• Battle Arena Toshinden (USA) was one of the launch titles for the Playstation 1 in 1995. Battle Arena Toshinden was also one of the first 3D fighting games.

Settings

  • Emu: Bizhawk 2.9.1 with Nymashock core.
  • Setting Difficulty at Very Hard which is the highest. This also means the true last boss Sho is fought since you have to beat Hard or Very Hard without dying to fight him.
  • Timer left alone since it makes no difference in speed.
  • Set number of Round Bouts to 1.

Mechanics

  • There is a Strong and Weak punch and kick.
  • Ducking reduces hit area and can also do attacks while crouching.
  • Blocking is done on the ground by holding the direction away from the facing direction. This stops the slight movement possible while on the ground. Blocking is done automatically if the opponent is attacking and the back direction is being held.
  • Back step is performed by double tapping away from the facing direction.
  • Rolling is done with the bumper buttons.
  • Running is performed by double tapping the facing direction. Running in the game is very strange and limited. The main issue with running is that there are no moves that are tied to running, and in fact running has a minimum period before the player can even STOP running. This mean that running should only be used when there is a decent distance between the fighters. In addition running will turn around if the opponent happens to be behind the character. So it is not possible to jump over an opponent then run to the edge of the stage.
  • Jumping is very floaty and mid air moves are very hit or miss. Usually only one mid air move is possible with only a couple exceptions that being Fo's Mystic Sphere, a fireball move and Mondo's special jump move, and Ellis's air spiral move that can be then be interrupted with one other move. Jumping while blocking will only result in a jump straight up, but if a jump is done without holding the direction backward beforehand a backward or forward jump is possible. Jumping distance is increased by holding the direction while in mid air.
  • Throwing an opponent is done by pressing back and one of the two punch buttons. Characters
  • Each character has a desperation move done when their health is red. This is taught after beating Gaia. The move is not shown if Sho will be the unlocked to fight.
  • Each character has a Super Move that is taught to the player after defeating the secret boss Sho.
  • Hitting a character in the back will do extra damage.
  • Some moves can hit multiple times.
  • Combos are only a couple hits due to how the characters get knocked back after each hit. So it is not possible to combo a character out of the ring from the start.
  • Characters will fall down to the ground after taking a certain amount of damage, or being hit in the back by a strong hit, or hit in mid-air. There are several different falling animations, but generally the harder the hit the more they get knocked back if it is determined to be a knockdown. This means there is at least a 3 second penalty for them to get back up. But some very hard hits to the back will make a character do this stumbling forward walk with a slow recovery animation that takes around 5 seconds.
  • After knocking a character out of the ring the game advances to the next fight screen faster if the character is both stationary and facing the camera.

Chosen Character : Kayin

This tas will not use codes to use Gaia or Sho. When looking at speedrun.com the names are wrong often for the character actually selected.
Kayin is used since he has the best throw move. It is a backwards throw and it launches the opponent the furthest distance. Kayin is one of the best characters in the game since he has a flexible moveset with a good mix of speed and range. His Deadly Rain move is possibly the best move in the game due to its instant 360 degree large radius. Kayin has a mid air somersault and a ground kick that can hit upwards into the air somewhat. He can use a ranged fireball special too.

Opponents

The enemy script in general tries to use moves that could possibly hit, but not always. There is something partially broken with the AI where they may just stay far away and use a couple close in range attacks, then get closer a bit, then maybe use another close range attack, then edge a little closer, etc. A large part of the tas is managing this strange behavior. There are a couple opponents that have troublesome enemy script and those are the ones that have long range attacks which they favor. Most opponents on very hard will input read and do actions the next frame based on the inputs. Attacking to manipulate them has to be done carefully since they will sometimes do weird slow actions. For instance even if you are across the ring and do a close range kick, the opponent may block instantly, perform a short range special attack, or roll to dodge an attack that could not possibly hit them. Jumping is an action that can give odd reactions from some opponents that have "anti-air" moves. The general approach to the stages is to lure them to an edge and get a Ring Out. The opponent's script reacts pretty randomly to different attacks so trying different attacks at different times is used to manipulate the opponents.

Mondo

His scripts likes using his extended spear specials a lot as well as his specials that make him rise up into the air. Back stepping is the fastest way of getting to the edge of the stage, but Mondo will keep using spear pokes and take a long time to approach the edge. Using backward jumps works well to get him to approach well. Here once Mondo is close enough Kayin can do a throw and get Mondo out of the ring.

Fo

He decides to use his anti-air move, and while it would not have ring outted himself, Kayin's ground special kick move hits him just before his lands, causing Fo to be knocked backwards out of the ring.

Duke

Poor Duke and his Southern Cross. The script seems to be able to use Southern Cross from almost across the ring and due to its high speed it beautifully and wonderfully homes in on my position...and then after Kayin rolls Duke performs a Ring Out on himself.

Ellis

She is an odd opponent that has some odd air specials, but with some manipulation was able to get her to try and hit me in the air with her anti-air, but she ring outs herself.

Eiji

This guy is exceptional in how reactive and just weirdly not able to tell distance he is. Getting him to cooperate like this took a awhile. Probably the most broken enemy script in the game. He will do odd stuff like even if you are standing in front of him he may decide to jump into the air and do his air special that has no hope of hitting. Jumping anywhere often makes him do a series of short range attacks.

Sofia

Her enemy script is super trolly. Most of the time without manipulation she sits back and will spam her fireball move. Her second option is to use her spinning special slowly making her way too you. Happy with this manipulation. She was probably the hardest to manipulate after Eiji.

Rungo

Again this is an opponent has that annoying script issue with using close range attacks that have no hope of hitting. Did the best manipulation I could to get him near the edge for a ring out.

Kayin

This mirror fight was not bad with Kayin's aggressive enemy script. He wants to get close in and that works out just fine to throw him out of the ring.

Gaia

This guy cannot be thrown so my initial idea was to roll behind him and knock him out, or to get his extremely high jump to come out which often straight up causes him to ring out. However, after trying some different setups Gaia surprised me by yeeting himself off the edge without any prompting or even trying to attack me. No idea why, but it is hilarious. Normally Gaia is a hard boss with many of his moves having i-frames because of course the standard last boss has to be cheap. Gaia potentially can two shot a player if certain moves hit fully. I would not be surprised if Gaia could potentially one shot a character if one of his strong moves hits the back of the character.

Sho

This is a secret boss that is unlocked on hard or very hard when you go though the game and defeat the "last boss" Gaia without any continues. His moves are an amalgamation of both Eiji and Kayin's moveset. All his moves come out fast and with higher priority than the player. Sho here is moderately aggressive without needing too much manipulation although for some reason he kept doing his version of Eiji's helicopter attack despite being far away from Kayin. Eventually I got him to be behind Kayin, and one Deadly Rain later Sho was knocked out of the ring.

Post Credit

  • There is a post credit scene that needs a start button to teach the Super Move for Kayin. Should not be needed for timing, but if someone wants to show that it just needs Start to be pressed.

Recommended Screenshot

Frame 7083

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: If I have the timing right on this, you seem to be 55 seconds faster than the WR. This is a good chunk of time, over human effort. This run doesn't waste time clearing out each round. Great job on this run!
Accepting.
Spikestuff: Fighters Destiny sure looks different.
GOOD THROWING, 2 POINTS WON, WIN--
feos: Restored cycle count.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #9187: CoolHandMike's PSX Battle Arena Toshinden in 03:57.66
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4042
Fun TAS. Instead of having an optimal combo, you want to ring out each opponent, meaning you have to manipulate them into destroying themselves in their own unique way. It's like every character gets a chance to anti-shine!
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1107
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
This is a really cool fighting game TAS. I love how you just toy with the AI, the best parts are when they just throw themselves off the stage without even being hit! I voted "yes".
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Dimon12321
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Posts: 1216
Location: Romania
Sweet dReams! Yes vote
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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Posts: 15533
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6089] PSX Battle Arena Toshinden by CoolHandMike in 03:57.66