Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Jougai Rantou!? Shuyaku Soudatsusen released for the Super Famicom on December 16, 1994 is a fighting game from Bandai listing Angel as its developer. Angel was a subsidiary of Bandai, originally a toy company that branched out for games—however https://twitter.com/baetog_/status/1325235049306890241

In the early 90s contract work for video games was very common—and Evo 2018, Arc System Works publicly revealed that it was their first fighting game and that they were very proud of their grappler AI. Of course, the grapplers are two of the strongest characters in the game but

That’s always up for debate. The game is pretty unique in that every character has something that makes them feel pretty busted depending on your own person viewpoint. There are 9 characters total as the game was released before the S season had ended and before Saturn became a

Member of the team. Six of them are available for use during the story mode, with the other three being “boss characters”. The main plot is that the girls have just bopped the enemy of the week and everyone is starting to argue over who the best girl is — so they decide to fight

It out tournament style to see whomst should be the star of the show. On top of that, beating the story mode with the character of your choosing changes the title screen to reflect that. So beating the story mode as Sailor Venus will change the title screen to Sailor Venus S.

The story mode is also infamous amongst new players since they discover one annoying thing out about the game from trying it out: There’s a stat increase mode that computers use (ACS Ability Customize System) and if you don’t know how to use it, the computers will stomp you easy.

It’s accessible by pressing select after choosing your character. The stats are Physical attack up, Special attack up, Health up, Defense up, ? (Increases desperation super damage), and a handicap stat that gives you a chance to fail special moves or backdashes. Each point into a

Stat is around a 10% increase to that stat. So if a normal does 10 damage and you max out physical attack, it should do 15. The ACS is typically only used for single player, as these bonuses would be insanely wack for tournament play. Though the notion to try an ACS tournament

Has been joked about in the past. As well as an easy mode tournament. The game offers an easy mode that allows special moves to be performed by holding L or R and pressing one of the four face buttons; assuming you didn’t remap the buttons. Easy mode is of course banned in compet

-itive play as it allows for some crazy applications like walking flash kicks and very easy desperation inputs (by pressing both shoulder buttons). The last two things to mention about vs CPU play; a difficulty selector is available in the options menu, allowing you to choose

Between four different difficulties. From very easy, easy, normal, and hard. The difficulties also offer different ACS levels on your CPU opponents; with very Easy having no ACS except the handicap in vs CPU and much lower ACS in story than usual.

That should cover all of the vs CPU stuff. except for — pressing start on a 2P controller while in Vs CPU mode will flash “ENTRY NEW PRETTY SOLDIER” and swap the mode to Vs 2P. Very cool cut in, I wish it was something that worked in story but it be like that sometimes. Anyways,

The game is unique in a few different ways. It’s a late 94 game that has backdashes (as well as two character specific forward dashes) and guard cancels; one of the earliest examples of these mechanics. On top of that, guard cancels are free, no meter involved. Another mechanic

That helps the game stand out is it’s combo system. There’s no specific normals you have to use to cancel into specials. Most normals are very plus on hit and all normals can cancel into specials (or Backdash/forward dash). On top of that, Backdash gives characters an air state

So if you have an air special (Moon, Jupiter, Chibimoon), you can do the special during the Backdash. Another unique mechanic for the game considering the time period is it’s input buffer. The way directional inputs are polled by the game holds those inputs for around 15 frames

Give or take, I’ve heard the number as slightly more and slightly less, it’s around 15. 15 is a nice flat round divisible by 5 number so I go with it when I talk about the directional input buffer. Anyways. This means that you can buffer specials in ways that would normally be

Very difficult or even impossible. Moon and Jupiter are great examples of this due to the Backdash air specials I mentioned earlier. Moon has an air projectile where she throws a heart. The input is 214 punch; or quarter circle back punch, depending on what you are more familiar

With. This means you move your directions from down clockwise to back and press a punch button. Easy! But this needs to be done while midair. So you would need to jump first, right? No. Remember what I said earlier about backdashes? So you could hit back twice, or 44, then 214

Right? Yes. You could. But. You can do it even better and faster. You can choose to do 4214 instead. The game will see that you’ve hit both back twice as well as a quarter circle back in that 15 frame window and as soon as moon begins to Backdash, she will throw her heart. This

Is pretty cool as it is, but take that a step further when analyzing Jupiter’s air fireball and it gets very interesting. Jupiter’s air fireball is done with the input 632 punch, or quarter circle clockwise forward to down. She throws down a ball of lightning and it causes a

Pillar where it lands. It’s one of her most important tools and being able to use it very close to her whilst retreating can be very useful. So taking what we’ve learned before from Moon, we can choose to 463214 punch and get the Backdash and the lightning pillar. Even though

The last input it the special, the down input, isn’t the last input in the chain. It’s very interesting, but many games will let you get away with something like that, but Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Jougai Rantou!? Shuyaku Soudatsusen typically does. I say typically because

This isn’t always the case. For example. Moon heart should be able to do a backwards tiger knee motion right? A 2147 punch for the heart. But it won’t. In that case the game actually requires the 4 to be the input that punch is pressed on. It’s a weird quirk and I find it

Extremely interesting. Most fighting games in that situation would let that rock. You can work your way around it by doing 21474 punch, but it doesn’t seem that useful in most situations. Another relatively unique mechanic I mentioned earlier is desperation supers. When a

Character is at low health (less than 20%) they enter into a panting animation. Similar to Art of Fighting series before it and early KoF around the same time, it unlocks a new move that can be used until the round is over. Desperation moves also unlock if the timer is 9 seconds

Or less. Desperation moves are typically very strong and make for a good comeback mechanic for a lot of characters, though their usefulness varies depending on the character. Some (Pluto, Chibi, Venus) become a lot scarier, some gain a situational move (Moon, Mercury, Mars), and

Others (like Jupiter) can be extremely unsafe and a terrible idea to go for. Despite that, it’s need to see character options change mid Match based on health and time. For example, a Chibimoon player might be enticed to play unsafe for the first ten or twenty seconds of a round

Neat*