My fifth Star Citadel gallery. By this time the game is starting to become more challenging. Just like the original Star Castle arcade game, everything has started to move faster: the rings rotate faster, the energy projectiles fly faster, the cannon rotates faster, and the mines home in quicker too. All of this makes everything harder to destroy and/or avoid.
Note that Star Citadel has two variants: a modern version, from which these screenshots are taken, and a classic version, which is designed to play as much like the original Star Castle as possible.
Click on the images to see larger versions.
The world's most ineffective Star Castle attack run. No hits although, as the shields expand, it's likely that at least a couple of those shots will do some damage.
Same level a bit later on. You can see I've managed to do quite a bit of damage to the shields, but the game is becoming more challenging. I'm running from an energy projectile, and there's a mine closing in nearby.
Amazingly a couple of my last few wild shots have found their mark and I've managed to waste a couple of the mines.
Not much progress here and the issue is that, with only a couple of shield segments left in the outer ring, there's a danger that I'll inadvertently destroy them, which will allow the cannon to regenerate a whole new shield ring, just like the original Star Castle arcade game.
I've just destroyed a mine here but, given I'm sat right in the middle of the explosion, you can imagine exactly how close a call that was. I'm also going to have to dodge incoming fire from the cannon.
Still, managed to get a lucky shot in there and the cannon is toast. Oh yeah!
The start of a new level and this is a bit more like it - most of these shots are on target or close to. I should do some damage here.
Looks like I've managed to get some solid hits on the shields, although I haven't worried the cannon itself.
Here you can see how effective an initial strike on the cannon whilst it's still materializing can be. Note that not only have I managed to destroy several segments in the outer shield ring, but I've also weakened a few of the segments in the middle ring.
This is OK. It's not exaclty on target but you can see that I should be able to punch a hole through the inner shield ring, which will make the cannon vulnerable.
Yep, punched a nice hole through the inner ring, and I'm bugging out because the cannon is firing.
Back in for another strafing run and I've taken out one of the mines. In the original Star Castle you didn't get any points for destroying mines; in this version you get 1 point. Yes, that's right, one point. For some reason, whilst I was happy for destroying them to be largely worthless (apart from for self-preservation), I still didn't want to award nil points for it.