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Zelda Skyward Sword - Demise - No damage

I've said this a lot already, but Zelda: Skyward Sword's motion control was really wasted on the boring enemies in the game. Most of them attack maybe once every ten seconds, and far too many feature auto-blocking. That is, it doesn't matter how they're holding their weapon or shield initially, they'll always block at least your first slash unless you can catch them off guard, and you have to force them into blocking one direction so that you can then hit them from another. And Lizalfos — about the only strong enemy you encounter a lot of — are even worse. No matter how you swing at them, they always dodge until you've swung enough... At which point they sit motionless, hiding under their shield with one spot clearly exposed, as if to scream at you, "Swing in this direction to hit me!" After the initial thrill of the motion control wears off and you see through the enemies' gimicks, the result is that combat in SS tends to feel more like a series of button prompts or routine patterns than fluid and dynamic tests of your reflexes.

But then, at the very end, the game throws Demise at you and gives you a glimpse of what could've been. Unfortunately, he still does the auto-block BS, but he also attacks quite often, which does a lot to break the feel of monotonous button prompts. You actually have to pay attention to more than just the direction he's holding his sword, or he'll beat you down while you mindlessly try to get past his blocking. The first round of the fight is close to what I expected Darknuts to be like in SS, except then they went and left Darknuts out of the game for some stupid reason, and despite its flaws, it's genuinely fun and actually somewhat difficult.

The second round is slower-paced than the first, but it's more complicated to make up for that. Even the tired stun-and-slash mechanic that's overused for 3D Zelda bosses is done in a much more interesting way. Because even though you're not directly attacking Demise while trying to get lightning to strike your sword to stun him with, you're still having to balance offense with defense. Offensively, you're attempting to get a lightning charge, while defensively, you're trying to avoid Demise's attacks. And what makes this complicated is the fact that you don't know when exactly lightning will strike, and when it does, you're vulnerable for a short period of time. So if you're not careful about when you raise your sword to try for a charge, you can end up getting attacked right as lightning strikes, which not only hurts you, but also makes you lose your charge.

So yeah, I have to at least give Nintendo props for this fight, even if most of the rest of the game's combat is subpar. I had a lot of fun replaying it and learning its intricacies, which resulted in the below video.

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Played in real time on Dolphin 3.0. The depth of field effect is turned off and other graphics may not look quite right because I had to turn the settings down to get it to run at a decent frame rate.

During the first round, the most important thing to remember is to avoid swinging too quickly. Demise's attacks all have a very long windup animation and they're always either one or two slashes, which makes them easy to block with shield bashes, but you won't be able to shield bash if you're still hacking away with your sword. Space your swings out, and if you see him pull back for an attack, stop and get ready to shield bash.

Demise's blocking can be easily exploited by swinging in the right directions with the right timing. When you first run up to him, swing down, then up, then down again and the third slash will almost always hit. (Up-down-up also works, but I find starting on down easier.) Then just keep alternating between up and down, and every other slash will hit him if you time it right. But again, don't swing too quickly, and watch out for Demise's attacks. After blocking an attack, start the pattern over.

When Demise falls to his knees after getting hit enough, you'll have time for about five quick slashes. After that, he'll block your next slash and then counter with a two-swing attack, so count your hits and be ready to stop swinging and shield bash when he gets up.

After 25 hits, the second round will begin. Don't try to attack Demise until you've stunned him during this phase. While his sword is electrocuted, you'll be hurt if he blocks, and if you're attacking him when lightning strikes his sword, you'll get thrown back and damaged. Instead, stay about two sword lengths away and wait for him to fire a sword beam and lose the electric charge. Sidestep the beam, then raise your sword straight up in the air, like when charging a Skyward Strike, and wait for lightning to strike it.

With your sword charged with electricity, fire a sword beam at Demise to stun him, then move in to attack. Once he recovers, backflip away so you're out of his sword's range, then raise your sword again to repeat the pattern. The trick is to stay far enough away from Demise so that he can't hit you with his sword, but close enough that he won't use his charging attack.

If he does crouch down and then charge at you, lower your sword and get ready to shield bash to block his swing when he reaches you. If lightning strikes your sword just before Demise reaches you, you won't be able to shield bash to block his attack.

After 20 more hits, you'll knock Demise onto his back and be prompted to use a fatal blow. Don't do it. It may be possible to get him the first time you knock him down, but it must require extremely accurate timing if it is because I've never managed it. Each time you knock him down, he'll stay down a little longer, though.

When Demise gets up, lightning won't strike your sword for a bit, and he'll usually get a charge before you can. Again, stay about two sword lengths away and try to get him to fire a sword beam. Getting him to do it seems more difficult than at the start of the fight, however, so you may need to just raise your sword to try to get a charge of your own.

If lightning strikes your sword just as Demise fires a sword beam, DO NOT try to block it with your own sword beam. You're more likely to get hit this way and you'll also waste your charge. Sidestep it as usual, then counter with your own sword beam.

After another 5 hits, you'll knock Demise down again. Count your hits and then stop swinging, because you'll need to be quick in activating the fatal blow to get him on the second knockdown. If you activate it too late, Demise will dodge and then usually get an automatic hit on you while your sword is stuck in the ground.

Nyaa~

I had this single from Momoi Haruko sitting in my Downloads folder for months and never got around to unzipping and listening to it. Yesterday I finally fixed that – and then laughed as I listened to the Nyan Myan Ver. of the song and realized that, yes, it's a whole 1:20 of Haruko just making cat noises in place of the lyrics. Of course I immediately thought of Miss A. But then I was disappointed that it wasn't on YouTube, for convenient Nyarolling, so I had to upload it.

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Click the HQ button for stereo sound.

Nyaa~

Title: Chicchana Bouken (Nyan Myan Ver.)
Artist: Momoi Haruko
Album: Chicchana Bouken - PRISM ARK Chibi Kagura no Bouken Theme Song Single

ちっちゃなぼうけん (にゃんみゃん Ver.)
桃井はるこ
『ちっちゃなぼうけん』 PRISM ARK 『ちび神楽のぼうけん』 主題歌

Super Metroid - Phantoon - No damage

Well now, I never thought I'd care enough to make this fight happen with no damage but here it is. Since all the previous strategies I'd come up with required a large amount of luck to pull off no damage with, I never cared to spend the time replaying it over and over again until I got a perfect fight. (Also, I just don't like this battle; I was willing to spend over six hours on Ridley because it was a fun fight and entirely skill-based but this one is rather boring.) Some recent comments on my other two Phantoon videos, though, got me thinking about different strategies for the fight. Thus, after a few hours of pondering, testing, and practice, I ended up with this video.

The main difference between this video and my previous one is how I deal with Phantoon instantly appearing after being invisible. There's no way to predict where Phantoon will appear, which means no way to avoid it if it happens to appear on top of you. This was the big sticking point that kept me from pulling off no damage before.

Now, the main tip I've seen for avoiding Phantoon's instant appearances is to keep moving. This advice is worthless, however, because without being able to predict where Phantoon will appear it's just as likely you'll run into Phantoon appearing in front of you as you are to avoid Phantoon appearing where you moved from. I'm not sure why people think this is a good idea because I've tried it and the number of hits and dodges were pretty much the same as standing motionless.

A tip that actually makes sense, on the other hand, is to minimize the area where you can be hit by making yourself smaller – you can do this by rolling into a ball. Assuming Phantoon's appearance location is completely random, taking up one third the space while morphed into a ball would result in getting hit a third as often. I tested this idea and found that it works very well; while morphed into a ball, only very, very rarely did Phantoon appear low enough in the room to hit me.

So, having found a viable strategy, I gained the motivation to sit and practice enough to pull off a no damage fight. There was still some luck involved, since there are still situations where Phantoon can trap you with too many flames to avoid, but little enough to be tolerable.

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Phantoon beaten without taking damage. Played in real time on Snes9x v1.43+.

Phantoon is the hardest boss in the game to avoid damage on due to the amount of luck required to avoid some of its attacks. The strategy shown in this video minimizes your chances of getting trapped by unavoidable hits but it's still not entirely consistent.

Phantoon's normal attack pattern is fairly simple: It will drop flames for a bit while visible, then open its eye -- during which time it's vulnerable to attack -- while sending out a ring of flames around itself. After that, Phantoon will be invisible while dropping flames until it appears with its eye open, along with a line of flames that will drop from the ceiling. Phantoon will continue appearing with lines of flames until it's damaged, at which point its attacks will reset to the start of the pattern.

Now, the first thing you need to know is that the flames Phantoon drops from its closed eye won't hurt you until they've touched the ground or a wall. And the second thing you need to know is that you can use the Charge Beam to pass through all its flames unharmed. Simply charge up a beam shot and spin jump through them. This will save you from vast amounts of damage.

It's also important to know how Phantoon will react to certain attacks. If you hit it with a super missile it will cause Phantoon to appear at the top of the room and send eight waves of flames down at you, but these are easy to avoid by using the Charge Beam. If you hit Phantoon with a charged Ice/Wave/Spazer Beam shot, it will immediately disappear. If you hit Phantoon with a charged beam shot with only one or two of the other beams equipped, or with a missile, Phantoon will fly around the room for a bit, during which time it will be vulnerable to attack but will also damage you if it runs into you. Afterwards, Phantoon will always restart its attacks from the beginning of the pattern.

In Despair Once Again

I've been working on Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei ep2 lately. Here I thought encoding the raw to use in the subbing would be easier this time, since I actually know what I'm doing now instead of learning on the fly. But, no, there were complications.

Simply getting a decent raw to encode from was a small learning experience. For ep1, Freelance-RAWs put a DVD image up on Tokyo Toshokan so I grabbed that and was able to encode directly from the DVD source. This time, they put up a 1280x720 upscale, leaving me going, "WTF mates? ^^" (For those that don't know, DVD resolution is 720x480 which then gets stretched out to 853x480 for 16:9 widescreen videos.) I messed around with it, downscaled it back to 848x480, and re-encoded. It ended up looking okay but not great.

After a couple days of still no DVD image showing up on Tokyo Toshokan, I decided to go hunting for one myself. Which involved learning how to use a couple Japanese peer-to-peer programs. I tried Perfect Dark first (no, no relation to the N64 game of the same name) and found two upscaled raws, one of which was the one Freelance-RAWs had uploaded. Apparently people upscale the DVDs for playback on the PS3, since it was labeled "PS3 upscale" or something like that, though I have no idea why. Then I tried Share and, lo and behold, I discovered a DVD image! This made the Des happy but I'm still wondering why the heck Freelance-RAWs uploaded the crappy upscale but not the DVD image this time.

So now I've now got my pretty new encode which kicks the crap out of the other one I did from the upscale, with the OP and title screen subs done.

Earlier I also did styling and scene timing for the ED subs, but I still need to do the karaoke timing for them. Which will have to wait until Dagger gives the ED a look (hint hint ^_^) since I just grabbed the romaji and an English translation off the net to have something to work with and am not sure if it's correct.

But enough ranting. I know what you all really want are some juicy screen shots.

Hopefully we'll be able to get it released some time next month.

And, since I probably won't get around to posting again until after Christmas...

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Ear!

Ha Ha Ha

I'm sure most people have already seen this linked in the chat but I have to post it here anyway:

As soon as I saw that scene in Tales of the Abyss ep7, I knew I had to extract it to mercilessly Jaderoll Gome with. It was just too perfect.

In other news, I went through my ImageShack account just now and tagged all my images. So now you can sort them by anime, video game, specific series, etc. Finding stuff I'd previously uploaded was getting to be a pain, what with the ever-increasing number of images in my account, but this should alleviate the problem.

Last night I also got Adam to fix the bug with sorting World posts by tag. Now, when you click one of those shiny links up in the intro to view only posts with that tag, you'll be able to browse through all the pages of posts instead of having the page nav links reset the tag filter. So yay for that.

Proper categorization makes Index happy.