen. If I don't miss any fireballs, I'll usually be able to take
Optomon down to 30-40% health during those first sweeps without dying,
and after that, I fall back to safer strats.

If you took the shield from Area 3 before entering the corridor,
another option is to use the Cutter Laser and attack from the side, as
practiced by runner Schmidtty. A good Cutter kill will only take about
10 seconds, so if you can't get a fireball kill before the boss music
loops, Cutter may actually save time overall despite the 20-second cost
of the early shield.

Whichever way you choose, quick-menu to Saber (right 2 from Fireball or
left 1 from Cutter) during the exit animation.


Area 3 again
------------
Take the energy tank to refill your health (which is probably empty),
exit the Corridor 3 room to the right, pass through the Corridor 13 room
again, then go right, down 2, and left to a miniboss.

MINIBOSS: Green Flower (64 HP, shield powerup). This guy bounces around
like crazy and does 3 boxes of damage each time he hits you. Pull out
your Saber and let him bounce across it, and shoot your regular gun for
a bit of extra body-check damage on the bounces. If you get here with 6
or less health (especially if coming here before Corridor 3), grab the
Red Lander to the north first as a health refill.

After killing the miniboss, go up one screen and grab the Red Lander (if
you didn't take it first), then deathwarp.

If you grabbed the shield powerup and Red Lander before Corridor 3, just
walk right from Corridor 3 to the butterfly room and up to the
down-arrow room, and deathwarp there.


Area 0 -> Area 4
----------------
After the deathwarp, walk up to the W room, then right to the message
room, up to the N room, right twice, and up to the Area 4 entrance.
Going through the message room is about 2 seconds faster than walking
around the outer edge of Area 0.

In the room below the Area 4 entrance, be careful if you walk along the
top edge of the screen, because your shots will be absorbed by the
corner wall and you won't be able to destroy the blocks in your way.
Stay about half a tile below the wall at the screen transition to avoid
this.


Area 4
------
Hold B and walk up-right from the save room. On the next screen up, move
right along the bottom to avoid the red wall. Once past the red wall,
immediately move up and right, entering the screen to the right and
following the left wall up to the entrance to Corridor 14.

OPTIONAL: Instead of going straight up, go right 1 screen to a Blue
Lander, then back left and up to the Corridor 14 room (9 seconds).

Go up from the Corridor 14 room, quick-menuing to Saber Laser (up 1) as
you do so, then up again and take the Cutter Laser upgrade from the item
box. If you just use the regular gun to destroy the blocks, you'll lose
a handful of frames either from being stuck on the block to the right or
from walking straight up from the item box when you could have gone
diagonally up and right. If you time an A tap just right, you can use
the Saber to destroy the blocks more quickly and save time, but be
careful not to hold A down for more than 1 second in total because that
will consume chips and leave you unable to buy the Blue Lander in the
shop. (If you do use up chips, you can grab one of the blue chips on the
floor in the "up arrow" room to recover, but be careful of the red
volleyballs.)

From the Cutter box, go right twice and up twice. Quick-menu to Saber if
you haven't done so already, then enter the shop and buy the Blue Lander
on the left. BE CAREFUL here; if you walk straight left from the
entrance, you'll pick up the totally useless Bullet Shield, you'll be
out of chips, and the Blue Lander will be gone! Make sure to walk down a
bit before moving left.

The gimmick for opening Corridor 4 is to ask the shopkeeper next door
for help. If you repeatedly exit and reenter the shop, then the 4th time
you enter, you'll get the unlock sound effect and the corridor will be
unlocked. Use the Saber along with the regular gun to open the warp
panel faster. (You can in fact do this at any shop to unlock Corridor 4,
but there's no need to enter any other shop in the any% route. If you
were to skip the Blue Lander in this shop [3 seconds], you could
potentially save a fraction of a second by using the shop along the
south edge of Area 2, but it's unclear if dropping that Blue Lander
would cost more time due to less body-checking ability and a greater
risk of having to farm health than would be saved from skipping it.)


Corridor 4 (hold Select)
----------
Score targets: 193k on entry, 224k at boss

This corridor has a similar difficulty level to Corridor 3. It includes
more pomegranates, some of which pop almost immediately, and the return
of the spinners from Corridor 0, which we can finally destroy using the
Saber Laser. The level itself also scrolls more quickly, which is
important for picking up drops -- once drops solidify, they're locked to
the background, so you have less time to shoot and grab the item.

Drop management is important in this corridor. Depending on whether you
plan to pick up the attack powerup or not (see below), you want to get
an energy tank drop either right after or right before the boss fight.
My target for getting a post-boss drop is to hit 8-10 pomegranate seeds
after the 230 red chip (the second of the two consecutive red chips).

BOSS: Teramute (256 HP)

Teramute is a surprisingly trivial boss following up Optomon. All he
does is teleport randomly around the screen, shooting a spread of
fireballs each time he solidifies. You can simply sit under his nose,
impale him with your saber (which also takes out the fireballs), and
win in 4 cycles. But if you want to go fast, you can use body-checking
to cut one cycle off that time (and also dump health if you're planning
to skip the optional attack powerup).

If you position the Guardian directly on top of Teramute's head, you can
get Saber hits as well as body-checking damage. Do that for the first
two cycles, which will drain the Guardian's health to near empty, then
move down out of the boss's hitbox for the third cycle. If you're aiming
for an energy tank drop, you should plan to get it from the fireballs
rather than Teramute himself, since the Teramute drop can float off the
top of the screen and become unhittable.


Area 4 again
------------
OPTIONAL (but recommended): You can pick up an extra attack powerup
here, which will make late-game corridors (especially Corridor 10) safer
and likely somewhat faster at a pickup cost of about 20 seconds. Walk
left from the warp panel, then down-left through the red volleyball room
and left into the miniboss room. If you didn't get a health refill in
Corridor 4, you can get infinite blue chips from the item boxes in the
red volleyball room. I don't recommend skipping this until you're
comfortable with the Gauntlet in Corridor 10, and even then, it's
unclear how much net time save one could expect; for example, it seems
impossible to get the quick kill on Corridor 21 Fleepa with attack
level 2, which costs 6 seconds over an optimal attack-3 run.

MINIBOSS: Blue Flower (112 HP, attack powerup). Basically the same as
Green Flower, but slower. Why is the slower one in a harder area? Who
knows. Just take it out with Saber. Dump as much health as possible to
speed up the deathwarp afterwards.

After the miniboss, walk back to the right and deathwarp on the red
volleyballs.

If not getting the attack powerup, just walk straight down from the warp
panel and deathwarp.


Area 0 -> Area 5
----------------
Exit the save room down, then walk down and right to the Area 5
entrance.

OPTIONAL: Kill the miniboss to the left of the Area 5 entrance for a
Blue Lander (11 seconds).

In the save room, walk up and around the left side of the Blue Lander
NPC instead of through the center of the room to save about 10 frames
(credit to ZakkytheGoatragon for finding this while developing his TAS
of TGL).


Area 5
------
After leaving the save room, walk right until you reach the Corridor 15
room. Be especially careful of the volleyballs in the room before the
corridor, since they hit hard.

OPTIONAL: Go 2 screens right from the Corridor 15 room for an extra Blue
Lander (16 seconds).

Go 4 screens up from the Corridor 15 room for a miniboss. Quick-menu to
Cutter (left 1).

MINIBOSS: Crystal Flower (208 HP, shield powerup). The Crystal Flower
alternately moves horizontally and vertically toward the Guardian,
occasionally shooting a homing projectile that does a solid amount of
damage. However, if you can lure it onto the green blocks that close the
exits when the boss spawns, it will get stuck and become almost unable
to move, letting the Guardian take it out easily.

Start the fight standing immediately above the Flower, facing left or
right so one of the Cutters is damaging it. As soon as the Flower starts
moving up, dodge left or right and lure it up to the top of the screen.
Unless it spawned very low on the screen, by the time it finishes its
vertical cycle it should be stuck on the green tiles, and you can stand
next to it and let the Cutter do its work (but make sure not to let it
get so close that it starts damaging the Guardian).

After the miniboss, go right 2 screens to the Corridor 5 room. The hint
for Corridor 5 is "shoot into the corridor"; the actual gimmick is that
you have to shoot the sign that says "Corridor 5". There's an invisible
object on top of the "Corridor" sign, and doing enough damage to it
opens the corridor. The hitbox actually extends slightly below the
"Corridor" sign (credit to Zakky for finding this), so the fastest way
to deal the damage is to hold the Cutters out while standing slightly
below the sign facing up or down, so that the lasers are on the top tile
row of the floor. You can also take advantage of the otherwise-annoying
bug of getting stuck while diagonal-walking against a wall; walk
slightly forward into the room and then diagonally up, and when you
reach the Corridor sign you should get stuck with both your regular gun
and the Cutter dealing damage.

Quick-menu to Saber (left 1) while entering.


Corridor 5 (hold Select)
----------
Score targets: 245k on entry, 275k at first volcano, 287k at boss

Corridor 5 is fairly quiet (all the better to enjoy the great music).
The flying starfish from Corridor 2 and birds from Corridor 3 make a
reappearance, and there are two new enemies of note.

The first new enemy, which shows up in two waves at about the 1/3 and
2/3 points of the corridor, is a blue rock which slowly floats toward
the Guardian. It doesn't shoot any projectiles and seems fairly harmless
at first glance, but it has fairly high health, high enough that even
Saber or Cutter take a good fraction of a second to destroy one. The
blue rock is also immune to Enemy Erasers, which will become very
important to keep in mind in Corridor 10. Note that hitting more than
two or three at once with Saber/Cutter will add lag, so be sure to take
them out as they spawn rather than letting them all pile up first.

The second new enemy is a volcano, two of which appear at the end of the
corridor. This enemy is unique to the "ice" environments (Areas 5 and 6)
and constantly spews small green rocks in random arcs. The rocks are
good for grinding score or drop points if you need them, but they can
pile on damage (and lag) quickly if you're not careful.

The corridor itself is fairly straightforward, but as usual, keep your
health as high as possible when entering the boss.

BOSS: Zibzub (224 HP)

Zibzub behaves almost like an inverted version of Corridor 1's Fleepa,
bouncing up from the bottom of the screen instead of down from the top.
He can be destroyed with the Saber and body-checking the same way. Be
careful to stay directly under Zibzub, since he'll accelerate to the
side otherwise and make the fight much more frustrating.

You'll want to deathwarp after the corridor, so dump as much health as
you feel comfortable dumping during the boss fight. Keep in mind that
you'll also be destroying projectiles, so you'll probably run over at
least one drop during the fight.


Area 5 -> Area 6
----------------
Deathwarp on the crabs outside the Corridor 5 room.

From the save room, go left twice, down twice, and right twice to the
Corridor 6 room. Quick-menu to Cutter (left 2) while warping in.

The hint for Corridor 6 says to use a special weapon to open the gate.
The actual gimmick is to have your chip count decrease while in the gate
room, so with chips-per-second weapons, you have to wait for a chip tick
before the gate will open. Also, as with other gate rooms, the game
doesn't start checking until 1 second after you enter the room, so if
you hold A for Cutter as soon as you enter the room, the the first tick
(at half a second) will be missed and you'll have to wait for the second
tick (at 1.5 seconds). Ideally, you should press A half a second after
entering; I use a music cue to estimate the timing. If done perfectly,
the gate should open at the same time as if it was already unlocked.


Corridor 6
----------
Score targets: 298k on entry, 350k at 2nd set of blue rocks, 372k at
boss

Corridor 6 is both slower and (much!) busier than Corridor 5, despite
being part of the same "ice" area. The only new enemy is an orange
crystal which appears in flocks which dash toward the Guardian, but the
corridor is full of other enemies -- most notably the volcanoes which
appeared at the end of Corridor 5.

The volcanoes here will add tremendous lag if any other enemies
(including other volcanoes) are on screen, so you should learn their
locations and destroy them as soon as they appear, unless you want to
farm the projectiles (which you should only do when nothing else is on
screen). Generally speaking, any enemy which is not a volcano is a trap
designed to lure you away from upcoming volcanoes and fill your life
with lag. For the same reason, try to avoid shooting the Guardian's
main gun and rely on the Cutter Laser to take out enemies and volcano
projectiles.

Even if you're not on score route, you should try to farm at least some
volcanoes, because you'll want to pick up an EE drop in Corridor 7.
If you get through the third drop cycle (second energy tank drop), you
should be good.

Quick-menu to Saber (left 1) at the boss alarm, and hold Select through
the end of the corridor for the cutscene skip.

BOSS: Glider (96 HP)

The Glider is a small bat-like boss which swoops around the screen,
occasionally shooting small missiles at the Guardian. The low health
value makes it seem trivial to defeat, but the Glider is invulnerable
except while shooting, so casual players can find it a surprisingly
difficult enemy.

As with other bosses that don't move sideways while shooting, simply
sitting under the boss with the Saber out will kill it. In the specific
case of the Glider, you can move ahead of time to the points in the
Glider's movement cycle where it will become vulnerable: above the "I"
in "CHIP", above the tens digit of the SHOT count, and in the space
between the chip count and the word "SHOT".

If you have enough health, you can body-check the boss to kill it in
two cycles. Even body-checking will only damage the boss while it is
shooting, so wait for it to reach the proper points in its cycle and
move into its hitbox while holding the Saber out.

Note that the two-cycle kill is very tight with level 2 attack; you need
to be aggressive about body-checking the Glider and use up all your
health in order to win on the second cycle. With level 3 attack, there's
a bit more leeway since body-checking does several more points of damage
each time.


Area 6 -> Area 7
----------------
There's nothing we need in Area 6 (unless you skip score routing and get
the Red Lander, but that's not until after Corridor 7), so go straight
back out to Area 0, then go left 1 and down 3 screens and enter Area 7
to the right. But if you want extra safety, you can get a shield from a
miniboss a short way into Area 6 from the corridor (right 2 and up 1
from the corridor room), and if you prefer to use level 2 Fireball,
that's also available a few rooms in (right 4, up 1).

In the first room down from the Area 7 save room, break a single block
diagonally from one of the blue chips and use the infinite blue chip
glitch to refill your health. You don't need to get all the way to full
health, since you'll be picking up 2 shield powerups which will give you
4 boxes of health in total.

Break through the blocks and continue along the path. Be careful of the
red volleyballs, which can take out over half your health with one hit.
At the first intersection room (with an arrow to the right), follow the
arrow to the right, then go up through the warp panel to the Corridor 17
room.

From Corridor 17, go out the right side, then down, right, up, right
twice (through the lying arrow), and down to a miniboss. If your health
is low, perhaps because a red volleyball caught you, you can grab the
Repeller upgrade in the room right of Corridor 17 for 2 health with no
time loss if you shoot along the top edge of the bottom row of 3 blocks
(as with the Blue Lander in Area 2).

MINIBOSS: Red Crab (96 HP, shield powerup). Just like the blue crab in
Area 2, the right side of the crab is safe, so stick a Saber in it and
call it done. If the boss spawns all the way on the right edge of the
screen, either enter and exit the shop to force a respawn, or put your
Saber diagonally up across the crab's claw from the left side (requires
stopping on a diagonal, which is difficult, and wrecks score route
because of all the bubbles you'll destroy). Grab the shield powerup and
leave through the bottom, snagging a quick exit if the spawn allows.

Continue down 3 more rooms to another powerup. This will give you shield
level 5, which increases the Guardian's walking speed by about 30%. Walk
left 2 more screens and enter the warp panel to the Corridor 7 room.

The gimmick for opening Corridor 7 is to enter the room 4 times, so go
back and forth over the warp panel 6 more times to unlock the gate. As
with the shop in Area 4, using Saber will help open the warp panel
faster. (As noted under Other Glitches, there's a minor bug in that the
check fails if you don't enter from the same warp panel all 4 times.)

Quick-menu to Cutter (right 1) while entering the corridor.


Corridor 7 (hold Select)
----------
Score targets: 385k on entry, 394k after laser ships, 410k at boss

The game's difficulty starts noticeably ramping up at this point. As
soon as you enter the corridor, you'll be assaulted by laser-shooting
ships which deal over 3 boxes of damage _per hit_. Staying in an open
area can be dangerous since you can get trapped by lasers; my strat is
more or less to hide in the corner, hold A and B, and pray. You should
try and kill some ships if you can to advance the drop counter.

Halfway through the corridor, you'll encounter another new enemy which
looks like a small green squid. This enemy doesn't attack at all, but it
has the unique ability to block all of the Guardian's shots, even
normally unblockable shots like the level-2 fireball. The only way to
destroy them is to run into them with the Guardian herself. These
enemies will prevent you from attacking anything behind them, so get rid
of them as soon as you can.

If you farmed enough drop points in Corridor 6, you should get an EE
ammo drop around the time the flying bubble shooters from Corridor 2
make a reappearance. Make sure not to miss the drop, since you may
need the ammo in Corridor 8.

On score route, keep in mind that the eyeballs are worth 800 points
each, so you can farm or avoid them as needed for score control.

BOSS: Eye Growth (384 HP x 4, 96 HP x lots)

The Eye Growth is not a single boss, but rather a set of eyeball turrets
similar to the Defense System at the beginning of the game. There are
four central large turrets arranged in a diamond, with numerous smaller
ones around them. Regular enemies will also continue spawning during the
fight, so be careful in particular of any laser ships that appear.

The large turrets act like other bosses with respect to damage, but the
small turrets are treated as ordinary enemies, which means damage is not
capped and the Cutter will damage them on every frame, taking them out
quickly. Take advantage of this to wipe out the small turrets and reduce
the number of projectiles before focusing on the large turrets.

You can save a couple of seconds by leaving one of the small turrets in
the top corners (left or right) alive, then killing it along with the
final large turret, which saves the time of moving over to kill it first
and then returning to the center of the screen. To make this work,
you'll want to be sure to keep one saber on the opposite-side large
eyeball as you take out the small turrets on that side. (For example, if
you leave the top-right turret alive, start from the bottom right and
move left then up, damaging the left large turret as you move up the
left side.) This will help ensure that the large turret nearest that
corner is the last one left alive, so you can hit both it and the small
turret at the same time. Credit to Zakky for this strat.

If you're on score route, be aware that the first volley of eyeballs
will disappear as more of the turrets scroll into view, so make sure to
kill them early if your score is low. Also, since the eyeballs are
still 800 points each, any delay in finishing off the boss will quickly
push up your score; in particular, if your health gets low and you have
to move away from the boss for safety, you can quickly rack up another
10k or 20k points, which can be very difficult to recover from in time
for Red Grimgrin in Corridor 8.

Finally, be careful when moving to the top of the screen for the exit
animation, because random enemies will keep spawning right up until you
lose control. If you're low on health, you may want to move a bit down
the screen for safety and just accept the second or so of time loss.

The route diverges here depending on whether you're doing score route or
not, so see the appropriate section below.


Area 7 -> Area 8 (score route)
------------------------------
Walk right from the Corridor 7 room and deathwarp.

OPTIONAL: Instead of deathwarping in the room to the right, walk up,
left, down, and left ~~through the forest of maze~~ to an EE item box.
Clip through the red blocks, break the yellow blocks, get the EEs, and
deathwarp.

Walk left out of the save room into Area 0, continue left past the "S"
room (4 rooms), then walk down and enter the Corridor 8 gate room. We
won't enter Corridor 8 right away, but we can open it up now for a
faster entry when we return.

The gimmick for Corridor 8 is to set your special weapon to "NO USE" and
press A. It's a mystery who's sitting in the shadows watching the
Guardian uselessly press her special weapon trigger, but since we just
deathwarped, we're already on NO USE. As with other corridors, the gate
can't actually be unlocked until 1 second after entering the room, so
press A after 1 second; the easiest way to gauge timing is to recall the
timing of the gate opening sound for Corridor 7 and press A at the same
point in the music.

Continue into Area 8; go down 1 screen (ignore the item, which is an
energy tank) and right 2 screens to a miniboss. Quick-menu to Saber (up
1).

MINIBOSS: Sir Red the Flower (256 HP, Red Lander)

Sir Red the Flower, who gets the honorific from his status as killer of
runs, is smarter than his green and blue brethren in that he bounces
toward you instead of just randomly around the screen. This can make him
more dangerous, but it also allows us to lure him into a pattern which
essentially turns the fight into a damage race, and as long as you lock
in the pattern soon enough, the Guardian will always win.

There are two possible loops into which we can lock Sir Red, a
horizontal one and a vertical one. In the horizontal loop, which was
used in the first sub-50-minute any% run, we want Sir Red to bounce up
toward the Guardian, hit her at the peak of the bounce, turn around, and
land back at the same place. However, just standing there holding A and
B won't deal enough damage and you'll lose the damage race. Instead, you
need to move forward (toward Sir Red) a few pixels on each bounce, which
will both let more of your regular shots hit (essentially body-checking)
and force Sir Red backward. But don't go too far on each step, or you'll
disrupt the pattern and Sir Red will start hitting twice on each bounce
instead of once.

There are various ways to start the horizontal loop, but what I've found
most consistent is to stick out the Saber so the end of it touches the
top left or right corner of Sir Red's sprite (whichever leaves more room
to move forward); usually he'll fall into the loop after one or two
bounces. If he spawns too close to the edge of the screen (either on top
where I can't get above him, or near the left or right side where
regular gun shots will be blocked by walls), I'll usually leave and
re-enter and blame the time loss on bad RNG.

With that bit of history out of the way, TGL runner Schmidtty worked out
a new "pole dance" strat which locks Sir Red into a vertical loop
instead. The vertical loop is a bit more risky in that if you ever let
Sir Red out of the loop it's harder to recover, but you deal damage more
quickly than in the horizontal loop, making it a faster strat once you
learn it.

For the vertical loop, we instead stand right below Sir Red as he spawns
and face him, holding the Saber out. Sir Red will usually take a small
bounce and fall down toward the Guardian; walk up through him so the
Guardian is standing above the point where the bounce lands (it may take
some practice to get a good feeling for this positioning and timing).
Sir Red should bounce straight or almost straight up through the
Guardian; keep the Saber out, and tap up on the D-pad when Sir Red lands
so the Guardian moves a few pixels upward, which is important to ensure
that the next bounce is also a high one. If your timing is off or you
don't move far enough, Sir Red will start doing tiny bounces which leave
him sitting on the Guardian and constantly draining her health.

If Sir Red spawns near the bottom of the screen, you can instead start
above him, which should cause a large bounce upward, and walk downward
through the bounce. Once you cross through Sir Red, you can start doing
the vertical loop as usual.

For either pattern, if you get a bad spawn, clip through the left wall
of green blocks and re-enter the room. You can also escape during the
fight if it looks like you'll run out of health and grab the energy tank
2 screens to the left (only once, obviously).

Once you finish off Sir Red, return to the Corridor 8 room and enter the
corridor. Quick-menu to EEs (right 2) on the way in.


Area 7 -> Area 8 (1600 chip route)
----------------------------------
There are two Red Landers in Area 6 you can take in place of Sir Red in
Area 8, at an overall cost (extra time taken minus time saved) of about
27 seconds. These are useful if you're not comfortable fighting Sir Red,
or if you're not score routing and you don't want to have to farm for
drops on later bosses.

OPTIONAL: Pick up the safety EEs as on the score route, but don't
deathwarp.

Walk back to the Corridor 17 room (up, left, up 3 times; or from the
optional EEs, right once and up 4 times), then continue up through an
empty room and a save room into Area 6. Walk up, left, and down to a
dead-end miniboss room.

MINIBOSS: Red Crab (96 HP, Red Lander). Identical to the one in Area 7.
Kill it with Cutter (which you should already have equipped), take the
Red Lander, and go. Since you now have fast walking speed, quick exit
should be free, but if you miss it, walk as far right as possible during
the fanfare before touching the top edge of the screen, to avoid wasting
movement time after the screen transition.

Return up and right, then go up through the Corridor 16 room and follow
the path to a shop. The item in the room before the shop is an energy
tank; don't waste your time with it since the Red Lander will refill any
health you've lost.

BE CAREFUL when entering the shop not to just walk left! The Red Lander
is the leftmost item, so walk down, left, and up to grab it (just like
with the Blue Lander in the Area 4 shop).

Walk left out of the shop, then down twice to the Area 7 entrance, left
4 past the "S" screen, and down into the Corridor 8 room. Quick-menu to
NO USE (right 2), press A to open the gate, and quick-menu to EEs (left
1) on the way into the corridor.


Corridor 8
----------
Score targets: 435k on entry, 450k at 2nd wave of circle rocks, 463k at
side eyeballs, 478500 (+/-500) at boss

Remember those green shot-absorbing squid that popped up in the second
half of Corridor 7? They spawn throughout this entire corridor, along
with a barrage of other enemies that will do their best to drain your
health before Red Grimgrin, who himself is not a pushover by any means.
Fortunately, everything in this corridor aside from the large eyeball
turrets is vulnerable to Enemy Erasers, so just use an EE every time
the screen fills up, both to avoid damage and to reduce lag. My rough
guideline is to EE whenever there are 3 large enemies (birds or
mushrooms) on screen, and otherwise as needed to avoid damage.

When score routing, if you entered with 435k points, straightforward use
of EEs should keep you on track throughout the corridor. If you were
high, try to dodge enemies as long as possible to get back on target;
the squid seem to take priority over other enemies, so if you can get
enough of them following you around (without touching them, obviously),
it will become a bit easier to continue dodging, until they eventually
float off screen. It's a lot harder to catch up if you entered with a
low score, but more aggressive EE use will keep enemy slots free and
potentially get you some extra spawns for a few thousand more points.

Quick-menu to Cutter (left 1) at the boss alarm, and (if you feel
comfortable doing so) hold Select through the boss fight to skip the
exit cutscene.

It's also possible to play this corridor with Cutter, but in my tests,
the lag introduced by having so many enemies on screen (especially when
the larger ones start appearing) was about a second longer than the
delays from EE use and from switching back to Cutter for the boss. You'd
also have to arrange for a red chip drop to refill your chips before the
boss, which on score route means much less leeway for error in getting
the level-up at 500k.

BOSS: Red Grimgrin (1664 HP)

Red Grimgrin is a giant flying face with five eyeballs all shooting at
the Guardian. The top and bottom eyeballs shoot... more eyeballs, while
the center one shoots ordinary (10-point) bullets. As you damage
Grimgrin, first the bottom pair (at 1024 HP), then the top pair (at 768)
of eyeballs will disappear; finally (at 512) the center eyeball will
break, Grimgrin will turn orange, and it will start spewing a fountain
of projectiles from the newly exposed center hole.

Throughout the entire fight, the Guardian's main gun adds a significant
amount of lag; try to avoid shooting when possible and rely on Cutter
instead.

During the first part of the fight, focus on damaging Grimgrin while
also taking out the eyeball projectiles as they spawn. If you position
the Guardian roughly over the center eyeball, the hitboxes of the Cutter
should be able to take out both the top and bottom eyeball projectiles.
If you're behind on score, be especially sure to take out the bottom
eyeballs, since those will travel in a straight line off the screen,
while the top ones will follow the Guardian. The eyeballs will
occasionally drop items; make sure to pick these up (unless you're on
score route and you're about to hit the level-up).

Since you picked up the level-3 Cutter upgrade as the Corridor 7 reward,
the Cutter Laser will now consume 35 chips per second. On score route,
you'll only have 800 chips to work with, so you'll run out very quickly;
this is why it's important to control your score to get the level-up
during the first half of this battle, while eyeballs are still spawning.
If you start the fight with 478-479k, keep your Cutter on the boss, and
catch all the eyeball projectiles, you should have just enough chips to
reach the level-up, and then enough chips after the level-up to get to
the final (orange) phase, where you should be able to get a red chip
drop without EE farming.

If you're not using score route, you'll have 1200 chips here, which
gives you a bit more of a buffer to work with. You'll still want to
keep an eye out for red chip drops, because 1200 alone won't carry you
through the fight.

Either way, make sure you have enough chips saved up for the middle
phase of the fight, when only the center eyeball is left and there are
no more eyeball projectiles. It takes about 7 seconds to deal 256 damage
and push Grimgrin into the final phase, so you'll need at least 245
chips once the top eyeballs disappear, and probably a bit more to farm a
red chip drop from the projectile fountain afterwards.

During the final phase, keep your Cutter over the central hole at all
times to destroy projectiles as soon as they spawn, or the game will
start lagging pretty horrendously. Even when you need to get an item
drop, if you see that Grimgrin's path will take it over the drop, try to
stay with Grimgrin and pick up the item then rather than immediately
dashing for it, so as to reduce lag.

If you do end up needing to EE-farm for items, remember to do it during
either the early phases (when eyeball projectiles are still available)
or the final fountain phase. If you do run out during the middle phase
when there are no eyeball projectiles, you can spawn a few explosions
for item drops by hitting Grimgrin with regular shots, or you can slow
down the EE spam rate to keep the explosions on the screen until
Grimgrin shoots a new set of bubbles.

After finishing the fight, if you're not holding Select, remember to
skip the exit cutscene.


Area 0 -> Area 9 (hold Select)
----------------
Go up from the Area 8 entrance, then left twice, up 5 rooms to the
northwest corner, right, and up to the Area 9 entrance.


Area 9 (hold Select)
------
Follow the path out of the save room. At the intersection with red
blocks, go up to where the blocks end in a question mark, then continue
up 2 screens and take the shield powerup from the item box. If you're at
or close to full health and if there's a conveniently placed enemy, take
a few boxes of damage here to set up some invincibility at the Red
Lander in a few rooms. Continue left and down, then through the warp
panel into the Corridor 19 room.

OPTIONAL: Go left out of the Corridor 19 room, then down twice to pick
up an extra Blue Lander (16 seconds).

Go up from the Corridor 19 room, then left to a room with a Red Lander
item box and a volleyball festival. If you're at full or close to full
health, take a hit or two before collecting the Red Lander so you have a
few seconds of invincibility from the health restore to get through the
rest of the volleyballs. Go up two screens, left at the arrow
intersection, and down into the Corridor 9 room.

OPTIONAL: Go up and left from the arrow screen for an extra Blue Lander
(45 seconds), or up and left twice for an EE refill (20 seconds), or
both (55 seconds). If taking the EEs, you can reduce the time loss by
combining them with the deathwarp after corridor 9.

The gimmick for opening corridor 9 is to stand on the gate. Yes, that's
all there is to it. If you're in position to enter the gate, it will
open for you, so just make sure you don't walk down past the perfect
pixel and you'll get a first-frame unlock.

If you're not holding Select from the Grimgrin fight, remember to skip
the entry cutscene.


Corridor 9
----------
Score targets: 570k on entry, 610k at pomegranates, 642k at boss

Corridor 9 starts out with red versions of the flying diamonds seen in
previous corridors, which are very tough to destroy even with Saber or
Cutter (they have 255 HP, the most of any enemy in the game other than
bosses), and large flying skulls and stationary skull statues which spew
smaller skull projectiles. The skull projectiles in particular are
noteworthy both because they do significant damage to the Guardian and
because they usually appear in large bunches, so they're useful for
advancing the drop sequence. Also watch out for the blue laser ships
from Corridor 7, which now do even more damage.

A bit farther along, the blue bullet-shooting ships from Corridor 3
make a reappearance. As before, their shots are very painful, so be
especially careful to watch your health here. If things get tight,
clearing the ships and bullets with EEs is a perfectly viable backup.
Runner Schmidtty also discovered that if you position yourself slightly
below the center of the screen and hold your Cutters out, you can
destroy both the blue ships and their shots before they hit you -- but
you still need to be careful of the spinners and flying heads.

These are followed by a new tall monster-like enemy which bounces up and
down, shooting lasers vertically toward the Guardian. These cannot be
destroyed by EEs, so if you had to use EEs on the blue ships, switch
back to Cutter here. If you're behind on score route, you can kill the
lasers themselves with Cutter for 1000 points each.

The second half of the corridor features blue versions of the
pomegranates from Corridors 3 and 4. These explode almost as soon as
they enter the screen, and if you let the projectiles fly around they'll
add lag, so quick-menu to EEs (right 1) and use an EE to take out the
projectiles as soon as the pomegranates explode. There are a total of 15
pomegranates leading up to the end of the corridor.

While handling the pomegranates, also keep an eye on your drop count.
You'll want at least one health drop during the boss fight; I try to
get to a count of around 200, so I get two red chips and an energy tank
while fighting the boss. After the pomegranates are a couple of flying
skulls (5 drop points per skull projectile) and 7 floating mouth balls
(8 drop points each), so aim for the 140-point heart drop around the
time you finish the pomegranates. If you're too far off to adjust at
the end of the corridor, you can use EE farming to push the drop
counter along.

BOSS: Blue Eyegore (512 HP)

Blue Eyegore is another giant face boss, but rather than fly all over
the place like Grimgrin, he simply floats up and down the center of the
screen, shooting skull projectiles from the sides and lasers down the
middle.

There are a couple of ways to approach this fight. My current strategy
is to move the Guardian so the nose of the ship is around the outer
corner of the boss's eye (either side), then follow the boss up and down
the screen while holding A and B. You'll take damage from the eyeballs
(and potentially the lasers, but that's not a problem, as described
below), but if your drop sequence is set up properly, you'll recover
enough health to survive the battle. The Cutters will also take out some
of the boss's lasers, which give you 1000 points each and help you reach
the target of 690k for entering Corridor 10.

If you're not score routing, another option is to just ride the lasers
and bask in their glow while hammering the boss with Saber or Fireball.
The lasers look scary, but in fact they only do 1 damage at a time, and
you get 15 frames of invulnerability after taking a hit. As long as you
make sure to always take damage from the lasers and not the skulls (or
boss), you don't have to worry about your health. However, doing this
loses the option of killing the lasers for score, so it doesn't work
well with score routing.


Area 9 -> Area 10
-----------------
Leave the Corridor 9 room and deathwarp on the droplets. They don't do a
lot of damage, but it's still faster to deathwarp there than to do two
screen transitions to a screen with stronger enemies.

Walk down from the Area 9 entrance, right twice to the "N" room, and up
to the Area 10 entrance. Try not to get caught on (or clip into) the red
blocks.

Unlike the other areas with multiple branching paths and hidden items,
Area 10 is a single long path from the entrance to Corridor 10, so
follow it and try to avoid taking too much damage, because everything
(even rocks, which fall in some of the labyrinth rooms here) can and
will wreck you. There's a single energy tank about halfway through the
area which you can pick up if you're low on health, but it won't
respawn if you die, so picking it up and then dying can ruin any
further attempts at the corridor.

There are a couple of places along the path where a red wall divides the
path in two, and one side leads to a dead end. If you're confident in
your block clip, it can be faster to take the dead-end path and clip out
rather than walk around the intended way.

Shortly before the Corridor 10 room is a miniboss with a backup EE drop.

OPTIONAL MINIBOSS: Glider (96 HP, EE refill). Identical to the boss of
corridor 6, and you can fight it the same way. It probably makes more
sense to take this after Corridor 10 since you can combine body-checking
with the death warp.

The gimmick for opening Corridor 10 is to "keep shooting"; you have to
hold the B button down for 11 seconds (more precisely, 10 seconds
starting from 1 second after entering the room) for the gate to unlock.
Quick-menu to Cutter (left 2) on the way in.


Corridor 10 (hold Select, if you dare)
-----------
Score targets: 690k on entry, 730k at trench diggers, 750k at boss

Corridor 10 asks questions of those who brave it. Hard questions. _Very_
hard questions. If you're not up to the challenge, Corridor 10 will chew
you up, spit you out, and dine on your tears.

Right off the bat, you'll be assaulted by skull turrets, falling rocks,
and rock circles. The rock circles are especially dangerous; each one
deals 16 damage (2 boxes of health) to the Guardian, and if you're not
careful you can easily end up with almost no health going into the
Gauntlet. I usually try to dodge the rock circles rather than destroy
the rocks; if you alternately lure them to the top and bottom corners of
the screen, it's not too hard to stay out of their way.

As the rocks taper off, the background scroll speed will ramp up to
around the same speed as the beginning of Corridor 0. Remember trying
to get that first heart drop? Now you have to do that while dodging or
killing a flood of some of the toughest enemies in the game. This is
the Gauntlet, and the second gatekeeper of the run. I highly recommend
practicing the Gauntlet on its own until you get familiar with the
enemy patterns and timings, or you will have many runs that end in
disappointment here.

The first half of the Gauntlet is the most critical part; after a few
red diamonds and laser ships, the screen will start to fill with blue
rocks (from Corridor 5) and bouncing laser shooters (from Corridor 9).
Both of these are immune to EEs, which prevents you from cheesing the
Gauntlet by just erasing everything. You'll have to take them out with
Cutter, watch carefully for drops, and line yourself up under the drops
to shoot them and pick them up as soon as they solidify. You should
normally get the two consecutive heart drops (140 and 180) during this
section; you can survive missing one if your movement is good, but
missing both is usually fatal.

Once you get past the blue rocks and laser shooters, the remainder of
the enemies _are_ vulnerable to EEs, so if your health is low, don't
hesitate to switch over and clear the enemies out. But beware of the
pomegranates, which don't die to EEs until they explode.

If you survive the Gauntlet, you'll be rewarded with flying skull
shooters, and you can farm the skull projectiles for drops which will
now be easier to pick up. Try to recover as much health as you can, but
be careful of the rocks which will start to fall again.

The skull shooters are followed in short order by the trench diggers
from Corridor 1. These trench diggers shoot nail-like projectiles which
home in on the Guardian but move in irregular patterns, making them
diffcult to shoot down. They're worth 500 points each, so you can farm
them if you're short on score route, but like everything else in this
corridor, they hit hard, so this is a dangerous strategy. If you can
afford to, or if you're not score routing, take out the diggers as soon
as you can.

After the diggers, you'll have a few seconds to catch your breath, but
don't get caught unawares by the four blue laser ships. These are
followed by 8 skull turrets which signal the end of the corridor. As in
Corridor 9, try to get your drop counter to around 200 when you reach
the boss.

BOSS: Red Eyegore (768 HP)

Red Eyegore is similar to his blue cousin, but instead of skulls, he
fires nails at the Guardian. As with the trench diggers, the nails fly
in irregular patterns and do significant damage, so this fight can
quickly go south if you're not careful, or even just unlucky.

I originally used a strategy similar to Blue Eyegore, lining up the nose
of the Guardian with the side horn of Red Eyegore rather than the corner
of the eye, and dancing up and down a bit while following the boss to
try and take out the nails more quickly. Runner Schmidtty instead
suggested lining up with the eye itself, similarly to Blue Eyegore but
slightly more toward the "pupil" of the eye, and I've adopted this
approach as well since it seems more consistent.

As with Blue Eyegore, you can also ride the lasers if you're not score
routing.

If you're not holding Select, don't forget to skip the exit cutscene.


Area 0 -> Escape
----------------
Deathwarp immediately on exiting Corridor 10 (or after the backup EE
miniboss, if you take that).

Walk down once from the Area 10 entrance to the "N" room, then left
twice and down twice to the Corridor 21 entrance. If you're low on chips
(lower than 300 or so), you may instead want to hit the chip refill 2
screens right and 1 screen down from the central message room. (If
you're on the 1200 chip route and you have to detour here, you might as
well also pick up the Red Lander in the adjacent shop after refilling.)

As long as you've completed all of Corridors 1-10, Corridor 21 will be
unlocked as soon as you enter the room. Just go to the perfect pixel
and enter the corridor. Quick-menu to Saber (up 1) on the way in.


Corridor 21
-----------
Score targets: 835k-845k on entry, 895k after Clawbot, 910k at Grimgrin,
955k at Bombarder, 975k-980k on exit

This corridor is a boss rush of Fleepa (Corridor 1), Zibzub (Corridor
5), Blue Clawbot (Corridor 14), Red Optomon (Corridor 16), Blue
Grimgrin (Corridor 18), and Red Bombarder (Corridor 19). The bosses
still have the same stats as before, so Fleepa in particular is trivial.
However, if you body-check well enough, you can take advantage of how
this corridor works to spawn Zibzub 6 seconds faster.

In Corridor 21, each boss is tied to a segment of scrolling background.
At the end of the segment, the game checks whether the boss is still
alive, and if so, it jumps back to the beginning of that segment of
background; otherwise it advances to the next one, which spawns the next
boss. In the specific case of Fleepa, the segment is 6 seconds long, and
there's just enough time to kill the boss before the end of the first
loop if you body-check well (though this may not be possible at attack
level 2). You'll know you missed the quick spawn if you see a second
ridge appear on the left side of the screen after killing Fleepa.

Zibzub likewise goes down the same way as before, with a saber up his
nose. But be careful of the falling rocks -- each one does over a box of
health in damage, and it's the rocks that make this corridor a real
challenge.

This is the first appearance of Clawbot in the any% run. Clawbot has a
giant claw which occasionally opens up to fire a huge laser, but it
can't do anything about attacks from the side, so just quick-menu to
Cutter (right 1), waltz up to the side of the base (not the claws), sit
back and enjoy the damage. Do make sure to keep firing your regular gun
to take out the rocks, and grab item drops as they fall. If you plan to
use Cutter on Red Bombarder (see below), you can hold Select after
menuing to Cutter for the cutscene skip at the end of the corridor.

As you damage Clawbot, the claws will first turn orange and then fall
off, drifting toward the bottom of the screen. Each claw is worth 4000
points, so on score route, check your score after killing Clawbot
(target 895k) and kill one or both of the claws if you're behind.

Incidentally, Clawbot's background segment is a whopping 12.5 seconds
long, and it takes about 15.5 seconds to kill Clawbot using the Cutter
Laser, which is why there's such a long delay before the next boss
spawns. In 100%, you can use the main gun at attack level 4 alongside
level 3 Fireball to squeeze in just enough damage to kill Clawbot before
the background loops.

Red Optomon is basically the same as the original Optomon fight, but now
we have level 3 Cutter and much higher defense. Touching Optomon or the
seaweed will still do fairly large amounts of damage, but if you line
the Cutters up with roughly the middle of Optomon's eye, you'll be able
to slide through Optomon (using special weapon invincibility) without
taking damage from the seaweed strands.

Blue Grimgrin is a weaker version of his red cousin (1152 instead of
1664 HP), so he won't take as long to reach the orange stage. Even so,
this is easily the most dangerous fight of the boss rush, again because
of the rocks raining down. Take full advantage of healing invincibility
from heart and chip drops, and especially make sure not to miss the
energy tank which should drop around the midpoint of the fight.

On score route, you should be at around 910k points when you reach
Grimgrin. You can try to farm eyeballs if low or avoid killing them (at
the cost of severe lag) if high, but both are risky. Aim for 955k after
killing Grimgrin (Grimgrin himself is 20k).

The final enemy of the boss rush is Red Bombarder, another first-time
appearance in the any% run. The Bombarder randomly teleports around the
screen, spawning 16 homing missiles each time. Compared to Optomon and
Grimgrin, the Bombarder is trivial as long as you don't let too many
missiles catch you.

It's possible to continue with Cutter for Bombarder and save 2 seconds
of menuing time, but Saber makes it easier and safer to body-check the
boss and shorten the fight by 2-3 cycles (at 5 seconds per cycle).
Saber also has a much lower chip cost, ensuring you stay close to full
chips for the final boss, so I recommend using Saber here. Bombarder's
hitbox is surprisingly small; you need to be centered horizontally and
slightly above center vertically to get the body-checking bonus damage.
(If you do use body-checking, make sure to watch your health!)

In preparation for the final boss, you'll want to end the corridor with
the drop counter around 180-200 depending on your current chip count, so
keep an eye on your position in the drop sequence and either kill or
dodge rocks as needed. You can take the 180 heart here or pick it up
from the rocks at the beginning of Corridor 22, whichever is more
convenient for your current drop counter. Also be aware that rocks will
continue falling right up until you lose control, so you'll add a bit to
your drop counter and score even after killing the boss.

On score route, you should be in the 975k-980k range on leaving the
corridor. At 980k and with full chips at the start of the fight, you can
beat the final boss without needing any red chip pickups; at 975k you'll
need one red chip before the level-up; above 980k you'll need a red chip
after the level-up (and long enough after that you can take the entire
500 chips without hitting the max of 1200).

If you switched to Saber for Bombarder, quick-menu back to Cutter
(right 1) and hold Select after losing control.


Corridor 22 (final boss)
------------------------
This "corridor" (identified as 22 when you play in the score-attack
"TGL" mode) starts out with a shower of rocks that quickly peters out.
You can use these to adjust your drop counter or score as needed, but
try not to take damage from them because you need all your health for
the final boss. When you reach the boss, your drop counter should be
around 190 (higher if your chip count is below 800 or so), and on score
route your score should be around 980k.

BOSS: It (2176 HP)

The final boss, a.k.a. "It", is a monstrosity with an appropriately
monstrous amount of health. To make things worse, it only shoots
projectiles at a slow rate until it reaches low health and the
projectiles don't give many drop points, so not only is it easy to run
out of chips (especially when using Cutter), but when you do, it's hard
to farm for a chip drop.

The boss shoots two types of projectiles: a missile that homes in on
the Guardian and a bubble that follows an arc up and back down the
screen. The missiles do 1 box of damage, can be destroyed in 1 hit from
any weapon, and give 800 points and 2 drop points. The bubbles have a
high amount of health, do almost 3(!) boxes of damage, and give only 200
points and 1 drop point. (The boss itself also does close to a box of
damage if you run into it.) So this fight is all about avoiding the
bubbles while staying close enough to continuously damage the boss and
also not running out of chips.

When the fight starts, wait for the boss to solidify before putting the
Cutters out just to save chips, since the final boss's fade-in time is
unusually long. Once the boss starts moving, try to keep one Cutter over
the bottom edge of the boss's eyeball at all times, as this will let you
destroy the missiles as soon as they spawn. Then just follow the boss as
it moves across the screen, and do the best you can do avoid the
bubbles. If you see a bubble headed toward you, you can safely cross
through the boss with special weapon invincibility, so switch sides as
needed.

Also make sure not to miss any item drops, though sometimes it can make
sense to let a drop sit for a while; if a red chip drops but your chips
are already close to full, you might want to wait a few seconds (letting
the Cutters continue to consume chips) and then dash down to grab the
red chip so you get more benefit from it. If you end up needing to farm
during this phase, you can get a few extra explosions for farming by
switching to EEs and immediately using them while explosions from your
Cutter hits on the boss are still onscreen.

On score route, if you start the fight at 980k, you should expect to get
the level-up near the beginning of the second loop of the boss music. If
you started the fight with full chips or set up your drop counter
properly, you should have just enough chips to make it to the level-up
without having to farm.

Once the boss gets down to 512 health, it turns orange and starts
shooting projectiles faster. If you're low on chips (especially when not
on score route), this is when EE-farming becomes much more feasible. If
you do have to farm, try and spawn a lot of items and then grab them all
at once, so the health refill invincibility protects you from the
bubbles which will probably be hitting you as you collect the items.

At 256 health, the boss turns red and starts spamming projectiles even
faster. If you're not careful here, bubbles can drain your health before
you realize what happened, but on the flip side, you only need 52 more
Cutter hits or about 7 seconds (plus lag) to kill the boss, so as long
as you stay on target and keep an eye on the bubbles, you should be home
free.

Timing stops after the victory fanfare when you lose control of the
Guardian, so there's no need to move to the top of the screen after
killing the boss. But be careful of leftover bullets!


Credits/shoutouts to:
---------------------
- Theseawolf1 (previous WR holder), Mattrick_, ZakkytheGoatragon,
fridaywitch, and other TGL runners who first routed the game.

- Extra credit to Zakky for putting together a great TAS and finding
some time saves applicable to realtime runs as well.

- ShinerCCC, for pointing out the lag caused by regular gun shots.

- Schmidtty, for several new strats and for being the second any% runner
to join the sub-50 club.

- The Admiral on GameFAQs, for a detailed writeup of weapon, boss, and
other stats:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/587320-the-guardian-legend/64314055