Shenmue 70 Man Battle fastest WR pace speedrun - 66 defeated in 2:06.03
Today I’m sharing an excellent run I pulled off just before the end of 2020, where I get very close to achieving a time at least 10 seconds faster than the current World Record. This is also my current fastest pace up to Pedro, with an improvement of almost a second compared to the old Best Time (2:06.03 VS 2:07.00).
The run is the first one I upload that was played on Dreamcast (albeit emulated with Flycast, a DC emulator available for Retroarch). To be more precise, I’m playing the Shenmue Undub: Definitive Edition made by Shenmue Master and Phantom River Stone, in order to enjoy the original Shenmue experience with Japanese audio and English subtitles (read more about this amazing release here - https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2020/09/shenmue-undub-definitive-edition-video.html ). I hope this doesn’t make the run any less valid in people’s eyes.
To elaborate on why I’m playing on Dreamcast, it’s because there's a variety of small little differences between versions, some of which end up making the time trial easier in some ways and harder in others. For instance, on Dreamcast you start the time trial by pressing “A” and the input won’t count as a move (unlike what the HD remaster does, which is making the A press count as both the run start and Crescent Kick *facepalm*). This allows me to start the run with a base Brutal Tiger, which, according to my tests, saves half a second compared to the standard KPK combo strategy we generally employ (granted, KPK is 100% consistent, while untrained Brutal Tiger can kill the run instantly if you miss the target lol).
However, one noticeable downside of the Dreamcast version is that the AI is generally more reactive compared to the remasters, which makes the speedrun even more difficult than usual. That being the case however, the original release doesn’t suffer from glitchy hitboxes, so you can go nuts with combos, not that it really makes for a faster run to be clear, but I reckon having more options can always come in handy.
With all of that said, I'm yet to talk about the run per se, but apparently I write too much (which is probably true), so I'll leave a link to a pastebin document where I describe my thoughts about the run and some of the new strategies I've employed. Give it a read if you find this stuff interesting! - https://pastebin.com/V7mY5Rnb
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Thank you for reading and watching! If you have any questions about the video or Shenmue stuff in general, feel free to ask in the comments section, I'll be glad to answer. :)
Any like, share and feedback is, as always, much appreciated! I spend way too much time researching the game’s combat and it would mean the world to me if you could help me grow the community of active Shenmue players speedrunning the 70 Man Battle!
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Music is "Dirt Motocross" by Harumi Fujita from "Tomba!/Tombi!" (PS1). The version I used comes from the composer's official soundcloud account and sounds great - you can find it here: https://soundcloud.com/harumi-fujita/tomba-car-racing
#Sega #Shenmue #シェンムー #VirtuaFighter #speedrun #timetrial #70ManBattle #worldrecord #wr #fight #battle #fail #pb
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