If you're at this page, you're either (a) curious, ,(b) heard rumours about Titanic Lance or ,(c) foolish enough to wander into Zone M. If you belong to the first two categories, may this serve as a suitable deterrent to meet him. If you belong to the third category....well, so do I, so I will refrain from commenting on you.
Rolling Stone has a knack of putting up badly-compiled top 100 lists for several occasions. Were shoot'em up gurus to perform a same task regarding the top 100 bosses, guess who would make the Top 20? Objectively, Titanic Lance may seem the high point of the 'blow up part by part' type of Darius boss, but he could easily pass muster as theDarius boss, ever.
From "Hooks In You" to "Ray of Light", just the nose of Titanic Lance is pretty eclectic.
Tips:First of all, it's okay to be afraid. Second, do not be intimidated. Third, panic bombing's okay as long as it's intelligent. Fourth-WATCH OUT FOR THE CLAWS! They're not as bad as they seem-they go down fairly quietly if you're powered up; in fact, they don't really touch you. They do let off when you blow two of them, and the nose then opens up to charge up a Purple Beam of Death. This is the Lite version after Golden Wimp's, but T.L. uses it more effectively. He scrolls up and down with it. Pray your shield is charged up, otherwise try and jump above or below the beam as it is charging up so that it's always just above or below you when it fires. When that's done, just aim for the broken nose while some tiles are thrown at you. In the meantime, six homing lasers open up on you continuously. I'd suggest the dodge-at-the-last-minute move, but there are six lasers, so...I'll just suggest to move either up or down if there more space above or below you.
NOTE: The first picture on the left does not convey the trickiness of this attack (see text for details).
Still with us? Good. Now two turrets and two straight lasers emerge from the wreckage. The former with fire at you and respawn, and the latter just do their thing and are the weak point of this segment. Much grief can be avoided by slipping under the hull and hammering away (it still takes damage). If only it were so easy. Intermittently, a pod is launched which explodes into a bunch of homing missiles with some big bullets. They could be dealt with from where you are, but to avoid losing a pointless life, wait until the turrets stop firing (they do for a while!), blast the missiles, and then either go back to either above or below the hull. Fire, destroy, repeat. When this is gone, Titanic Loser fires a pod which explodes into an almost-perfect bullet circle. Since it's almost perfect, watch for YOUR opening of choice and float through it.
The same goes here.
Now comes a nasty part. The next portion of the hull splits into two and head off to deal with you. It also launches electrified mines which cannot be dstroyed while the halves behave like Leadain's second attack (I hope you know what this means; otherwise, check his page out when I get to it). But the mines make it unfair. Try and stay at one corner of the screen so that you can move out of the two halves clashing together. I strongly recommend a panic-bomb here. But it gets UGLIER then.
After the next out part of the hull dissolves in some nice wireframe effects, you are greeted with destructible fishy missiles (but not as fishy as they could be-see later) which can be handled more or less straightforwardly. THEN we are greeted to Titanic Lance's descendants, who fire bullet arcs at you and take an unfair amount of shots to destroy. If I remember correctly, the main ship joins in the fun too by canarding you too.
After the flurry of remora missiles, things actually ease up a bit.
The fish-missiles then take off to take you out. Please take them out first, preferrably as they take off, otherwise they leave a spidery wake of bullets behind them which is harder to deal with than just them. When they're gone, what's left of his outer hull disintegrates (and is debris, so mind your head) to reveal what must be his main reactor which then promptly fires. Duck out of the way; the powering-up gives you ample time to duck. I'd would suggest you duck down; for though you can't get at his next weak spot, you can blow up what could harm you if you were on top. The tentacles now fire bullets and break up into little orbs which fire more bullets, and are quite easy to take out from below. When this is done, head up and blast off his top, leaving his final weak spot ready for attack.
Almost there now...
After blowing off the last bit of his shell, hammer away at his exposed head. You have two attacks to deal with here. First are the green seeker lasers
(left) which are best dealt with by not moving until the last minute (not that you have much elbow room to start with). Then what's left of him moves back and his 90-degree laser kicks in. Ideally, you should be as far right as possible, and wait until the first batch of lasers start firing, move back, stop, move back, stop, move right and so on. If correctly done the lasers will fire at you in a staggered way and missing you completely. The cycle repeats now. It would be less worse if you couldn't sock 'it to 'im in a harer-hitting and longer way each time. No death pic again, because I was too busy giving Titanic Bastard the fingers when he went down. Seriously, two hands' worth of middle fingers cannot suitably insult him.
Rating:
Colour Scheme:
72%
Design:
88%
Attacks:
102%
Name:
100%
Real-Life Inspiratiom: Matthew Ross from the University of Hawaii tells me:
"Titanic Lance is a straight-shelled nautiloid (this is probably why they gave him that orange striped pattern). These were the top oceanic predators from about the middle of the Ordivician period up through somewhere in the mesozoic. They are also incredibly cool! If you care to read about them more, here's a good link: Titanic Lance isn't a belemnite. He actually is a straight-shelled nautiloid (this is probably why they gave him that orange striped pattern). These were the top oceanic predators from about the middle of the Ordivician period up through somewhere in the mesozoic".
Thanks, Matt! A good link for information about 'im is here (also provided by him).
