Always go for the red power-ups! Ignore the blue and green power-ups
because although they may be better than the reds at the start, in the long run, you would be better off with red, particularly when the pteradactyls become faster and the red gun ends up being significantly better than the blue, green and flashing red. The blue, green and white when full powered are absolutely useless. In particular, do not get mixed up between the red and the flashing red as you may become slightly agitated after you nearly have a full powered red gun to find that you accidentally tapped into a level 1 flashing power-up.
Be patient! That is how you receive the highest scores! Sometimes it takes 20 minutes of gameplay to get a score of 2000. At the start, reaching the 100 mark takes a fair while and as you progress, you will be receive over 1000 in less than 5 seconds. Starts are always slow compared to the end. If you start with a red gun only to find that 3 green power-ups follow it, do not be disheartened, keep with the red, as the greens are not very strong full powered.
As soon as you see your gun power-up appear on the screen, do not rush for it straightaway as the birds usually fly behind it straightaway! Wait a couple of seconds until the power-up is halfway down the screen until you race for it.
Start the game by choosing intermediate, this is because in easy mode, it takes too long to get the good points which ultimately means that you lose more life. In hard mode, you are also not given enough time to build up your weapons for the harder evil birds so that is out of the question, so intermediate should do just fine.
Slowly build up your red gun, power-up by power-up until you are at least on scorch cannon, if you are below this, do not bother trying to continue. After the third level, stick to the right half of the screen as after this level, the evil birds will start appearing from the left side of the screen. Also stick about 5cm (2 inches) above the bottom of the screen in case the dinosaur appears. What I tend to do is stick to the far right. The scorch cannon is large enough to cover my whole body when shot so racing evil birds to my left aren't a problem any more. (Be careful about touching the walls though)
With the scorch cannon, I will stay in that position, only moving when the dinosaur appears behind me or the evil birds from the left side appear. I only move to dodge them. Now, when you see the fluoro green birds (looks like bows and arrows) appear from the top right of the screen, shoot it. You should get around 5 points. Now stay in that position forever unless dodging various targets and after a while, more of those green fluoro birds should show up.
Every time you shoot one, a replacement bird will appear on the same position.
After a level, another of the same kind of bird will join it so you will be doubling, then tripling and then quadrupling your score etc. This is why the scorch cannon is so important. Anything less will not be able to handle it.
Up to level 15 or so, you should be gaining extra lives to replace the ones you lost. If you are lucky, you should finish the game with a good few thousand points!
Some images/material �Neopets.com
Background images �Art for the web