These are various strategies discovered for the opponent Soda Popinski. While some of these strats maybe doable in real time, these demo movies are Tool-assisted and demonstrate the strat in a frame perfect manner. These times present the fastest possible time that can be obtained with these particular strats.

The idea behind this strat is to exploit Soda's weakness. If you intercept one of his uppercuts with a body blow, the next star uppercut will instantly knock him down. The logic of each phase then is the same: get him to attempt an uppercut as soon as possible.

All phases start by stopping Soda from throwing his hooks by throwing two left body blows. He then has one of six random events. He could either throw more hooks or uppercuts. And his delay could be fast, medium, or slow. It must be manipulated so that he throws uppercuts with as small a delay as possible.

This TAS strat differs from the Phil & Genisto strat in how it intercepts his uppercut. They way the game works is that on a certain frame it reads if the user is pressing down, if so, Soda will pause in a crouching position in which he can be punched. In non-TAS strats, Mac will have to duck, then come out of ducking position, then punch. In the Phil & Genisto strat, down is press for just 1 frame, which isn't enough to start the ducking animation, so Mac can hit Soda much sooner. This strat discovered by adelikat begins punching at Soda THEN presses down. If timed right, the game reads the down press and causes Soda to pause at the same time the punch lands.

After getting the star, throw a body blow to intercept Soda's 2nd uppercut, then deliver a star uppercut that will send him to the canvas.

Somewhat interesting fact: There is actually a 1 frame window where Mac will intercept Soda's uppercut so soon that it won't trigger the insta-knockdown uppercuts.

TODO: Make vid and describe

TODO: video

Using the clock stopping glitch it is possible to get infinite points on Soda.

TODO: Describe how

In Round 1, after the first two hooks, Soda will either do 2 more hooks, or 2 uppercuts. If the lower nibble of the RNG (0x0018) is 00-03 he will decide to do jabs, other wise he will do uppercuts. Therefore, a 12/16 chance he will do uppercuts.

All Speed strats depend on this happening in all 3 phases, which is a 216/512 (or 42.18% chance.

(Not relevant to Speedrun strats) After the two uppercuts, he will sometimes do a Jab, this occurs of the lower nibble is 08 or more, so a 8/16 (50/50) chance.

There are 2 possible timings he will use to initiate the uppercut pattern. If the lower nibble is odd, he will do a fast uppercut, else he will do a slow.

So the odds of him doing a fast uppercut in each phase is 6/16 * 6/16 * 6/16 or approx a 5% chance.

TODO: Some stars are 50%, confirm this