Here’s a brief spoiler-free guide for Jet Force Gemini with an emphasis on things someone might wish to know before playing. Minimal spoilers; just advice to save time and frustration. If you’d like me to cover anything not listed here, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page.
Control Settings
Each controller input can be set to either Expert (default) or Normal button mappings. The main difference is that Expert binds strafing to the left/right C-buttons and jumping to C-Up, while Normal uses the C-buttons for weapon-swapping and binds jump to the A button.
In my opinion, Normal is ideal for standard gameplay while Expert is preferable for boss battles. This is because bosses lock you to a 2D axis, so strafing is your only way of moving, and Expert allows you to keep your thumb close to the jump button to dodge attacks. Also, it’s more intuitive to remember that strafing is assigned to the relevant directional C-input. Want to strafe left? Press C-Left. Simple. Normal is useful for exploration because you’ll often want to jump, and (depending on the controller being used) it can be cumbersome to adjust your hand to reach C-Up.
You can swap between Expert and Normal at any time from the options menu, so switching upon any boss encounter is totally possible. Getting used to C-button strafing is extremely helpful for the final boss, so I recommend doing so.
Tribals: You MUST Collect All of Them
This normally isn’t revealed to the player until a ways into the game, but to save you time, I’ll tell you now: collecting all Tribals is necessary to reach the final stage, boss, and credits. This isn’t a “true ending” deal—it’s the one and only ending. You can’t beat Jet Force Gemini without collecting 100% of Tribals.
Tribals always respawn upon starting a level (including after running out of Continues), even if you’ve previously collected some or all of a stage’s Tribals. Specific Tribals are not recorded, merely your best “score” for Tribal rescues. This means Tribal collection is all or nothing. If you don’t collect all Tribals in an area before completing it, you have wasted your time and will have to start collecting from scratch.
Tribal records are only updated when a level is completed, meaning you must have seen your score display prior to entering a new area. Unlike items and upgrades, Tribal records aren’t saved if you leave a stage from the menu’s Map function. Basically, leave via a door with a red light at the base of it or by entering your spaceship.
Tribals: You CAN’T Collect All of Them (At First)
In some levels, you can rescue all Tribals during your first visit (highly recommended to save yourself from a return visit). For others, you’ll need either a specific character, upgrade, or an explosive weapon. There is no direct indication of which stages can’t be perfectly cleared on your first go. Normally, you’d just hit a fork in the road and have to realize the alternate path can only be traversed with a different character’s ability (as opposed to you missing an environmental secret, etc.).
To save yourself time, I’ve included a list of all stages where Tribals can be collected on your first visit. This still accounts for character-specific abilities. If Vela is the first one to visit a stage, for example, and her swimming ability is necessary to get all Tribals, I will list it under the assumption that you’ll get all Tribals at the first opportunity. This is to avoid having to give hints towards the locations of Tribals, which some players won’t want, and anyone can find that information elsewhere.
All areas where 100% Tribal completion is possible on your first visit and before unlocking the ability to visit stages with any character. (Click to reveal)
- Goldwood: Outset
- Goldwood: Interior
- S.S. Anubis: Hold
- Tawfret: Bog
- Tawfret: Bridge
- Tawfret: Castle
- Cerulean: Dune
- Rith Essa: Interior
- Eschebone: Approach
- Mizar’s Palace: Lobby
- Mizar’s Palace: Flume
To reiterate, if a location is not on that list, you can’t get all Tribals at the first possible opportunity, or the area only becomes available for the first time after receiving all exploration upgrades, anyway. Now, you can optimize your time playing Jet Force Gemini.
Can Tribals Be Permanently Lost?
No. There is no way to lock yourself out of obtaining all Tribals. Even if they’re killed and a level’s progress is saved by leaving the area, all Tribals will still respawn upon returning to an area. If you want to restart mid-level after a Tribal is killed, simply enter the menu, select Map, and choose the planet you’re already on. You will restart from the beginning of the same area, as opposed to having to start from the planet’s entrance.
Vertical crates with slanted tops upgrade a weapon’s ammo capacity for the character that picks it up. These upgrades are finite; once they’re all picked up, that’s it. Ammo capacity upgrades are never shared. If Juno increases his Pistol capacity, Vela and Lupus’s capacities remain unchanged. By not collecting upgrades, it’s possible to return to stages with a different character you’d prefer to have that upgrade on.
While this decision may seem down to personal preference, there’s actually an extremely important, practical reason to distribute ammo upgrades a specific way. Juno is the only character capable of fighting the final boss, and the final boss can only be damaged by explosive weapons. It’s extremely hard to hit them with grenades for most of the fight, so if Juno is lacking in Tri-Rocket and Homing Missile ammo, you can borderline softlock yourself if you have no ammo upgrades left to pick up, making the game impossible to complete. This happened to me; I reached the final boss with only 20 Tri-Rockets and 10 Homing Missiles on Juno.
Avoiding this is done how you’d expect; don’t collect upgrades for those weapons as anyone other than Juno. Now, you don’t need to put literally all Tri-Rocket/Homing Missile upgrades on Juno. Really, you should be fine giving Vela and Lupus whatever they find on their debut stages prior to Mizar’s Palace. The main thing to watch out for are optional upgrades during the game’s second half, as many Tri-Rocket and Homing Missile upgrades are located together in secret areas. The more ammo on Juno, the better—the final boss is not a pushover—but I wouldn’t recommend reloading a save file just because Vela or Lupus picked up one random upgrade. And no, you can’t tell what weapon an upgrade is for prior to picking it up.
Drone Heads and Tribal Heads
The menu’s Inventory screen counts how many severed Drone and Tribal heads a character has picked up. This ghoulish tally is referenced for unlocking three cosmetic secrets obtained at 100, 200, and 300 heads. Once unlocked, these cosmetic changes can be enabled or disabled at any time from the Options menu under the Cheats section. Despite the “Cheats” moniker, these have no practical purpose and can be completely ignored if you’re not interested.
Head tallies are not shared between characters. Juno and Vela having 50 heads each will not unlock anything, for instance. Likewise, heads of different species aren’t cumulative. Having 200 Drone heads and 100 Tribal heads will not unlock all three Cheats; you’ll still only have two unlocked.
Because Drones greatly outnumber Tribals (and given your practical reason for killing Drones), it’s far more efficient to solely focus on collecting Drone heads. Whether or not a Drone drops a head appears somewhat random and dependent on how it was killed. The Shuriken weapon will always have a Drone drop its head, making them the best method for farming heads.
Floyd Missions
After recruiting Floyd (a mandatory part of progression), you can begin special missions by pressing A while on top of panels bearing his image. This is a minigame where Floyd must be flown first-person through a series of tunnels while collecting items and destroying obstacles.
For the most part, these missions just unlock new multiplayer content. However, achieving Gold or Expert rank in the S.S. Anubis mission is required to obtain an item needed to finish the game. To obtain Expert medals, you must collect all items and destroy all required targets while coming under a certain time. This can be very difficult. Fortunately, all Floyd missions other than the one in S.S. Anubis can be ignored by anyone not striving for 100% completion.
Final Boss Strategy
Many players struggle with this boss, so I thought I’d give some advice. I think it’s actually quite simple once you get used to it.
Preparation
For starters, I highly recommend having Juno’s ammo capacity for Homing Missiles and Tri-Rockets be as high as possible. The final boss can only be damaged by explosive weapons, and hitting it with anything other than these two weapons is nearly impossible. There are many guides online that list ammo upgrade locations. Homing Missiles are far more important than Tri-Rockets, and it’s possible you won’t even need the latter if you’re accurate with your Missiles.
I’d recommend a minimum of 20 Homing Missiles; this is enough to defeat the final boss’s first phase while giving you slight leeway for missing shots. The second phase is far less mobile, and while not ideal, you can reliably damage it with grenades, etc. if you run out of Homing Missiles/Tri-Rockets.
I also recommend setting your controls to Expert (the default). Use the C-buttons for strafing and jumping, and rely on the R button for manual aiming.
First Phase
- Begin the fight with your Machine Gun equipped. The boss will launch small meteors at you. Strafe back and forth between your platform’s edges while constantly firing your Machine Gun. A slight jumping rhythm can help you dodge some meteors, too.
The goal isn’t to dodge every meteor; they barely damage you and there’s just too many. You just want to take as few hits as possible. Your Machine Gun fire is just to destroy meteors that serendipitously fly directly in front of you. Some players will attempt to stand still and manually aim at the meteors. Don’t do this. You’re likely to take more damage than simply staying on the move and firing. - This meteor attack happens two more times as the boss’s health lowers. Use the same strategy every time.
- As the meteor attack ends, switch to your Homing Missiles (or Tri-Rockets, if you run out of ammo).
- Now, the boss will use its most vulnerable attack. It’ll charge towards you and slam its arm down into your platform. If you’re strafing left and right, this should miss every time. Just try not to be at the platform’s edge when it lands. The attack also produces a shockwave with an extremely small hitbox. You can jump to avoid it, if you’re worried.
- Immediately after determining you’re safe from the above attack, enter manual aiming with your Homing Missile launcher. Align your targeting reticule with the glowing spot on the boss’s back—its single weak point—but don’t immediately fire. Wait for a “beeping” sound and a green outline to appear around the weak point. This means your Homing Missiles are now locked-on and will chase your target.
- The boss will lift its arm up, turn around, and fly away. This is your best opportunity to deal damage. If you’re quick to lock-on, you can fire and land four consecutive Homing Missiles If you’re struggling with the timing, start with two shots and work your way up. If you shoot too early, even locked-on missiles might end up hitting the boss’s legs as it turns around, wasting precious ammo. You’ll know a hit landed from hearing a “squish” sound effect and seeing blood (though it’ll begin continuously bleeding as its health is depleted).
- After using its arm attack twice and thus giving you two chances to counterattack, the boss will attack three times. There are three attack types it can randomly choose from, and it can repeatedly use any of them. Each one is covered below. Between attacks, try and recenter yourself in the middle of the platform to give yourself room to strafe and dodge either left or right.
- Green “breath” attack: The least threatening of the boss’s attacks. It’s extremely slow and lasts a short time. Simply strafe to the furthest edge of the platform. If you have enough distance, the attack will end before it reaches you. If it starts to get close, just jump over it. Even if you’re hit, you’ll barely take any damage.
- Purple eye beams: When you notice the boss’s eyes begin to glow, start strafing to the furthest edge of the platform so its subsequent beam will miss you. After each of its three beams land, begin strafing in your opposite direction, alternating direction until all three lasers are dodged.
- Green lightning: By far the most dangerous attack. The green lightning has a hitbox that’s constantly active and you receive no invincibility frames upon being hit. This means your health can be drained within just a second of staying inside the lightning. Take this attack seriously.
When you see the boss lift its arm during this sequence, it means the lightning attack is coming. Begin strafing left and right from the platform’s center, but don’t go all the way to the platform’s edges. You just want to see where the lighting is going to land, and you absolutely do not want to be cornered when it does.
This is why the Expert control setting is so important: once the lighting lands, it’ll move left and right across the platform surface. Stand still and jump over the lightning as it crosses beneath you. The lightning attack’s speed is random every time, so don’t become too used to any single speed. If you’ve been diligent about staying near the platform’s center between attacks, you should have plenty of room to see the lightning coming each time and be able to jump over it.
If you’re too close to the platform’s edge, the end lag upon you landing from a jump can cause you to be hit by the lightning. Cut your losses and strafe to the middle of the platform so that you have enough space to make a complete jump. It’s better to take one “hit” from the lightning than to gamble and fail jumping over it several times.
Depending on where the boss is when it initiates the lightning attack, you can occasionally get a terrible viewing angle. Where you’re barely able to see behind you. Unfortunately, the only way to deal with this is to just get used to the rhythm at which the lightning moves and jump preemptively when it’s offscreen. This sucks, but the lightning’s speed doesn’t change after the attack has started, so it’s predictable. - After three of the above attacks, the boss will repeat its arm-slamming attack and subsequent vulnerability. This pattern will continue until about five direct Homing Missile hits. It’ll launch another meteor salvo, then continue this same pattern, only moving a little faster and giving you just one window of opportunity to fire at its back. Regardless, all strategies are the same. Just focus harder and be patient when aiming your attacks. Once you get used to dodging, you’re in far greater danger from running out of ammo than you are from your health being depleted.
- The second phase is basically a replica of a previous boss battle; you’ll know when you see it. It’s practically a joke compared to the first phase, and I don’t even feel a need to cover it in-depth. Your biggest risk is starting this phase with barely any health left, but if you practice, you can definitely enter this phase with at least half of your health remaining.
Obviously, switch to Tri-Rockets if you run out of Homing Missiles. Failing that, your various Grenade weapons work fine. Just be cautious about being too close to your own explosions, as you’ll take damage from them. Just like always, strafe left and right to shake off the boss’s attacks tracking you.
F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions)
Are Flares as useless as they seem?
Yes.
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