Gaiapolis - Prince 10,102 - No Elixir 1CC [PCB]

Performed on an original Japanese region Gaiapolis PCB with a Sega Blast City.
This game is a major hidden gem. It can be super tricky in some places and but you can benefit a lot from having a little bit of esoteric knowledge and routing your magic. The controls are rather simple, but somewhat clunky.
You have an attack, familiar, and magic button. You are able to perform a dash attack by double tapping in a direction, and can perform a spin attack by rotating the stick clockwise (counter-clockwise for Fairy). Because these motion inputs aren't triggered in tandem with a button press, it can be pretty easy to accidentally input a dash or spin attack at the wrong time. You should be very assiduous when moving.
There is a combo attack that you can use by spamming the attack button and the fourth hit will be a knockdown. The fourth hit deals no extra damage to bosses (and I don't believe it does any extra to standard enemies) and has a long windup animation. Sometimes going for the full combo will net you an extremely powerful flaming critical hit. I'm not sure if the crit is completely random or if it happens after every 3 combos and the count gets interrupted. For all intents and purposes, it seems random to me.
Most of the time you should use the first two hits of the combo and reset because several dangerous enemy types can counter-attack during the fourth hit. This can be done by rapidly pressing the attack button twice and repeating, or by holding the attack button for about a half second to have the game automatically perform your second hit. Pressing the button twice seems to buffer your next combo so I would recommend doing this instead of holding the button.
The most important thing you can do in this game is block. When you get a shield at the end of stage 1, you can hold the attack button to reduce incoming damage significantly, if not entirely. When you're hit during blocking, you have a bunch of time to abuse your i-frames to get free hits in on the enemies. You should be blocking at almost all times during this game.
As for familiars, you have the Goblin, Galuda, and Rolling (the armadillo). They are all pretty useful, but Goblin is more situational in my opinion. They can be controlled to attack with the B button and recharge health when they are recalled.
As you collect EXP, you will level up to a maximum of level 30. When you level up, your character's attack, defense, and maximum health are upgraded. Because of this your level can have a noticeable effect how difficult the game can be. EXP and points are awarded on a per-hit basis completely irrespective of damage. Naturally, this means that doing the least amount of damage to enemies will net you the most hits on them and, therefore, the most EXP. This can be abused by using your familiar to damage enemies for you in some sections for extra EXP.
In Stage 5, Maharishi, there is a fruit stand that is invincible as long as it is not fully on-screen. When you dash attack the screen does not scroll. You can abuse this to get the fruit stand off-screen and position yourself you attack it for as long as you like for tons of EXP and points. Once the timer expires, a dragon appears at the top of the screen to breathe extremely dangerous fire at you to end the game. If you abuse the dash attack screen-scrolling to get to the top of the screen, you will dodge all the fire and will only be hit by one weak full-screen hitbox before he leaves. After you're done milking you can make your way up to a hidden full-heal room and dodge the dragon a few more times through the stage while you try to complete the level.
There are also crystal crabs that can be triggered by using magic. If you use magic when the last digit of the timer is at 0, 4, or 8, then a crab will spawn shortly thereafter. There is a limit to how many crabs you can spawn per area, and in some places you can't spawn any crabs (such as the dark corridor). Once the crab spawns, depending on if you are over/under 2 health or currently have magic, the time you want to kill the crab to get the most loot changes (up to 4 items). Keep in mind that when I say "kill the crab," I mean the second that he actually explodes, not when he takes lethal damage. The times go like this:
MAGIC + Over 2 health: 3, 7
Over 2 health: 1, 5, 9
MAGIC + Less than 2 health: 0, 4, 8
Less than 2 health: 2, 6
Basically, if you're over 2 health you have to remember odd numbers, and if you're below you have to remember the even numbers. Additionally, several chests and hidden items can give better rewards if they are unlocked on 0, 4, or 8.
As you collect crystals your magic will increase in order to: Lightning, Ice Wolves, a magic orb, pentagram, Lightning Sword, and Dragon. Collecting several crystals after dragon gives you a hidden golden eagle spell, but dragon is usually better.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Nicely played!! This game is crazy ha. It looks beautiful though, I especially love the bat skull logo on the floor of the final boss fight

[@michaelpf08]

This is also under the Level 8 Hardest Difficulty. From the Stage 2, this scene we can tell, 4:44, there's a golden armored knight(1Boss) here, which means this is under the Hardest Difficulty. If the game's difficulty is set as Normal, that Golden Knight won't appear in here. Great Playthrough!

[@Bloodreign1]

With artwork by Shuzilow Ha of Twinbee fame, this game is not only incredibly beautiful (and long for an arcade game), but it has excellent music, a Konami trademark. Shamefully never saw a home port, but maybe with the Arcade Archives, at some point it finally comes home to consoles.

[@Co_dD]

How many hours you spend on this? You're a very unique person.

[@baf__]

still missing those extra 100pts, mr WorldWide