Edit (9/17): I tested Kamakura for first several stages instead of Santos and also, fixed several mistakes in Santos part. Resulting in saving 820 frames, changing several explanations accordingly.
Improved by
01:23.23 over
Pepper-Color's run. Despite of over a minute timesave, the route is essentially same other than the beginning.
Roulette
You can upgrade weapon, refill your HP or switch character via that after finishing stages each time. You can't do them during combat as none drops items. Holding button before minigame always yields to stop on sub weapon upgrade and it's fastest to finish this game. But I had not to choose this option sometimes due to bug or route-wise.
Character choice
Santos has best mobility main attack, W-FIST. It allows him to move 4 times faster over his walking and also, give greater ascend speed too. His sub weapon, "カツ" (OOF in English translation, 1st grade) and "ホーミング" (Homing, 2nd grade) are great coverage attack as all his main weapons are melee. Kamakura, the ninja can move twice as fast than Santos' walking but switching character causes to delay obtaining W-FIST. It results playing Santos entire run is actually optimal. Kamakura was able to save time much more than the costs of not having Santos with W-FIST for a stage and extra screen transitions by switching character.
Brief note how game works, explaining the route roughly
- In certain stages (A stage where it's looped infinitely to be exact), collecting yellow heart(s) is required to trigger boss spawn but you can't manipulate the drop because it's determined which enemies drop it.
- Enemy spawns are heavily affected by your horizontal position. (vertical too but not often) I mixed standing/walking or jumping/punching to manipulate them.
- There is bug that when you upgrade highest grade sub weapon, game downgrades to 1st grade instead of remaining current grade.
- Enemies being in mid-air have basically much shorter iframes. Sometimes I waited for them to jump and started attacking for that reason.
- You may use sub weapon just once per a stage. It's refilled in next stage or dying then use continue.
- OOF is one-time AoE attack but Homing loses that property in exchange of ability of attacking multiple enemies four times max. As long as you don't scroll the screen much, homing objects never disappear until it hits something.
Route
- Starts with Kamakura because he can move twice as fast than Santos without W-FIST. Plus, his main weapon helps to attack distant enemies quicker. Then, switch to Santos at sheep stage because sheep has its own move and attacks.
- Sub weapons have super long animation but it's useful to attack distance enemy or widely spreaded enemies. Using them after meeting goal each time doesn't impact to time.
- Picking life up when I want to retain current sub weapon in next stage. Life up is 2 frames slower than Sub up.
CoolHandMike: Replacing with faster new movie file that uses Kamakura in the beginning as well as Santos.
Accepting to Standard.
Great job!
CoolHandMike: 20240917 Replacing with an additional file from author 206 frames total saved.
