Figured out where in the memory the game stores the unlocks need to figure out the flags and then I’ll add it to the lua script.
Location 0x0DF280
*Is having an incredibly hard time not putting up his own tier list after seeing Andy’s.
Finally decided to launch the game to see if I can still play it, indeed I can (kinda).
So, a year and 6 system re-formats later, some Maxter rehab.
I don’t see why you would resist putting your own opinions up lol… It’s fine! My list is based only on our theoryfighting combined with my experience with the game. There are naturally characters I know better than others, and so it’s impossible for me to really speak anything concrete on behalf of a lot of the characters.
I like the combo! 
I say such because I have an incredibly poor history with tier arguments and theoryfighting, but whatever the list.
Disclaimer. My list abides by the rule that chars in the same tier are roughly as good as each other.
Stupid Tier: Epyon*, Psycho, Dark
S Tier - Burning, Rose, Deathscythe
A Tier - RX-78, Heavy Arms, Wing, Master, Tallgeese III, Hydra, Red Zaku
B Tier - Nu, Maxter, Green Zaku, Dragon, Altron, GP-02A, Hygogg, Bolt
C Tier - Q.Mantha, Sandrock, Sazabi, FA-ZZ, Nu Ziel
D Tier - Ball, Acguy, Zeong, Big Zam
Epyon - Epyon is ridiculous. Armor Tackle is unnecessarily strong, and he possesses a normal which can lock down most any airborne char. Add on an unblockable super, and he is just too much stronger than a lot of non-armored cast.
Chars whose position I question (likely because I have limited experience with them):
Wing - Feels quite strong, but I have very very little experience and knowledge of his capabilities. Felt A-Tier was safe (he has a lot of good matchups).
Hygogg/GP-02A - Mid felt like a safe placement for them. Both have selectively good or bad matchups. Especially considering that C-Tier is where chars with serious flaws start coming in.
Sandrock - Heavy Arms Hard Counter. Should explore if he counters anyone else. Seems weak overall.
FA-ZZ - I seriously don’t know how to play this guy. Felt C-Tier was safe.
If I was to assume this as an official tier list, I’d say this game is actually fair in terms of tiering. Top and High tiers compete well with each other. Mid has decent ability to fight with High, but has to fight harder to beat top. Low can fight some of Mid, but struggle with anything higher. Bottom has to struggle overall.
Bah, our ideas aren’t really that different anyways, haha! I only feel like Heavyarms has more hard counters though. I’d be interested to see someone really invest in playing Heavyarms, because I just feel like he has too many bad match-ups. Seems like every fight he either has a mostly easy time with, or just can’t win at all.
Epyon is very stupid, lol.
Really the other major differences are that I feel Dragon, Nu, and Sandrock are stronger than you feel. Sandrock is questionable, but I think if you zone a lot (why is he so good at zoning?) he can be really solid in a lot of match-ups. It’s another character I wish someone I knew was invested in. It’s also hard to tell with Nu Gundam sometimes. He’s fairly sluggish. Capable of good damage though, I like his reversal, and his beam rifle is pretty much the best, it has such fast start-up. I really think Dragon is pretty damn strong. If nothing else, that slide is so good haha…
You have Maxter higher, but you know Maxter better. The only thing I do know is that I could not beat one of my semi-nubile friend’s Deathscythe with my Maxter for the life of me, lol.
I have a hard time placing the Zakus and Sazabi. Sometimes Zaku (especially red) seems really good. And really, for only having a machine gun, the gun seems to be really good. Crackers do so much damage. Sazabi is so hard to place. I’ve been trying to dabble with pretty much all of the characters, but I am truly ass with Sazabi.
Yeah, FAZZ pretty much sucks, lol… Super is too slow, you can really only use it for over-heat OTG as far as I know. His invincible reversal is slow and horribly unsafe on block, also uses ammo on hit. Homing missiles leave him too vulnerable for too long, useless. Dodge > I-Field, easily, in my experience. His beam rifle is really the only thing I like about him. I really don’t think FAZZ has much potential. I think he could fight Heavyarms though. Zeong is kind of in the same boat.
Oh, you forgot Bolt! 
Ah dammit, Bolt, my LEAST played char in the game. My last judgement of him had him in mid-tier (at times, he feels downright stupid). I should be keeping a better eye on him.
I had Heavy Arms there because of just how many chars he beats. I see him downright beating about 12 chars (possibly 14 if some of my theories are correct), and loses to 6 (2 of which are 6-4 losses for him). Biggest problem is he has the worst matchup I have ever seen in a fighting game, vs RX-78, where he loses 9-1, which should probably dock him down harshly. I very often think about swapping those 2, or putting HA in A, but I feel he has waaaaay more winning matchups than most of A (including RX-78 himself).
The way I look at Nu and Dragon’s placement, compare them to those I have in A-Tier. All of those chars have something downright amazing about them, and I don’t feel they compete hard enough with them. If you had to ask me my personal opinions, then I would say they are likely the 2 strongest chars in B-Tier (trying not to have the list too lopsided in the amount of chars in a tier).
Sandrock, interesting char, but man, when you do get the hit with him, it is incredibly underwhelming. It is not too hard to just run/block your way towards him till he has to use his lackluster normals to push you back. He also does a somewhat poor job at stopping someone from an all-in attack. I don’t feel he competes as well as some of the C-Tier chars I have.
Zakus took me the absolute longest to tier (followed by Heavy Arms and Hydra). Back in early 2010 I considered them both mid-tier, but when Red can pressure the crap out of you, has explosions of damage from 70-80% of a life bar, and can put nearly any char in the corner, I realized he was just a bit more special than Green. Green still hits at nearly the same damage at the price of being much slower.
Sazabi just feels bad.
FA-ZZ vs Heavy Arms is more even than anything. FA-ZZ’s problem in that matchup is that he wastes too much time and boost/ammo resources trying to do enough damage to HA. HA can actually adapt well here and shoot bombs from high instead of being grounded where beam will destroy him. Nothing is stopping HA from getting a lead and just blocking for the rest of the round, since FA-ZZ doesn’t have a lot of ammo resources to do significant chip to HA. At some point I did have FA-ZZ in mid-tier, cause he can really be a bully with that beam, but losing the life lead almost equates to an instant loss for him.
And yes, Maxter is my baby. It hurts me inside to have him considered low-tier. You can thank some old gamefaqs tier discussions from about 8 years ago where he was often considered the worst char, and I had to study him out of curiosity, only to find that he has a good amount of fight in him. Sometimes reality slaps me and says he’s not that good, but it’s hard for me. I may have stated in the past that he is not my main, but he is my most played char in the game, and I feel mid-tier is about where he belongs.
One thing I did notice from playing some Bolt, is that his hyper armor shoulder charge actually is unsafe on block, in some match-ups at least. Pretty sure Burning’s jab punished me. Also, I haven’t tried it yet, but I think if you just cancel block stun with a rising dodge, he may just pass under you and you would have free reign. He still has a few nifty tools though.
I guess my point of view on Heavyarms is simply that any S tier character should have virtually no real hard counters. Really none of the other ones do, I think. I actually think there are several that would best him at least 7-3. Can’t really say just yet though. I’m going to try to convince someone to start playing Heavyarms and see what various characters can make happen. Actually, my friend Johnny (plays Rose, but also interested in Heavyarms) could do it, and do it well after a few sessions. He’s a reasonably accomplished MvC3 player, but he lives 2 hours away from me. =/ Might have to dust off the old Kaillera…
Another thing about RX-78 is that he has one of the only somewhat reliable tools against Epyon. RX-78 will often struggle against real solid rush down, but when you see someone commit to much of anything, you can just take their whole bar. lol.
Thinking about HA vs. FAZZ a bit more, I realized HA can just go on in him too, and FAZZ really can’t compete up close.
I certainly consider moving Maxter up a bit.
The question is… ban Epyon if there ever was a tournament, or no? I personally lean towards yes, but I was going to wait until somebody broke the game with him. It would be somewhat interesting trying to find ways to deal with that… evil. Hate to drop the ban hammer too quickly though. People hate that sometimes.
I still main Sandrock. Shotel toss light is really useful as a fast and free long projectile to bait your opponent toward you into that sweet mid ranged spot where he can rack up some damage with shotel toss heavy. Shotel throw light is useless because you have Shotel toss Heavy, and with that you really have to read what you’re opponent is going to do. Could be a solid Oki for people who boost out of knockdowns too much, similar to Master’s anti air tenkyoken, only more useful because of its hitstun.
Of course, we’re all forgetting Sandrock’s amazing unblockable. Fast, lunges, eats bullets, good damage, what’s not to love?
His normals are solid, if unremarkable. Same can be said for his potential damage.
I say he’s a very solid B+ tier if C is mid.
I also am unsure about Heavyarms having as many high match ups as Judge suggests. Upon first glance, of course he seems amazingly cheap, but we know now that Beams eat through bullets. I don’t know for sure, but I question how he can have a good match up against any of the gundams with beam weapons, when his primary strategy can be immediately snuffed out by countering with qcf.LP.
As for Epyon… it’s hard to argue against him being bannable. I liked the idea of reducing his armor points to balance him out more, but if the standard is at 3 now instead of 5, is there much of a difference between 1 and 3? I’m not sure.
I still think he has trouble racking up damage outside of his j.LKx3 combo. But that whip, that dash, that unblockable super.
Dodge is a pretty essential tool to have in a lot of situations, but in certain match ups, having a shield makes a few beam attacks and most beam mega specials very unsafe.
Yeah, Sandrock’s unblockable can be so nasty, especially meaty if they don’t quick rise. The heavy vertical toss is really awesome for oki, you’re right about that. His combo is fun to do, and I didn’t think the damage was that bad. His shotel rekkas move actually seems really good too, it’s fast, and safe I believe, but I didn’t learn when to use it well yet. If anything, I wasn’t too fond of some of his normals, but he has some winners, and maybe I just haven’t found where they belong yet. Every special he has is useful. He never really has to tolerate zoning, which is a pretty big deal in this game sometimes. Somewhat hard to deal with rush down though, I thought. I do think he’s pretty solid overall.
Seeing as you guys are having a Sandrock discussion, I’ll pop in some thoughts from this past week of exploring his capabilities.
Sandrock’s unblockable is odd. You can pop it in the opponent’s face, and when you have the opponent in block stun, but at any kind of distance, it becomes a gigantic risk. The rekkas are almost always unsafe on block, unless the opponent is airborne. Each projectile is useful, with Light being the anti-projectile fullscreen zoning tool, and Heavy being the enemy offense prevention / offense opener. You can pull off some distanced punishes with rekkas, and most hits typically convert to a knockdown. As a zoning / keepaway character, he is actually much better than my previous opinions on him (I probably have less than 3 hours playtime with him). I do feel I should bump him to at least mid to possibly upper-mid for his superb projectile zoning skills (though I feel a couple of my mid-tier chars can drop to low-tier. I’m looking at you GP-02A).
Now here are my problems with him, his normals. While his cr.LP has nice range, it is a tad slow in that you can only really spam it enough to push the enemy back, or hope for a confirm. You can do a little fishing with cr.LP and cr.HP, but the latter can be incredibly risky. st.HP’s best use is a knockdown option when the opponent tries to escape a grab. st.LK really only sees use in a full combo. cr.LK can be useful for fishing for a confirm into rekkas, but I feel cr.LP better serves this purpose. Both HK normals are incredibly risky. His aerial normals are all pretty straight-forward, not terrible, but he gets little to nothing out of them.
Overall, I feel Sandrock is a great projectile-based zoning char, and nothing else.
Not sure who to explore next. I still believe Heavy Arms’ stalling capabilities are being underestimated somewhat.
Man, GP02A is somewhat difficult to tier. I used to really think he had very little potential, but Mizark plays him almost exclusively now, almost completely dropping God Gundam. GP02A gets out-zoned by any real zoners, or hell, even crappy vulcans can beat his rockets, but he actually has a lot of ammo to play with, and his zooks are very effective when not matched up against other projectiles. In theory fighting, this sounds inadequate, but in practice, the zooks are very useful, and they do a lot of damage. Speaking of damage, his punish damage is pretty insane. His invincible reversal does so much damage, he more or less really only needs 3 good reads to beat you. The only downside, is that it whiffs on crouching opponents. Like everything else in this game, you recover instantly when you land, so it is even difficult to get a full punish on GP02A’s uppercut sometimes. Of course, he can certainly use that for anti-air, but another anti-air that we’ve learned is deceptively awesome is his cr.HP. Watching my matches against GP02A again with various characters, I noticed I got swatted away while airborne frequently by cr.HP. Then there’s rocket rain as anti-air if he sees you flying about. Sweet raptor Jesus, don’t get hit by the primary rocket! His s.LP stuffs a lot of things as well. His aerial command normal, Shield Turn (dwn+HP), is awesome as well. You’ll also notice in some of the videos, he’ll use numerous j.LP, and it can be challenging to see and react to how many before he lands and hits low.
Fighting against him without projectiles, it’s always a guessing game whenever he gets a special flash. After being conditioned enough on zooks, there are opportunities for rocket rain. Rocket rain is slow and punishable you say? Not always. Unless you have a beam super, Gundam Hammer, or some other fast nearly full screen punish that you can use to react to EITHER regular zooks or rocket rain, you more or less have to deal with the rain, because the start-up looks exactly the same as regular zook fire. Block it, *aerial dodge it, or try to avoid it altogether. Of course in our casuals, you’ll see me try to punish it post-launch anyways for funzies, but it almost never works out too well. One thing about rocket rain, and his super even, that Mizark doesn’t really believe in (but I do), is attempting an unblockable while they are pinned down or forced to block. He’s more into attempting a grab before you block a super, or waiting to see if you hang yourself during rocket rain. His unblockable is usually fairly easy to dodge, but hey, why not try it?
Let’s add another layer onto the guessing game. Will GP02A fire one rocket, or two? You really just never know. If you assume he fires one and commit to something, but he fires two, ouch. For example, I think I recall there were times with Dragon I would slide under a rocket, thinking only one was coming, only to be smacked in the face by the second one before I was able to block. If you always assume he fires two, then you give him a lot of extra time whenever he only fires 1. Sure, I could just match with my projectile, but GP02A recovers fast enough to block if he only fires one rocket, and he has way more ammo than Dragon, for example. You also wouldn’t get much reward. There’s a lot of this in my videos as well.
I will say though, that the tracking on the zooks isn’t good. If you are standing when he fires them, many characters can get under them easily (ie Dragon with slide). If you’re crouching when he launches it, you have to deal with it usually, or jump it. Some characters can still get under (Hygogg) but it’s scary. Proximity to GP02A when he fires the zook is also a factor in whether or not it can be easily avoided.
It’s unfortunate that his super is so awful. It is really only good for space control, and really even at that, it can be risky sometimes. After a knockdown is safest, but let’s list GP02A’s practical knockdowns:
Exactly. He’s pretty much relying on overheat opportunities. Well, I guess that’s why he does so much damage. The other thing to really consider then is his health pool, which is massive.
I really think to have GP02A in middle tier, almost exactly in the middle nowadays. There are some match-ups I feel he simply cannot really win, but he holds his own against a lot of characters, even some of the stronger ones. There is no other character that I have more experience fighting against.
Could you elaborate a bit more on GP02’s Mega Special? I think it may have more uses. Considering GP02’s punish damage is so high, he really doesn’t need a mega special to rack up damage in the first place, so I think space control and pressure is exactly what it’s used for. As for knockdowns, I’d say his safest knockdown is getting an overheat from all the damage he does, XD
Yeah, it’s fine that it’s used for space control in theory, no problem with that, but it’s horribly unsafe in so many situations, so its use as space control even is still restricted. You only can cause 2 overheats a match. Best bet may be to look for anti-air super opportunities.
It’s truly unfortunate that the explosion isn’t big enough to at least cover him. If it would have a larger blast radius, or descend more quickly to cover him from a direct approach, then we’d be looking at something else entirely.
I hate to bump without having anything to add, but I’ve been missing GBA2 and the GBA2 players. Just wondering if any of you guys are still out there. I wish I could do more videos, but my old computer caught a weird virus I couldn’t fix so I bought a new lap top and unfortunately it didn’t come with video editing software.
Also, as a trivial aside, not too long after the Game Grumps GBA2 video, my video guide for Big Zam became the most viewed video in the set, and generally the whole set got a slight view boost.
I’m sure most of us are lurking and not posting. I’d be willing to try this on kailerra again at some point
I’m still around. Similarly, I ended up reformatting my desktop, and I never got around to setting GBA2 up again.
HurtboxTV has a few recent videos for the game, but they aren’t well-versed in the game.
I have been itching to play it again. Damn kaillera for being so meh…
Yes, I’ve tried putting in the unfinished characters. They will crash the game.
Mother of pearl, man! That second picture! What did you do!?
It was just a ram hack.
Notes
Around 0x1FDF50 is where the game stores the table. Each slot is a 16 bit value(2 bytes or a word).
It goes left to right then bottom to top.
Unfinished characters crash the game (Probably cause they have no graphics so avoid using 06 0D 0F 10).
If a character is on there multiple times it’ll only highlight it’s first slot. So, if I moved on the Zaku II only select screen it won’t appeared that I moved.
That’s very interesting. It’s really too bad the other characters won’t work, but superb effort!