Hey all,

This week I started to learn this amazing run. But I have a few questions and I wonder if someone could answer them.

Question 1) How does the "shield dude" mechanic work? When do they exactly raise their shields?

Question 2) How does the ninpo damage distribution work?

Thanks!

Heeeeey!

I kinda messed around with this game a while ago, and as far as I know... 1- From what I experimented, if you stop for roughly 20-30 frames as soon as those enemies appear, this will cause them to not raise their shield quickly enough, allowing you to slash them in time! The timing can be very tricky though, so you'll need to experiment for sure ^^

2- I'm really not sure about this point, but I think they do as much damage as your sword, but with the benefit of possibly hitting the enemies/bosses twice due to how big their hitboxes are, and also because i-frames are nonexistent in this game :P

It's not some very technical knowledge but I hope it'll help you!

Hello,

Glad someone else is getting into this game, it's a great one. I can't add much on the number of frames you need to stall to manipulate the shieldy AI, but it's got a pretty forgiving window to it. I just lift my thumb and then press the d-pad pretty much as fast as I can as they come on screen and it seems to work well for me without issue. There is a finicky one during the conveyor section in level 2 just before the boss where a quick turn around seems to work best for me (~4:10 of this video ), but outside of that I use the same slight pause strategy on the rest of them.

As for the ninpo damage... That's correct, it does the same damage as the sword, (2 damage per hit) and can hit multiple times although yeah two hits seems to be most common. I've managed to get it to hit 4 times on a couple of bosses, but I haven't made it very consistent yet.

I had started to dig into the game memory and figure a few things out, but ended up getting side tracked and haven't made it back to it yet. Everything I know and have collected so far on that front is here in this document.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VvZBdoKQiLjX_ryo-6JVU9RFsMRQCZudBupv-HBfxdI/edit?usp=sharing

I hope it's useful to you. Good luck with the runs, and let me know if I can help with anything else.

Thank you Desolis!

That Google Doc you made gives me a lot of insight and let me understand better how this game works. Very interesting that Ryu's attack actually does 2 damage instead of 1.

Also now I understand why my inputs "got eaten". It takes a few more frames before you can do another input again. Which will probably take a while to adjust to, because I am so used to the NES Ninja Gaiden.

Once again thank you Desolis for the help =)