The Combatribes for the SNES is a port of the arcade beat-em-up. This improves the current run by over 2 minutes.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 1.11.6
- Beats the game as fast as possible.
- Plays on Hardest Difficulty: Super (by enterring a passcode using buttons on player 2's controller)
Comments
I FINALLY got around to finishing this. I was surprised at how many improvements were available. Ram watch was critical here in keeping track of enemy health. Overall though optimization was just testing different approaches and keeping the winner. Unfortunately most of the little tricks are obscured by the constant bashing of enemies heads into the ground, but that is the fastest way so so be it.
Mechanics
I will list some common mechanics that are used in optimization:
- Bashing enemies heads into the ground is by far the best method to deal damage, combined with a charge attack that knocks them over. You have to be careful though, if you just run into an enemy it only does one damage.
- For levels 1-4, after you beat the boss, any remaining enemies are reduced to 1 HP, so you don't need to focus on them during the fight. This doesn't carry over into the re-fights though.
- Some enemies will spawn aggro'd to a certain player, even if the other player is much closer. So sometimes they will run right by you which is handy if you just started face planting an enemy.
- Hitting an enemy or boss with both players on the same frame will do the damage of both players.
- Enemy HP is from WRAM addresses 001798 to 0017A8
- You can manipulate enemy AI by performing actions on different frames. Naturally this means there are a huge number of potential strategies, but it also means you can usually get what you want in terms of enemy behaviour.
- Once you start running, the best way to stop is with a charge attack, even if it's just into the air, this is used pretty often.
Other comments
I'm really happy with how this came out. Dooty's WIP was invaluable in learning the game, so I leave him as co-author. Of course with a game like this there are bound to be improvements still to be had, but the amount of effort will only climb expontentially to achieve them, so I think the current result is a pretty good step up by itself.
Alyosha: Judging!
Samsara: I'm super happy this run exists for multiple reasons, but unfortunately it's still Combatribes and the voting seems to reflect that. It was a much more entertaining experience this time around, but... well, like I said, it's still Combatribes. Accepting as an improvement to the published movie, though, and congratulations on obsoleting all of 2004!
Spikestuff: \o/