v0.387 brings the Stage 5-A (2003 Afghanistan) endboss, Steel Aughisky, to life, as well as adding two new DLC fighters to the roster. Sound volume levels have been balanced out and additional QoL improvements have been added as well.

NEW CONTENT

• New DLC fighter: Fire Leo-03 "Styx" (Thunder Force III): Our second-ever Variable Weapon Mode fighter, following in the footsteps of Miria. Also technically our second Sega rep, since Technosoft went defunct in 2016 and sold all its games to Sega.
• New DLC fighter: Firefox (Firefox): Our first Atari rep, hailing from the 1983 Laserdisc arcade game Firefox, based on the 1982 Clint Eastwood film of the same name. This make the Firefox our first film rep as well.
• New endboss: Steel Aughisky (Stage 5-A): Long dormant, the evil BRES submarine comes to life and attacks the Xeno Fighters both above and below the sea!

FIGHTER CHANGES

• New weapon mode (Variable) for fighters with a diverse loadout switched out with the SP button (ex. Miria)
• Changed damage type of the flamethrower weapons that the Phyxius and the Miclus use from overlap damage over time to hit-once. This change balances the DPS the flamethrower does to do equal damage to all enemies, instead of dealing more damage to larger enemies than to smaller enemies
• Strikers fighters and Tengai: Strikers source material death explosion replaces the default player death explosion they had previously
• Miclus: Now has Fairy Slaves from RF2/RFJ. Marion also uses the Fairy Slaves.
• Miclus main shot: balanced out damage curves for all power levels. At power level 4, the three larger center shots together deal 82% of the total damage of the 5 shot spread, leaving the outer two smaller shots in the spread to be more suited towards attacking zakos.
• Mega Man: Auto-Bomber (Bomber): Increase rate of fire of Auto's missiles from every 45 frames (0.75 seconds) to every 30 frames (0.5 seconds)
• F-82 Twin Mustang SP Ability (Justice Attack): Damage increased from 250 to 425 on contact

ENEMY CHANGES

• Stage 5-B endboss Eurytion polish and improvements
  • HP in each phase increased from 6875 to 8000
  • Phase 2 pattern: added a new sweeping entrapment attack that move from left to right, after the existing right-to-left sweeping entrapment attack
  • Phase 2 pattern: Shortened the bullet spam attack from 570 steps (9 seconds) to 360 steps (6 seconds). Changed bullet sprite from the small bullets to larger and more visible bullets

• Stage 6-A endboss Bronze Harpy sprites palette-optimized and improved appearance of thruster animations
• Updated enemy zako sprites in Stages 3-A (Chechnya) and 6-A (France)

DEFAULT SOUNDTRACK CHANGES

• Stage F-B Dreadnought Echidna raid BGM: Changed from "Aircraft Carrier" from Gradius V to "Part Man, Part Ant" from Grounded
• Stage F-B Dreadnought Echidna boss BGM: Changed from "Stage Boss Theme" from Gradius V to "Harvest the Grapes of Wrath" from Grounded

BUGFIXES

• Regression fix: Fixed screenbound objects scrolling horizontally in wide stages such as Stage 5-B from when the player is dead to when they respawn
• Regression fix: Fixed Battle Garegga fighters' death sequence briefly misaligned (during the fade to red before the death explosion) when the Garegga fighters are using their custom sprite skins
• Fixed end-of-stage sequence starting and ending while there are still Arrange Mode bonuses to tally from a huge Tech Break bonus after defeating a boss, potentially leading to a major loss of scoring
• Fixed Raiden mk-II's Bend Laser head giving only 10 points instead of 10*ArrangeModeMultiplier points when overlapping an enemy in Arrange Mode
• Gradius fighters with Option formation change SP (Vic Viper, Lord British, Gray Layer, Hikaru): Fixed selected formation in the Option formation display not being in the correct angular position (above the player's fighter) when the player dies and respawns with an Option formation other than the default Shadow/Follow formation active (F-Option for Hikaru).
• Regression fix: Fixed hit-once type weapons (Opa-Opa's Heavy Bomb, Wild Snail's piercing main shot, etc.) awarding only 10 points instead of 10*ArrangeModeMultiplier in Arrange Mode
• Bugfix: Fixed enemy bullets sometimes being rendered distorted, especially noticeable in Stage 4-A and 5-B during their respective boss fights
• Mostly fixed fighters on select screen showing banking frames when changing their skins

OTHER CHANGES AND FIXES

• Extensive sound volume/gain balancing for many sounds throughout the game, with UI and player feedback sounds having the highest gain values, and player bomber/SP having the next highest gain values.
• Applied higher priority values to vitally important player feedback sound effects (item pickup, finding secrets, large enemy and boss destruction, Miclus explosion, player BONG) so that they are less likely to drop when too many sounds are playing at once
• Re-recorded higher quality versions of audio for the following ambient sounds: Air Raid Siren, Vahrstor passby sound, windstorm
• Set default music volume (for first-run of the game) to 75%, down from 100%
• New EX-5 exclusive thunderstorm sound that plays once during the first approach to Vahrstor. This replaces having the game play multiple of the same two common thunderstorm sounds at the same time
• All SAKURA voices rerecorded with VOICEVOX using the Kotoyomi Nia (Normal) voice profile.
• In Arrange Mode, made the chain timer display in a larger font
• In Arrange Mode, made the Tech Break medal value multiplier display in a larger font and on a new line from the main medal value
• Fixed some typos and grammar errors in some Story Mode cutscenes
• Fixed long-standing minor color inconsistency with the screen transition animation
• Stage EX-4 fixes:
  • Fixed some minor draw depth issues with certain zakos
  • Smoothed out the movement of the Windows 98 desktop and Hampster Dance windows in Area 2
• Updated explosions from destroying the zako gunboats in 3-B, 5-A, and 5-B to use the Raiden II small ground explosion in addition to a water splash effect