Son of Phoenix has a lot of leeching potential at the end as evidenced by the current two top recordings for it. The technique is simple enough: Kill the last boss and die right away. You get enough points for an extra life and you restart the fight with the boss. I thought this could go on forever, but as I was finishing up my recording I noticed that I didn't get an extra life for the last time, so it's possible that after you get over a million the game stops awarding extra lives.

The problem with this is that while it provides an end to the game if I'm right, it makes for a very uninteresting game at the end. Leech, die, leech, die, repeat until you hit the theoretical maximum (1M + 9 lives x 60K for the boss + assorted change for the other enemies) and finish the game. Depending on your score at that point, it could up to 17 or 18 runs through that fight before your lives are finally exhausted. This isn't necessarily something that has to be removed because the leeching appears to have an end, but I felt it should be pointed out and handed to the editors for some kind of opinion.

Cheers, Brian

-- Brian McLean (bmclean84@hotmail.com), December 30, 2000