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These
pages are Dedicated to my favourite Arcade game of all time PLEIADES. You will find amongst these pages detailed information about the game as well as hints and tips on playing it. I'm not saying i know it all , but i have played this game to death and have made a lot of notes about it , which this site makes available to anyone who has an interest in this game. I hope you find it useful. |
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To
start with, lets sort out the confusion with the name.
The
Marquee,Manual and side art all spell
the
name correctly as PLEIADES
this
name was taken from
a
constellation of stars in the night sky also known as
"
The
Seven Sisters"
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As with alot of games from this era most of the names tended to
have some sort of a link to space.The Title screen however
spells the game incorrectly as PLEIADS
The reason for this i dont know, maybe it was just a mistake, maybe
they could'nt fit the width of the name on the screen so they missed
out the E on purpose ?
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General Description PLEIADES
Is
actually the sister game to to the Arcade classic PHOENIX
another
Space orientated shoot em up.
PLEIADES
has
four different game screens to it and for want of a better term
i'll call them waves, (
as in waves of attackers ).
So
1
level, would be completion of all 4
waves, if you see what i mean !!
Wave
1
invading Diamond shaped attackers
Wave
2
invading
Bird type creatures
Wave
3
A Mothership with Mushroom shaped invaders
Wave
4
Spaceship Docking
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Control
Panel
Depending
on whether your game is in a Tehkan
or Centuri
Cabinet
or not, you will either have two buttons , one for left and one
for right or a joystick.
You
will also have a fire button and a Hyper warp button, except on
the Tehkan cabinet, where you pull the joystick up for Hyper Warp.
Left
/ Right and fire are obvious so i wont waste time on them, but
the Hyper warp needs explaining.
It
makes you dissapear for about a second and then places you back
on screen at a completely random place, this can be handy in tricky
situations when you havent got time to dodge invaders missiles.
But more often than not it will place you directly under some
other invaders missiles, so i tend not to use this button very
much.
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Wave
1
This
wave consists of 16
yellow
diamond shaped invaders each with 2 green
dots
above them. Once you have shot 14 of them, the last 2 will be purple with white dots. The invaders may at any time come down to just below the horizon, grow legs and run across the screen just above you, when in this form they are worth 80 points each. In
this form also they may leave a barrier of UFO pods, which are worth
150
points each,
these it pays you to shoot, coz they only get in the way of you shooting
the flying ones. TIP*
If
you get trapped in the far left corner you will find that the attacking
invaders will pass through you without killing you, this is due to a
programing error, so use it to your advantage (This
is also the same for the game Phoenix)
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Wave
2
This wave consists of 8 green Bird like invaders, which start small and grow in size. Once at full size they start to swoop around and dive bomb at you, it can get a bit hectic so keep your wits about you ! Depending on what size they are if you shoot them in the middle, you can score either 50/100/400 points, if they reach full size however, each time you shoot a wing you score 20 points. Once you have killed 4 of them they will change colour to yellow, once you have killed 2 more they will change to pink. Kill one more and the final 1 will be red. Tip*1 When you get to the final red invader dont kill him straight away, just keep shooting at his wings and boost your score, but be carefull as he tends to get a bit annoyed and speeds up dramatically ! Tip*2
Shooting
the wings also stops the invader from swooping, it will still dive bomb
but it makes it easier to hit.
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Wave
3
To be honest this is my favourite wave of the game. It consists of a Mother ship with 5 thruster jets that need to be destroyed. Also appearing on the screen from either the top left or right or from hatches above the thrusters will again be 16 blue invaders, this time in the shape of mushrooms. You finish the wave by either killing all the invaders or destroying all the thrusters.you can only destroy a thruster if the hatch above it is open, each time you destroy one it will extinguish and bonus points will show above the Mother ship, anything up to 9600 points is achievable. The mushroom invaders are worth 30 points each unless they turn into a flying pink pod then they are worth 150 points. Once you have shot 14 of them the last 2 will turn into pink mushrooms invaders. Tip*1 Again take advantage of the left hand corner in tricky situations. Tip*2
I
tend to shoot all the blue
mushroom invaders, whilst picking off the thrusters when i can, but
when i'm down to the final 2
pink
ones i ignore them and finish getting the thrusters.This way i boost
my score by getting all the blue invaders and all the thrusters.
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Wave
4
This is the final wave in the level. It involves trying to dock your spaceship on a target at the top of a triangular grid. Positioned around this grid are other spaceships and flanking the eges of the grid are flashing coloured lights. If you bump into these other ships or the lights you die and lose a life. Also on the grid placed at random there are sometimes flags, these you can bump into and they will give you bonus points anything between a 100 points and 600 points. Each time you do this wave on a different level the amount of ships on the grid and thier position will change. If you can finaly make it to the top and land safetly on the pad, depending on how accurate you are, you will gain bonus points anywhere between 500 and 4000 points. When this happens fireworks go off on the screen, the higher the score, the more they go off !! TIP*1
There
is a secret flag that is floating in space as you fly up to the grid,
BLINK
and you'll miss it. Once you get used to the game, you'll be ready
for it!
TIP*2
In
the rest of the game, if you dont use your controls, your spaceship
just sits there, in this wave its different. The spaceship takes on
a drifting in space feel, where it will keep moving slowly in the
last direction you moved it. If you dont need to move, keep alternating
quickly between left/right to keep yourself hovering in one position.
TIP*3
I
use
2
basic methods for this wave, and alternate between them.
1st
time on this wave i go up through just slightly left of center. 2nd
time i go as far right as i can go, it may look like you're gonna hit
the blue one , but you will just miss it !! and when i get about just
over 3/4 of the way up, i come over to the left and through to
the top. Just alternate between these two. It
also helps getting a fair amount of flags !
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All Pleiades screenshots used in this site are courtesy of KLOV
