Numan Athletics 2 - Mach Breaker is a sequel to the previous Numan Athletics. It is a competitive sports arcade game developed and released by Namco in 1995. It runs on the company's NB-1 hardware, and has unusual competitions to test the strength and might of mutant athletes called "Numans". Up to four people can play simultaneously.
- This TAS uses the default Dipswitch settings.
- On movie playback, set the following in TAStudio: Metadata -> SaveState History Settings -> Gaps - Buffer Size to be set to at least 256. Otherwise BizHawk will most likely crash.
Gameplay
- This is an athletics competition game where pressing buttons with speed and correct timing is key to getting good records. A competition can have one to three attempts where the game will take the best score. For this tas faulting, aka failing, is the fastest method to continue to the next area when the match does not just time out. There are some quirks to some of the games as well which are covered in their sections below. While this is a 4 player game, there appears to be no difference in characters. However in 4 Player mode scores seem to differ a lot in Monster Drag for some reason. There appears to also be an anti-tie system which prevents some timing scores from being the same. For 1 player that does not come into account. Because of that the 4 player mode seems to be able to get higher scores than is possible in single player.
- Video of a TAS of Numan Athletics 2 : Mach Breakers by Prog61: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BPC48GxgJE
- Extended Input File which includes "CHM" for initials on the final input: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638963307222486938
- A couple frames during character selection are delayed to get Sophia as the opponent. This does not save time, but was chosen for entertainment.
Maximum Speed
The goal is run as fast as possible by alternating pressing button 1 and button 2. There is some slight variation in ending time which seems RNG based.
Monster Drag
Drag a Monster as far as possible by pressing buttons 1 or 3 depending on which is arm is active. Pressing when the bar is nearly full and getting a "Good" is the fastest method here since it pulls far and has the shortest animation. Get three "Good"s in a row and you get a Very Nice which pulls three times in rapid succession. Faulting here means failing to get the distance needed, which results in the monster crushing the player with a big foot (superhumans are perfectly fine afterward).
There is something unusual for scoring in this event in particular when the game has multiple players. The game has an usual "anti-tie" system and does not want ties so it will changes scores at times. Here it seems when there are multiple players some will get much higher scores than others. In both Japan and World game versions, both players regardless of chosen character would do a 4m88 on a "Good" pull. This was tested using various characters on single player.
Ice Crusher
The goal is to destroy as many Ice Blocks as possible. Here run as fast as possible by alternating pressing button 1 and button 2 with some frames in-between. When reaching the block pressing button 2 on the last possible frame keeps the highest speed. There is a bug with the speed in the beginning where you can mash the buttons before the race starts to increase the speed slightly.
Hyper Glider
The competition is to run as fast as possible, jump at the end of the path, and then glide as far as possible. Alternating mashing buttons 1 and 3 with a couple frames in-between to increase speed, then press 2 to jump. Once in mid air buttons 1 and 3 need alternating pressing to increase the glide distance. There is some slight RNG with the distance here.
Beast Hole
The player needs to destroy monsters as soon as they appear by pressing button 2. The sooner they are destroyed the more points are awarded. There are multiple lanes and the beasts appear on the lanes moving towards the player. If a beast reaches the player the player is captured and eaten. It is important to get 100% accuracy to get the 1.2x bonus score. At the end I fire two extra shots that the game removes when the gate closes. These two extra shots do not actually count against the accuracy interestingly enough.
Future Gate
Players destroy robots that rise up on platforms as soon as possible. The sooner a player destroys them the more points are awarded. Players need to press buttons 1, 2, or 3 which correspond to left, middle, and right positions. Sometimes civilians rise up on the platform and hitting them will cause a penalty. I do this once here for entertainment since there are enough points by the end to reach max points for this event.
Bombs Away
The goal is to catch, then throw a missile as far as possible. Catch the missile at the right point using button 2 and hold button 2 a bit to angle the missile up. Getting the right angle is important to get the highest distance, but there is a couple frame leeway here. Then press buttons 1 and 3 alternating to increase the power gauge bar. Notice that if the angle for the missile is not high enough there is not enough time to get the power gauge up to maximum.
The missile gets launched at maximum power and everyone then celebrates when it destroys a city!
There is a little graphical issue on the bottom left and right of the screen during this event, but nothing too bad.
Super Stunt
The competition goal is to vault off the tiny platform on the car, then do as many mid air spins as possible. Alternating mashing buttons 1 and 3 with a couple frames in-between to increase speed, then press 2 to vault. Once in mid air buttons 1 and 3 need alternating pressing.
The speed at the beginning seems to not have an effect past a certain high speed around 270 km/hr. Any higher and the number of spins seems to be the same regardless.
Deep Dive
The player has to dive as deep into the ocean as possible, then swim upward to exit the water without drowning. The idea to press button 2 on the way down and then wait a bit then press button 2 to do another stroke to go further down. Wait too long or too early and the speed falls.
On the second attempt I go as deep as possible and at the bottom you can see Urashima Taro and a turtle in front of the Dragon Palace. Not sure this information was elsewhere since to get it you have to perform extraordinarily well on the strokes to get below 1000m.
Rapid Jump
The goal is to jump across a lava pit. On landing if you wait too long to jump again you fall into the lava and get eaten by a lava goldfish. The idea is to jump on the earliest frame that gets the aura-like effect which indicates the furthest jumps.
Block Buster
The competition is to hit blocks as fast as possible. Alternating mashing buttons 1 and 3 with a couple frames in-between to charge the power bar, then press 2 to smash the rock. Press the button 2 too early and the rock will not break. Sometimes there is slowdown so frames need to be delayed or adjusted.
With tas speed it is possible to break the rocks that have not even fallen yet. If you let the final block fall and do not hit it, the block seems to keep falling and the background graphics start scrolling to different scenes.
Ground Spike
Here the superhuman jumps off an extremely tall platform and then hits the ground. Alternate pressing buttons 1 and 3, and then right before hitting the ground press button 2 on the correct frame to get a "Nice" bonus which increases the depth of the hit by 20％. This is I think the only event where the inputs alternate every other frame to increase the Power Gauge. This one required a couple frame delays before the event to get a slightly higher score since there is some minor RNG with the score.
As a bonus if you get the max depth you can see Dig Dug on the bottom.
Exhibition Match
This is the same as the Maximum Speed competition but shorter. This is more for the fans of the first game where the player competes against Sharon, the previous Champion of Numen Athletics, and has no bearing on the final scores or ending.
Final Results
| Maximum Speed | 7.63s |
| Monster Drag | 204m80 |
| Ice Crusher | 35 pcs |
| Hyper Glider | 718m80 |
| Beast Hole | 26424 pts |
| Future Gate | 99999 pts |
| Bombs Away | 7168m7 |
| Super Stunt | 47 spins |
| Deep Dive | 742m4 |
| Rapid Jump | 12.24s |
| Block Buster | 5.77s |
| Ground Spike | 347m83 |
| Exhibition Match | 5.20s |
Potential Record Improvements
- Beast Hole points could be much higher if the enemies were clustered more together but that might need a lot of RNG manipulation on top of optimizing each attempt.
- Maybe better RNG on some races?
- There are some slowdown frames, and there could be a few hidden, but there are no easy ways I could use to highlight them. If there was a way to do that some improvements might be achievable.
Final Thoughts
A multiplayer tas of this would be interesting, but also challenging due to how the game breaks ties, and how the RNG can alter scores slightly. On one multiplayer tas video the author mentioned how the Fourth player seems to have an advantage as well. Also, does anyone know how to change the costume color? Mirror matches are possible where Makato can versus Makoto with the second Makoto have a darker color palette.
eien86: Claiming for judging.
eien86: Similar to its prequel, Mach Breakers features a set of events which would otherwise be lethal for humans. These events, as crazy as they appear to be, are indeed very fun to watch. Also same as in the previous submission, the author tries to get the highest possible score at first try, then aborts the next attempts. This is the case in most events, except when there is a head to head competition, where the first (and only) attempt matters. The movie looks very optimized and it would be really hard to say if there is a way to extract even more score out of the events.
The "1 player" goal clarification seems unnecessary to me, as I don't see how a 2-player strategy may help in achieving a higher (single player) score.
Accepting to standard "maximum score"
EZGames69: Processing...