Rare Replay

The achievement description is pretty much self-explanatory, but note that as is generally the case with the achievements in Rare Replay that call for a cumulative total, this can be done across multiple playthroughs and between reloads. However, you cannot use the rewind function for this.

You'll get a fair way towards the required 100 power-up pods in the course of a standard playthrough of the game. To get yourself up to the required 100 pods, the easiest way is just to load up a new game and get yourself to the first "collect pods" stage, which will be either the second or third stage, depending on your first stage route, saving at the start. This stage sees you collecting power-up pods against a time limit - get as many of these as you can, then reload your save from the start of the stage and repeat until you reach the required cumulative total.

I'll also use this achievement as a place to explain how the power-up system works. You can upgrade your boat in five different areas, most of which are persistent between stages within a playthrough - turbo, fire, speed, missile and force. To earn these upgrades, you need to collect power-up pods that you'll come across in various stages. Importantly, however, you need to activate the upgrade to apply it to your boat - and if you neglect this, certain stages can become impossible. You'll be able to apply the turbo upgrade after collecting one pod, fire from two pods, speed from three, missile from four and finally, force from five. If you collect any more than five pods without applying an upgrade, you'll simply start cycling through them again, which brings no benefit.

The upgrades are as follows:

• Turbo (one pod): This has a single upgrade level and gives a significant boost to your boat's acceleration.
• Fire (two pods): This has six upgrade levels above the base level, improving your boat's standard fire. The first two upgrade levels provide a boost to your boat's firing rate, then further upgrades alter your firing pattern. The third level causes your bullets to break into four in a + shape with a second press of the fire button, the fourth makes your boat fire in that + pattern directly, the fifth gives a concentrated forwards fire with wider effectiveness than standard and the sixth gives four forward-firing bullets in a wide arc that accelerate straight forward with a further button. Once at the sixth level, you can still apply another fire upgrade, but this will just cycle your firing pattern between patterns four, five and six indefinitely.
• Speed (three pods): This has three upgrade levels above the base level, each increasing your boat's top speed.
• Missile (four pods): This has three upgrade levels, causing your boat to fire powerful missiles alongside your normal fire. The first level fires a single missile straight forward, the second fires two missiles in a V shape in front of you and the third level has the same V shape pattern, but with homing missiles.
• Force (five pods): Force as in "force field". This power-up gives a temporary invincibility to your boat.

I'd recommend first getting the turbo upgrade, then focusing on a balance between speed and fire. The missile upgrade is useful, but not as important as these first three. As for the force upgrade, as the effect is only temporary it's much less useful for the most part so I can't recommend it until you've maxed out the other areas.