Game:

Battle Circuit (1997)

Duration: 41:33

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2

A 1-credit clear of Battle Circuit [batcir], played with WolfMAME 0.250. Score: 4,920,600. Played for the 2023 Winter Yolympics!

This game is delightfully silly. The playable characters have unusual designs, and the bosses are bonkers - an Elvis impersonator, the two-headed Cyber Samurai, and a crazy snake-mech-rider midboss just named "Dave". That name, "Dave", is a nice touch.

Alien Green is a terrific character. You can grab enemies and slam them back and forth doing collateral damage to anyone standing to your side. You can use BDL capsules for a generous dose of healing. And your upgraded charge attack (the bees!) is very effective on a lot of enemies. This is still a very hard game: The enemies (especially bosses) can melt your health bar very quickly. Minor enemies who can attack from range mean you can't always just use your slam attack.

The moves you use affect how much gold you get to spend on upgrades (and on extra BDL capsules for healing). The Alien Twister throw is a good source of cash - using it exclusively can be risky (and a bit slow) but grinding some extra cash may be worth it. My purchase plan was: Stage 1 Alien Twister, Stage 2 nothing, Stage 3 Honey Bee and Vital Gain, Stage 4 Healing Plus, Stage 5 Green Cyclone, Stage 6 BDL capsules, Stage 7 BDL capsules. (I never bothered with Alien Magic; it's a hard move to pull off and didn't seem worth the extra work even if it can give food)

Your desperation move (A+B together) is good for getting out of trouble in a few ways.
- If you don't hit anything with your desperation move, it doesn't use up any health - but it still gives you iframes. This makes it trivial to avoid some of the Master Program's most dangerous attacks - use the desperation move, then if the attack is still going either use your iframes to run to safety or use your desperation again.
- If you're grabbed, it breaks out of the grab - you'll use up some health but it'll save you from an even more damaging throw
- It can be useful for getting the stage 4 boss fight back on track

Looping an attack on some of the bosses can help do damage safely. One option for getting lots of damage is repeated uppercuts: Uppercut (tap forward, forward to dash then press A), then uppercut again, and again until they hit the side of the screen. This works well against most bosses, with the downside that the string of uppercuts doesn't do that much damage. A variant of this that's good for the stage 6 boss is to alternate uppercuts with the Green Cyclone move.

An even safer technique, assuming you can pull it off, is looping the Alien Twister throw:
- Grab enemy (probably by approaching from above or below, or even by using your vine-reach attack)
- Optionally bite them a a couple of times (tap A while not pressing the joystick)
- Throw them with the Alien Twister (fireball motion and A)
- Immediately tap and hold A to charge up, and run after them
- Jump roughly as you reach them, turn back, and release your charge attack (poison, or bees)
- Grab them again while they're stunned and repeat the process, facing the other direction
...this is effective (though hard to pull off) against the stage 2 boss, and it's *terrific* against the stage 3 and 5 bosses.

Some other notes:
- Stage 4 boss takes lots of damage by having little guys thrown into him; that'll be how you do most of your damage
- Stage 7 boss, Pluto, is tricky. My route is to deliberately use the Alien Twister throw, not the slam attack (which leaves you open to getting shot from afar). After two throws be ready to run to avoid meteors: Run right-to-left along the bottom, then up, then right, then down to the bottom-right corner. (You can also avoid meteors with your desperation attack, but you'll spend a little bit of health for killing the meteors as well as any other innocent bystanders). Don't try to grab Pluto just as he gets up or he'll probably spin-attack you; keep your distance and then move in from above or below him. When he goes in to Defense mode (white suit), jump-attack him (which he'll block) then grab and do a slam and repeat. If you get a good string of throws in, you can finish him off before he gets his Vitality (which restores a full bar of health!) or Speed capsules.
- Stage 8 boss, Master Program, seems impossible at first. But on the plus side he has no mooks helping him, and you can avoid lots of his attacks for free by using desperation moves. The main thing to learn is his blue ice-dragon form: Run forward as he starts blowing you backward, then (a) if he moves forward, run and jump away (b) if he flies up, move off-axis to dodge his swoop, otherwise (c) move forward past the ice breath and fire the bees. For red dragon, run to bottom and desperation-attack if needed. For cube attack, desperation attack three times, jump attack twice and start charging bees. For other attacks (electric octopus or dance party), try to fire off bees if he's close and otherwise be ready for desperation attack.