Magic Purple arcade 1cc

A 1-credit clear of Magic Purple, an obscure arcade game released by Unico in 1996. Score: 1,154,900. I couldn't find much info about it, so I've written some notes here.
- This is one of MANY single-screen platformers in the vein of Tumblepop. I cleared another obscure and jank Korean game, Jump Kids, earlier this year.
- You can use the boxing glove or the gun. The gun is definitely the best! You can fire faster in midair, so jumping and mashing the fire button does a lot more damage than standing and firing. Boxing glove punches through walls so it's sometimes handy, but for almost all situations (especially boss battles) you want the gun. When you die, you lose your power-ups and reset to the boxing glove, which can lead to death after death if you die at an unfortunate time.
- You have a jump button, an attack button, and button-3 fires off a BOMB (the "SB" pickups) that kills enemies in a small radius near you. The bombs are situationally useful for taking out enemies crammed into tight spaces or hiding behind walls.
- Starting the level off right, making the most of your invincibility window, is key to survival. I made notes on how to start each level...and after a while a lot got burned into my memory.
- I think most item drops are fixed, and others are random? (Or, maybe they're all random but with a fixed RNG seed at the start of each level)
- Spelling the word BONUS nets you an extra life. There are other letters, which just give score (e.g. the word "BEST" on level 1-7 is mostly there for the B and S).
- One thing I find grimly funny is that your character, a bird, gets point pickup items that looked like cooked chicken or turkey. One big annoyance is that you receive precisely ZERO points for completing the game :(
- I had fun with this game. The goofy enemy designs (HAMBURGER WITH A MOHAWK) make me smile and it doesn't drag on too long like many single-screen platformers. It's hard to recommend the game, though - it has wretched, distorted-sounding music.
Boss strategies:
#1 (Pirate Ship N.G.S.) Move all left, hold down to duck, push jump to drop down a floor, push right while ducking to face right. Then keep firing. This works 95% of the time unless you get an unlucky enemy spawn.
#2 (Motorcycle Dinosaur): Go to the top, and don't stand directly above it. You can repeatedly jump over it and fire. Just watch out for mice jumping up from below.
#3 (Mohwak Hamburger): He wants to walk to midscreen, switch heights toward you, then walk to either side of the screen. Jump and shoot, and position yourself so you can walk over or under him when he makes a move back to the side.
#4 (Vampire): Move all left, hold down to duck, push right while ducking to face right. Then keep firing. This is a freebie!
#5 (Fat Ice Demon): Head to the bottom of the screen, jump and mash fire, and hope he wiggles and summons easily-dodged ice!
#6 (Mustache Mech): Stand and shoot, then head up to the top. He'll drive to the middle, pause, jump, then drive to either side. (Similar to motorcycle dinosaur). Fighting him up top is easy unless a slime decides to jump up and interfere...like what happened in this video!