Here's my latest PSP speedrun, this time I'm taking on the Japanese-only revised edition of Ultimate Ghosts n Goblins: Goku Makaimura Kai. Firstly, some credits are in order. Thanks to:

• mike for answering a bunch of questions regarding run timing and other stuff, and for doing the big sexy on SDA.
• nate for his expert encoding work on SDA, and accepting my not-so-perfect digital capture methods.
• Breakdown, Flip, and dex for their recent flow of sweet updates.
• kareshi for encouraging me to stick with UGnG even though it became quite frustrating to speedrun. I still went on to run the easier version though xD
• the verifiers for taking some time off to watch and judge the run.
• YOU, for watching the run and (hopefully) appreciating this underrated game.

  RUN INFO
  -18 segments
  -Life Stock A difficulty (2 lives & 3 credits, not that it mattered)
  -No hits/deaths.
  -Recorded with RemoteJoyLite.

  Differences from Ultimate Ghosts n' Goblins
  -No item collection required to beat the game. Those Red Chests and rings are optional now.
  -Checkpoints are back: you no longer respawn on the spot when you die.
  -Shields are now one-at-a-time-only items and can be replaced by picking up new ones.
  -Magic Spells are now replaceable item pick-ups as well. Unlike UGnG where you're given a depletable Mana bar, spells in Kai are chargeable like in SGnG.
  -Unseal magic is absent. All sealed doors can be opened by simply touching them.
  -The special items from UGnG--Knight Soul, Magic Pendant, etc--are absent in Kai.
  -You have immediate access to double jump at the start of the game.
  -You can't dash/run.
  -Bosses and certain enemies have decreased HP.
  -The stage layout has been modified a bit.
  -The Sorceress fight in the Witch Lair is now mandatory.
  -On round 2, you don't fight Astaroth at the end of Stage 5 anymore. You go straight to Hades.

  I segmented this run for a few reasons. First is that I can't use my RemoteJoyLite->Hypercam recording setup to capture a full 40+ minute run since there will definitely be some audio-desynch/frameskipping somewhere along the way. Second, it's obviously easier to manipulate luck in a segmented run than an SS run, especially in this game. Finally I find it much more fun to make a segmented run with near-perfect execution (like my recent Prinny run) than an SS run where I could get easily distracted near the end and make a fatal mistake. I'm not an uber-level speedrunner yet. :P

  Anyway, enough idle talk. Let's get down to business..

  ROUND 1

  ST1-1 Magic Forest
  A little trick to open chests quckly is to release DOWN while crouch-shooting to cancel the attack's recovery time and move immediately. It only saves a nanosecond and I only open a few chests this way but hey, it looks cool. The item order for ST1-1's Red Chests goes like this: Armor, Weapon, Armor, Red+Blue POW, etc. This is why I take the time to open the 3rd Chest even if I didn't need the armor, so I can get the Red+Blue POW earlier.

  ST1-2 Bloody Nest
  It's hard to manipulate the Snake into staying on the bottom right of the screen for an easy kill, but I only lost a second. The Flare I did before getting the Angel Armor was to exploit a one-hit-kill glitch I discovered that occurs if you hit that Minotaur from offscreen. (it takes 3 Flares otherwise) The 2nd Minotaur can't be provoked to toss its axes for whatever reason, so I had to wait for it to get in place.

  Gate 1 - Arthror
  An ok fight. Finished before it had a chance to do another stab attack.

  ST2-1 Storm Fortress
  Flying to the other side is around 5-7 seconds faster than taking the slow moving platform, since you have to go through 3 Cyclops along the way.

  ST2-2 Death Castle
  Angel Armor FTW!

  Gate 2 - Deathguise
  Pretty fast kill if I say so myself. I totally lucked out when it didn't phase out after dropping its HP below 50%.

  ST3-1 Rotten Swamp
  Angel Armor FTW! After hours of testing I finally discovered a good technique for manipulating Slugel into not burrowing more than once. Otherwise this fight would've took a whole minute.

  ST3-2 Sea of Death
  Without the need to collect Red Chests this stage is pretty easy in Kai. Black Dragon used to be a pain to manipulate but I found a rather simple positioning technique that works wonders.

  Gate 3 - Vermirous
  Pretty simple strategy for the overgrown flea.

  ST4 Scorch Mountain
  This stage gave me problems not because of difficulty. It's because this stage is very graphics-intensive and I'm using RemoteJoyLite for recording, my game kept crashing when I was about to save after clearing the stage. This happened around 30 or so times, with or without including the Spiral Mantruder fight in the segment. In the end I decided to split the stage and boss fight as separate segments just so I could save the friggin game already >_> Notice how I wait a second or two before accessing the save menu. It's the only way I could prevent the crash.

  Gate 4 - Spiral Mantruder
  Instead of continuing after this boss fight and into Stage 5, I decided to keep this segment because Mantruder's last arm is tricky to manipulate.

  ST5 Black Palace
  I originally planned to split this stage into 2 segments, but since I've already made an extraneous segment just for the Mantruder fight, I just pushed through. Every boss fight except Arthror went as planned, and Astaroth fell to ZA WARUDO. I personally like how this segment looks. :D ON TO ROUND 2!!

  ---

  ROUND 2

  Witch Lair - Sorceress
  The game decided to give me the Blue Witch Lair for this fight. The Sorceress was unusually tame this time around, which worked to my advantage.

  ST1-1 Magic Forest
  No need to grab chests anymore but I had to be careful not to grab the armor that shows up above the eyeball tree to keep my Angel Armor. The Hadouken (or Wave Magic as it was called in UGnG) makes short work of the mid-boss, and there's more of that ownage to come.

  ST1-2 Bloody Nest
  For some reason the last Minotaur died from just 1 Hadouken. I dunno how that happened, and since my common practice is to shoot 2 I wasted a bit of time at the end due to very bad reaction time on my part. No complaints though coz the overall stage time was still faster than what I usually get in my practice runs (mostly because of the perfect Snake fight)

  Gate 1 - Arthror
  Sneaky bastard nearly pulled a fast one on me right at the start. Too bad Hadouken passes thru solid objects. >:D

  ST2-1 Storm Fortress
  Manipulating that tailwind at the start of the stage is key to getting a fast time. Had a little trouble positioning the Hadouken during the first bat swarm in the end. The other 2 swarms were spot on though.

  ST2-2 Death Castle
  I hate the golden squids. I had to drop from the air to dodge an incoming squid, but somehow managed to open the barrier AND jump through before the platform carried me away. Phew. Dust Manteater was perfect, Hadouken just owns the darn thing.

  Gate 2 - Deathguise
  Bad luck right at the start when it decided to phase out prematurely. Still killed it in 30 seconds but yeah, could've been faster. Ah well.

  ST3-1 Rotten Swamp
  Slugel's behavior is different this time in that he will burrow after just a few hits. At 8:19 one of its eyes suddenly stretched upward and dodged one Hadouken, so I was 1 hit short of the kill. Unfortunate as it was, I decided to keep it and just make up for that in the next stage..

  ST3-2 Sea of Death
  An already easy stage made quicker with Hadouken. Black Dragon fight was perfect, and a few seconds faster than round 1.

  Gate 3 - Vermirous
  Once again, easy.

  ST4 Scorch Mountain
  Yes, those fire pillars don't kill you during their sinking animation. Dark Arimmars are now the easiest bosses thanks to Hadouken. It's one overpowered spell ain't it?

  DEMON GATE 4 - Spiral Mantruder
  I'm getting redundant here. >_> Hadouken!

  ST5 Black Palace
  The first Minotaur has lower HP than the 2nd one, thus a single shot kills it. Vermirous struggled a bit longer before dying but the rest of the bosses were pretty fast. By now I've made up for Slugel's stalling in ST3-1.

  Hades' Chamber
  At the top of my comments I said "No Hits/deaths". I lied. I intentionally take a hit in this fight since no matter how fast I kill Hades, my final time will still rest in the 43:25~27 range. I actually have 5 versions of this segment but I picked the one that looked like the best finale to the run. Beating the final boss with nothing but underpants is just the way Arthur likes it. Oh and ZA WARUDO! *gets shot*

  ---

  I had to skip the credits cuz the in-game timer doesn't stop for that. Too bad, it would've been nice to show Arthur's rainbow pony at the end. I surpassed my original goal of sub 45 and I'm very happy of it. There's obviously some room for improvement, but mostly on getting lucky against some bosses. Hmmm..If only Hades' VERY long startup sequence is skippable, I'd have gotten sub 43 xD

  Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the run, and don't forget to check out the bloopers reel!