Coffee Crisis

Death Metal is the hardest difficulty in the game and does not allow for the use of any cheats or level skipping (believe me, I tried). So you will have to beat the entire game without losing all your lives.

Fortunately, there are a few tips that I can share that will help make the mode a bit easier.

TURN OFF THE MODIFIERS:
There are three modifier settings in the menu: Special FX, Modifiers, and Screen Modifiers.

-'Modifiers' cause an assortment of rule changes and various effects that may make the game easier or harder. Even though some of the modifiers aid you (UFO or attacking birds), some will cause your progress to come to a screeching halt (doppelganger bosses in the middle of a wave). Ultimately, it is in your best interest to just turn it off.

-'Screen Modifiers' cause a special effect that changes the visual style of your game. While it doesn't effect any of the game mechanics, they can be very distracting. Deactivating this modifier will ensure you will be able to see what you are doing.

-'Special Effects' cause a different style of screen modifier. To the best of my knowledge, the only thing this modifier does is allow 'CRT' items to drop. Once collected, your screen changes to look like an older (90's era) tube television. This effect isn't nearly as distracting as the typical screen modifiers. However, this is a result of picking up an item; one that appears in crates and other destructible items or dropped by defeated enemies. By deactivating this modifier, you now replace the probability of this item appearing with the probability of any other item appearing.

USE NICK:

I don't mean to sound like a misogynist, but Ashley is utter garbage. Her speed is about the same, but her attack range and damage seem to be less, and her charge attack and special attack are far less effective.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO USE YOUR SPECIAL ATTACK:

Your special attack () will cost you some HP to use. Because of this, it may seem counterintuitive to use in a game mode in which your life is very precious. However, there are many occasions where just tapping the button will actually save you some HP.

-Crowds: If you are in a huge crowd of enemies the special attack will hit a large radius of enemies, deal a decent amount of damage, and knock them down (with the exception of larger enemies) to allow you some breathing room.

-HP pickup is on the screen: If you have full life, or nearly full life, and you see a health pickup on the screen, you can feel free to use a couple special attacks to deal damage and disperse enemies. Then you can pick up the HP with no major loss to you. This is particularly useful when you see a full HP item (coffee pot). You can use as many special attacks as you can then pick up the item before it disappears. Be careful though, items don't hang around too long.

-Invincibility: Any time you pick up the Invincibility pickup, you cannot receive damage from using your special. Just tap until the effect wares off.

GET GOOD AT THE MINIGAME:

If you pick up the minigame pickup (looks like a meteor or something) you will have the chance to play the button tapping minigame at the end of the stage (some boss stages won't allow for the game following completion). You must just tap fast enough to get above the yellow area and into the green area. If you can hold it here, you should get the required amount of score to earn a 1-up (638 points for Death Metal). If you tap too fast, you will reach the red area and you will not receive any points. This may be a means to prevent players from using turbo controllers.

If you get good enough at it, it should be a guaranteed 1-up each time. Some instances it seems to award 2. Also, you will regain some health lost from the previous level.

SUPER JUMP KICKS

I have found that if you press the attack button immediately after jumping and then continue tapping the attack button while pressing back and forth on the d-pad, you are able to kick multiple times per jumps. This doesn't help much against regular enemies since they get knocked down, but larger enemies can be hit several times in a single second. It is not useful in every scenario, but you can watch my video clip below and see it in action during the first boss fight (about the 3:20 mark)

GENERAL STRATEGIES:

First thing, you need to have as much control as possible while fighting enemies. Grouping them together is a fine strategy. The last thing you want is to be spam attacking a group of enemies while there are a few projectile enemies on the opposite side shooting at you. You will find that this can deplete your life quickly. Use jumpkicks to knock enemies from one side of the screen to the other in helps of consolidating the enemies. Once they are in a nice group, you can just spam the attack button without much issue.

Pay attention to the different enemy types. For instance, the 'jock' enemies will use a anti-air attack any time you jump at them. For this reason, you never want to try and jump kick these types of enemies.

Familiarize yourself with all the destructible items in the levels. You don't want to pass up free items. most are obvious, but some not so much. For example, the porta-potties are easy to figure out during the lawn concert stage, but hitting the side of the 'overpriced beer' stand might not be as obvious.

Try to save crates and destructibles for when you need them if they are on the same screen as an enemy wave. You don't want to open up a Full HP item and pick it up right before a huge mob of enemies. If you have all your life and there is a HP item on screen but no enemies or waves in the area, pick it up anyways. Even though it won't give you life it will give you some score. Every 1000 points = 1up.

PRACTICE:

I would like to post specific enemy and boss strategies, but it would take long time and would be hard to explain. If you have the desire to earn a tough achievement like this, some work is to be expected on your part.

I would recommend getting a feel for the game and coming up with strategies that compliment your play style. I suggest playing on Heavy Metal difficulty and using the level select passwords to quickly jump to stages and improve your boss strategies. I didn't do this originally and got creamed the first time I reached the doppelganger boss on Death Metal.

GET LUCKY

This is an unfortunate aspect of the game mode, but unlike other beat 'em ups of this style, 1ups are not consistently located, but randomly spawned. For this reason you may find yourself scrounging for them or stockpiling them. Obviously the key is to lose as few times as possible to reserve them. At one point during my run, I had 10 lives. They can be drained very quickly during some lopsided boss fights.

Anyways, below is a video of my first 10 minutes of the game mode (all the XBOX DVR will allow at a time).

If you have any specific questions, be sure to leave them in the comments.

Thanks