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!
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.
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.
Bumping
Bumping rival racers is also 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
TODO
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 |
