Difference between revisions of "Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Racing"
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== Individual stage strategy == | == Individual stage strategy == | ||
| − | TODO | + | This section describes strategies for placing 1st in each race. On easier courses, or courses where your character has a strong boost, some of the strategies may not be needed to win. Experiment with your character and incorporate the strategies you feel comfortable with. Videos of successful race wins and demonstrations of boosting strategies are included. |
| + | |||
| + | It's important to note that you cannot ''guarantee'' 1st place without spending bombs. There's always a chance that a rival will launch ahead of you at the start of the race and stay ahead the entire time. However, even in such unlucky cases, you'll usually at least be able to take 2nd or 3rd and pick up some points. 1st place can often be guaranteed with an opening bomb. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Unless otherwise stated, this section assumes you are always going at full speed when not boosting, i.e., no intentional braking to make stage sections easier (and recovering as soon as possible if you accidentally lose speed). Full speed play is the foundation on which you build race wins with boosts and bombs. | ||
| + | |||
| + | === Basalna City (Stage 1) === | ||
| + | {| class="wikitable" | ||
| + | |- | ||
| + | | | ||
| + | '''Racing difficulty:''' Low<br> | ||
| + | '''Strong characters:''' None<br> | ||
| + | '''Weak characters:''' None<br> | ||
| + | (All characters have equal boost stats for this stage) | ||
| + | |- | ||
| + | | | ||
| + | '''Demonstrations:'''<br> | ||
| + | [https://youtu.be/D6aHFJZEhBU Chitta, loop 1, boosting through entire stage]<br> | ||
| + | [https://youtu.be/_-mhhSQ7KfI Chitta, loop 2, slower strats, boss screen scroll manipulation]<br> | ||
| + | '''Clips from runs:'''<br> | ||
| + | [https://youtu.be/rV_ki0v47-4?t=19 Chitta, loop 1, a fairly standard run with safe boosting] | ||
| + | |} | ||
| + | |||
| + | This is one of the easiest races to win. Once you get ahead of the rival racers, they generally won't be able to catch up as long as you're going at max speed (boosted or unboosted). | ||
| + | |||
| + | If you're lucky, you can get ahead of everyone by boosting at the start, then take it easy for the rest of the race. Sometimes a few racers will pass you at the start, though. You have two options to deal with this: | ||
| + | * Use an opening bomb to prevent it entirely. This all but guarantees a win, unless your bomb misses some racers and they pull ahead. | ||
| + | * Boost as much as possible, and hope you overtake everyone that passed you. Sometimes you won't manage 1st if your luck is bad, but this saves a bomb. | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''Boost Routing''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | The safest places to boost are: | ||
| + | * From the start of the stage, until the first dangerous enemies show up. | ||
| + | * Around when Carpet appears, until dangerous enemies appear again. | ||
| + | * Shortly before the insect-shaped ship shows up, until the boss. The insect ship is harmless, and the only other threat is a skull ship, which you can fly above (they can only shoot downwards). | ||
| + | However, the entire stage, including the boss, can be boosted through if needed. | ||
| + | You'll need to learn where the enemies spawn and where they tend to shoot. If you stay at the top of the screen, the skull ships can only hurt you if they bump you downwards as they're spawning, so the main threat is the purple tanks that fire in your direction. The top left corner is safe most of the time, but not always. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The boss has two attacks: shoulder turrets that fire aimed bullets, and side turrets that shoot a dense spread of destructible bullets. To dodge the destructible bullets while boosting, position yourself either centered below the boss (on top of the dragon's tail) or on the wings by the shoulder turrets (most of the wing area doesn't have a hitbox). | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''On Loop 2''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | The behavior of rival racers is similar, so the race is still fairly easy to win, but boosting for the whole stage becomes more dangerous. It's harder to react to shots from the purple tanks, and the boss can corner you if the turrets use their fast-firing pattern. You may want to unboost and reboost before the boss to do the [[Shippu_Mahou_Daisakusen/Techniques#Manipulate_enemies_through_screen_scoll|screen scrolling manipulation strategy]] for extra safety. | ||
| + | |||
| + | TODO (remaining stages) | ||
== Technical details == | == Technical details == | ||
Revision as of 23:09, 4 April 2026
The racing aspect of Shippu Mahou Daisakusen is difficult and sometimes unfair, to the point that most players deliberately ignore it and go slow to make the game easier. However, successful racing is needed to reach the second loop (you must win the first loop tournament) and to see each character's 1st place ending. While the 1st place ending is the same across both loops, it's a little disappointing to get a bad ending after a successful 2-ALL, so you may want to race in the second loop as well. Plus, racing is fun!
Contents
Overview
Racing difficulty is not only highly variable per stage and character, but you are at the mercy of the random behavior of rival racers. For example, boosting at the start of the first stage will sometimes launch you ahead of all the other racers, but other times, a rival or two will quickly blast off the top of the screen at high speed and put you in 2nd or 3rd.
Furthermore, even if you boost for the entire race, you may not win if the dreaded "repeated pull-away" occurs. Every time a rival exits the top of the screen, they gain a burst of speed and it will take at least a few seconds to catch up to them. If you're unlucky, the moment you scroll the rival back onscreen, they will immediately pull away and exit the top of the screen again, getting another burst of speed. Sometimes this repeats for the entire race and you are forced to take 2nd place (or worse). The only way to counteract this is by bombing the rival during the brief window where they appear at the top of the screen, which may not always be possible.
Despite this, it's possible to consistently win the first loop tournament by a pretty wide margin. Races in the second loop tournament are more difficult, but you can often scrape together enough points to win with some luck and risky play.
Your main tools for winning races are boosting and bombing. It's also vital to manage your acceleration so that you remain at top speed when not boosting.
Boosting
Recall that if you hold down the fire button for a few seconds, you will stop shooting and get a burst of speed. You can't be slowed down in this state (even if you are bumped, or attempt to use the back or wall brake) and will exceed the normal maximum speed for the stage.
Your performance in races mostly depends on how much you boost. While rival racers can screw you over as described above, good boost routing will typically get you 1st or 2nd place in most races, at least in the first loop.
Speed while boosting is affected by four factors:
- The current stage (boosting has a stronger effect on slow stages like Outcast Castle or Deeply Dungeon)
- Your character choice (each character has different boost stats for each stage)
- Your bomb count (having less than 4 bombs gives a boost bonus, and having more than 4 gives a boost penalty)
- Your main shot power level (each power level grants a very slight increase to boost speed)
Boosting can increase speed by up to ~1.67x in the best case (slow stage and max strength boost); a more typical increase is 1.25x. There are extremely rare cases where it will have no effect on speed (weak character stats, minimum shot power, and 7 or more bombs).
For the most part, you don't need to know or worry about the details of boost speed mechanics to win races; the important thing is to boost as much as you can without sacrificing safety. However, understanding the mechanics helps explain why certain characters have a harder time winning certain stages, or why small variances in time can occur even when boosting through an entire stage. See the technical details section for the precise internal values related to speed and boosting.
Bombing
Hitting rival racers with a bomb will knock them off the bottom of the screen, and they'll typically take a while to make a comeback, if they do at all. (Though, annoyingly, in some cases they seem to appear back on screen immediately.)
An opening bomb can essentially guarantee a race win on certain courses. This is your main defense against the repeated pull-away problem; prevent them from pulling away in the first place.
Bombs can also prevent rivals from sneaking ahead mid-race, but using a bomb to take out one or two rivals may be a bit of a waste.
Since bombs are also very useful for survival, you may want to try to win races with boosting only at first, and save your bombs for if you start falling behind in points due to bad luck. On the other hand, you may prefer to build up a buffer of points by using bombs to guarantee wins on the easier courses.
Managing acceleration
When boosting, you will quickly accelerate to your top speed and remain there until you stop boosting. When not boosting (for example, to kill enemies for safety) it's important to manage your acceleration so you stay at the maximum unboosted speed. Rivals will quickly overtake you if you race at suboptimal speeds.
Recall that your character accelerates when in top half of the screen (see diagram). However, once your character reaches the maximum unboosted speed, you can position yourself anywhere on the screen and maintain your speed. So it's not necessary to stay in the top half at all times, you can just dip in there for long enough to reach the max.
If you get bumped, touch a wall, or touch the back of the screen while not boosting, you will lose speed. Some hazards also lower your speed (e.g. bubbles in Deeply Dungeon, pink wizard shots in Strato Storm). If you lose speed by accident, make sure to regain it as quickly as possible. If moving into the top half of the screen is unsafe, you can also stay where you are and charge a boost. Boosting causes you to accelerate very quickly, and you can release the boost as soon as you're at max speed again.
In general, if your goal is to win races, you almost never want to intentionally brake. Most parts of the first loop can be played comfortably at the max unboosted speed once you are familiar with stage layouts and enemy behavior. The second loop has a few sections that are extremely difficult without slowing down, so you may have to plan to lose those races and make up the points elsewhere.
Bumping
Bumping rival racers is sometimes useful, though not especially reliable. Ensure you are boosting while you bump rivals so you don't lose speed from the bumping.
At the start of each race, boost and bump the second-place racer downwards. If you're lucky, they'll fall behind and place poorly. This isn't really useful for winning individual races, but is helpful for winning the tournament, as it spreads out rival point gains.
When rivals are near the bottom of the screen, you can sometimes bump them off the bottom, which may cause them to lose speed and fall far behind (similar to how exiting the top of the screen gives them a burst of speed).
Character strengths and weaknesses
When not boosting, all characters share the same maximum speed, defined by which section of the current stage you're in. However, the maximum speed while boosting varies based on both the stage and character. Each character has stages they're "strong" at (good boost speed) and stages they're "weak" at (bad boost speed).
The raw values for each character are documented in the technical details section of this article, but they don't tell the full story, because boosting has a more significant effect on slower stages.
For example, Gain has a base boost speed of 32 (the worst possible) on Deeply Dungeon, while Bornnam has a base boost speed of 128 (the best possible). The max unboosted speed for the stage is 192, so this means (ignoring other factors) Gain will boost at 224 speed and Bornnam will boost at 320 speed. That means Gain's boost only increases speed by ~1.17x, while Bornnam's boost increases speed by ~1.67x. It is significantly harder to win the race with Gain than with Bornnam as a result.
By contrast, Chitta has 32 on Strato Storm, and Nirvana has 128. The max unboosted speed is 1280, so Chitta will boost at 1312 (1.025x) and Nirvana will boost at 1408 (1.10x). The difference in speed increase is much smaller and as a result Chitta doesn't really suffer much from her poor boost stat here.
For this reason, the tables below rank the character's strengths and weaknesses based on "boost efficiency": how close the character's boosted speed is to the optimal boost, expressed as a percentage. In the examples above, Bornnam and Nirvana have 100% efficiency, while Gain has 70% efficiency (224/320) and Chitta has ~93.2% efficiency (1312/1408).
The boost efficiency for the character is listed beside each stage name. Efficiency below 90% tends to make it noticeably harder to win the race.
Note: For speedrun purposes, the raw max boost speed may be a more useful metric than boost efficiency, which is meant to measure potential for taking 1st place in races.
| Gain | Strong at | Weak at |
|---|---|---|
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| Chitta | Strong at | Weak at |
|
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| Miyamoto | Strong at | Weak at |
|
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| Bornnam | Strong at | Weak at |
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| Nirvana | Strong at | Weak at |
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| Kickle & Laycle | Strong at | Weak at |
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| Honest John | Strong at | Weak at |
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| Bul-Gin | Strong at | Weak at |
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Individual stage strategy
This section describes strategies for placing 1st in each race. On easier courses, or courses where your character has a strong boost, some of the strategies may not be needed to win. Experiment with your character and incorporate the strategies you feel comfortable with. Videos of successful race wins and demonstrations of boosting strategies are included.
It's important to note that you cannot guarantee 1st place without spending bombs. There's always a chance that a rival will launch ahead of you at the start of the race and stay ahead the entire time. However, even in such unlucky cases, you'll usually at least be able to take 2nd or 3rd and pick up some points. 1st place can often be guaranteed with an opening bomb.
Unless otherwise stated, this section assumes you are always going at full speed when not boosting, i.e., no intentional braking to make stage sections easier (and recovering as soon as possible if you accidentally lose speed). Full speed play is the foundation on which you build race wins with boosts and bombs.
Basalna City (Stage 1)
|
Racing difficulty: Low |
|
Demonstrations: |
This is one of the easiest races to win. Once you get ahead of the rival racers, they generally won't be able to catch up as long as you're going at max speed (boosted or unboosted).
If you're lucky, you can get ahead of everyone by boosting at the start, then take it easy for the rest of the race. Sometimes a few racers will pass you at the start, though. You have two options to deal with this:
- Use an opening bomb to prevent it entirely. This all but guarantees a win, unless your bomb misses some racers and they pull ahead.
- Boost as much as possible, and hope you overtake everyone that passed you. Sometimes you won't manage 1st if your luck is bad, but this saves a bomb.
Boost Routing
The safest places to boost are:
- From the start of the stage, until the first dangerous enemies show up.
- Around when Carpet appears, until dangerous enemies appear again.
- Shortly before the insect-shaped ship shows up, until the boss. The insect ship is harmless, and the only other threat is a skull ship, which you can fly above (they can only shoot downwards).
However, the entire stage, including the boss, can be boosted through if needed. You'll need to learn where the enemies spawn and where they tend to shoot. If you stay at the top of the screen, the skull ships can only hurt you if they bump you downwards as they're spawning, so the main threat is the purple tanks that fire in your direction. The top left corner is safe most of the time, but not always.
The boss has two attacks: shoulder turrets that fire aimed bullets, and side turrets that shoot a dense spread of destructible bullets. To dodge the destructible bullets while boosting, position yourself either centered below the boss (on top of the dragon's tail) or on the wings by the shoulder turrets (most of the wing area doesn't have a hitbox).
On Loop 2
The behavior of rival racers is similar, so the race is still fairly easy to win, but boosting for the whole stage becomes more dangerous. It's harder to react to shots from the purple tanks, and the boss can corner you if the turrets use their fast-firing pattern. You may want to unboost and reboost before the boss to do the screen scrolling manipulation strategy for extra safety.
TODO (remaining stages)
Technical details
The table below shows the maximum and minimum unboosted speed values for each section of each stage. Some short sections are omitted (for example, when the wave of water comes in Deeply Dungeon, max and min speed are both briefly set to 1024).
| Stage | Min | Max |
|---|---|---|
| Basalna City | 256 | 512 |
| Air Circus | 384 | 640 |
| Air Circus (Boss) | 256 | 512 |
| Velmatic Ocean | 256 | 512 |
| Outcast Castle | 128 | 256 |
| Outcast Castle (Worms) | 64 | 192 |
| Outcast Castle (After Boss) | 256 | 512 |
| Cross Fire | 512 | 1024 |
| Deeply Dungeon | 96 | 192 |
| Deeply Dungeon (Boss) | 160 | 224 |
| Deeply Dungeon (After Boss) | 160 | 320 |
| Cold Corridor | 256 | 512 |
| Cold Corridor (Boss) | 192 | 256 |
| Cold Corridor (After Boss) | 192 | 512 |
| Strato Storm | 640 | 1280 |
| Forest of Dead! | 192 | 384 |
| Forest of Dead! (After Boss) | 256 | 512 |
| Kingdom Grandprix | 512 | 768 |
| Yashiki of Ninja | 128 | 256 |
| Yashiki of Ninja (After Boss) | 256 | 512 |
| Kobolds Tower | 192 | 384 |
| Kobolds Tower (Rocks) | 128 | 256 |
Boosting increases your speed beyond the unboosted maximum by up to 128 units, regardless of stage. This is why boosting has a more significant effect on slow stages.
Whether the maximum boost of +128 is actually reachable depends on three factors:
- Per-character per-stage base boost speed (see table below)
- Main shot power bonus (grants a small bonus for each power level)
- Bomb count modifier (grants a bonus for less than 4 bombs, or a penalty for more than 4 bombs)
The extra speed from boosting is calculated by adding together the values from the following tables. If the value exceeds 128, it is capped at 128.
Base Boost Speed
| Stage | Gain | Chitta | Miyamoto | Bornnam | Nirvana | Kickle & Laycle | Honest John | Bul-Gin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basalna City | 96 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 96 |
| Air Circus | 128 | 48 | 96 | 32 | 80 | 128 | 112 | 64 |
| Velmatic Ocean | 80 | 128 | 96 | 64 | 128 | 48 | 32 | 80 |
| Outcast Castle | 80 | 64 | 128 | 128 | 96 | 48 | 112 | 32 |
| Cross Fire | 128 | 112 | 32 | 80 | 48 | 96 | 64 | 128 |
| Deeply Dungeon | 32 | 112 | 96 | 128 | 80 | 128 | 48 | 64 |
| Cold Corridor | 64 | 128 | 48 | 96 | 32 | 80 | 128 | 112 |
| Strato Storm | 96 | 32 | 80 | 80 | 128 | 64 | 112 | 128 |
| Forest of Dead! | 80 | 64 | 112 | 128 | 96 | 32 | 128 | 48 |
| Kingdom Grandprix | 128 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 112 | 128 | 128 | 112 |
| Yashiki of Ninja | 112 | 128 | 128 | 128 | 96 | 112 | 112 | 96 |
| Kobolds Tower | 96 | 112 | 128 | 112 | 128 | 96 | 96 | 128 |
Main Shot Power Bonus
| Level 0 | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | +2 | +4 | +6 |
Bomb Count Modifier
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +32 | +24 | +16 | +8 | 0 | -8 | -16 | -32 |
