Submission #2171: errror1's PSX Strider 2 in 08:51.10

Released by Capcom in 2000 as a sequel to the original strider based on Striders Marvel vs. Capcom appearance. Once more you must kill Grandmaster Meio armed only with an insanely badass sword and your godlike ninja skills.

Youtube encode http://youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9AB639BC501FAB50

You may notice I take damage a few times in the run, twice in lv 1 and twice in lv 5. As near as I can tell this is due to an emulation bug. It doesn't happen on the original hardware or even other emulators, just pcxs and appears to be unavoidable. I don't know what causes three of the hits I take but the first damage I take in lv 5 happens at the same time solo's energy saw blades hit a wall so some how the game thinks when the blades hit something I should take damage. This next segment is about movement so skip it if you've played the game.

Walking
press forward or back

slowest movement never used when speed is an issue

Run
forward, forward or back, back

Much faster then walking and also makes jumps move much father horizontally. When you stop running or run into a wall Hiryu will go into a sliding animation that you can't change directions during making running a poor choice of movement if you need to turn around quickly.

Climbing
run into a wall or ceiling in the air

The fastest way to climb a wall is to jump three frames before you touch it, it will cause you to jump before you land on the wall. If on a wall you can press away from the wall to do a hassou jump. It's basicly a quick air dash horizontally and slightly up. You can cancel out of a hassou jump with a midi-giri but not with a double jump. There is no quick way to move along a ceiling so I try to avoid it whenever possible.

Slide
press down and jump when on the ground

Not as fast as running and you can't change directions or do a normal jump out of it so it's nearly useless. You can however cancel it with a strange backwards jump by pressing back and jump in a slide. The jump has very low vertical movement and decent speed but you can't double jump, midi-giri, or even change directions during it so it's nearly useless. Still it's a quick way change directions.

falchion
press slash button

So this thing is basically a crissagrim. It can be used anytime (except a few frames before landing) without slowing you down. If used when standing or ducking it will slash forward, up, and down.

midi-giri
down, up, slash (can only be used in the air)

This is basically a 360° slash that does more damage then a normal slash so most of the boss fights are about using this over and over as quickly as possible. When used it slows down your movement almost completely. If to many sprites are on screen sometimes it will not show the slashes but it will still do damage. You can only midi-giri once per jump but if you jump at the first possible frame before landing you won't be able to do it. If this move is used as soon as possible before hitting a wall/ground/ceiling the slashes will continue and still do damage but it will cancel Hiryu's animation so this is a way to do the midi-giri without going through the full animation. The quickest way to do repeated midi-giri are attached to a flat wall.

There are two useful items

Boost

Activating boost causes all of your normal attacks to create a homing projectile increases the damage done by each slash and causes massive lagg. The arcade the game was designed for is basically just a psx with twice the ram and the psx version was not changed from the arcade. If boost is activated in an already laggy section then expect the game to play at around 15 fps.

Power up

Increases the range and damage of your attacks and gives Hiryu a purple aura but goes away if hit.

In game timer
Lv1 1:15
Lv4 1:39
Lv5 1:38
Total 4:32

Fairly straight forward, the solo fights are ugly but the rest seems optimized. You only need to do one of the first 3 stages. I tested all three out and this was the fastest.

The windy sections are a pain due to the huge lagg and the awkward jumps it causes.

The solo fight at the start is ugly. The gravity changing part is a pain, I have to stop three times to avoid enemies. Hien fight is a pain, if your wondering why I pause alot it's because Hien is invincible most of the time when on the ground. If you attack he goes into a blocking animation. Also hitting with a midi-giri is harder because of the moving stage. He takes much more damage when in the middle of his dashing attack witch is why I hit him with a double midi-giri there.

I am sure some frames can be shaved of this run but I am not going to bother with it until there is a better emulated version

Truncated: I fixed some of your markup for you. You can use three percentage signs to force a new line. It is also possible for you to edit your submission after you have sent it, to fix any mistakes you have made.

Anyway, I liked this. Very high action to length ratio. I will accept it. Didn't know there was another Strider 2 for PSX also, I had only seen the Mega Drive Strider 2 (which is a completely different game).

ShinyDoofy: Processing...

Spikestuff: Sync Note: For those figuring out the bios it's SCPH7502.