- The hack n slash Arcade game Kabuki-Z (aka 歌舞伎-Z) was produced by Kaneko and licensed by Taito in 1988. This title was most likely unfinished due to its buggy release state, and it lacking in cohesiveness and poor gameplay choices.
Gameplay
- The game has only 5 rounds, with the initial part being an autoscroller, with the end having a miniboss then the actual boss. The first autoscroller section is only slowed down if you attack. Enemies in the autoscroller sections appear in different areas randomly and usually come in groups of three. These enemies barely attack and can be forced off screen typically just by bumping into the them. Once off screen they tend to just despawn. There are sometimes environmental hazards like falling pieces of wood, chandeliers, or stones. In the final stage that are two extremely narrow pits despite the graphic making them appear rather large. This means I am just burning time until the mid boss appears. At the end of each section jumping is the fastest way to get close to the mid-boss or boss, however if you jump too close the character will be in an incorrect state when the intro mid-boss or boss intro is over so the first attack or parry will instead cause the player to jump. Because of that it is important to only jump so close. In a couple cases it is better to not get close to the boss due to how the enemy script works.
- The first three Levels (aka Rounds) you play as a samurai type character, and for the last two rounds you play as a barbarian character with extremely minor differences in gameplay between them. The character can be in the high, neutral, or low stance. The neutral stance is the starting stance and good attack range but attacks are slightly slower. The high stance has the fastest but shortest range attacks, and sometimes does lower damage than the neutral or low stance. The low stance is generally the best stance despite being slower than the high stance. In low stance, after parrying an attack from a mini-boss or boss that is also in low stance, if you get in close it is possible to do a double hit on most mini-boss or bosses. The low stance has a lower hurtbox since the character is also crouching, and most normal enemy, mini-boss, and boss attacks cannot even damage the character while in low stance.
- Changing stances is strange. Each level begins in the neutral and easiest stance to use. The two main ways to change stance is to parry with button 2 while holding Up to go into the high stance, not holding Up or Down for neutral stance, or holding Down for low stance. The other way is to jump, and then on landing press Up for high stance, not holding Up or Down for neutral stance, or holding Down for low stance. Additionally sometimes striking an enemy will cause the character to get knocked back and become stunned. When getting out of the stun state, by rapidly pressing different directionals, the character will sometimes switch to another stance, usually the low stance. I think there is another way the game can change your stance if you get knocked down by getting hit too much. There is a bug with changing stances and attacking where if you parry an attack, then on the earliest frame parry, then on the following frame attack. This eliminates the parry animation.
- Parrying is also very strange. The top and neutral parries can vary in use depending on the enemy, but in general the low parry is almost always preferred. After parrying using the top and neutral parries the followup attack can vary in damage from not even taking a bar of health, to doing one bar of health, to two bars. The low parry followup attack in contrast can also vary in damage, but it typically always does two damage except for the first hit. The low stance attack can also do double damage usually if you are close enough, and the game is not forcing you to back pedal. Followup attacks after parrying usually requires a wait on most enemies to get good damage.
- The game has a unusual mechanic that forces the character to back pedal sometimes after attacking the mini-boss or boss. The times for when this happen vary from mini-boss to boss. The Round 3 dual boss fight has this not happen at all, to the last boss where the game forces the back pedal after every single hit. Trying to manage this pack pedal mechanic is a good part of the optimization of the fights.
- The top section of the game screen is split with the health of the character on the left, and of the attacked enemy on the right.
- The two characters have the same stance, but the only real difference is visual. The barbarian requires some additional directional frames to change the stance after parrying sometimes. The barbarian's jump animation has a built in attack however that sword attack seems to be unable to hit anything.
Mini-boss and Boss Tech
There are a couple techs that are used to rapidly deal damage.
The first is to low stance parry an enemy attacking while crouching then do a double hit with the low stance attack. This does 4 bars of health. Works amazing on the Round 2 boss. Note that when using the double hit the second hit can be lost if the game forces the character to back pedal after the first hit.
The second method is to attack JUST as the character passes above or below the enemy. This can be repeated as long as the enemy does not move quickly and block the character from doing this. This can be repeated until the back pedal mechanic kicks in.
The third is to attack on a frame just as the enemy comes into range. This works well in most cases, but may depend on the stance. Enemies sometimes will prevent the same stance from doing consecutive hits.
The fourth is to attack then switch stances and attack from difference stances.
The fifth is use a turnaround attack which only works on the Round 3 boss.
Round 1
The mini-boss I get behind and attack then switch stances. This uses a bug with changing stances and attacking where if you parry an attack, then on the earliest frame parry, then on the following frame attack. This eliminates the parry animation.
The boss takes no damage while airborne which I believe is a bug, and parrying usually knocks up the enemy a little bit. This reduces the parry effectiveness for this fight. This also means trying to exploit the enemy to jump for some kind of damage loop is pointless. There is another bug with this boss where if you parry it and keep moving right then you can keep the boss hovering in the air for several seconds and it cannot do anything.
Round 2
After awhile the stage will transfer to a lower section and normally the character falls down to the lower area. However if you spam jumping by pressing both button 1 and 2 the character will stay in the air. Oddly enough the enemies spawn in the ceiling near you but slowly float down.
The mini-boss is the first form of the boss in this round. Parrying and using the low stance followup attack is very effective, but the back pedal tech reduces the effectiveness here. One the final mini-boss hit the game is forcing the character to back pedal even during the boss intro.
The boss which is really just the second form gets destroyed with the low stance followup after parrying. The boss has some serious palette issues while attacking here.
Round 3
The auto scrolling area seems much longer than intended. Jumping back and forth can show enemies appearing and re-appearing.
The mini-boss is a strange one. Here the fastest way I found was to attack and have the first attack be blocked. There is no visual indication of WHY the hit is blocked but it is. Then just keep moving right when possible and attack. The mini-boss for some reason cannot be parried for any of its attacks.
The dual boss fight here is hard. They bounce all over and attack very fast. The best method here is to force both of them into a corner and continually attack. I do not understand why the two bosses have such an extremely long recovery time on the initial hit. The game waits until they hit the wall or the end of the screen. There is a unique trick that is possible in this fight where if you press the direction away from the boss and press Button 1 for attack, then hold the opposite direction towards the enemy, the enemy script does not block or parry and instead just eats the hit. This is used a couple times when the bosses randomly would block hits.
Round 4
For some reason we are a barbarian fighting chess pieces that seem unable to even damage the character now.
The mini-boss is tricky here. The low stance parry followup attack is the best method for doing damage, but it cannot be used a lot due to the mini-boss having a really lengthy recovery time. There is a trick to this where if you attack with different stances then you can do damage, but if you attack with the same stance while it is "in recovery" or whatever that is where it moves backward after getting hit, you can do some good damage.
The boss has nothing special, it plays just like Round 2 mini-boss.
Round 5
Bizarre flippy enemies in the autoscroller section. The one thing of note really is the very narrow pitfall which can kill the player.
The final mini-boss of the game can be defeated by holding right which makes it fall into a pit. This...this...was certainly a game development design choice!
The boss has the back pedal mechanic on max here. After every attack for half the fight the character moves all the way left (or right) depending on the facing direction. For the final half of the fight the back pedal mechanic seems to lessen the length of the forced knockback. Here low stance attacking as soon as possible works out the best.
Potential Time Saves
Figure out a way to stop the back pedal mechanic or at least mitigate it.
Darkman425: Scooting on in to claim this for judging.
Darkman425: The autoscrolling levels are straightforward enough that there isn't too much to worry about there. The complexities of handing the jank boss fights to get damage in as much as possible seems well optimized for this game. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
Publisher's note: there's a lot of flashing after defeating the Round 3 boss (two ninja ladies no longer in a big dude suit) and briefly at the start of Round 4. Please be sure to note this in the publication.
