Started this run back in 2005, and after 8 years in limbo, it's finally done. This run uses Zan/Blaze and plays on Hard difficulty on the US version of Streets of Rage 3 (which is quite a bit harder than its Japanese counterpart, Bare Knuckle III). This is 8 minutes faster than my previous 1 player run.

Technically, damage is taken to save time (only a few times, I cancel Blaze's elbow by hitting her with Zan), but due to a bug where you gain extra life beyond your lifebar after exiting a scene, you'll never actually see that damage on the lifebars.

There are many speed/entertainment tradeoffs, especially during long boss battles that would otherwise be very boring (the Yamatos in particular).

The major bug used in this run is the multi-hit bug. This occurs when both players are hitting two or more of the same enemies at the same time, causing hits to stack quickly. Unlike the "Handshake of Death" bug in Streets of Rage 2, this one does not freeze the players, and is slightly less lethal. I only found out about the bug when I reached the Stage 2 nightclub, so it isn't used until then. Redoing the run from that point would have made it more monotonous, as the bug gets used quite a bit from that point onward.

AI manipulation was the hardest part of this TAS. Enemies' behavior is determined by one (or both) player's position and actions, and not having the ability to dissect their AI routines means a lot of frustrating trial-and-error, especially with the stubborn/annoying enemy types (Goldies, Zacks, Tigers and robots). Because of this, you'll see some unusual solutions to getting the enemies to do what I want, especially in Stage 7.

These enemies (the jumping robots, not the Robot X clones) have many unique properties. They have a much longer hit stun than other enemies, making the multi-hit bug useless against them. They also have interesting interactions with grabbing flurry attacks (Zan lets go after two flurry hits, and Blaze can repeatedly knee if she has multiple robots in one spot).

Some robots can self-destruct, but only under certain conditions. Here's what I've determined about this behavior:

Only 4 robots in the game are non-white and have more than 1 lifebar, unfortunately. Otherwise, having robots with less than 1 lifebar self-destruct loses time versus just killing them normally.

Axel/Blaze would probably be faster due to Axel having a more damaging jumping downward attack. Bestiajerules' 1 player run shows a bug where on Robot Y's last hit caused him to skip his death animation, saving a few seconds. Try as I may, I couldn't replicate this bug.

Suggested screenshots: Frame 45715, 83332, 118673

feos: Accepting for Moons and publishing...