Tips and tricks?

[Mallow]

I played Nintendo Hard games back in the day...which is the problem, my reflexes ain't what they were. Any tips on getting back in the unforgiving groove, or is it just "practice until your eyes bleed" protocol?

[Sad Pug]

Don't rush. The game can get extremely cheap on Isle 3 (there are also some of the crappiest bosses and run and gun stages in the entire game), but be persistent and you will do it.
Also, game itself is pretty forgiving if you're not stupid. Contra 4 was much more unforgiving than this.

[arejang]

Also, I'd recommend playing until you hit a wall you can't seem to beat. That could very well be the first boss, but if you find you can't find a solution, do post here because there are strategies to each phase and while they might not be sure-win, I think it'll help where lightning reflexes may fail.

[Smash45]

Well, aside from increasing your patience you can also buy items from the shop, I would recommend the smoke bomb as it turns your dash into a dodge and buy the spread shot, the charge shot or the homing shot.

[Mike]

Hopefully I can share some helpful information. It worked for me, maybe it will work for you.
I've beaten the game on expert on more than one save file, single and multiplayer, so I've noticed a couple of little tricks that helped me get those pesky S ranks and whatnot.

• Try to find out a simple and low effort way to dodge an attack every time rather that moving around like crazy. Some enemies launch very chaotic barrages at you and it makes you want to scurry all over the screen to try and dodge them. A lot of dumb damage comes from flailing around when you could just park your butt somewhere safe and concentrate on damage. Here's a couple of examples.
  
  - Djimmi The Great: during the phase where he's a blob in a sarcophagus, he likes to launch these wobbly, double sine-wave, eyeball projectiles at you, which makes you instinctively want to thread the needle through them while they are far apart. Your movement is usually restricted to the area between the eyeballs and further restricted by the ghosts/mummies he throws at you.
  Instead of putting yourself at risk and trying to thread the needle towards the center of the screen, just stay at the far left of the screen and park your butt in the exact location he originally launched the eyeballs and keep shooting. The eyes will automatically miss you every time. If you are playing on expert mode, just move yourself forward/right about an inch, because the wave pattern changes slightly in that mode.
  
  - Wally Warbles (bird): Wally likes to cough up these obnoxious eggs that split into three projectiles when they hit the left side of the screen. Somewhat similar to Djimmi, you can just park your butt on the far left side of the screen and move slightly up or down from the location he fired the egg. Since they split apart into 3 projectiles that move right, a safe spot is created just above and below the egg when it breaks. This will prevent him from coughing up a second egg on you if your initial reflex was to move towards the middle of the screen to thread the needle through the three split projectiles. In expert mode, he makes it a little tricky because it splits into 5 projectiles instead of 3. You can remedy this by moving a little further up or down, and moving an inch or so foward/right. If you're nervous, you can shrink your plane until the projectiles pass you. In the phase where he's featherless and on a cot, you can avoid dodging most of the trash by going to the left and underneath the cot and shooting his butt (not the doctor birds, the cot itself). You can still get hurt there, so be careful, but I found it way easier to dodge stray pills and garbage there than in the center of the screen.
  
  - Phantom Express: During phase 2 (giant skeleton), you can lock your position on the corner of the mine cart (by the pink crank) in the hollow spot two train cars and stay completely still the entire fight. The smashing skeleton hands cannot hit you there at all even though it looks like they can. Just be mindful of the pumpkins that drop bricks and you'll be fine. Don't let those pesky pumpkins put you in danger. During phase 3, when those two round faces vomit lightning, you can wedge yourself in the far left or right corner of the screen, and dodge damage completely, even if the lighting is coming from directly over you. I don't think I've ever taken damage from those lighting faces even once.
  
  - King Dice: For King himself, you can wedge yourself on the far left or right side of the screen and you can completely avoid dodging a single card. You're totally safe behind his hands. The tricky part is figuring out which hand he will start on, and he will occasionally change his left/right/left/right pattern. If you pause and unpause the game right before the "READY? WALLOP!" shows up, you can usually see the first frame or so of his arm moving animation to get a good hint on which side he will start on.
  
  
• Casino Minibosses: (I highly recommend SMOKE BOMB. It makes dodging so much easier.)
  
  I also recommend CHARGE SHOT. The minibosses don't have much HP and most of them are fairly stationary or easy to hit, so you can lay waste to them in a short amount of time compared to the other weapons.
  The boomerang weapon is also a favorite for times I prefer to move around without focusing on aiming.
  
  1. (3 alcoholic drinks) Watch the tall bottle in the back and move very slightly left or right after he launches the pillar of liquid. Jump+dash to avoid the short wobbly glass' attack and knock olives out of the air if they get annoying. There's not much to this one if you simplify your movements as much as possible.
  2. (poker chip tower) Probably the easiest of the minibosses. Shoot the face and dash/duck/jump as the poker chips pass you.
  3. (cigar) jump over the spiral flight-pattern fireballs and dash to the opposite ash tray when he tunnels underground. Smoke bomb will make the tiny cigarette devils irrelevant, because you'll teleport past them.
  4. (domino on a swing) short hop over spikes and dodge occasional slow projectiles. One of the easiest bosses.
  5. (rabbit) Smoke bomb will make this fight a breeze. Just teleport yourself left or right when the circle of skulls get dangerously close to you and parry pink projectiles occasionaly.
  I recommend falling straight down when he sends the blue and pink projectiles upwards from the floor, because the hitboxes on them are a little weird and sometimes hit you if you try to go left or right a little bit, right after hitting the pink projectile.
  6. (horse&flying level) I hate this one. The trick is to simply dodge projectiles that come from gift boxes he tosses and move left or right whenever you see a ghost horse-rider on the bottom of the screen (they fly up at you the moment you pass them). However, the trees and junk in the foreground get in the way and flash rapidly in front of your vision and it got a little motion sick-ish/disorienting for me. :(
  7. (ballerina roulette) Just smoke bomb left and right as she passes while holding down the button to your boomerang shot. It's kind of a brain dead easy fight if you take her on this way.
  8. (8-Ball and calk cubes) use charge shot to hit the 8ball and either walk or dash left or right as needed. It's occasionally tricky in the way the chalk cubes move when deciding to walk versus dash, but the fight is so simple that juming isn't even needed.
  9. (monky and flip cards) I HATE this one. It's not tough at all, but it's a waste of time in my opinion. You can occasionally glitch kill the boss by intentionally flipping over the wrong second card right as the monkey is about to hit the boundary of the screen and he'll go past the screen and kill himself. There's something about this boss that feels super tedious, but you do you if you want to fight him.
  
  
• You can shrink your plane indefinitely. I was super dumb and thought it was a dash until half way through the game. You can get a secret achievement by making your plane shrink for the whole boss fight and killing them with tiny plane bullets.
  
  
• Learn how to parry upwards (right as you jump) when it's necessary. There are a ton of bosses that fire projectiles straight over your head as a means of trying to restrict your movement, and swatting those out of the air as soon as your feet leave the ground is incredibly helpful. You won't be able to get it perfectly timed like the parry sugar charm, but you can get pretty darn close.
  
  
• For boss fights, I almost always use the charge shot and boomerang. The damage of the charge shot is godlike and the boomerang is good for times where you need to move and dash around. I got most of my S ranks by using these two weapons.
  
  Exceptions are:
  
  Grim Matchstick (dragon): I used lobber (purple ball). On phases 2 and 3, he stays pretty low during phase 2 and you need to be up high. If you're good at jumping from cloud to cloud, you can cheat by looking at the bottom of the screen and focusing on the faces of the fireball dudes. The ones with the angry zigzag shark teeth are the ones that jump and that's a visual cue long before they go "HNNNGH" and jump at you.
  During phase 3, you can just stay up high to avoid the times where he transforms his face and burns the middle of the screen. If you avoid popping the bubbles, you minimize the projectiles coming at you, too. Popping the bubbles makes the fire split into 4 smaller projectiles.
  
  Honeybottoms (bee): for the phases with the cop and the airplane (1 and 3) I use the homing shot. I usually poo-poo on this weapon for its poor damage, but this allows you to stay far away from danger and focus on not getting hit. Nearly half the challenge in this boss fight is figuring out how to shoot down while you try to move up. During phase 2, I swap to boomerang or charge shot because the boss is on the top of the screen and stationary.
  
  
• Some other small boss tips:
  
  - Baroness Von Bonbon (candy castle lady): You can parry those giant pink and white mints that roll after you Indiana Jones style and use them to fling yourself over those heads the throws at you. Because she's behind you and you're focused on moving forward, I just use charge shot to find safe windows of time to toss a charged shot backwards at her. The damage you do is comparable to constant fire from a weaker weapon.
  
  - Beppi the clown: In phase2+, you can get a very good visual cue of when the roller coaster is about to come at you. It shows up in the background about two seconds before it charges across the screen. In phase 1, he reels back and raises his eyebrows up into a >:) expression before he charges at you. Once you get into phase 2, use something like the boomerang or 3way shot to keep balloons off of your heels. If those are out of your way, the whole second phase is easy. The boomerang pops the balloons right away and the shotgun gives good coverage.

Hopefully there's some helpful info in there for you!

[Mallow]

Thanks so much, everyone! I'm starting to work out where my problems are (at least 40% of the time the answer is "DON'T PANIC"), and I'm sure this will help as well. I was very torn about what to buy from the shop, so that's definitely useful |,D I appreciate it!

really though am I the only one who wants to see a full Nintendo Power-style eight-page "guide" complete with those little asides about hard parts that are titled with puns or zingers, is that just my nostalgia or is the game begging for it