Hey all, I think this would be the most interesting SNES beat-em-up for our treatment. Why?
A freakin' HUGE number of routes, that's why. It's going to take a lot of effort to figure out the best one, I will say...
I've played this game a lot and can offer some useful advice, including the following:
1. Use the Japanese version (Rushing Beat Shura). Music is the default setting (in the US version, boring background noise is), and there's a lot more of it. Also, there are a few enemies that were removed from the US one (i.e. mechanical spiders). It gives you more lives, but that's the only way in which it is easier. Oh yeah, and the super moves look much cooler. =P
2. This game is all about throws, punch combos cause almost no hitstun and are pretty useless in general. With luck manipulation you may be able to get something out of them, though. There are also A-button attacks which drain your life...some are good, others not.
3. Dick and Elfin (Flynn and Echo in the US one) are far and away the two best characters. They're the two fastest AND also more damaging than anyone besides Jimmy (Prokop)...you have no reason to ever use anyone else. See, after grabbing an enemy, they can hit them 3 times before throwing; everyone else except Jimmy can only do two hits, and Dick and Elfin do just as much damage per hit as them. Although Jimmy does more damage per grab than anyone, he is WAY too slow to be worth considering (it's only a little more damage, we're not talking SoR2 Max here!).
Elfin is much faster than anyone else...her dash attack is going to be very important for forward movement. Her throws are pretty straightforward. Her A-button attack is crap (a dinky 1-hit somersault kick), but it's a small price to pay for everything else.
Dick is the second-fastest character, same strength as Elfin. His A-button attack is actually good (multi-hit dash punch, good damage). When throwing with him, hold up/left or up/right to throw them farther, or left or right to throw them straight down (quicker, same damage).
4. This game has a rather odd feature...if you throw an enemy into another enemy, the thrown enemy takes double damage and the guy on the receiving end takes nothing. This is why it's a very good thing that Dick and Elfin can throw people so far...the video should contain lots of 2-4x damage throws. If you're only fighting one enemy, Flynn's normal throw is better than the upward one.
5. By holding X+A, you can execute super moves that hit everything on the screen for massive damage. However, you only get two of them per life (forget if that's per character, or just two period) and cannot acquire any others. And they don't work on the final boss, so don't save them for him...but everything else is fair game.
6. In quite a few rooms, you don't have to fight anyone. Just make your way to an exit.
7. While grabbing an enemy, you are invulnerable to projectiles. Might come in handy.
8. OK, here's the controversy...if you grab an enemy, then move the controller in a half-circle motion from back to forward and press Y (like Dhalsim's Yoga Flame in Street Fighter II, essentially), you will perform a much more powerful throw that also launches the enemy farther. This is not documented in the American manual, don't know about the Japanese one...should this be allowed? If so, there's almost no reason to use any other throws (delivering a final blow is the only thing I can think of).
Another one I'm not sure about is Dick's "Super Saiyan Mode". When he's below 10% life, hold R (the block button...don't see it coming into play with luck on your side, but you never know) and perform the SF2 fireball motion and press X. It's a pain to execute for some reason, but ridiculously cheesy; you turn into a palette swap of the last boss, become invincible, and can punch everything for stupid damage. You may be able to use this just once per life, I don't remember exactly, but it's definitely awesome if allowed.
Alright then, that's all for now, just wanted to get some info out there.
-Josh
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice