Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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This is a tool-assisted speedrun. Playlist with all stages: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3V0eG1j-1vKfkxneY3XydESL0dxPb2JT

Stage 3 Area 1
This area has the most complicated enemy placements for New Game tactics. It involves a lot of dashing and collecting enemies, but I’m still not sure if I saved maximum time. The situation got a little lenient at times thanks to continues squads, so I was more focused on killing 2-3 enemies to make more enemies appear, especially for foot-dragon mixtures.

Stage 3 Area 2
That section was cumbersome regarding the framerule. Eliminating squads of 2-3 katana ninjas, when done in the fastest time, is just enough to cut 1 keyframe (30 frames) from spawning new enemies. The concentration of 56-59 frames periods for spawning was high while making this TAS, but I managed to save time where possible.

Stage 3 Area 3
It would be a good idea to lure ninjas and knock a landing Foot Tech Ninja with them, but unfortunately, it lacks time to make him fall in the right direction, so I would lose more time reaching the next fighting spot in time. I managed to do that only once, at the very last squad, and saved only 9 frames.
- Evil Turtlebot Ver.1 boss fight -
That’s not really clear what Konami was willing to do with Turtlebot, but its AI works in a weird way. When he spawns in, he’s initially invincible for 232 frames. He also becomes invincible after being knocked down for 61 frames. After performing an attack or a combo, he stands dead on his tracks for a short while regardless of the outcome. When it runs out of health, its complete fly-away animation takes 283 frames before the arrow pops up.
I’ve been examining possible strategies, how to spend exploding shurikens and how many of them I should spend on 2 Turtlebots, and I ended up beating the first one with combos and dashing because I found killing a Foot Tech Ninja with exploding + electric shurikens quicker in terms of time saving.

Stage 3 Area 4
This is my favourite area in Stage 3. This area looks like a tile 3x3 with 5x5 squares in each cell and it’s filled with explosive barrels. I don’t know if the developers were conceived this, but the whole area can be cleared with barrels only. Except for the first squad where regular fighting is faster.
Thanks to the smooth explosion propagation, human enemies can be hit twice, which simplifies the task of eliminating Foot Tech Ninjas.

Stage 3 Area 5
Not much to say about this area. I got lucky with both of the swinging hooks. I had to keep 2 explosive shurikens for Turtlebot and spent the extra ones on Foot Techs before the second hook. The ones near the exit were beaten with strong attacks, thanks to the narrow area.

Stage 3 Area 6
Finally, I got to the end. We know about the invulnerability thing from the first Turtlebot encounter. That’s the main reason why I was collecting those regular shurikens, because I have enough of them to drain most of its health and since I got 2 explosive shurikens, I can drain the rest of its health quickly. There’s 1 frame gap when you can hit almost fallen Turtlebot with a shuriken, but you gotta slow down. That’s why I threw explosive shurikens at the end.
Thanks to the cutscene before the fight, I was invulnerable to the attacks at the beginning, which let me push Turtlebot towards the corner so I could keep the right distance to have this frame gap.

Dojo 2
Comparing to Dojo 1, the luck got negated, so I had to bruteforce the whole thing.
For this Dojo, Turtle’s Home location is divided into several spawn zones where Foot Ninjas spawn in. There are 4 squads in total. A squad contains of 3 ninjas, but it can be decreased to 2 of them to match the usual limit of 5 humans. The first spawn point is selected at the very beginning of the training, so the only way to manipulate it is to skip frames on Stage Select screen, so I had to do that to have the first squad close to me.
For other squads, the spawn points are also selected at random. It depends on the moment when the last ninja in the squad is vanished as well as your attacks in a specific time gap. Usually, doing a strong attack 16+ frames before a squad jumps in results in it having spawned in a different spot.
If you have a squad on the field, then an additional squad is spawned. I don’t know the actual mechanic of it, but it seems like it spawns in in 3 sec, if the previous squad hasn’t been destroyed yet. Of course, waiting for so long is pointless, so I eliminate it in the fastest time and the game spawns a new one as soon as the next time period is in order. There might be a special case to have 2 squads quickly, but I didn’t manage to reproduce it.

0:00 Stage Select
0:25 Stage 3 Area 1 (in 2;04)
2:41 Stage 3 Area 2 (in 0;29)
3:28 Stage 3 Area 3 (in 2;37)
6:20 Stage 3 Area 4 (in 0;46)
7:21 Stage 3 Area 5 (in 1;09)
8:46 Stage 3 Area 6 (in 0;13)
9:30 Dojo 2 (in 0;09)