Sonic Battle FAQ

	Sonic Battle FAQ

Q: What is this game?
A: It's a cool little "fighting" game for the GBA

Q: What is the strategy to go fast?
A: It varies for each character, but the majority of fighting is done with special attacks. The way the game works is at the start of each life, you (and all your opponents) get to choose a combination of your 3 special attacks: Shot, Power, and Set. Each one is allocated to either Ground, Air, or Defend.

So for example, for Sonic I use: Power-Ground, Shot-Air, Set-Defend. This means on the ground I use his 'Power' attack, in the air his 'Shot', and I defend all 'Set' specials from opponents. Because it's not always possible to know what the opponent chooses, you need to have at least 2 different strategies for taking them out. For example Sonic's fastest method is his ground special, it does the most damage, but if they use Ground-Defend, all my attacks are blocked immediately. If this is the case I switch to his aerial, but I might also use his regular combo in some fights.

Q: What are the bars on the top left of the scree?
A: The yellow-orange one is my health, that hits 0 I die. The blue one, is referred to as the "Ichikoro Gauge". When it fills up completely, my next special attack will have an added property that makes it OHKO anything it touches. Obviously this is a key point into going fast. The way to build it up are:

1) Healing. The effectiveness of healing varies from character to character, but it not only heals your health but your Ichikoro Gauge too. The difference between characters is quite stark, for example Shadow gets basically nothing out of it at all, but Cream can heal to Max after every single kill. This is mainly used after a kill while I am waiting for opponents to come back

2) Getting hit. Taking damage slightly builds up the gauge. In terms of the run however, this is mainly something that happens as a consequence rather than on purpose.

3) Blocking attacks. Blocking adds a fair amount to the gauge, but very hard to pull off as reading random computer spurts isn't easy. However this is still seen a lot throughout the run, as all Chaos Gammas explode as an aftermath effect after each death, and so these explosions can be predicted, and as such, blocked.

4) Rebounding off walls. When you are hit by a Heavy Attack in this game, you are sent flying. If you make contact with a wall, 2 things can happen: Either you hit the wall and take a bit more damage, or, if you are holding the opposite direction to which you are hit, you dash back off the wall. If you succeed in doing the latter, you add a very sizeable amount to your Ichikoro Gauge, more than anything else. This is used a lot throughout the run if I pick the direction, as you can get hit in any of 3 directions with every Heavy Attack (you can only face Right and Left, but can always be hit Up or Down by holding that direction while executing a Heavy Attack)

This is abused for Emerl, I'll be pausing to make sure I guess which way I am hit so I can dash back, as the Ichikoro Gauge is most important for Emerl

Q: Why is it most important for Emerl (Who/what is Emerl?)
A: Emerl is a robot who can learn the attacks of everyone else. He starts off shit but can be built to be the best of everything. However in this run I'm going to leave him as default everything (it might be slightly faster to equip some things, like say a faster heal, but it's against the rules for the individual story runs, so this way I can do 9 runs in one, instead of just a full game run)

Ordinarily this would make the run basically suicide, as default Emerl is shit, and he fights the most (you fight as him in other people's story, he is the "main" character), and he gets the hardest fights later on as it is assumed you make him great. But default Emerl has a trick up his sleeve, his Aerial-Shot special.

Just by default his Aerial-Shot special is quite powerful. While it doesn't actually shoot anything because default Emerl is supposed to be bad, if you make contact with people it kills them in 3-6 hits, depending on the handicap in the battle. However, it has a little detail which was probably unintended. If you max out your Ichikoro Gauge, you lose the special OHKO property once the attack ends. In the case of Emerl's Aerial-Shot special, the attack doesn't properly "end" if it is interrupted by either getting hit, or hitting the ground. Getting hit is very rare as you are hitting them, but you can easily hit the ground no problem. So by maxing out his Ichikoro Gauge and using is aerial special right before he hits the ground, he can OHKO everyone forever.

As an added bonus on top of this, it isn't even considered a special by the game. This means it can't be blocked by the computers either, which is a huge bonus.

Q: What is World Record?
A: http://www.speedrun.com/Sonic_Battle | Note that I'm actually doing any%, but because I'm not changing Emerl's skills at all I'm also doing all 8 stories as well, so this is really 9 runs in one.

Q: Why are you playing in Japanese?
A: The text is faster. The text has no effect on gameplay at all, and all versions of the game can play all languages by changing the options, so there is no reason not to.