Document Title: [SmashTVStrategy.html (html file)]
Don't try to conserve ammo. Your shots should be efficient and kill as much as possible, and you won't have time to think about conserving shots (esp. in the latter stages). The pattern of moves you should follow at the end of each board to reach the easiest boards is:
Mutoid man: Stay *above* him. The best hiding place is at the upper corners of the board. Then nothing can get you, except Mr. Shrapnel. Best weapons are Shrieker grenades, then spread fire.
Scarface: There are two attack types you use against this guy. The first is when you have grenades/shrieker grenades and are invulnerable. Then you blast away at his face. Be sure to get all areas of his face. The second is when you have spread/missiles/double. Then you travel around him in circles and knock out his perimeter shielding. If you don't get all his perimeter shielding he CANNOT die. This is why most people find him so hard. Then he is converted to a skull. When you have grenades/shriekers, be sure to get ALL areas of the face! Otherwise attack the top of his head, and in general keep him away from you.
Cobra: You should fire at all areas of the cobra body. Don't move above the cobra heads, cause you will die. Best weapon: spread fire.
Game show host: Same as mutoid man but moves really fast. Play cautiously. Note that you can stay at the upper-right-hand corner of the screen forever, picking up unlimited points on Mr. Shrapnel. This is slow, however.
The game is known to adjust its difficulty by the daily high score list. If the high scores are too high, making the game too hard, just turn the machine off and on again.
Now, the pleasure dome. This is hearsay, so don't get upset if this doesn't work. Sometimes, instead of saying "COLLECT POWERUPS!" on the second board, it'll say something else. When that happens, it means you can get to the pleasure dome that game. When you get to key room #1 (after the cobras) you can go down after the board is completed. Tough rooms follow. In the pleasure dome, you collect girls instead of gifts. It isn't possible to get to the pleasure dome on some machines. If it isn't on yours, ask your operator to ask Williams for a (free) ROM upgrade.
Felix Lee says this applies to Rom Version 8 and up. You can tell what version, he says, by the message in room #3 ("Collect TEN keys" instead of "Collect keys"). He also says that this is hearsay. I say that this is a scummy trick, putting out a game with a heralded 'feature' that won't exist for several months, and counting on people not to find out about it until then.
He adds that if you discover "Secret Warp 3", you've just experienced the game's error-recovery system at work.
When playing with 2 people, if one player finishes the level near an exit, the other will "walk through the wall" to the next room. Can be useful on some levels.
You can cheat the enemy men by running through them backwards (to do this, you have to be firing). This works especially well when you have extra speed.
(Contributor: Ryan Tanner)
I just saw the bit about ignoring the highscore unless you get some kind of cheat. There aren't any "cheats" in the true sense of the word in Smash TV. Smash TV has a warp that happens occasionally when it has an error, and will put you forward or backwards. Haven't been able to reproduce this.
Here's a list of fun things to do: When fighting Mutoid Man or the Host, get a shield and stand behind the boss. If he backs up far enough, he will push you back out the wall area he came in. You can not be hit there, and if you position yourself right, you can fire from that position. This isn't really a cheat since you need special weapons to kill the boss. You can leave the area by simply moving down.
If you have the sawblades and are moving right next to the exit and so is the other person, the sawblades will not have time to disappear and will be carried to the next wave. It's nice to see those sawblades cut up the camera men. Also, you can sometimes get another sawblade set for the other player because the software doesn't realize that you still have that set you should have lost. Dueling sawblades!
After killing a boss monster, if player one stands next to the exit and
player two stands to the left of some mines, player two will be dragged
across the mines at no extra charge. FEARLESS MINE WALKER! This can
also work on any wave ending, but you get more time to position player
one and two on the end of a level.
