Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Techniques

General techniques

Damage limits

Technique: Damage limits & damage cancelling
Despite having racing elements, damage potential is still the most important difference between ships in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen. First consider the most common types and amounts of damage the player can deal. Normal shots: 1 damage per tick Normal bumps: 1 damage per tick Sub weapons: 2 damage per tick (for a decent green weapon, but it varies) Spinning bumps: 3 damage per tick Now, one quirk of dealing damage is that, after receiving damage, enemies enter a "taking damage" color state and are invincible for 18 frames (294 milliseconds). This means that weaker forms of damage like normal shots will cancel out the greater damage of sub weapons and spinning bumps. Theoretically, the fastest way to kill any enemy vulnerable to bump attacks would be to do a constant stream of spinbump damage. When possible, normal shot damage should be avoided if it's overlapping with a higher damage source, either sub weapons or spinbumps.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=421 Getting stuck inside a boss and doing more damage than normal shots or subweapons

Opening bomb

Technique: Get ahead with an opening bomb
Bombs are one of the few ways to significantly hinder rival racers. Since everyone will consistently be bunched up at the start of the race, it's a good place to knock them all back with a bomb. Ride an early lead to an eventual victory. Works great with the spin glitch in score runs as the two techniques naturally overlap, and it's highly recommended for helping reach the second loop in 2-ALLs. Opening bombs are most helpful on tracks you're trying to win and actually have a chance of winning, such as Basalna City, Outcast Castle, and Cold Corridor. You probably want to avoid accidentally bombing enemy racers when you're not trying to win a race (such as on most of the second loop tracks, see losing on purpose) as rival racers are a source of heavy randomness and are extremely dangerous to have on the screen; you want them all way ahead of you as soon as possible. Sometimes this technique overlaps with another objective, such as killing some high HP enemies near the start of the race, such as in the animation to the right. You'll have to judge based on the position of the racers whether or not to wait a bit or to bomb early and potentially miss some enemies up ahead. This is mainly only relevant for Cold Corridor and Deeply Dungeon (which you should probably not be using an opening bomb on).
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=211 https://youtu.be/2VVh7yq6EZ8?t=220 https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=692 Avoiding the bomb for a long time so rivals can clear out

Use stage hazards

Technique: Use stage hazards
Outcast Castle, Yashiki of Ninja, and to a lesser extent Deeply Dungeon feature certain stage hazards that can almost guarantee a race win. In Outcast Castle, a giant set of doors will close as you enter the castle. Any rival racers that don't make it through in time will be permanently slowed for the rest of the race. Needless to say, this is great if you're trying to win races. This also goes great with opening bombs as you will certainly be able enter the door before anyone else does. In Yashiki of Ninja, after defeating Hayatemaru, the mansion will be set on fire. A blazing inferno will chase the player, and any enemies caught behind it will be permanently slowed for the rest of the race. This is of limited usefulness because the level is essentially already over, and there is no real reason to even go to Yashiki of Ninja other than for fun, and even then, you probably shouldn't be racing in such a dangerous stage. In Deeply Dungeon, trapped walls will sprout bricks that can block racers. However, this doesn't "knock back" the enemies like a bomb would. It merely forces them offscreen. This is of limited usefulness as you probably shouldn't be racing in Deeply Dungeon anyway.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=231 All 7 enemy racers are locked behind the door and permanently slowed

Collecting death powerups

Technique: Die in certain positions to ensure you'll be able to re-collect your powerups

Chitta is too slow to get the 3rd powerup. Some ships are able to collect all 3 of their dropped powerups after dying. This can be useful when suiciding for a bomb refill. The correct positioning to die in for player 1 is just slightly to the right of the on-screen speedometer. Any character slower than Honest John is not able to collect all 3 powerups after death. For slow characters, it may be best to die bear the center or right side to at least ensure easy retrieval of 2 powerups. Characters who can perform: Nirvana Miyamoto Kickle & Laycle Gain Honest John Characters who cannot perform: Chitta Bornnam Bul-Gin

Manual rival knockbacks

Technique: Manually knock back rivals when you have nothing better to do
Simply put, when you have nothing better to do, you can push enemy racers off the screen (either up or down, depending on where you want them). Useful at the start of any race you aren't planning to open with a bomb but want to win. Useful in the final stretch of some races where you're boosting and trying to gain a few positions. Note that bumping enemy racers activates your character's wall brake / enemy brake, so you may slow down when you don't want to. Boosting completely negates all brakes, so you may want to boost when doing this. Pushing racers around is entirely dependent on weight and speed, so obviously it's going to be easier or harder depending on your character and the target character.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=482 https://youtu.be/rV_ki0v47-4?t=32

Manipulate enemies through screen scoll

Technique: Manipulate AI and despawn enemies by changing speed
One of the most powerful mechanics unique to this game, enemies can be despawned or have their AI manipulated to your advantage through speed changes. The applications of this technique are vast, but it's mostly useful for getting rid of troublesome but slow enemies, or making enemies (especially bosses) not fire by abruptly slowing down. Scrolling bosses partially offscreen to stop their weapons from firing is also a possibility. This is quite useful even in casual play. If the screen is somehow hopelessly flooded with enemies, one strategy is to suddenly boost (for characters with good boosters) and despawn them all off the bottom of the screen. Characters with good brakes can do the same for the top of the screen by suddenly reducing speed. Wild Wyvern manipulation Probably the most consistently useful application of this is against the boss of Basalna City for characters with good wall brakes / enemy brakes. When Wild Wyvern spawns, his AI script will be different based on the player's speed. Generally, enemies that spawn while moving fast will take a greater distance to fully activate, so by spawning the boss at the maximum speed and then abruptly dropping speed, the boss will need a greater distance to activate, but with the very low speed, the player will take quite awhile to traverse that distance, and thus the boss is stuck not doing anything for a long time. You can use this time to set up your spin kills on the boss's parts. Despawning enemies Despawning enemies by speed change is a powerful technique (for non-score runs) in stages like Strato Sphere loop 2 with lots of difficult-but-floaty enemies that are susceptible to speed changes. Hayatemaru Shuriken despawn Hayatemaru is a very floaty boss and heavily affected by speed changes. If you notice him doing his spinning shuriken attack near the bottom of the screen, you can boost and he will not fire. This may be the best way to avoid this nearly impossible pattern. Gigandes cannon despawn Gigandes can have most of his body scrolled off the screen while the player sits on top of his main damage zone doing heavy spin damage. He will eventually scroll back up though and likely shoot you, so he should be low on life before attempting this. Bashinet R cannon despawn When Bashinet R spawns, he too can be locked at the top of the screen by a sudden brake where his cannons are just out of range of being able to fire. This turns him into a punching bag while he uses laser attacks. If he doesn't randomly decide to shoot his green bombs which force him to move forward, he could theoretically stay helpless at the top of the screen until dead.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=60 Miyamoto's strong wall brake abruptly drops his speed to minimum and the boss's cannons do not activate https://clips.twitch.tv/EagerEntertainingBatteryTBCheesePull Extremely tough boss Gigandes made mostly harmless by sudden boosts https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=2157 Sudden back braking gets Bashinet R stuck at the top of the screen where his cannons fail to fire https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=1428 Accelerating briefly to get rid of troublesome enemies spawned from behind

Take note of points

Technique: Take note of tournament points

If trying to reach the second loop, it can be helpful to keep track of dangerous rivals in order to hamper them later. The most obvious application would be using a bomb to knock them back during the race, but one may not want to expend a bomb just for that. Rather, knowing which rival might steal 1st place gives you a better idea of who you need to manually and physically knock back during the race, perhaps even attempting to push them into bullets or lure bullets into them. This is incredibly risky and rarely works because of the game's rather interesting coding and AI, but if a bomb is out of the question and your trip to the second loop is on the line, it's probably better than having to restart the entire game.

Precision diagonal movement

Technique: Precision diagonal movement
In this game, as is common in many shmups, the player can sometimes exercise better control of the ship by moving diagonally rather than orthagonally. The player's ship moves more slowly along an axis if some of that movement is similarly spent moving through a perpendicular axis. In other words, you move quickly to the west if you head straight west, but you move more slowly to the west if you head northwest, as some of your movement is now going north rather than all west. In this game, motion against a screen edge or wall still counts as motion, and thus reduces your movement speed. Thus, if you hold down against the edge of the screen and tap left, you move more slowly/precisely than if you just press left. This has obvious applications in making precise movements, especially in avoiding tight bullet patterns with a fast ship.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=1284 These are dodges enhanced by holding down to further control Miyamoto's high speed

Subweapon dragging

Technique: Subweapon dragging for more damage
Some characters can do significantly more damage with certain weapons by positioning differently or moving while shooting. Miyamoto has the most drastic difference in damage while moving away from enemies with his shuriken subweapon. This causes more ticks of damage per volley of shurikens. In some cases, this causes enemies to die in one shot rather than two, but usually results in more damage on just about anything. Chitta and Gain's homing weapon do better damage to enemies to their sides or behind them. Gain's forward weapon deals much less damage to horizontally thin enemies. When possible, aim for vertical, fat parts of enemies. Kickle & Laycle's forward weapon may do more damage when dragged backwards like Miyamoto's homing weapon.? Nirvana's homing weapon does significantly more damage when the fairies are positioned to pass directly over the enemy hit zone.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=648 These enemies take two shots to kill without subweapon dragging

Losing on purpose

Technique: Losing on purpose
Simply put, you can't win most of the races in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen, and since slowing down is usually easier and more rewarding score wise, you should often lose races on purpose by going as slowly as possible and playing safely. If only going for a 1cc, you can lose races as much as you like, but if you want to get to the 2nd loop, you have to win the overall tournament via points . Recommended races to try to win Basalna City Outcast Castle Cold Corridor Strato Sphere (race at the beginning and after the boss, slow down in the middle) (Loop 2, scoring only) Basalna City For loop 2, on top of the extra health and danger presented by loop 2 enemies, races are extremely difficult or impossible to win after Basalna City, so losing on purpose is basically mandatory there.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=1140 All races after 2-1 purposefully thrown

Rank breakpoints

Technique: Make the game easier by using rank breakpoints

It's possible to change enemy AI to your advantage through temporary rank manipulation. For instance, it's sometimes better to travel slightly faster than minimum speed. The boss of Cold Corridor shoots much harder aimed spreads if you are scrolling the screen at minimum speed. But by accelerating the scroll speed by just a little bit, his spreads lose 1 bullet each. This makes the pattern much easier, and there is virtually no downside to this slight increase in speed. For the small turrets in Crossfire loop 2, minimum scroll speed causes a rank overflow which makes the turrets fire very slowly. On the other hand, traveling slightly above minimum speed causes them to suddenly fire extremely rapidly. For the boss of Strato Sphere, Gigandes, it will fire 2 homing lasers instead of 3 if scrolling the speed moderately more quickly. However, this doesn't help that much as 2 is also far too many to avoid amidst the streams of other bullets.

Boosted item avoidance

Technique: Touch to avoid unwanted items while boosting
When boosting, it's possible to get item-carrying fairies to drop unwanted items by getting near them while maintaining boost. As simple as it sounds, it's possible to learn the activation hitbox of fairies and have them drop unwanted items off the screen. This is more useful than it sounds, as most characters only have one good subweapon and the game will constantly try to saddle the bad one onto you. Fairies fly down the screen very slowly, and if they are carrying a bad subweapon, they are the equivalent of an enemy bullet hanging around on the screen for a long time. If you aren't boosting, just shooting the fairy and avoiding the falling item also works
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=114

Direct item collection

Technique: Collect items directly by flying over the item carrier
As it was in Mahou Daisakusen (and likely a holdover from past Compile titles), it's possible to collect power-ups by activating and directly collecting the items by flying over the carrier. The actual spawn position of the items (coins and weapon powerups) is slightly north of the carrier compared to the carrier's activation zone, so try to be physically north of the item carrier. This is somewhat more useful for coin bags, as the coins spray everywhere and are difficult to catch. It's less important if it's too dangerous or you're already at full power and don't care about the meager points from the coins.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=55

Faster cutscenes

Technique: Faster cutscenes
By holding the shot button (without autofire), opening and ending cutscenes play at double speed. As simple as it sounds, this allows you to do more runs in a shorter period of time.
Examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7AMjtvKSW8&t=13

Scoring techniques

Spins

Technique: Spins

Spins are at the heart of score runs in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen and require a completely different and more dangerous playstyle. Spinning at its core is mostly based on ship animations. When the player ships remains fully tiled in one direction for a short time and the player suddenly reverses direction (horizontally only), a spin animation will occur. If an enemy has a | weak body type and the player spins into them, it will do 4 times increased damage over normal bumps. If the enemy dies to spin damage, significant extra score is usually awarded. The rules of spinning: The ability to spin is largely reflected through the ship's tilting animations, so if your ship isn't doing the correct animation, you can be sure the spin will not work. Do not push the bare edge of the screen; this cancels your tilting animation. Pressing against a wall or enemy is fine because grinding against walls or enemies does not cancel the tilting animation. It's harder to spin if you are already tilted in the opposite direction. Stay still and wait for your tilt animation to fade, and then charge up your tilt in the other direction. it's noticeably harder to spin with faster characters because they reach the screen edge too quickly. It's easier to spin without touching the screen edge when moving diagonally as in precision diagonal movement. See spin bonus for exact scoring details.

Spinbomb glitch

Technique: Spinbomb glitch
Luckily, one doesn't have to methodically spin into every enemy in the game. The spinbomb glitch allows most characters to enter a bugged state where they are constantly considered to be "spinning" despite still going through their normal animations. It is an essential technique for serious score runs. To activate the glitch, simply use a bomb while in the middle of a spin animation. Opening bombs are often a good time to set this up. From then on, you're free to fly around bumping into whatever you wish for increased damage and score. Carefully avoid dying or doing another spin animation by accident, as this will cancel the spinbomb glitch and you will need to spend another bomb to reactivate it. Spinbomb racing One upside of having a permanent spin state is that the player can often remain in boost mode and instead rely on bumping to deal damage to enemies. Remaining boosted for long periods of time is extremely advantageous when trying to win races. Stages like Basalna City can be completed with very high scores while staying boosted for almost the entire race. Good places for spinbomb racing: Most of Basalna City (slow down for the boss) Calmer parts of Outcast Castle Calmer parts of Cold Corridor, especially after the boss Most of Basalna City loop 2 (beware of tougher loop 2 enemies) Bul-Gin Bul-Gin cannot activate the spinbomb glitch for some reason.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=21

Manual spins

Technique: Manual spins
Even with suiciding for bomb refills, you will probably not have enough bombs to do everything you want to do. Manual spins can be used for some extra score when fully activating the spinbomb glitch isn't worth it. Manual spins are basically spins as they were probably intended to originally be by designers: very dangerous and hard to perform. Charging them up against walls before barreling into enemies is one of the few consistent ways to do them. In their safest usage, they can gain you a few extra points during sections where you aren't planning on having the glitch active. Manual spins can also be a backup plan if you accidentally deactivate the glitch, although depending on the severity of the error and your desired score, you may just be better off restarting the run. Bul-Gin has to totally rely on manual spins, mainly on bosses and high-value enemies, as he cannot activate the spinbomb glitch.
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=441 Manual spin charged on a wall after suiciding. Safe manual spins used on some enemies after the boss https://clips.twitch.tv/GrotesqueCharmingTermiteEagleEye Even Bashinet R can be manual spin'd like this

Strato Sphere infinite enemy spawn

Technique: Strato Sphere infinite enemy spawn
In the middle of Strato Sphere is one of a few sections in the game featuring infinitely respawning enemies. Unlike the section in Kobold Tower, the diving enemies here respawn instantly after being killed. This means wide-ranging and powerful attacks like bombs are especially effective. Characters can convert excess bombs into score during this section, even suiciding during the section for more bombs. Along with individual racer stats, this part of the game is largely what determines how high a character can score. Miyamoto, believed to have the highest scoring potential, has a bomb perfectly suited to this section, and can gain a roughly 50,000 point advantage compared to bombless play. Characters like Nirvana and Kickle & Laycle may not want to use any bombs here as their bombs are particularly ill suited to killing the respawning enemies.
Examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7AMjtvKSW8&t=565 Many bombs and 2 suicides used to maximize score from respawning enemies

Speedkill bosses for more enemies

Technique: Speedkill bosses for more enemies
It's possible to gain significant extra score by killing bosses as quickly as possible. In this game, enemies will not spawn while a boss is alive. Most bosses end up cancelling out the spawns of many high-scoring enemies. It follows then that one must balance the risks against the rewards of killing bosses quickly, possibly even spending bombs to kill bosses as quickly as possible. Bosses with significant blocked enemy spawns Basalna City (very fast kill required for a 3000-point extra enemy) Kobold Tower (infinitely spawning large battleships appear as soon as the boss is dead) Velmatic Ocean (slow kill may miss several 2000-point enemies) Kingdom Grandprix (constant steady stream 500/1000 point enemies)
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=68 3000-point enemy appears after fast kill https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=887 Fast kill maximizes number of ships after the boss

Brake tapping

Technique: Control speed with wall & enemy taps
Oftentimes during score runs you will want to be at the top of the screen but not accelerate or tilt too steadily into a wall (lest you accidentally spin off of it). Because wall brakes / enemy brakes last longer than the period the player is touching the enemy or wall, the brake tapping tapping technique can be used to keep oneself mobile but un-accelerated. To perform brake taps, just occasionally tap into walls or enemies while in the acceleration zone of the screen and you will either stay at or eventually fall to minimum speed. After the boss of Kobold Tower, there is a huge scoring section where kobold ships spawn infinitely. Moving up to bump the ships causes acceleration and thus fewer ships to spawn overall, whereas wall / enemy brakes cause deceleration and allow more ships to spawn as well as better control of the screen. This is the main scoring section where a ship's wall brakes come into play (and also where acceleration is a strongly negative stat to excel in).
Examples https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=2040 Brake tapping at the top of the screen without charging a spin https://youtu.be/J7AMjtvKSW8?t=921 Staying decelerated at the top of the screen by contacting enemies as much as possible