Following Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, squid must be a pretty feared family of sea-creatures -at least the bigger ones, I guess. In that respect Cuttle Fish and Demon Sword were mild disappointments, the latter more than the former. This time around, they got things right with Neon Light Illusion.
Neon Light Illusion's attacks get easier to handle, the further his attack cycle progresses.
Tips:(NOTE:This holds good for Zone H)Here's another boss who knows how to make and entrance. Will Smith, eat your heart out. While his tentacles are intact, his attack pattern consists of three, well, attacks. Neon Light Illusion's first move is to swing his tentacles around and pound you with bullets-it often appears that every segment of his tentacles fires a bullet each. And for some reason, I am rather horizontally-challenged in dodging bulletspam. But fear not, things can be made easier by concentrating on tentacles from the top or bottom. This way, the bullets are aimed a bit more at you than otherwise so that a path dodging is more visible. When he's done with that, the screen darkens and he straightens all his tentacles to fire lasers at you, normally in parallel pairs. Not too bad here. When he's fired enough and taken enough damage (hopefully), he moves back a bit and starts launching anchor thingies and a sort of pulsed bullet, which pauses and corrects its course towards you every now and then.
NOTE: Shudder. And again. (see text for details).
When this is done, and if enough tentacles are intact, he repeats this pattern. When all of his tentacles are blown off, one will pervesely remain stuck on, he sheds his skin and comes out looking like a sparkplug. He then fires out a really scary array of straight lasers at you. If you do stay in line with his head (keep yours cool for that), less dodging and cursing will take place. Also, there will often be a gap in each row of lasers, so keep your eyes open here. I don't remember if the hyper shield can survive a single shot. Then come the homing lasers. As before, his weak point is his head, and eventually, you should get:
In Zone O, Neon Light Illusion's first attacks are more or less the same, but when the sheath comes off, he unloads an unholy amount of pulsed bullets. Curiously enough, I was able to survive it. The trick is to stay in one place as long as is humanly (or Dariusly?) possible so that the next wave of bullets doesn't come in directly on you, and if it does, you get enough time to avoid it. Changing direction quickly also helps, since this will confuse the pulsed bullets.
Rating:
Colour Scheme:
92%
Design:
98%
Attacks:
96%
Name:
100%
Real-Life Inspiration: The giant squid (Archi-something, I'll get it right shortly).
The giant squid, in turn the real-life inspiration for the kraken (Tennyson wrote a niceish poem about it), has had a history of picking fights with sperm whales, chiefly because the latter eat it. It has also been killed by a few famous personages, including Ned Land, Kirk Douglas, James Bond (rather unconvincingly in Dr.No, and now those blokes from Darius or Vadis. Of note is the fact that its neurons are so damn BIG that they were a very popular system for studying the nerve impusle, and Julian Huxley and friends (yes, the Brave New World and Doors of Perception guy's son or grandson) did a lot of pioneering electrophysiological studies on it. I think they (not just Huxley, mind you-I can't remember the names yet) developed some important
models of nerve action based on their work with giant squid neurons. I once built a clay model of a giant squid too, with blue eyes and a brick-red body.
I am an ass. I got my wires crossed between Neon Light Illusion and Cuttle Fish! My marine biologist contact at the University of Hawaii suggests this:
Shapewise, Neon Light Illusion looks a lot like the Indo-Pacific reef squid Sepiotheuthis opalescens, which isn't bioluminescent either but does display some crazy colour patterns (and is very common in Japan). Probably the guys at Taito weren't picky enough to settle on a specific squid species to emulate, though .
I'll go with you on that. They did it with Guard Savage too. Hell, even Cuttle Fish may be prety generic too. NLI was supposed to be called Cuttle Fish II!
Some Thoughts on the Name: Apart from having a nice ring to it, Neon Light Illusion has been given an excellent setting in zone H. Given the fact that squid often do glow (but that's due to bacteria), this probably gave Taito their inspiration. It also sounds like a bad title for a bad 80s rock song a la "Welcome to the Jungle" by way of Bon Jovi in a cautionary sense. I can picture a bad rock star singing how he was lured by the neon light illuuuuusiion.....
