Kendo Rage is the Dark Souls of obscure SNES platformers that had no reason to be localized.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
- Aims for fastest time
- Uses death to save time
- actually it really isn't like dark souls
- kinda the opposite if you think about it
- kendo rage has really intriguing gameplay
- but every boss is garbage
- whereas dark souls is a bad game
Kendo Rage, known in some circles as Makeruna! Makendō and in other circles as "hey isn't that the game that Ferret Warlord TASed like 15 years ago that nobody had ever heard of?", was released in 1993. Wikipedia claims the game was developed by Affect Co, who would earlier go on to develop Nolan Ryan's Baseball, known in one circle as "Flyin' Ryan's Big Bat Bonanza". Wikipedia also claims the game was created by Datam Polystar, though. You can remember their name easily by remembering that "Datam" is the plural of "Data", and "Polystar" is what I'm known by in some circles. I'll leave it up to you to decide which creator is correct. The Wikipedia article does need citations at time of writing! In America, this game had no reason to be localized, but it sure was! Wikipedia describes the gameplay as "It is a 2D action side scrolling game." That's it. That's all you get from Wikipedia. The heckin' notice asking for citations has more words than that. In a turn of events that nobody saw coming and, more importantly, probably don't care about anyway, this game has an OVA and two sequels. Neither of those sequels are platformers. The plot of the version that had no reason to be localized follows Josephine, an American girl, because good localization hadn't been invented yet. The kendo part of the title comes from her being a kendo student in Japan, and the rage part comes from the fact that the second half of this game made me want to die.
I have a weird fascination with this game. It's... cute. Quirky. Charming, in both good and bad ways. It has a couple neat ideas and mechanics. It's actually pretty fun to play casually! I just find it weird that it was localized at all. I assume it had something to do with Seta Corporation, who had also published Affect and/or Datum Polyromantic's
Cacoma Knight in BizHawk, but with nearly every company involved being defunct now, I guess we'll never know. Or care, really.
Timed to the final hit on the final boss, this is a 1591 frame improvement to
"hey isn't that the game that Ferret Warlord TASed like 15 years ago that nobody had ever heard of?". Time is lost all throughout the run due to emulation differences, so the actual improvement may be closer to 1800-2000 frames. This does not account for my choice of when to end input: Since the game automatically advances to the credits, I elect to end input on the final hit instead of optimally advancing through to the end as in the published run.
Techniques
PSY
This had less meaning in a pre-Gangnam Style world.
For the purpose of this TAS, PSY effectively determines the power of Jo's attacks. PSY is capped at 64, regenerating at 1 every 4 frames. A value of 0-31 will return the lowest power attack, 32-63 will give a medium power attack, 64 gives the highest power attack. Each normal attack will reduce PSY to 0.
You'd think that PSY management would be extra important over the course of the run, but it isn't. From 0, it takes over 2 seconds to build up enough PSY to give the equivalent of 2 normal hits, and Jo can attack much faster than that, about 3 times per second. Boss invulnerability is 25 frames, so there really isn't any reason to try and manage PSY outside of the first hit on a boss. There are a couple cases where you can manage PSY within a fight, but you're still only talking one saved hit or so.
I could talk about Jo's normal attacks here as well, but there isn't much to say. The little colored orb next to HP represents how Jo attacks. Green is obtained as soon as possible, as it is the strongest, and it is used exclusively throughout the run. Red and Blue do other things with her attacks. Feel free to ponder those orbs yourself.
Jo's Speed
Jo accelerates at 1 unit per frame while on the ground, up to a max of 256, oscillating between 255 and 256 at her normal max speed. This value does not necessarily always represent how fast Jo is actually moving, though it does in a vast majority of cases. I say normal max speed because of how she behaves on slopes. When going downhill, Jo will accelerate at 6 units per frame, up to a new max of 496, nearly twice as fast as the normal cap. The catch is that when she's on flat ground, she will decelerate back down to that normal cap. The second catch is that no acceleration or deceleration occurs in midair, which is abused all throughout the run to maintain slope speed.
There is one other way to break the normal speed cap, but there's a bit more to talk about with that, so...
D-D-DASH!!
Pressing A causes Jo to perform a dash attack. This costs health, but makes Jo invincible for the duration while doing a healthy amount of damage to anything she comes into contact with. From full health, you are able to use 4 dashes. The primary use for dashing in the run is to significantly shorten boss fights: Dashes are equivalent to three normal attacks with the Green orb, meaning each one saves, at least, 50 frames.
The interesting thing about dashes though is that they last exactly as long as a boss is invulnerable, meaning that it is just barely possible to hit twice with one dash. This means that, under perfect circumstances, you can hit a boss 8 times with 4 dashes, which combines to 400 frames of timesave over a fight that is otherwise pure base damage. Obviously, that's significant.
Apart from the health drain, dashing's other caveat is how it affects Jo's speed. Her speed is set to 288 for the duration of the dash, slightly faster than her normal max, but this speed is immediately lost upon coming out of it. Basically, it has almost no use as actual movement speedtech, apart from a couple things which will be discussed in the level comments.
Parries
Yellow orbs are parries and are pretty much entirely useless in the TAS. I collect two near the end for pure RNG reasons. That's it. Okay, bye.
Difficulty
As far as I can tell, the difficulty only seems to affect two things: The health of some minibosses, and the placement of item pickups. Lower difficulty leads to a more interesting Stage Three and some slightly faster miniboss fights. See Stage Three for a more detailed explanation of how and why I ended up lowering the difficulty.
Power On to Start of Stage One
Normally this wouldn't be worth talking about, but the first actual improvement of the run happens by skipping the intro cutscene about a second and a half sooner. Turns out you can press Start again about 4 frames after starting a new game.
Stage One - "Cliff Hanger"
The beginning is virtually unchanged from the published run, but changes pretty drastically with the removal of the one major glitch. The published run jumps in such a way to go past the normal level boundary, avoiding part of the level, but the problem with that glitch is that it resets Jo's speed due to how long she spends falling. It's actually significantly faster in the long run to go through that part of the level, resetting Jo's fall distance in order to maintain her speed, which is carried all the way through to the boss.
Boss One - Josephine2
The fight starts with a dash before it even begins properly. Jo normally stops dead in her tracks before a boss (you'll see this later), so the dash will actually carry her into the boss for an early hit. The strategy is identical to the published run, it's pretty hard to improve on a boss that takes way too much damage from every attack.
I lose a tiny bit of time on the fight from having faster speed going in. It messes with the timing of the initial dash, losing a few frames. This was done months ago, I can't remember exactly why. Sorry. I'm secretly not a good TASer.
Stage Two - "Ice Queen"
I tried a few different iterations of this opening, and this ended up being the fastest. Snow slows Jo down, but she accelerates at the same rate, so I use a mixture of staying grounded for the acceleration early on and jumping for the speed going into the slopes, hitting max speed by the long straight section into the cave. After dashing through the snow without a sleigh or some jingly bells, I control Jo's speed in a way that allows me to make a jump that would otherwise reset her speed to 0. It takes going backwards for a couple frames in order to build up slightly more speed going into the jump, but it saves far more as a result. The enemies at the end are positioned in a way where I can't hit the slope any earlier, and attacking them would mean losing PSY, but the part leading into the boss is short enough that a higher speed would hardly save time.
Boss Two - Kroakie Kate
Once again, this has the same strategy as the published run, however I save time by managing my PSY better, meaning I can hit with full power without needing to wait.
Stage Three - "The Pond"
It's a water level.
Jo's clearly read my nearly 7 year old
submission text for Umihara Kawase "sightseeing" with that fish pun, which I think legally makes her my daughter. I dunno, I don't make the rules, but I'm pretty sure bad fish-related puns are genetic. Anyway, this stage left me feeling a bit crabby, to be honest. Jose-fin moves at basically minimum speed in the water. She can't build speed here, so other speed-type methods are needed in order to do a good move fast. Lobster.
You can actually crouch while you're on the ground, which briefly sets Jo to her maximum water speed as long as she's crouched and moving forward, but this needs to be refreshed constantly. However, crouching for a frame and then "jumping" gives her instant max water speed, and as long as she's not on the ground, she'll maintain it. This is used any time I have to touch the ground.
Changing the difficulty adds a full health refill near the beginning of the stage, so I'm actually able to use dashes to my advantage to save a disproportionately small amount of time. Seriously, all that dashing only saves half a second. I move past the health refill and dash into it in order to get the speed benefit of the dash while also fully refilling my health, essentially giving me an extra dash.
Stage Three Miniboss
This boss is unnamed and I hate it, slightly.
I said I'd mention the difficulty choice in the stage 3 notes, so here I go. The original reason I switched to lower difficulty is because of health refills in the stage. I found that the early health refill meant I could use some dashes to save time in the stage itself, and a later health refill (we'll talk about that one) meant I could dash attack this miniboss. Since the boss dies so much quicker with dash attacks, I didn't notice until much later that it has less health on Normal difficulty.
I feel like this is a cheap improvement, though it was purely accidental. The time I thought I would save by dashing more throughout the stage pales in comparison to the time I save on minibosses like this that just have less health to begin with.
Anyway, this boss's hitbox is too small to hit multiple times with one dash. I make up for it by abusing the fact that a dash doesn't reset PSY, meaning I can dash three times in a row and then hit a mid-level normal to save another further hit. This is actually the second biggest improvement in the entire run.
But also, this miniboss is the first in a long line of fights that just absolutely suck.
Stage Three Part Two
I spend about a second going out of my way for the health refill, as I desperately need dashes for the boss. I'm still 4 seconds ahead on this stage even with that detour, so it's well worth it. Not much else here. Jo's water movement is weird. Hard to explain, inconsistent, and I guess there's random, like, currents or something that cause her to move slower? Man, I wish I was smart enough to understand video games.
Boss Three - Curly, Moe, and Bubbles
The Three Sturgeons. THANK YOU, GOODNIGHT
Killing the crabs right before the fight causes it to start sooner, at the expense of not having a max PSY hit. The fight itself ends up a second faster, but RNG robs me of all of it since the positioning of the fish at the end means it takes slightly longer for the animation to start playing. Basically dead even on the fight because of that, except for the extra loading lag and such.
Stage Four - "Technodyne"
Short section. The miniboss here is also unnamed and also has less health than in the published run. It isn't worth its own section. Same general strategy on it, of course. I found that jumping into the teleporter in a certain way actually keeps Jo's speed, so the last part of the stage is significantly faster.
Boss Four - Toyminator
I'll be back... on store shelves, in time for the holiday season.
The first hit is faster, otherwise the strategy is the exact same. There isn't a lot of room for boss improvements in the run, at least not yet.
Stage Five - "The Commute"
Oh boy, starting off with an autoscroller. What's worse, an autoscroller where I have to build speed in a tightly confined space before it stops. The stage is mostly downhill from here, lol, lmao, lol, lmao, lol, lmao, lol, lm-
Boss Five - Dr. Whoo
this is the worst boss in the game and i dont wanna talk about it
Stage Six - "Triathlon"
Honestly, there isn't much to say here except for just better overall control of Jo's speed all throughout. The more interesting improvement comes later on. The first miniboss isn't notable enough for his own section, but his name is literally Paylay.
Miniboss - B E A C H B U N N I E S
hell yeah now you got my attention
Boss Six - Rose N. Ball
Here's the more interesting improvement! The Bunnies had less health between them, but the fight ended up hardly being faster due to me preserving a dash for this fight.
Rose is invulnerable to normal attacks, she can only be harmed by reflecting her spikey bois back at her. Normally when starting this fight, she'll serve one to you. This is slow, and boring, and slow. If you're close enough to her when she decides to do a move, she'll perform a spinning attack that sends four of her bois at you. This is faster, and less boring, and faster. The dash puts me in exactly the right spot in order to trigger the spin attack instantly, which saves more time here than it would have on the previous fight.
The strategy here is basically the same as the published run. You may notice that the published run uses a 3-3-2 hit pattern while I use a 3-2-3 hit pattern. These actually end up even, as she won't perform any attack until all of her spikey bois are offscreen. My 2 hits on the second spin means she advances to her third spin faster, though of course I lose that time having to reflect back an extra spikey boi.
Rose speaks in tennis puns and not fish puns, so I don't think she is legally my daughter. Perhaps my niece. Who knows.
Stage Seven - "School Daze"
this is the worst stage in the game and i dont wanna talk about it
ok fine
Stage Seven - it's a boss rush
It's a boss rush without health refills, even! This means nearly every boss takes longer since dashes have to be saved for when they'll save the most time... In other words, the fish.
I elected to grab the parries right before Josephine2 2. This loses PSY for me and requires an extra hit, but the parries make up for it in absolutely no way whatsoever! They do affect RNG though, which comes into play later.
Kroakie Kate 2 appears in this run.
The Three Sturgeons 2 is more or less the same as the published run, however the RNG that slowed this fight down back in Stage 3 lined up here, gaining me that time back. Thanks, parries! I originally intended to use the parries here to be able to move through the water faster, but it ended up not working out with any strategy I came up with.
Toyminator 2 is slightly faster. I parry a missile, because it's badass.
Fine, I'll talk about Dr. Whoo now. This is a really irritating boss to TAS, that feather attack is a lot harder than it looks to dodge while maintaining steady hits, made worse by his hitbox only being around his head. It was irritating in Stage Five, it's still irritating here. Even more irritating is how carefully I was building up speed all throughout, even sacrificing a couple frames for it, but most of the time saved from faster speed after the fight is negated by a massive chunk of unavoidable extra lag. Emulation differences really hecked me all throughout this run. Maybe we should be updating runs sooner than 16 years later.
Rose 2 has the exact same strategy, just without being able to get the early spin.
Boss Seven - Dean of Detention
I have to get rid of my other parry during this fight. Costs only a couple frames. More importantly, the run desyncs and I die on the first phase. Also, I'm kidding, I needed the health refill.
The second phase is constantly pushing you to the left, so some speed to the right needs to be built up in order for the dashes to work. Even with the extra time for the death, the dashes save so much more time, especially with being able to double-hit. I take another death here to trivialize the third phase.
The third phase is the single most improved section in the run, utilizing all 4 dashes for double hits and ending with a mid-level PSY attack to save an extra hit on top of that.
I'll admit that I'm not entirely happy with this run, there's a few things I didn't quite understand while making it and a lot I could have gone back and tweaked or fixed to save some extra frames, but honestly I was feeling burned out way sooner than usual. It doesn't look like a difficult game to TAS, and it kinda isn't, but it is still frustrating, particularly in the later boss fights and especially the end boss rush. Given how long it's been since the last run was published, though, I figure it's better to have something more modern out there for someone to compare to.
Special Thanks
- Naturally, Ferret Warlord for the published run and a lot of the strategy stuff. It's a very solid run even by today's standards, let alone early 2006.
- Omnigamer, because apparently we're just attracted to the exact same games through entirely different circumstances. His RTA work helped me figure out difficulty differences and clued me in that taking deaths on the boss rush could be faster, which... Uh, yeah, they were faster.
Suggested Screenshot - Frame 24170
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: I watched this side-by-side with the old run and couldn't find good reasons for separating the two difficulty modes. Strategies are meant to be a bit different of course, but without intimate knowledge of this game I feel the difference in gameplay is still too subtle to grasp what exactly is different and why. The author's reasoning for using easier difficulty mode makes sense to me.
Compared to how it's supposed to look:
