------------------------------------------------------------------------
S P A C E   C H A N N E L   5   F A Q / H E L P - Version 1.7 - 01.09.00

by Tom Callahan

'For all people who love music ,dance and game.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------


First, let me say that this is not a game that can have a real walkthrough. 
The patterns change a lot depending on how well you do, and each situation 
is a little different, but they all use the same basic method so once you 
figure that out you should be able to figure out how to do any of them. For 
exceptions see the Bosses and Hints sections further down.

Let me also say that this game rocks...


WHAT'S NEW
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Even more details on Extra Mode (and more questions!)

-Unless I can figure out or someone tells me how the alternate paths thing
in Extra Mode works, this will probably be the last update to this. I have
finished with 99% ranking and have 88% of the people. Another reason for one 
more update would be if someone can translate the story and let me know for 
sure what is going on...


THE MENUS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Since these are entirely in English, I'm just going to mention a few things:

The tutorial isn't there. From the parts of the Japanese I can translate, it
seems to say 'Look at the printed manual to ask the Moro' (Moro being short 
for Moroliens, I guess). So basically read the manual. Or this FAQ...

You must load manually before you can 'continue'.

There are character info bios in the options. You have to rescue the character
in the game before they become available here. Hit up and down to see different
categories of characters. You can move, spin, and zoom the characters using the
joystick and L/R buttons, and some of the other buttons remove the text and
other onscreen stuff.

The vibration option in the Device Options has two settings - 'Error' and 
'Off'. 'Error' doesn't mean something's wrong, it means it will vibrate when
you make an error. After a while you'll really dread that vibration... try 
turning it off if you're having a hard time getting through part of the game.


THE BASIC STORY
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I don't speak/read much Japanese, so I'm not entirely sure exactly what's
going on, but from what I've been able to figure out and also from what I've
read, the 'Moroliens' have come and enslaved most of the people on Earth with
their dancing prowess, and you, 'Ulala', are a reporter for 'Space Channel 5'. 
You have to out-dance the aliens to free the people, fighting not only the 
aliens but your rival reporters along the way.  Only in Japan...


MORE STORY (spoiler, sort of, I think!)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of level 3 as the aliens are closing in on you, you destroy 
the giant TV that's apparently mind-controlling the aliens, thereby freeing all 
of the aliens, who promptly start dancing happily, then they join your side. 
Now again, I don't speak Japanese, but I think it turns out that the Moroliens 
were being controlled by the guy that runs Space Channel 5 (who also might be 
the guy that yells at you over the radio). It seems almost like the plot to 
that recent James Bond movie where the media mogul was creating his own news to 
boost his media empire. 


THE LEVEL PROGRESSION / MINI WALKTHROUGH (spoilers)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The first level is the spaceport. You go around rescuing people. In the normal
path through it, you go onto the roof where you dance against a rival reporter,
the girl from Space Channel 42. You can steal her guitar-playing sidekick. Then 
you fight the boss and move on. Each level has one rescue situation that seems 
more important than the others. This one has two guys taking pictures wearing
candycane-striped astronaut suits.

The second level is the spaceship. you rescue the crew and captain, then move 
through the ship rescuing passengers. Next, you dance against the other rival 
reporter and steal his sax-playing sidekick. Then there's another boss. The
special rescue this time is a lady in a frilly dress.

The third level is the asteroid field. You fly through the field blasting 
asteroids and guys on space bikes (why, I have no idea), then you fight the 
rival reporter from level 2. Next, you enter a big asteroid, the alien base I
guess, and on the way in through this long, fast tube you fight the lady
reporter from the first level. Then you fight the alien boss, and during the 
fight, the two rival reporters join your side to help. You escape out of the
asteroid just ahead of a giant fireball.

The last level is Space Channel 5 studios. You start in the board room, where
you confront first what appear to be the head aliens (only they turn out to be
holograms), then the head of Space Channel 5 (I think) who is also a hologram.
Then you rescue Michael Jackson, then a little girl playing a keyboard, then
you confront the guy again. He drops a bunch of aliens in to delay you, then 
retreats. After that fight, you fight a robotic version of you, then the guy
reappears, transformed into a giant orange ball-thing with a head in a glass 
bubble. You fight him, and the head pops off and turns into a TV floating in
space. He sucks you into the TV and you fight him while all of the people you
rescued show up outside. Eventually you escape from the TV and finish him off
by blasting him with a big antenna. Then you all walk off into space on a road 
made of sparkly things.

Makes sense to me!


HOW THE LEVELS ARE DIVIDED UP
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Each level is divided into several segments. Each segment has a few situations
in it. At the end of the level is the boss. After each level, if you did well
enough, it will offer to save and continue to the next level. If you choose
continue and you didn't have a high enough percentage, you just start the
previous level over again.


STARTING A LEVEL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
When you start a level, it will display a percentage in the middle of the
screen. That's the percentage necessary to finish the current level and go to
the next. Your percentage is affected by your performance. Dance well and it
rises, dance poorly and it drops. It starts you at 10%. The levels and the
percentages necessary to finish each are as follows:

Level 1 - Spaceport - 15%
Level 2 - Spaceship - 25%
Level 3 - Asteroid Field - 45%
Level 4 - Space Channel 5 - 70%

After you start a level, you will see Ulala walking along. She will then come
upon a dancing 'situation'.


BASIC GAMEPLAY
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
There are two types of dancing situations, a pure dancing one and a shooting
one:

PURE DANCING SITUATIONS
The opponent (usually aliens) will be on screen with hypnotized people in the
background. Your job is to out-dance them to rescue those people. Along the way
you'll rescue generic people as well as important people like the captain of
the spaceship and, yes, Michael Jackson. 

You have a given number of hearts. Each time you screw up, you lose a heart.
Lose all of your hearts and it's game over. 

If you do well, the aliens will spin around and disappear, and the people you
rescued will appear behind you. As you rescue more people your entourage grows.
If you're good, you can get up to about 15 people at a time following you.

If you suck, the people will be taken away by the aliens.


SHOOTING SITUATIONS
You can't lose the game by sucking at these, unless it causes you not to
have a high enough percentage to continue. Targets will pop out from behind
things or just materialize in mid-air. Some will be aliens. Some will be
people. Some will be objects. You have to hit the correct directions and
buttons to save the people and kill everything else. More on this later, but
every person you rescue in this part appears in your group.


HOW THE DANCING WORKS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In the bottom left corner is an indicator - blue for the enemy's turn, orange
for yours. There's a little chime that sounds when it switches. The enemy will
say a series of directions (up, down, left, right) and and/or a 'noise'
which sounds a little different depending on who's saying it. Sometimes it
sounds like 'nyah', sometimes like 'chin', sometimes like 'chew', sometimes
like 'shoot'. At any rate, that's the cue to hit the A or B button. In the pure
dancing situations it's always A. Never B. In the shooting situations, A is the
kill weapon, B is the rescue weapon. Shoot aliens and objects with A, people
with B. Just do everything in the time to the way the enemy did it and you'll
get it right. Mess up anything at all and you get it wrong. Each time you screw
up, you could lose one of the people following you - they'll become hypnotized
and at the end of that situation will leave your group.

After each situation, Ulala moves on to the next one. If you did well, she and
everyone following her will walk tall (or dance tall - she never just 'walks')
for a while until they reach the next situation. The dance they do changes
depending on your ranking (there at least a dozen that I've seen). If you
didn't do so well, they'll walk hunched over and depressed, sometimes with
their hands on their foreheads, and the music will be out of tune and screwed
up.


BOSSES
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
First Boss: Just like a normal dancing situation. You have hearts, you have to
repeat what it does. Eventually it changes modes and it becomes a shooting
gallery. Very straightforward.

Second Boss: It will dance around and hold out various things in it's arms.
Sometimes they're aliens, sometimes they're people - shoot the appropriate
button (one clue is to look for the hypnotizing ring around the people's
heads). Eventually it picks Ulala up in it's tongue and you have to fight it
off. Creepy.

Third Boss: This thing kicks ass - it's a happy/sad monster. It starts out 
straightforward, then one of the rival reporters shows up and helps you out, 
and it starts shooting out a series of pictures - some aliens and some people. 
You know the drill.

Fourth Boss: The key to this one - hit the OPPOSITE direction. The button hits
are all button A, but if it says UP, hit DOWN. Do the opposite. It gets pretty
screwed up, and eventually there's one you're just not allowed to do. You get
knocked away and picked up by the male reporter, then you go back into the 
fight for two very hard patterns, and you only have two hearts. You just have 
to get one of them right and you can go on to the last boss.

Final Boss: The guy behind it all. Back to normal directional buttons. I think 
he's the president of Space Channel 5 turned evil. He says 'I've always watched 
over you.', then yells something about a TV, and sucks you into his TV. All of 
the people you've rescued (or could have rescued) and the aliens and bosses 
show up. You fight him for a while in the TV, then you break out of the TV to 
finish him off. It's pretty straightforward. He alternates pictures of you and 
him on his various TVs. A for him, B for you. Once you get out of the TV and 
he turns into a big TV-monster, it's all A button hits. It's really pretty easy 
compared to the fourth boss. Watch out for a really easy way to blow it and 
LOSE THE GAME. When you escape from his TV and it show all three reporters
(Ulala and her two rivals) say something to him, then power builds up in the
big antenna, you have to hit A three times. IF YOU MISS ANY OF THEM, you LOSE. 
Aaarghh...

My highest final ranking: 99%


PROBLEMS WITH THE GAME AND HOW TO WORK AROUND THEM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-There's a big problem with the syncing of the video backgrounds with the
polygon people. Especially towards the end of each little section, it can get
very out of sync. If you're having trouble, try not really focusing on the
on-screen action. It's the sound that matters so it sometimes helps to stare
at the LCD screen on your memory card. The face on that changes just like the
enemy/you icon on the screen so you can still get a visual cue of when it's
your turn, but you won't be distracted by weird video stuff. Sometimes pausing
the game and waiting a few seconds then unpausing it seems to help. Let's hope 
they fix this before it comes out here. Japanese consumers will put up with 
stuff like that - Americans won't.

-Related to that, the first thing (enemy does something/you repeat) you do in
each section is hard because the game seems to be re-syncing the video and 
polygons, so the actions skips a little. You'll get used to it and after a 
while it's just second nature to do things a little different for that first 
thing.


HINTS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-Don't focus too much on the video - it's the sound that matters. The moves
the people onscreen are doing aren't always 100% in line with the buttons 
you're hitting, and if you're watching too closely you'll just throw your 
rhythm off.

-Sometimes the noise and lights from you getting shot or something else
dramatic happening onscreen will screw you up. In particular, I'm thinking
of the fourth boss when he whacks the other reporters, Ulala screams their
names as they fly off, but at the same time the boss is moving on with the
next pattern, and it's easy to miss something. If you're having trouble, try
to ignore everything except the patterns. Once you get through a part you can 
always come back and pay attention to the wackiness.

-Pay attention to whose turn it is. There's a lot of variety in the length of
the things you have to repeat, so one time it may say 'UP LEFT RIGHT DOWN SHOOT
SHOOT SHOOT' and the next just say 'UP', then it's your turn again, and you can
miss your turn entirely if you're not ready for it.

-In the asteroid field level, in the first segment, there are no 'good' people.
All the guys on the space bikes are baddies. Blast away.

-The fourth boss is crazy. See the Bosses section for help on that...

-At the end of most sub-sections, there's a little 3-shot shooting situation,
where three aliens or gun turrets or something jump you as you move on to the
next section. Just be ready for it and it's really easy.

-If you have no rhythm, you will suck at this game. 

-If you're having a bad day or you're tired, you will suck at this game.


COOL STUFF
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-After the credits, there's one more thing to do. It's always said 'UP' for me,
and it never seems to give me anything for getting it. If anyone knows if that
does something let me know.

-The guy screaming at you through the radio says a bunch of cool stuff (in
very heavily accented English) to rate you as you go. Listen for them:

Bad:
'Never give up.'
(I think most of the other bad ones are entirely in Japanese)

Good:
'Perfect!'
'Good shooting!'
'Great shooting!'
'Dynamite!'
'Miraculous shooting!'
'Shooting, shooting, shooting!'
'Excellent!'
'Sticky!'
'Sticky, sticky, sticky!' (I love that one!)
(Sometimes he sings along to the music, too.)

-You fight your robotic doppelganger right before the fourth boss.

-Ulala's outfit changes for each level. Check out the sunglasses she's got on
at the start of level 3.

-In the part of level 3 where you're running from the explosion, there's an
alien with drums. If you rescue him, he flies along with you and plays drums.
He goes away at the end of the level and seems to server no purpose except to
add crazy drumming to the music.

-There are character info bios in the options. You have to rescue the character
in the game before they become available here. Hit up and down to see different
categories of characters. You can move, spin, and zoom the characters using the
joystick and L/R buttons, and some of the other buttons remove the text and
other onscreen stuff.

-If you get above 95% ranking Ulala glows with purple flames. (this is probably 
only possible on the last stage unless you are in extra mode, in which case your 
ranking from the first time through the game will still be there)

-YES, you do indeed rescue Michael Jackson (or Space Michael, as he's called in 
the game. And yes, it's really him - it's in the credits. It says: 
'Space Michael.............Michael Jackson (Thanks!)'.)   He's in the last stage, 
the second situation. While you're trying to rescue him, whenever it switches 
from your turn to the enemies or vice versa, he says 'woo!' and if you rescue him, 
he says 'Thank You, Ulala!' when he appears on your side. Then you walk like him 
as your celebration dance.

-The credits also credit Ulala as 'Ulala................Herself'.


EXTRA MODE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Once you beat it and save, you can choose which level to load from that saved
game (hit left or right when loading to switch). If you load that game, then
continue, the game is different in some ways. So far I've found:

ALTERNATE PATHS

Level 1:
-A different path that goes through a transport system of some sort (sort 
of like the tubes in Futurama). It starts at the end of the first area at the 
elevators. At one point you have to resuce a bunch of things that look like 
rabbits. This path replaces the part on the roof. You can see a section of this 
part if you let the game sit at it'stitle screen for a while. (I think it's the 
second clip it shows) Once you get through this you rejoin the original path at 
the boss.
-A path that replaces the same part of the original path as the first alternate 
path, but this time I want through the waiting area. I rescued a guy with 
sideburns that looks at his watch while he dances after a VERY long dance
situation, then something zoomed in from the outside and there was an explosion
that blew Ulala onto some hanging Neon rockets, where you had to hit Up three
times to avoid falling, then you rejoin the original path at the boss

Level 2:
-A different path through the second level, diverging from the main path after
you rescue the ship captain, in which you go into a dark tunnel and rescue a guy
with a raygun-looking thing. There are glow-in-the-dark rat-things running 
around. Then you go into the trash processing area and fight aliens jumping out
of garbage cans and rescue people, then you go back to the original path to
fight the boss.

Level 3: 
-No alternate path even though I started at 95% and finished at 99%, never went 
below 96% once I got over it, and held 100% for about 1/3 of the level!

Level 4:
-After the Michael Jackson section, there is an alternate path where you go 
through the studios, including a news desk with news anchors to rescue and a 
game show with a game show host to rescue. At the end you catch a glimpse of 
the final boss who runs away. Once you make it through this part, you rejoin the 
original path at the dance against the robotic doppelganger.

(After finding a second alternate path to the first level I have NO IDEA what 
triggers the alternate paths. I'm going to say a certain ranking at the right 
point in the original path gets you in. I'm going to list the percentages I had 
for each alternate path and maybe somebody can figure it out. It seems that 90% 
or better gets you in, but what determines which path? Then there's level three
which completely defies that logic:

Rankings that were enough to get in:
Level 1, alternate path 1: ??%
Level 1, alternate path 2: 91%
Level 2, alternate path 1: 92%
Level 4, alternate path 1: 91%, 95%, 97%, 98%

Rankings that were not enough to get in:
Level 3: 95-100%
Level 4, alternate path 1: upper 80%s

If anyone has any better idea how this works let me know!) 

ALTERNATE PEOPLE TO RESCUE
---3 of the robotic doppelganger's robots instead of Michael Jackson in the last 
stage.
---an old lady with a cane instead of the lady in the frilly white dress on the 
spaceship.

(I'm sure there are other different people to rescue, but I have no idea what
triggers the different people to show up - sometimes it's the normal person,
sometimes it's their alternate)

If anyone figures out more specific info on the extra mode, let me know.


CONTACT INFO
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can send me something good like more info on extra mode or some real extra 
that I missed, go ahead. Or if you can figure out some of the other stuff the guy 
on the radio says. Or if you know where to get a soundtrack CD or those T-Shirts 
I've heard about...

I don't, however, want to hear about all the different people you rescued or 'I 
can't do such-and-such' thing.'

email: 
t o m @ c a l l a h a n . o r g 
(take out the spaces to make this address work)

Sticky, sticky, sticky!

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Space Channel 5 and all game-related names and terms Copyright 1999 Sega
This walkthrough copyright 2000 Tom Callahan
------------------------------------------------------------------------