Splatterhouse (Arcade) - Speed Run [ 

This was played on an original Splatterhouse arcade PCB on the H.A.S. supergun. My Splatterhouse PCB also now has the EVERTEN stereo expansion board, so the audio is more clear now with separate stereo channels! This run was done on the hardest difficulty, which starts you at 2HP instead of the default 4HP.
This was also recorded through the Datapath E1 capture card via RGB and upscaled to 4k, so this quality is about as crisp as you can possibly get on real hardware. For comparison, you can check out my first 13:37 run from a while back which was recorded via S-Video to see how much better the recording quality has gotten: • Splatterhouse (Arcade)...
It is also worth noting that the game is running at a slightly higher framerate than the home release ports out there (JP Wii VC at 59.94 fps, and the Namco Museum version runs at ~60 fps). This board appears to run at about 60.60 frames a second, so this benefits from small time gains compared to those versions.
It’s also worth noting that RU-vid will kind of “squish” the frame rate of the video in order for it to comply to the standard 60fps that their platform handles, which results in some staggered scrolling and uneven flickering that can be very slightly unpleasant to some people.
I don't normally do this, but since this arcade board is significantly outside that spec (60.6 FPS), I’m also including some lossless video files that do not have this issue. The smallest one will just be the actual resolution of the game (288x224), as well as an integer scale for 4x of that size. These files are pretty large since they’re lossless, like on the order of 3-6 GB depending on the one you pick, so just be aware of that! The 4x scale is the most "comfortable" size to watch, but it can be taxing to view on some computers, so be aware of that too.
1x size: www.mediafire....
4x size: www.mediafire....
So Stormcrow56k picked this game up for speedrunning recently, and found a couple of new strategies in a few spots. The main optimization he found was for the stage 2 boss, where he found an approach to kill the chair with one punch and one slidekick, however it's extremely difficult and inconsistent, so he also found a backup strategy that minimizes time loss if you don't get it, which helps justify going for it.
Beyond the chair kill, there's a really hard strategy that requires good luck on knives such that they cross in the center of the room, as well as a really difficult jump-punch strategy to take out the 2 airborne knives, which requires pressing jump and punch on the same frame to get Rick to carry his "punch state" into the air and punch twice in the air. Normally when you do a jump, your first attack will always be a jump kick, and any subsequent attack will be a jump punch (unless you hold down for more jump kicks).
The other big find that Stormcrow found was for the Jennifer boss fight in stage 5. Effectively, you can exchange one of the punches early in the the fight with a very late slide kick for the last attack, which saves you one attack and nets you a tiny bit of time.
This run was pretty much what I was looking for. I got the best version of the new stage 2 boss kill, then nailed stages 5, 6, and 7. I had a few small mistakes, like in stage 3, I hit attack too early and did a ducking kick instead of a shotgun blast. In stage 4 I somehow managed to only get 1 hit on the boss when it initially stops (usually I get 2), then ended up having to kill the boss as it touched the floor on the right side, whereas the best kill gets it when it's at the top of the screen on the right. The final mistake in the run was me missing a slide kick near the end of the chair room, which loses about a quarter of a second.
I lost about half a second on the final boss due to luck, with the hands spawning on the same side that the head spawned both times. The stand out highlight of this run is definitely the stage 6 boss kill. For the rest of my splits, I maintained roughly the same pace on average, but I got a gold split on 6 due to how aggressive I was able to play it. This run was also almost damageless! I only took hits at the very end of the run due to bad luck with the hand spawns. I also streamed this on Twitch if anyone would like to watch the VOD: / 1200261672
The exact time of this run is a 13:28.974, which beats the old run by 3.103 seconds (old record was a 13:32.077). With this run, I’m done with this version of the game unless new strategies end up being found. This run is slightly over 2 seconds from my sum of best, which is wild considering how many luck elements the game has. I’ll probably start messing with getting captures for my SNES to be as crisp as they can be, then start messing with redoing the Super Punch Out individual fights with high quality uploads.
Anyways, thanks for watching!