Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Racing

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!

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
	Air Circus (100%) Cross Fire (100%) Kingdom Grandprix (100%) Strato Storm (97.7%) Yashiki of Ninja (95.8%)	Deeply Dungeon (70%) Outcast Castle (87.5%) Cold Corridor (90%) Forest of Dead! (90.6%) Velmatic Ocean (92.5%) Kobolds Tower (93.8%)
Chitta	Strong at	Weak at
	Velmatic Ocean (100%) Cold Corridor (100%) Yashiki of Ninja (100%) Cross Fire (98.6%) Kobolds Tower (96.9%) Deeply Dungeon (95%)	Outcast Castle (83.3%) Forest of Dead! (87.5%) Air Circus (89.6%) Strato Storm (93.2%)
Miyamoto	Strong at	Weak at
	Outcast Castle (100%) Yashiki of Ninja (100%) Kobolds Tower (100%) Forest of Dead! (96.9%) Strato Storm (96.6%) Air Circus (95.8%)	Cold Corridor (87.5%) Deeply Dungeon (90%) Cross Fire (91.7%)
Bornnam	Strong at	Weak at
	Outcast Castle (100%) Deeply Dungeon (100%) Forest of Dead! (100%) Yashiki of Ninja (100%) Kobolds Tower (96.9%) Strato Storm (96.6%)	Air Circus (87.5%) Velmatic Ocean (90%)
Nirvana	Strong at	Weak at
	Velmatic Ocean (100%) Strato Storm (100%) Kobolds Tower (100%) Kingdom Grandprix (98.2%)	Deeply Dungeon (85%) Cold Corridor (85%) Outcast Castle (91.7%) Yashiki of Ninja (91.7%)
Kickle & Laycle	Strong at	Weak at
	Air Circus (100%) Deeply Dungeon (100%) Kingdom Grandprix (100%) Cross Fire (97.2%) Yashiki of Ninja (95.8%)	Outcast Castle (79.2%) Forest of Dead! (81.3%) Velmatic Ocean (87.5%) Cold Corridor (92.5%) Kobolds Tower (93.8%)
Honest John	Strong at	Weak at
	Cold Corridor (100%) Forest of Dead! (100%) Kingdom Grandprix (100%) Strato Storm (98.9%) Air Circus (97.9%) Outcast Castle (95.8%) Yashiki of Ninja (95.8%)	Deeply Dungeon (75%) Velmatic Ocean (85%) Kobolds Tower (93.8%)
Bul-Gin	Strong at	Weak at
	Cross Fire (100%) Strato Storm (100%) Kobolds Tower (100%) Kingdom Grandprix (98.2%) Cold Corridor (97.5%)	Outcast Castle (75%) Deeply Dungeon (80%) Forest of Dead (84.4%) Air Circus (91.7%) Yashiki of Ninja (91.7%) Velmatic Ocean (92.5%)

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 Strong characters: None Weak characters: None (All characters have equal boost stats for this stage)

Demonstrations: Chitta, loop 1, boosting through entire stage Chitta, loop 2, slower strats, boss screen scroll manipulation Clips from runs: 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 screen scrolling manipulation strategy for extra safety.

Air Circus (Stage 2A)

Racing difficulty: High Strong characters: Gain, Kickle & Laycle, Honest John Weak characters: Bornnam, Chitta, Bul-Gin

Demonstrations: Chitta, loop 1, kills boss Bornnam, loop 1, uses opening bomb, times out boss Chitta, loop 2, uses 3 bombs Clips from runs: Miyamoto, loop 1, uses opening bomb Gain, loop 2, gets 3rd place

This race can be tough to win. Once the scrolling slows down for the boss fight, rivals will start to catch up to you and there's not much you can do if they pass you. Boost aggressively to put distance between you and the rivals before the boss starts. Weak characters have a particularly hard time getting 1st, and might need to get a little lucky with enemy bullets taking out rival racers at the end.

Depending on your overall tournament routing, this may be a good stage to not worry about your placement and try to make up the points elsewhere.

Boost Routing

The safest places to boost are:

• From the start until enemies appear.
• Through the gem hallway near the start.
• Through the stop signs before the open-air section.
• At the end of the open-air section, up until the boss.
• After killing the boss, until enemies start spawning.

However, these are short boosts that may not be enough to get 1st place.

Less obviously, you can safely maintain boost through the entire open-air section. Sit in the top left corner; the wizards will circle you but rarely fire. When the turtles appear, their first volley of shots will contain one aimed directly at you, which you can tap-dodge downwards, then get back in position. You will need to dodge two shots from the turtles. After the second one, get out of the corner before the stage wall pushes you downwards.

There is a movement pattern (see demonstration videos) that allows you to maintain boost from the start of the stage, past the gem hallway, and up to the large formation of green wizards (where it's recommended you stop boosting and shoot the wizards for safety). After killing the last of the green wizards, you can boost again and carry it through the stop signs and open-air section, up to the boss.

There are two approaches to the boss:

• Maintain boost as much as possible until the boss times out. You'll need to briefly unboost and shoot when it fires the spread of destructible bullets.
• Kill the boss quickly, then try to find safe places to boost during the enemy rush afterwards.

In the enemy rush, the sections without any blue wizards are generally safe to boost in, since the turrets on the walls just shoot aimed bullets that can be misdirected. In the final section with the mix of green and blue wizards, it's reasonably safe just to stay still and let them fire around you. Even if you get bumped by something, it'll often happen after the end-of-stage invincibility has activated.

On Loop 2

Rivals catch up faster, and the boost strategy for the open-air section no longer works due to changes in wizard behavior. The boss is a nightmare and will probably force you to dump multiple bombs. Incidentally, dumping multiple bombs is the only real way to fend off rivals when they catch up at the end. It's probably a bad idea to play this stage in the second loop anyways.

Velmatic Ocean (Stage 2B)

Racing difficulty: Low Strong characters: Chitta, Nirvana Weak characters: Honest John, Kickle & Laycle, Bornnam

Demonstrations: Honest John, loop 1, uses opening bomb Chitta, loop 2 Clips from runs: Miyamoto, loop 2, uses opening bomb Bornnam, loop 2

A relatively easy race to win. Rivals will steadily catch up to you if you aren't boosting, but the pirate ship section provides an easy boosting opportunity. Even weak characters can typically win the race as long as nobody pulls ahead at the start, which can be guaranteed with a successful opening bomb.

Boost Routing

The pirate ship: The easiest and most important boost strategy for this stage. Around the middle, a pirate ship appears. As long as it is not fully destroyed, it will remain onscreen until the boss. Destroy all but one or two turrets, then boost while dodging the occasional aimed bullets. This alone is often enough to win the race.

Through the cliff section: This is a little trickier. Start boosting after you pass the huts on the beach, and move to the top left corner. It remains safe here for a while, up until the two large black ships switch sides and the green tanks start coming from the cliffs. At this point, move downwards and start shooting (or bomb for safer passage).

The boss: It's safe to boost for most of the fight, except for the arm-swinging attack that shoots a wide spread of destructible bullets. Switch to shooting when you see him wind up for it.

On Loop 2

The stage is harder, but the race is still fairly easy. Rivals are a bit faster, and tend to catch up around the start of the pirate ship section if you don't boost before then, but that's exactly the point where you can start boosting safely.

As with many bosses on the second loop, the arm-swinging attack now features a mix of destructible and normal bullets, so shooting through it no longer works. Instead, dodge it by flying close to the boss and staying directly centered under him. This is much harder, but on the plus side, it allows you to stay boosted for the entire fight.

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