zallard1 | Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense Bear Hugger [1:32.79] @zallard1 | Uploaded September 2020 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Shoutouts to Mysteryman for this adjustment. This run bests his WR by a frame, which also happens to make this fight match the TAS time! This is a very peculiar fight to optimize. With the way this fight works, it technically only requires *one* frame perfect input, but there are a few catches that go along with that.

Firstly, none of the inputs in this fight matter until the 1:35 mark on the fight timer (youtube timestamp is 1:00). You want to get to a specific spot in Bear's attack script at that *exact* frame, because Bear will decide what type of attacks he does depending on what whole second the in-game timer is. In this run, if I were to get to that spot 1 frame earlier, Bear would throw a delayed hook with the squirrel on his head and ruin the fight.

My approach to this problem was to buffer as many things as possible up until that point. Every buffer in phase 1 is frame perfect to make sure my pace is sufficiently good. First buffer is 1 dodge, 2 quick dodges, and jab. Second buffer is simply 4 full dodges into jab. Third buffer is 2 dodges, 1 punch, dodge, quick dodge, jab, and triple star punch.

My phase 2 buffers are intentionally *lazy* so I'm wasting an amount of time such that my average counter timing makes it really likely for me to get to the correct frame I need to be at. This just so happens to be compliant with literally all left dodges for everything in phase 2 lmao.

Phase 3 is the important part. You need to counter the first hug, then cancel the 2nd one, counter the "Catch & Release" hug, then do a centering hook. This centering hook dictates your entire pace, because the very next attack is going to be the pivotal attack at 1:35. You can elect to do this centering hook sooner if you feel your manual counters up until this point have been bad, or you can do the hook later if you feel all your manual counters have been really tight. This is hard to really judge accurately in the moment sometimes, so this really comes down to judgement calls to increase your odds of success.

After that centering hook, I've found a frame perfect buffer to always counter his next hook (2 dodges, then right jab, left jab). And right here is the only *mandatory* frame perfect punch aside from the weird centering hook if you're going for a 1:32.79, which is dodging his hook, stunning him, and throwing the final triple star punch. My pseudo buffer for this final attack is that I'll wait until I hear Bear's footsteps hit the ground, then do 2 dodges. It works really really well in my opinion.

Anyways, that's it for this fight! I got this ridiculously fast after finding the buffers and testing stuff in emulator, which was something like an hour of actual attempts. I'm thinking about improving my Sandman time a little bit before moving onto a different fight, since I feel I can do a least a little better on those cancels for now. Anyways, thanks for watching!