This is a game based on Japanese manga Ghost Sweeper Mikami, featuring Reiko Mikami and her crews who're paid by solving the problems caused by homeless spirits. I never read the manga nor did I watch the animated series, so I can't talk much about the comic ifself. Check Wikipedia or elsewhere for further information.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 1.6.1
Basic strategy
The protagonist Mikami has a powerful bo (I can't really tell what she's holding, so I might be wrong) that sweeps the enemy in one hit. While her horizontal speed is fixed, you can take a little boost by sweeping it on the hanger and releasing it instantly. This is especially abused in Report 7 where the player can creat hanger for himself.
Taking damage is of no use because although the player looks like taking boost from it, it's slower than normal running. It also has a side effect that it takes away the control about 20 frames, so I didn't find any place to use it.
Two subweapons are also presented in the game, which I never used on this run. The amulet consumes all enemies so it's useless in speedrun. The necklace stops the enemies for some time, while it has bizarre effect on the boss; some bosses stop stunning after one hit. This wasn't helpful on the boss fight where I needed it, so I didn't use it as well.
Stage by stage comments
Most of stages are basically straight running-right platformer, so there aren't really much to explain on details except boss fights. I'll try hard, though.
Report 1
The stage is very straight forward. Picked up electric bo for crushing doors in later part.
The boss on this stage is super easy. I hit him on either side alternatively for entertainment.
Report 2
Earlier part of stage features stream which holds the player a little slower. I carefully jumped constantly, reducing unnecessary hops. Picked up ice bo to use at boss fight.
The boss fight here is where I originally suspended for a while with frustration. You need to attack each hand to beat the boss, but the hands always slightly floats way when getting hit, so attacking them effectively requires careful plan. The strategy presented in the movie was the best way I came up with, but I believe this can be improved more.
Report 3
An autoscroller. Nothing special except the cat lifting glitch at the end which saves ~9 frames.
Picking up electric bo again to attack the boss earlier.
Report 4
Another straight forward stage. I picked up ice bo again and utilized it on the aggresively moving boss battle. With a lot of saves & loads, I got the best luck, optimizing the boss fight very well.
Report 5
Autoscroller again. Striking the enemies amusingly till the boss.
Beating the boss speedly is really hard, but I finally manipulated boss movement in best way and made it in one cycle. Also, blowing him in lower screen causes him to disappear faster, saving significant frames.
Report 6
Optimizing this stage was a bit harder than before because of belt conveyor and blocking enemies.
On the boss fight, getting ice bo works well here too. First phase of the boss requires me 3 cycle to beat, because this clown disappears too quickly. Using necklace sub-item made it possible in 2 cycle, but it was still slower than 3 cycle without it for some reason. Second phase of the boss was simple.
Report 7
Probably staged in her dream, Mikami acquires the unique that can create the hanger. Gravity also periodically changes in this stage. I used hanger boost as many as possible avoiding the slowdowns.
Except that the doppelganger moves pretty aggressively, the boss fight was easy as Report 1.
Final Battle
This boss moves annoyingly a lot in real-time play, but by luck manipulation I could make her summon the thunders, which delays her a bunch of time. So it wasn't really difficult fight.
Other comments
I extend a big Thank You to Bizhawk devs for making such a convenient emulator. Virtual Pad feature was especially helpful.
Suggested Screenshot
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feos: Accepting to Vault, with possible movement to Moons, if the ratings are better. And publishing...