- Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S - Jougai Rantou! Shuyaku Soudatsusen is a fighting game made by Arc System Works in 1994 that features 1v1 versus matches for the SNES. Arc System Works is well known for their later Guilty Gear and BlazBlue franchises.
1P Story Mode
- The 1P Story more is a series of matches against every other player. The chosen difficulty is on Nakayoshi. Nakayoshi makes the opponents more passive, have less health, and also initially lets you allocate more points.
Points at the start can be allocated to multiple stats. Attack, Special Attacks, "?" (which is really just the desperation move), Health, Defense, and Ochama (mischievousness). Ochama is one of the stranger stats I have seen in a video game since it seems too increase the chance of having your moves fail or something and then your character does some sort of pose. Not completely sure if there is anything else to that stat, but it did not seem useful for the tas, and there is not that much info on it either. Anyway the useful stats for a tas are Attack and Special Attacks. Allocating max 5 points for each increases their damage some in the match.
The base damage seems to just be added with the allocated points so adding them is important when most attacks rarely more than 10 for normal base attacks and rarely over 15 base damage for specials.
- There is a trick on the point allocation screen where you can press start to start exiting the screen, but you can still allocate points while it fades out.
- The character chosen is Mercury. Mercury has a good spread of attacks and damage and seems to be the best character for speedruns. Many characters tend to have strong moves, but those come at the cost of tending to also do knockdowns. Some others have strong attacks but they have multiple hits which takes up a lot of time.
- There are sometimes unusual instances of where an opponent will actually fail their special attack. This looks similar to the Ochama for your character if you add in those allocation points. Interesting mechanic, that sometimes comes out which can be useful to save time.
- The second fight of an opponent is harder than the first one since they are more aggressive and defensive.
- Last input in the tas is a start input to skip the evaluation cutscene before the ending. After the ending the game goes back to the title screen.
Damage
Damage depends on a couple things, but most importantly remember this: Try to hit the enemy in the face when they are doing something. They is the best way to do more damage. For instance the Hard Punch version of Mercury Aqua Mirage (the whirlwind attack) has a base damage of 14, if you hit them in the face with it, it does 18. Hit them while they are doing something it will do 21. Hit them in the face while they are doing something the damage goes up to 24. Adding the extra allocation points it can do 29. Of course it does not quite work out to getting that everytime even in this tas, but that is the idea to defeating these opponents quickly.
- Note that Initial enemies have 97 health, and the later half have 105.
RNG
RNG is really obnoxious as usual. The enemies do not easily cooperate at the start of the match which tends to be the main issue. The main way of changing behavior is to delay moves or doing different movements. The enemies tend to be sticky in their moves and are quite resistent to changing. Very often there are 10 frames here and there that have to be delayed to change behavior. In some spots waiting works too, but that is more rare. Usually the enemy already knows what it is going to do and does it anyway regardless of what you do.
General Strategy
The optimal moveset for the initial enemies is this: Enemy and Mercury walk towards eachother. Mercury uses Hard Kick close by then Mercury Aqua Mirage(Light Punch), and enemy walks forward and takes the hit. Then the enemy walks forward while Mercury recovers. Mercury recovers, then walks forward and uses the Hard Kick close to enemy then Mercury Aqua Mirage(Hard Punch) where the enemy walks forward and takes the hit. If everything goes correctly the initial matches on Nakayoshi can end with the timer being 98. However the game seems to really not like for some reason when the rounds end that fast since then the later enemies give horrid RNG.
The very good fight for the initial enemies is this: Enemy and Mercury walk towards eachother. Mercury uses Hard Kick close by then Mercury Aqua Mirage(Light Punch), and enemy walks forward and takes the hit. Then the enemy walks forward while Mercury recovers. Mercury recovers, then walks forward and uses the Hard Kick close to enemy then Mercury Aqua Mirage(Hard Punch) or Bubble Spray (HP) where the enemy walks forward and takes the hit.
If everything goes correctly the initial matches on Nakayoshi can end with the timer being 98. Sometimes the enemy fails an attack for some reason, and while the fastest option would be to fast walk towards Mercury it is a good thing to have happen. However the game seems to really not like for some reason when the rounds end that fast since then the later enemies give horrid RNG.
The later half have enemies with slightly more health so instead of walking forward a jump kick with Hard Kick is added in to take out the additional health. Often though the first Mercury Aqua Mirage is changed to a Hard Punch version since the enemy will not cooperate. The hard punch version covers slightly more distance, but has a slightly longer recovery time. 97 on the timer is the best I have seen with the later half of the roster with their extra health.
So basically this game is an RNG fest if you are trying to have each round be optimal even when it only takes a couple moves to beat each round. The enemies have a lot of available options that they can do that need to be often finagled. They can move right which is a no go. They can jump which is another action that needs to be removed. Mercury's Hard Kick needs to be close to have both hits get in so if they try to counter the move needs to be very short or slow. They can block which is another thing that is not good at all (only the last half of enemies on Nakayoshi tend do this). If the enemies stay still that may be good enough, but there is some slight time loss.
Realistically a good match is around the 97 timer. If a lot of bad enemy choices happen an 96 on the timer can happen due to trying to stop or get around them. If someone really figures out how the RNG works then in the future maybe everything can be optimal.
Mars
First character you fight and the easiest. Initially I had faster fights with Mars by 10 or so frames since I was able to get really good RNG, but the problem was Jupiter's second fight. The game simply refused to cooperate despite lots of attempts to change things. So I had to change the fights to add in delays to change the behavior of some later fights.
Jupiter
Jupiter has a special which the game likes using where she jumps in the air and uses a special fireball. It tends to want to do that a lot and also tends to be a very difficult to change behavior. She also has a big lightning bolt as a bad move to see. Her second round fight loves to start with that air fireball move.
Venus
Venus is oddly passive and tends to back away a lot. It is a good enemy behavior when she moves forward. She is also not tall so the Mercury Aqua Mirage is harder to hit on her. Had a couple faster fights with Venus, but the second fight of Moon went badly on the two times this happened. So probably 20 frames or so lost on Venus potentially if rng had worked.
Moon
Moon is tricky and this is the first fight where the opponent starts being both more aggressive and defensive. She is short so extra frames are needed to get in closer. She likes jumping and blocking too.
Chibimoon
The trickiest enemy is Chibimoon because the character is half size and special attention needs to be made so that the kicks and specials get in. The Mercury Aqua Mirage move is only good if you can get in close since the special move upwards, otherwise the Bubble Spray is a better option. Chibimoon also has a special that makes her get off the ground and that means that hitting her while she is in the air would cause lots of time loss if she gets hit upward. Chibimoon also likes making use of her double jump, and we do not want the enemies to jump at all.
Pluto
This enemy inputs reads more than the others it seems. Frame perfect reactions in many cases so the bad actions had to be taken care of. She has a long weapon, and very long kicks so Mercury has trouble getting in close without jumping or getting lucky. Pluto is however one of the taller characters so getting in the specials did not take too many extra frames.
Neptune
Neptune blocks and likes jumping but other than that she does not pose that much of a problem.
Uranus
A very tall character too which makes the specials easy to hit. While Uranus can close in with your character quickly, but when that occurs the fight goes slow with bad RNG. She starts backing off, backstepping, or blocking after taking damage often.
Potential Improvements
- Thinking this could be improved by a couple seconds if the RNG was perfect.
- Maybe if there are some bugs with the stat allocation?
