5315 rerecords.

3DS TASing is here, gentlemen. It's pretty long overdue, and, as compensation, it's getting the full spa treatment by being ported into Bizhawk - the devs of that emu are pretty crazy, so when some system gets ported to it, it tends to just work with no nonsense.

I knew I could win every fight in 30 seconds or less as Hayabusa, but I figured it'd be more fun to play as as many characters as I could instead - even though I only know a few, I could at least test things out generously with TAS tools.

This game is weird. I knew the AI cheated, ESPECIALLY in tag challenges, but I didn't realize just how much.

Firstly, the most expected thing: the AI reads your inputs. Sometimes the AI will enter a "counter-all" state - where it doesn't matter if you do a high, mid, low, throw, or offensive hold - it will hold your attack or counter your throw perfectly. There is nothing you can do when it enters this state, other than wait. It happens more in the later stages.

Secondly, the AI will sometimes escape stuns at breakneck speed. You can see this especially toward the end, where you hit them with something that would normally give you like a +25 advantage, but instead, they recover so insanely fast from the stun that you don't get any followup hit.

Lastly, their combo throws are effectively impossible. I mean that they will escape your combo throws instantly, and if they do a combo throw on you, they progress them almost instantly. If you're playing as any of the wrestlers/grapplers, don't bother doing any of the escapable combo throws, because they get out of them on like frame 2 or something insane like that.

It's also a big problem that your tag partner is AI controlled, and they're not very good. They tag themselves in when you're under half HP, and you can tag yourself back in whenever. Tag combos are effectively impossible because of this, unless you're using local play and playing with a friend. However, the AI opponents will do tag combos at nearly every opportunity, often chunking off 80% of your lifebar in a single combo.

If there was a way to TAS 2 player local play (or just a way to control both tag partners), then there could be some truly insane, DOA5 level tag combos in this.

But as a human with an AI teammate, your only saving grace is tag throws, which are done by simply pressing the tag button. It's your fastest, likely most damaging attack, and the tag throw animations are also pretty long, allowing for maximum healing. The throw windup is 4/5 frames depending on your character, which is a good punish and difficult for the AI to fuzzy guard.

I think they realized Kasumi α sucks, because it looks like she has more health than the other foes in the later challenges.

In fact, since this came out before DOA5, a lot of characters are missing abilities or tools that feel otherwise vital that were added in 5. Kasumi only has one teleport, Helena only has a few moves from her bokuho stance, Alpha-152 doesn't have her 9K, among other things. The only characters that really feel complete are Hayabusa and Ayane, at least in my opinion.

It's interesting to see how things changed between this and 5, though. Like how Tengu was reformatted into Nyotengu, Raidou and Alpha-152 were nerfed into the ground, Hayabusa was somehow made even stronger, Genra evaporated, you know. And also, it's nearly impossible to juggle people in this, but juggling is a core part of DOA5.

All things considered, though, this is a lot more fun to TAS than DOA 1 or 2 on the arcade machines. Crazy that everything between Dimensions and 2 is basically in limbo. 3, 4, Beach Volleyball, Extreme, are all very difficult to acquire and locked on their respective systems - can't even really emulate them.

0:00 1: Leon
0:40 2: La Mariposa
1:22 3: Tina & Bass
2:17 4: Kokoro
3:11 5: Brad Wong
4:08 6: Gen Fu & Eliot
5:21 7: Zack
6:20 8: Helena
7:24 9: Jann Lee & Leifang
8:28 10: Bayman
9:31 11: Christie
10:33 12: Ein & Hitomi
12:02 13: Kasumi
13:16 14: Ayane
14:29 15: Hayate & Hayabusa
15:49 16: Kasumi α
16:58 17: Tengu
17:55 18: Genra
19:06 19: Alpha-152
20:16 20: Raidou & Shiden