Submission #9573: dekutony's NGP SNK Gals' Fighters in 02:36.32

NEWS FLASH - local ninja woman beats up everyone just so she can marry some blonde guy in under 3 minutes, more at 6...

This is a TAS of Gals' Fighters, a silly little fighting game by SNK released for the Neo Geo Pocket Color in the year 2000. The very "mysterious" Miss X sets up a Queen of Fighters tournament to see who is the strongest woman fighter in the world. The lady who wins it all also obtains a talisman which is said to grant any wish they desire.

This TAS beats the game in under 3 minutes, also beating the current RTA WR by about 47 seconds (in RTA timing). Mai Shiranui was chosen for this TAS, just like in RTA mainly due to her consistently damaging combo string that can be performed on repeat until she KOs her opponent in mere seconds.

I change the in-game settings like this: Level (difficulty) set to 1. This is obviously to much more easily manipulate the CPU opponents. Speed set to 4. This makes the game run faster and makes battles more hectic and quicker. Round set to 1. Pretty self-explanatory.

After selecting a character, the game throws me into an Item selection screen. In this game, you can use items that affect matches (although most don't have any effect), but since I'm starting the game from a fresh save this is irrelevant and never comes into play in this movie. When a match is starting, there's a little intro animation between the two characters that can be skipped by pushing A/B the first frame the characters' names appear on screen.

Ok, so actually starting with the matches themselves, I'll explain the basic strategies and specific moves performed that make this deadly combo and then I'll point out any differences in execution I had to do for certain opponents, as they're not exactly the same everytime.

For the move names, I'm gonna refer to the names labeled in StrategyWiki when applicable. The move sequence goes as follows: Kuro Tsubame no Mai (F+SK), Down Elbow Attack (D+SP), Benitsuru no Mai (DR+SK), Sayochidori (QCB+K) all performed as fast as possible. SK or SP refers to Strong Kick and Strong Punch. In order to perform a Strong attack, you must press and hold either A or B for at least 7 frames or longer for it to work. You can buffer a special move at the start of a match and/or even after performing another move (this might vary depending on the previous move used), which speeds things up a bit more and looks pretty clean in motion.

For the finisher, we change the sequence by performing Kuro Tsubame no Mai (F+SK), Weak Punch/Fan hit (P), Kachousen (QCF+P). This was the fastest way to KO and end matches that I could find. Performing the starting combo or another variation where I skip D+SP was slower (in fact the latter was slower by a mighty boppin' 1 frame!). All this essentially becomes a Touch of Death combo (though not an infinite due to a certain thing I'll mention in a bit).

Sometimes, the opponent likes to start a match by rolling to the right, so I have to run up to them and start executing the combo a few frames later just to reach my opponent with my starting jump kick. Fighters that ended up doing this were Yuri, Leona and Nakoruru. You mostly want your opponent to either stand still, or get close to you without blocking, which only happened once with Shermie. Other times, when an opponent falls to the floor after a combo, they have a chance to quickly recover by rolling when they land, which is something that we actually want, as it lets us perform the next chain of moves way quicker instead of waiting for our opponent to get up and hit them. This, unfortunately doesn't happen very often, only 3 times even... once with Yuri, and twice with Miss X.

...And then there's Whip. Now the final 2 fights in the game will always be Whip followed by Miss X. It seems that Whip is a bit smarter than our previous opponents, as she not only starts of by slowly moving back, but is also well prepared to block our jump kick attack and punish accordingly. In this specific scenario, we are forced to wait for a bit longer on a specific frame window before we even start running towards her. When she stops moving, we're good to start attacking. The rest of the fight goes as normal.

Miss X is thankfully mostly normal in comparison. Iori Miss X will try to attack us with a comically long kick, which we somehow avoid, and then we start attacking as per usual without really slowing down at all. We beat the final boss and we finish the game with a rather... interesting ending. Whatever you say SNK... I guess. At least she got her wish... about 25 years later... I think?

Though, before I finish, I must explain one last thing I've been neglecting to mention up until now. Every time you beat an opponent or before a match begins, a short cutscene will play of either the opponent or our character. Either way, they'll speak a line of dialogue through text. Thing is that their dialogue can be longer or shorter depending on... RNG... I think. I (somehow) consistently get the same (fast and short) win quote from Mai each and every fight, but it's not the same for my opponent's dialogue. Mostly it's pretty short text, with the exception of Nakoruru, who has the longest text in the whole run. It seems that the dialogue changes depending on which frame (or frame rule/rotation?) I finish the fight (or is it which move I KO my opponent with?), which also dictates who do I fight against next AND which dialogue they speak (either long or short), so... this is more complicated and random than it needs to be.

After going back and forth with it, I decided to keep consistency with Mai's win quotes instead of manipulating my next opponent and their dialogue just to not make Mai have a longer win quote by ending the match even 1 frame late. This next opponent manipulation thing also seems to manipulate their AI pattern as well, which makes this whole thing extra annoying. This sequence of opponents and dialogue was the best I could come up with without taking me weeks of my own sanity. I hope you understand.

Even in spite of all these (seemingly) random elements, I still had fun making this TAS. Interestingly enough, I started working on this on International Women's Day. This was completely unintentional, I didn't realize this well after the fact, though I guess it's rather fitting for a game like this. I was looking for an obscure platform to TAS and after watching a video on YouTube talking about the Neo Geo Pocket, I decided to give it a go. Also this game seemed the most doable to TAS for me so that really helped.

Possible improvements? Well, better RNG for the opponent's AI patterns and intro dialogue, of course. Not to mention more frequent tech rolling from them too when they land. I don't know changing character would speed up things, but Mai seemed very optimal to me, so I'm not 100% sure about this one.

So with all that said, I really hope you enjoyed watching this. Now to go back to work on... whatever else I was working on. Special thanks to TCxKai for his RTA WR, which served as the basis for this TAS, and of course, thank YOU for reading this thing. See ya next time.