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Arwingpedia
Arwingpedia
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in: Technology, Weapons, Techniques

Charge

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SFZTBB Slippy Magazine
This page is currently undergoing maintenance. This may be due to out of date information or new information detailing from an upcoming or newly released game. Therefore, please excuse its incomplete and informal current state.
“Hold A to charge your laser!
You can also lock onto enemies this way!”
—97 Slippy97 Peppy

The Charge function, available for ships like Arwings, Wolfens and Landmasters, and some handheld weapons, allows the pilot to charge up their projected energy based weapon to provide a devastating charged burst of Laser attack. Usually, using the charge also allows the pilot to receive targeting data from anything sighted within the Reticle, allowing a charged shot or Smart Bomb to lock-on, and home in onto its target.

Gameplay[]

SF64 Area6 Andross Fools

An Arwing's charged laser bolt.

Depending on the game and vehicle, the Charge works similarly in every vehicle. A ship or pilot with weapons must typically hold down the Laser button to begin charging, and when a colorful build up of energy appears, the Charge is ready to be launched by releasing the button, sending out a devastating laser bolt at enemies. If the targeting reticule catches a target and creates the lock-on sound, releasing the Charged laser blot or Smart Bomb will chase the target, changing the shot to a homing missile.

There are some notable downsides of the Charge function. When a homing laser or Smart Bomb is locked onto a target, it will leave the ship unable to create another until the previous shot has made its mark, even if the target leaves the shooting range off screen and the shot still goes after them. There are also some types of hostile craft and wildlife that homing lasers will not work on, as the targeting reticle cannot lock onto some of them, and most Bosses are immune to homing shots, requiring more rapid laser fire or untargeted charged shots to defeat them.

Games[]

Star Fox 64 logo

In "Star Fox 64", the Charge is introduced as an effective attack for the Arwing and Landmaster. The vehicle can create a build up of devastating laser energy by holding down the (A) button, and releasing the button to send out a charged shot, in the form of a large green pulse. If the vehicle catches any targetable enemies in the reticle while charging the laser, the shot will lock onto the enemy and the Charged laser shot will become a homing laser bolt. Using the vehicle Reticle Lock-on technique can also work when launching Smart Bombs, turning it into a homing bomb. Unfortunately, Bosses and some types of enemies, such as Killer Bees and Small Missiles are exempt from the lock-on ability.

When sailing the Blue-Marine, instead of creating charged lasers, the ship can use Charge to lock onto enemies to fire homing Torpedoes.

Pilot characters in the game's Versus Mode are unable to create Charged lasers, unlike the Arwings and Landmasters.

Star Fox Adventures
In "Adventures", the Arwing is unable to create Charged shots or Lock-on laser bolts. It may be possible that Slippy stripped the function away to keep costs down, or the lack of large income may have prevented him from keeping repairs up. However, after Team Star Fox were handsomely paid for their services on, the Arwings were able to be refitted with charge functions.

Assault logo
In "Assault", the Charge function used by the Arwing and Landmaster returned and performs as it did in "Star Fox 64". In addition, the Blaster can now perform a Charge shot, helpful for dispatching any specific targets that the standard shots could not penetrate, such as Purple Aparoids and Ape Soldiers driving Mech suits. The longer the shot is charged, the stronger it will become, starting from green shots being the weakest, blue being medium and red being the strongest. In Versus Mode, Slippy and Peppy can charge their Blaster shots to red bursts much more quickly, to compensate for their low running speed.

Star Fox Command logo

In "Command", locking-on can be initiated with any button on Nintendo DS, of course excluding the Power, Start and Select -buttons. The personal craft of each character has its own Laser and lock-on features. Some personal crafts have no lock-on feature available at all. These are Bullfrog (Slippy Toad), Black Rose (Panther Caroso) and the Cornerian Fighters of Bill Grey and Krystal.

Single Lock[]

Crafts with Single Lock can only lock-on to one target at a time. Personal crafts with this lock-on feature: Arwing II (Fox McCloud), Cloud Runner (Krystal), Sky Bunny (Lucy Hare), Cat's Paw II (Katt Monroe), Monkey Arrow (Dash Bowman) and the Arwings of Peppy Hare and James McCloud. The Single Lock is the traditional locking-on system, and it behaves just like in previous games. A player must hold a button down to charge and release to shoot.

Multi Lock[]

With Multi Lock, a craft can target up to five targets at once. Personal crafts with this lock-on feature: Sky Claw (Falco Lombardi), Tadpole (Amanda) and Red Fang (Wolf O'Donnell). The Multi Lock is similar to Single Lock, but it damages up to five targets upon shooting.

Wide Lock[]

Wide Lock enables a craft to lock-on to every visible target. The only personal craft with this lock-on feature is Rainbow Delta (Leon Powalski). The Wide Lock is very simple to use. A player merely has to hold down a button and the Targeting Computer takes care of both targeting every possible target and shooting them.

Star-fox-zero

In "Zero", the Arwing can no longer lose its wings, so it can keep the Twin Laser upgrade even after taking significant damage. It also increases the strength of the Charge Laser. Upgrading to Hyper allows the Arwing to lock onto two enemies at once to fire two homing shots.

The Charge Laser itself was also given a stronger blue-colored variation that moves faster and can be launched by simply letting go of ZL the instant a full lock-on is achieved. While the Landmaster can't upgrade its laser, its Charge Laser function was replaced in favor of a multi-lock on system that fires powerful missiles with a large blast radius.

Logo-star-fox-2
Before its original cancellation, the Charge shot was first introduced in "Star Fox 2", however Charge shots cannot lock-on like later games.

See also[]

  • Laser for the different Laser variations in Command.
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