Submission #7437: ShesChardcore's NES Karate Champ in 07:25.25

(Link to video)
Nintendo Entertainment System
baseline
BizHawk 2.8.0
26759
60.0988138974405
1255
PowerOn
Karate Champ (USA).nes
Submitted by ShesChardcore on 4/11/2022 3:06:02 PM
Submission Comments
This submission is for NES Karate Champ, an arcade port by Data East. It can be difficult and confusing at times, but we can mitigate both of those with the power of TAS. This completes one loop of the game (final level is the warehouse.)

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.8
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Skips bonus stages
  • This is @Samsara 's fault

Comments

While certainly not a classic by any stretch of the word, this game isn't as bad as it seems. Sure, it only polls for input every 8 frames. Sure, the hitboxes are janky. Sure, the scoring system is confusing. But it's got a sense of charm to it.
In this game you are tasked with beating 10 stages of "increasing difficulty" (mostly just due to the increased amount of AI patterns in the pool.) To win a stage you need to win two matches. To win a match you need to score 2 points. Unfortunately the game has half points as well, and getting one of those can be frustrating since it just delays you. In a casual setting it can be hard to understand what the game expects you to do for the full point.
Basically you can always get full points from well timed counter attacks as they give enough score to qualify for a full point. It's not always obvious that you're countering though. A couple times in this run I have to delay an attack 8 frames to make it a counter even though visually the attacks are identical. Each AI pattern seems to have a counter available, and some are faster than others. The fastest are the low sweep kick and the later level mid punch. RNG on the AI patterns can be "influenced" by when you get hit to end the bonus game but by and large you can mostly only gain or lose time in increments of 8 frames. In the testing that I did, it wasn't worth it to delay anything and I stuck with the first possible frames.
The basic strat is to jump behind the opponent and do one of the following: throw an immediate jumping back kick, delay one cycle/walk right and jumping back kick, walk right for one cycle and throw a regular back kick. These are based on what move the CPU throws when you land. If done properly you will always hit and always get a full point.
So, yeah. Not a lot to say about this one. Not everything in the TASmania project will be top shelf gaming but every game deserves a TAS and I don't mind doing games like this.

feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Much faster than the human record, and I couldn't find anything on nico. Accepting to Standard.

despoa: Processing...
Last Edited by despoa on 5/2/2022 3:02 PM
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