Mind Arms

[dragontamer]

http://www.diced.jp/~tryef/

A freeware fighter, apparently it has an online mode now, but I haven't tried that at all. Its more or less a 3 button fighter, although the 4th button does some specific stuff like switching your attack state.

It has a somewhat interesting super system, you've got your standard "normal" attacks which don't use any resources, you've got your standard specials (quarter circles and all) which use up your mana (which recovers very quickly). You've got some supers / ex attacks (quarter circle heavy) which use up mana and voltage%, and finally, you have ultras which require you to have 80%+ mind.

I used to play this a lot years ago during classes... I figured I'd put this up to see if anyone else cared to try it. The menu is in English at least, but the story and instruction manual is Japanese.

Google's translation of the manual... if you dare...

[Blade]

Could use a cleaner design IMO.

[ilikeusingdizzy]

yesh!

[dragontamer]

Could use a cleaner design IMO.

Well, those screenshots do have ultras going off :-p

Or do you mean the MP / Voltage system? I think it is interesting, because MP limits your specials, and Voltage increases the rate at which MP recovers. Thus, high voltage leads to better combo / pressure strings. (Eventually, your MP will run out if you keep up the pressure)

However, you lose a lot of voltage when your supers / ultras go off. So its non-trivial to manage your resources in this game. Super now for lots of damage? Or should you use the voltage to continue having better pressure vs the opponent?

[Blade]

Actually I mean the character art is fuzzy and looks like its out of a sketchbook with a pencil.

[dragontamer]

Actually I mean the character art is fuzzy and looks like its out of a sketchbook with a pencil.

Meh, when I don't have to pay for something, I don't really judge too harshly on those things.

But you're right

[Clear Sky]

Interesting. I never saw this post until now! I am starting to post information regarding this game, however I am posting them at Kusoge Kings, in order to support their website:

http://kusogekings.com/forum/m/19535873/viewthread/11550208-mindarms-v076-doujin-poverty-that-over-10-years-old-still-meh

Cheers.

[Clear Sky]

Well, those screenshots do have ultras going off :-p

Or do you mean the MP / Voltage system? I think it is interesting, because MP limits your specials, and Voltage increases the rate at which MP recovers. Thus, high voltage leads to better combo / pressure strings. (Eventually, your MP will run out if you keep up the pressure)

However, you lose a lot of voltage when your supers / ultras go off. So its non-trivial to manage your resources in this game. Super now for lots of damage? Or should you use the voltage to continue having better pressure vs the opponent?

Since you use MP for basically everything (i.e. special moves, EX moves, supers), I think MP is more importantly firstly than voltage. Even if you are super low on MP, you still can build voltage by spamming normal attacks. Spamming 5A builds meter the second fastest besides spamming special moves. The only time you actually lose voltage is when characters take away your voltage points (it is a type of offensive and voltage burst trait) by hitting you or using your voltage to do supers or EX moves. Voltage always you to do more damage with supers and EX moves. Also it allows you to do voltage burst which does many good things for you like:

-regain some of your red health back

-acts like a roman cancel for your special moves

-gives you access to your special character trait

-allows you to build more voltage

-allows you do use your super

-refills your MP

-helps you get out of block stun and just defends

If you want tighter and longer pressure strings, you don't need to play a character who has special moves that give plus on block. If you press D after your normal move hits or is blocked, you cancel that normal move into the style switch animation. It works well like a rebeat from Melty Blood. Using style cancels with C normals works great because those attacks usually have a lot of hit and block stun, which give large enough frame advantage to extend block strings and combos.

However, I don't think pressure strings are not very safe in this game. Perhaps moves that have clash frames or multiple hits are safer, but strings purely made up of normal attacks will get punished hard by just defend and block stun cancel techniques. If you read that thread I just linked, you can read more information why that is the case.

[JohnGrimm]

Some interesting ideas in this game, really don't even understand half of what is going on, dang is it ugly, and boy do I have a hard time caring.

[Clear Sky]

Nice combo. It looks more stylish than the combos I do with Eigen. Here's my optimized Eigen corner combo thus far:

 

5A > 5C > 5D > 66 j.C > 5A > 5C > 22C > 5C x 22C > j.A > j.C > 214C

 

Does about 2.8k:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDH57Mr8HlQ

 

Also, the stage I'm playing on is a secret stage. I'm guessing it is an easter egg since normally it is hidden, but if you press C twice during stage selection, two extra, playable stages appear. The other stage looks pretty terrible and I never play on it though. heh

[Clear Sky]

Oh by the way, the OP forgot to mention that this game has netplay. I only tried it a few times yearsssss ago, vs a BR and EU player. Vs those guys, I remember my connection was pretty bad with them. We kept desync'ing in the same round and the input delay felt like 1-2 seconds off. One fault I will admit though is that we had to use hamachi. I have no clue actually if my opponent opened his ports, but I did when I hosted games and yet they couldn't connect to me. Anyway, perhaps though the netcode might perform better vs domestic opponents.

[Clear Sky]

Damn. I lost all of my information that I posted on kusogekings while they transferred to their new domain. I guess I will try to slowly post what I wrote about the game over there.

 

So far I've notice that this game has some really strong defense options that you can use to shutdown pressure, such as these options:

 

a) Canceling out of block stun

-For some reason in this game you can cancel out of block stun with EX moves, Voltage Burst or supers. You simple just input those attacks after blocking.

 

b) Just Defend Counter

-Hit D after a successful JD and you will get a completely invincible attack coming out of block stun. I've tested the JDC with quite a few characters and they can punish a lot of moves, even 5A/2A which are really fast in this game.

 

c) Just Defend Counter Cancel

-Basically you do a JDC and cancel it quickly into an EX. It's sorta nice because you can do some damage straight out of a JD, but using JDC is good enough to get out of pressure. The input is 4~D~EX move and the timing for JDCC is a bit strict.

 

These options are unfortunate, as they help promote IMO a game that already favors players to play at neutral. I don't have a problem with games that emphasize that but the problem is that Mindarms does it in a very boring way, thanks to the fact that combos are quite limited in this game and that traditional resets and okizeme off of combos don't exist for the most part. That is all due to how the recovery system works in this game. Due to these system features, you are left with a game where you want to zone at neutral, waiting for your opponent's recovery bar to completely refill so you can do maximum damage on them, unless you character can play keepaway or has an infinite that you can do off of a random hit.

[Clear Sky]

I found some old posts I made about this game, many years ago. It's kind of funny to see what my old thoughts were about this game, but most of the posts (which there are few of) are about old combos that don't work anymore: http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/comment/634459/#Comment_634459

 

A lot of that information in the post above I only recently found about a couple of years ago.

 

Cheers to nostalgia.

[Clear Sky]

Here's a clip of an infinite with EX Sarah that I learned from a JP combo video:

 

[2C > j.B > j.C > j.A > 5A] x n

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkbyX2zifL8

 

Personally, I think my variant is much easier to land than the one used in the combo video (which I will link when I find it again).

 

Here's another infinite with EX Sarah, but it is done by a glitch. This glitch is strange. It's off of her throw (6C), but it's done off of a throw that seems to come out by random. You cancel that unique throw into 236C to cause the glitch. Besides the glitch completely nullifying the teching system, your opponent becomes stuck in a frozen state where they can't move but only can block. So even if you drop your infinite, you can easily get it again by mixing up your opponent. When you do the glitch against the AI, the AI seems to be non-functioning until you undo the glitch which can only happen two ways: by winning or waiting until the round is over or by throwing your opponent again.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDMzOYf75Z4#t=3m18s

 

Here is a joke character that I didn't realize existed in this game for awhile, until I looked at the game's manual again and messed around at the character selection screen. You unlock him by apparently spamming the D button when you have the name "F-256" highlighted. That's the same way you unlock the two bonus stages in this game.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBFtJXQ8rTk

 

As for his gameplay, I never really messed around with Choin besides in that video. He has some combos although they appear to be limited. IIRC, he doesn't really have the same generic, crappy air combos that most characters in MA have. However though, he seems to have crazy movement and strong projectiles. He would be annoying to play against, I'm sure.

 

Here's an old infinite with Serto that doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work anymore cuz now the recovery gauge works properly with Serto's throw. Eventually your opponent can automatically tech out now:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3301RC-RpVk

 

I don't remember but now around 30 hits the combo drops. You can combo into super for more damage too although you need proper spacing at midscreen. 

[Clear Sky]

Here is my tier list for "fun" because it's silly to have a tier list for a game that never gets played even at a casual level. I don't even know how I would play this game if there was someone to play locally, because I never figured out how to get the game to not auto-detect my joysticks, so that P1 and P2 buttons don't overlap. Here's my list anyway which based around character strength and not match ups:

S: Kanna
A: Chain, EX Sarah, Choin
B: Serto, Colne
C: Eigen, Chako, Sarah, EX Chain, EX Chako
D: Soma
E: Takaya

I put Kanna at the top cuz she has it all. The best air normals, great movement and does decent damage. What sets her apart from every other character are her unique abilities and moveset. Hands down, she has the best Voltage Burst trait, which is super armor. When she activates VB, she can't block but you also cannot prevent her from not attacking you unless you have a move with a high amount of hits, which you can use to stun her. Besides that she has also the best EX move in the game, which is 214C. It's completely unpunishable since it's fully invincible, and she can use it to cross over you for free. It's a great away to reset position and get out of bad situations, and you can land her infinite off of it as well.

A-B are are placed higher for having a better zoning and rushdown game. They have great mobility which allows for them to easy convert into damage. Aside from that they also have infinites which you could potentially could kill with although it would take quite awhile. Resetting after 2.8k-3k would be quite enough since that is about 50% damage in this game. I don't know Colne too well but the infinite is the only reason why I put her in B. I place Choin in A because he has a frustrating keepaway game that most of the characters below him cannot deal with well.

 

C are characters which might excel in one area but have flaws in other areas of their game. For instance, Eigen does a lot of damage but has difficulty reliably landing that damage since he has low mobility and subpar pokes at neutral. EX Chain has decent movement (the same as Chain) but cannot easily force his opponent into the corner, where he does real man damage. Serto has good zoning but cannot easily convert off of damage at neutral because of his odd air dash. Both versions of Chako I am not too sure about, but especially EX Chako who just has more shitty versions of Chako's special moves. I'm quite tempted to put EX Chako in D with Soma, but it's safer to leave her at C, I guess.

D is the home to Soma since he does pitful damage. His combos are horrible outside of using his super. For regular bnbs, I haven't been able to break past 2.2k and that's me using an EX during combos. It's a shame since he seems to have decent normals and 50/50 mixup with his air dash.

Takaya gets his own tier because he deserves it. His movement is definitely the worst. He can only airdash off of his neutral jump, which is a shitty airdash. The trajectory might of been decent if he jumped a bit higher, and if he could more quickly go into an airdash after jumping, instead of waiting after he reaches the peak of his jump. On top of this, you can't even use that airdash now unless you are in offensive style. So with this bad airdash, you are forced to his float forward jump, which leaves him predictable and exposed.

Besides having terrible movement, he has the worst combos in the game. Like barely anything with this character combos. IIRC I seem to max around 1.8k with Tayaka, which means it will take forever to kill a character who uses VB often to recover their health. However that is not the kicker. What terrible makes Tayaka the worst character in the game is that he cannot block HIGH attacks. For some odd reason, Takaya cannot block in the high position unless he was blocking low and the series of attacks he is blocking keep him in continous block stun. If there is a gap in the moves he blocks, he will get hit for blocking high. The same blocking scenario applies to Tayaka using just defend. So you can imagine that Tayaka would get dominated in a game where the main for a long of characters to approach is by an overhead attack via IAD. Also keep in mind that Tayaka cannot even block when he is in offensive style. Seriously, Takaya is so bad it makes me wonder at times if he is a joke character. No way that the author could have been balancing this game for nearly 10 years and not notice these huge design flaws in gameplay.
 

[Clear Sky]

Here is a beefy combo here for Kanna. It uses her midscreen infinite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYObpcnSCWc

 

The amount of red life taken away is ridiculous.

 

If I can somehow find an infinite that is reliable in the corner, then hands down Kanna will be the best character in this game IMO. Unfortunately, this midscreen infinite drops in the corner because Kanna crosses up her opponent in the corner. The best alternative I have atm is: 2C > IAD > j.C > 2A > [j.ABC > land > j.ABC] x n, but the timing is tricky and I never have gotten past 3 reps in a row. I'm not a fan of link combos where I have to time jumps correctly.