Dungeon Magic (Taito Legends 2, PS2)

Edit history:

iast: 2012-09-13 07:52:39 am

2012-09-12 09:36:18 pm

So right now, I'm tinkering about with getting a run of Dungeon Magic, a semi-obscure arcade beat 'em up from the early 90s. Using the Taito Legends 2 version since it's the only console release the game's ever gotten. The run is single-player using Gren (the fighter).

The route itself is more or less planned out, just need to tweak things here and there for optimal movement and for enemies wanting to get in the way. A couple notes on some of the areas in each stage I'm still working on or recently found significant discoveries in.

Stage 1
Giant Snake (miniboss): Rather easy to fight with charge attacks, still trying to discover if there's any ways of influencing what direction it likes to head off in from time to time. Other than that, the fight comes down to recognizing what patterns it uses for curling around itself and just following after it with consistent hits

Dark Knight (boss): Today I found a semi-consistent way of getting his two knight lackeys he starts with into the right position to soften them up, then blasting away everyone with a magic stock to finish off the lackeys. Easy in general to fight using partial combos (3-hit, don't commit to the 4th bc of knockdown) and luring him around so he doesn't get too close to throw me.

Stage 2
King Viper (miniboss): The most difficult fight in the run so far, finding a "fast" way of doing it is gonna take awhile. It seems like there's times where he likes to favor staying around one side of the screen for his fire-breathing, compared to the other. Finding a reliable way to get him to do that, or getting a feel for when he's about to move to sweeping over the other end, would be a godsend.

Lizard room (room before boss): Dealing with four lizard-type monsters at once. Tough part is finding a position to guide them in that will consistently let me group them up without fear of retaliation or one sneaking around me.

Queen Spider (boss): aka the most lagtastic boss in the game. This one I think is gonna come down to managing how to balance between hitting her and dealing with her teleporting skeleton lackeys in the 2nd half of the fight. In one practice attempt I somehow managed to get an infinite going on her with repeating 2-hits. No idea yet how that happened, though with the mini-spiders that explode out of her after she's lost 1/3 health and the skeletons, prob not practical. Need at least one magic stock going in to kill off the mini-spiders or else they lag the game far too much.

Stage 3
Lesser Demon (boss): Yesterday I found an infinite in testing. You start it about 1.5-2 seconds after he drops in, just doing 3-hit repeats on him. Too soon or too late and there's a chance of the game forcing him to be knocked down after taking too many hits. Very reliable, with the only worry being if his skeleton lackeys come in at just the wrong angle. Doing the infinite from a higher position on his sprite (i.e. upper body) seems to reduce the risk of skeletons getting in.

Stage 4
Demon Lord (final boss): Start of the fight is pretty well consistent, guide him towards up the top corner, bait him into a jump slash and deliver the initial combo to him. Keeping him near that corner is a priority since his death animation forces him to travel up there anyways. The most consistent way of getting hits in after a knockdown is to stand about two char lengths away on either his left or right, bait him into doing his blaze thrust, then comboing from behind on recovery. I've gotten 3-hit near-infinites on him before, but no way of telling yet if there's any reliable way to get the game to allow them without knockdown. There's also an apparent risk of him doing blaze thrust to interrupt mid-combo.

Thread title:

So right now, I'm tinkering about with getting a run of Dungeon Magic, a semi-obscure arcade beat 'em up from the early 90s.  Using the Taito Legends 2 version since it's the only console release the game's ever gotten.  The run is single-player using Gren (the fighter).

The route itself is more or less planned out, just need to tweak things here and there for optimal movement and for enemies wanting to get in the way.  A couple notes on some of the areas in each stage I'm still working on or recently found significant discoveries in.

[u]Stage 1[/u]
Giant Snake (miniboss): Rather easy to fight with charge attacks, still trying to discover if there's any ways of influencing what direction it likes to head off in from time to time.  Other than that, the fight comes down to recognizing what patterns it uses for curling around itself and just following after it with consistent hits

Dark Knight (boss): Today I found a semi-consistent way of getting his two knight lackeys he starts with into the right position to soften them up, then blasting away everyone with a magic stock to finish off the lackeys.  Easy in general to fight using partial combos (3-hit, don't commit to the 4th bc of knockdown) and luring him around so he doesn't get too close to throw me.

[u]Stage 2[/u]
King Viper (miniboss): The most difficult fight in the run so far, finding a "fast" way of doing it is gonna take awhile.  It seems like there's times where he likes to favor staying around one side of the screen for his fire-breathing, compared to the other.  Finding a reliable way to get him to do that, or getting a feel for when he's about to move to sweeping over the other end, would be a godsend.

Lizard room (room before boss): Dealing with four lizard-type monsters at once.  Tough part is finding a position to guide them in that will consistently let me group them up without fear of retaliation or one sneaking around me.

Queen Spider (boss): aka the most lagtastic boss in the game.  This one I think is gonna come down to managing how to balance between hitting her and dealing with her teleporting skeleton lackeys in the 2nd half of the fight.  In one practice attempt I somehow managed to get an infinite going on her with repeating 2-hits.  No idea yet how that happened, though with the mini-spiders that explode out of her after she's lost 1/3 health and the skeletons, prob not practical.  Need at least one magic stock going in to kill off the mini-spiders or else they lag the game far too much.

[u]Stage 3[/u]
Lesser Demon (boss): Yesterday I found an infinite in testing.  You start it about 1.5-2 seconds after he drops in, just doing 3-hit repeats on him.  Too soon or too late and there's a chance of the game forcing him to be knocked down after taking too many hits.  Very reliable, with the only worry being if his skeleton lackeys come in at just the wrong angle.  Doing the infinite from a higher position on his sprite (i.e. upper body) seems to reduce the risk of skeletons getting in.

[u]Stage 4[/u]
Demon Lord (final boss): Start of the fight is pretty well consistent, guide him towards up the top corner, bait him into a jump slash and deliver the initial combo to him.  Keeping him near that corner is a priority since his death animation forces him to travel up there anyways.  The most consistent way of getting hits in after a knockdown is to stand about two char lengths away on either his left or right, bait him into doing his blaze thrust, then comboing from behind on recovery.  I've gotten 3-hit near-infinites on him before, but no way of telling yet if there's any reliable way to get the game to allow them without knockdown.  There's also an apparent risk of him doing blaze thrust to interrupt mid-combo.

mikwuyma

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2012-09-13 02:37:00 am

mikwuyma: 2012-09-13 02:30:42 am

2012-09-13 02:24:49 am

My feelings on The Demon Rush

I have no idea if these videos will be useful in a speedrun, but Replay Burners has some no miss videos of this game.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ReplayBurners/videos?query=dungeon+magic

Actually, if you like arcade superplays in general you should check out Replay Burners, they have some awesome stuff there.

EDIT: This is a better link. http://www.youtube.com/user/ReplayBurners/videos?query=light+bringer&flow=grid&view=1

iast

2012-09-13 07:52:26 am

Thanks for linking those videos, mikwuyma. Overall, the secrets he shows off, namely where some weapons are hidden, would sadly take too much time to go out of the way to grab to be of any use. There's only one weapon I grab in my current route, Gren's Evil Buster (holy weapon) in stage 3, since it's on the way to freeing one of the crystals and there's no lengthy setup required to get the chest containing it. Plus the final boss is weak to holy and it's a necessity for trying to make that fight as painless as possible.

I think his stage 2 miniboss and boss strats would likely come into use in an actual run, though. His method of using all super charge attacks on King Viper is by far the safest way I've seen of doing it, and faster than how that fight usually goes for me. The caveat would be that I go into that fight at lvl 2 and have a longer charge time that he does at that point, but the time between fire blasts may be long enough for it to not be much of an issue. Also his infinite on Queen Spider is the same one I mentioned before. If the strats he shows for those two are consistent, those are likely what I'll end up using.

One other thing I saw when he was fighting Demon Lord was that he somehow went into a ducking stance (3:12 in the video) to dodge one of the final boss' lightning balls. I've never seen that before, nor does the sole GameFAQs walkthrough mention it.

Thanks for linking those videos, mikwuyma.  Overall, the secrets he shows off, namely where some weapons are hidden, would sadly take too much time to go out of the way to grab to be of any use.  There's only one weapon I grab in my current route, Gren's Evil Buster (holy weapon) in stage 3, since it's on the way to freeing one of the crystals and there's no lengthy setup required to get the chest containing it.  Plus the final boss is weak to holy and it's a necessity for trying to make that fight as painless as possible.

I think his stage 2 miniboss and boss strats would likely come into use in an actual run, though.  His method of using all super charge attacks on King Viper is by far the safest way I've seen of doing it, and faster than how that fight usually goes for me.  The caveat would be that I go into that fight at lvl 2 and have a longer charge time that he does at that point, but the time between fire blasts may be long enough for it to not be much of an issue.  Also his infinite on Queen Spider is the same one I mentioned before.  If the strats he shows for those two are consistent, those are likely what I'll end up using.

One other thing I saw when he was fighting Demon Lord was that he somehow [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvbPGY1jOUU&feature=BFa&list=SP44E5FBB83A4215E6#t=3m09s]went into a ducking stance[/url] (3:12 in the video) to dodge one of the final boss' lightning balls.  I've never seen that before, nor does the [url=http://www.gamefaqs.com/arcade/568165-dungeon-magic/faqs/21418]sole GameFAQs walkthrough[/url] mention it.

ZenicReverie

2012-09-13 08:31:14 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from iast:

One other thing I saw when he was fighting Demon Lord was that he somehow went into a ducking stance (3:12 in the video) to dodge one of the final boss' lightning balls. I've never seen that before, nor does the sole GameFAQs walkthrough mention it.

It looks like that's the animation for opening the chest. Here's another video where it happens.

iast

2012-09-13 08:39:18 am

Quote from ZenicReverie:

It looks like that's the animation for opening the chest. Here's another video where it happens.

Oh derp, that makes sense now. Any treasure chests I do get in my route either just get bashed open or open by themselves when I get near them. Not quite as useful a trick as I first envisioned, but still interesting that it's an apparently applicable way of dodging projectiles.

iast

2012-09-17 02:20:17 pm

New PB after streaming some attempts earlier, sub-21:08. Was possibly looking at sub-20 going into the final boss but had issues with the boss giving a good pattern for pseudo-infinites and a couple errors in getting in on him after his blaze thrust. Continue record still stands at 2 though, I want that down to zero. Once I get to the point that I'm comfortable enough to record actual attempts, I won't consider anything that's not a 1cc submittable. If I can get a no-miss, that'd be even better.

Something even more unexpected and troubling happened during my last attempt: I got the infinite to work on stage 2 boss! For some reason, after getting lag spiders to come out, it let me infinite her the rest of the fight. Now I get to pull my hair out over how to trigger that. On MAME I can do it right at the start of the fight but on PS2 I've never gotten it to trigger until now. I'm guessing it may be a certain series of hits or a certain timing that puts her in an inf state and that lag spiders somehow got me to hit her at just the right moment.

Also got a better idea of certain rooms I really need to work on as far as getting quick kills in:

Stage 1
Room after miniboss: two red knights and a blue spawn here. Typically if I go after the lower red knight, it makes the other two more likely to wander into the path of my inf, but getting them into a favorable spot as soon as possible still needs work. Usually I can go from one to the other, but once in awhile both remaining knights will cross paths together and I can take both out at once.

Stage 2
Room right before boss: Two green and two red lizards. I hate this room with a passion. If I somehow get up to this point without a death, it's almost certain to happen in here. Still a lot of experimenting needed with this room to decide in what order to choose my targets. The big issue is going to be with if I already have a couple in an inf and one decides to start walking towards my front, since they like to stop just outside of Gren's reach and then tag with their axes. Dicey situation either way since dropping the inf leaves me at risk to eat hits from the lizards I was pommeling.

Stage 3
2nd room: Staircase with two shield orcs and two slimes. Usually I pop a spell in there to get rid of the slimes and then try to go after the orcs, but with them being thrown opposite directions afterwards it does take time to finish the room up. Killing the orc on the right after dealing with the slimes seems to be the trigger for opening the gate. Definitely will help if that's the case.

Stage 4
3rd room: Three dogs (one ice, fire and non-elemental each) and two ice skeletons. Popping a spell gets the non-elem dog dead and gets the other two to where a throw will kill either one. Sometimes I can catch one skeleton as well if I'm lucky. Gonna look into getting better positioning to throwing the dogs into skeles to speed up damage on them.

New PB after streaming some attempts earlier, sub-21:08.  Was possibly looking at sub-20 going into the final boss but had issues with the boss giving a good pattern for pseudo-infinites and a couple errors in getting in on him after his blaze thrust.  Continue record still stands at 2 though, I want that down to zero.  Once I get to the point that I'm comfortable enough to record actual attempts, I won't consider anything that's not a 1cc submittable.  If I can get a no-miss, that'd be even better.

Something even more unexpected and troubling happened during my last attempt: I got the infinite to work on stage 2 boss!  For some reason, after getting lag spiders to come out, it let me infinite her the rest of the fight.  Now I get to pull my hair out over how to trigger that.  On MAME I can do it right at the start of the fight but on PS2 I've never gotten it to trigger until now.  I'm guessing it may be a certain series of hits or a certain timing that puts her in an inf state and that lag spiders somehow got me to hit her at just the right moment.

Also got a better idea of certain rooms I really need to work on as far as getting quick kills in:

[u]Stage 1[/u]
Room after miniboss: two red knights and a blue spawn here.  Typically if I go after the lower red knight, it makes the other two more likely to wander into the path of my inf, but getting them into a favorable spot as soon as possible still needs work.  Usually I can go from one to the other, but once in awhile both remaining knights will cross paths together and I can take both out at once.

[u]Stage 2[/u]
Room right before boss: Two green and two red lizards.  I hate this room with a passion.  If I somehow get up to this point without a death, it's almost certain to happen in here.  Still a lot of experimenting needed with this room to decide in what order to choose my targets.  The big issue is going to be with if I already have a couple in an inf and one decides to start walking towards my front, since they like to stop just outside of Gren's reach and then tag with their axes.  Dicey situation either way since dropping the inf leaves me at risk to eat hits from the lizards I was pommeling.

[u]Stage 3[/u]
2nd room: Staircase with two shield orcs and two slimes.  Usually I pop a spell in there to get rid of the slimes and then try to go after the orcs, but with them being thrown opposite directions afterwards it does take time to finish the room up.  Killing the orc on the right after dealing with the slimes seems to be the trigger for opening the gate.  Definitely will help if that's the case.

[u]Stage 4[/u]
3rd room: Three dogs (one ice, fire and non-elemental each) and two ice skeletons.  Popping a spell gets the non-elem dog dead and gets the other two to where a throw will kill either one.  Sometimes I can catch one skeleton as well if I'm lucky.  Gonna look into getting better positioning to throwing the dogs into skeles to speed up damage on them.

iast

Edit history:

iast: 2012-09-17 09:34:04 pm

2012-09-17 09:33:44 pm

I figured out the stage 2 boss inf! There's a portion of her hitbox near the back of her upper body (basically where the human and spider halves meet up) and landing the first hit there puts her in the inf state. That easily shaves at least 1:30 off that fight since I can finish her before the skeletons start to spawn in enough to cause trouble.

New PB as well, 19:41. Really close to a 1cc that time but ran into bad positioning and timing with Dark Knight refight in stage 4. That's another room that still needs a lot of work.

iast

2012-09-24 03:30:02 pm

Some updates, since it's about time for them. First of all... I got the 1cc today! (Highlight here) Wasn't really expecting it so early in today's stream but I managed to get a relatively good fight against Demon Lord for once. Not a speedy one, but still with relatively few mistakes. Also got a new overall PB in the meantime, 19:22. Unfortunately not during the 1cc run, but I did get a new stage 1 PB by 2.4s (4:05). Now that I've overcome that hurdle, I'll start with recording attempts once I have that stuff set up.

From what I'm seeing right now, sub-19 is more than doable, provided I can clean up a couple of things.

-Good fight on stage 1 miniboss. If I can find a way that keeps him or makes him less likely to try to lunge me, I can just keep whaling on him. On fights where he behaves, I easily have him down within 1:57-2:00 of starting the run.

-Find a reliable early inf on stage 2 boss. Contrary to what I had mentioned earlier about getting the inf, it's not the position that primarily determines if the boss is inf-doable, but actually taking an intentional death in the lizard room right before the boss. I also have to get to that room without losing a life prior, since 1 credit only gives you two lives to start with and there's no way of obtaining more that I am aware of. If I take that death, the boss will become inf-doable without question at some point in the fight. The question is what other factors, if any, make the boss vulnerable earlier in the fight. Position could still make a difference in that regard, but I'll have to study past streams and see if they have anything in common with getting early infs.

-Good final boss fight. This is going to come down to playing it smart and figuring out what induces him to do certain attacks, and likely a good dose of luck as well. A big part of the early fight is getting successive 3-hits on him without knockdown, which happens whenever he's hit on his jump slash startup. I've gotten better also with maneuvering around blaze thrust and countering, but when he decides to combo break with it, I'm screwed unless I have a shield.

Some updates, since it's about time for them.  First of all... I got the 1cc today! ([url=http://www.twitch.tv/iastsa/b/333331629]Highlight here[/url])  Wasn't really expecting it so early in today's stream but I managed to get a relatively good fight against Demon Lord for once.  Not a speedy one, but still with relatively few mistakes.  Also got a new overall PB in the meantime, 19:22.  Unfortunately not during the 1cc run, but I did get a new stage 1 PB by 2.4s (4:05). Now that I've overcome that hurdle, I'll start with recording attempts once I have that stuff set up.

From what I'm seeing right now, sub-19 is more than doable, provided I can clean up a couple of things.

-Good fight on stage 1 miniboss.  If I can find a way that keeps him or makes him less likely to try to lunge me, I can just keep whaling on him.  On fights where he behaves, I easily have him down within 1:57-2:00 of starting the run.

-Find a reliable early inf on stage 2 boss.  Contrary to what I had mentioned earlier about getting the inf, it's not the position that primarily determines if the boss is inf-doable, but actually taking an intentional death in the lizard room right before the boss.  I also have to get to that room without losing a life prior, since 1 credit only gives you two lives to start with and there's no way of obtaining more that I am aware of.  If I take that death, the boss will become inf-doable without question at some point in the fight.  The question is what other factors, if any, make the boss vulnerable earlier in the fight.  Position could still make a difference in that regard, but I'll have to study past streams and see if they have anything in common with getting early infs.

-Good final boss fight.  This is going to come down to playing it smart and figuring out what induces him to do certain attacks, and likely a good dose of luck as well.  A big part of the early fight is getting successive 3-hits on him without knockdown, which happens whenever he's hit on his jump slash startup.  I've gotten better also with maneuvering around blaze thrust and countering, but when he decides to combo break with it, I'm screwed unless I have a shield.

iast

2014-08-11 07:36:16 pm

Suppose I should bump this since I finally have a decent run. Unofficial timing is 17:20, I'll have a better idea when I go to do the encoding. Here's the Twitch highlight for now: http://www.twitch.tv/iastsa/c/4819051

A mostly solid run with agreeable RNG. The only iffy part is the shield orc + slimes room at the start of stage 3, combination of bad RNG and a poor response to it. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.