A few months ago, I got a bit obsessed with Home Run Contest (I've spent literally hours in a row just trying to get a high score) and have watched Teitoku trying to see how he gets his impossible scores. I don't think there's a guide on it, so why not make one?
Also, this guide won't really work for Home Run Contest in Brawl and Melee; they work a bit differently, though some things should work in those games anyway.
You'll need to know:
Basic Controls: http://www.ssbwiki.com/Controls (read the picture of your controller)
Smash Attack: http://www.ssbwiki.com/Smash_attack
Picking up items (first part of the following guide, also by me): http://smashboards.com/guides/item-techniques.831/
The easiest way to pick up an item is to press the attack button when you're near it, but the other options can be helpful in this case (for attacking Sandbag while picking up the bat at the same time, for example).
Basics
In Home Run Contest, your goal is to launch Sandbag as far as possible (to the right, please don't do it to the left) with only 10 seconds to rack up damage before launching it. You can do this with any method you want, but the conveniently placed Home-Run Bat (which I'll just refer to as "the bat") is extremely helpful for this, due the amount of knockback it deals.
Some more detail
The crowd is cheering for you, but no pressure
The starting platform has a few things to note:
The bat works like a normal item. Never played with items? Well, uh, you should. At least once in your life. This is a party game, after all. Anyway, you can pick it up, throw it, and attack with it. The attacks that are replaced are jab (
), Ftilt (), dash attack (), and Fsmash (). Every other move will instead be your character's normal move.
Notice how I keep saying "Sandbag" instead of "the sandbag"? If you didn't know, Sandbag is an actual character (probably with some form of sentience?), but don't be afraid to hit it despite this fact. Its trophy description says, "Sandbag seems pretty content with being your punching bag, so it'd almost be mean not to go all out on it." Anyway, your goal is to hit it as far as you can, and since Sandbag gets knocked back further when it has more damage (just like normal characters) the usual tactic is to hit Sandbag to rack up damage, then hitting it with the bat when the time starts running out. I'll go over this more later on.
Oh, and Sandbag isn't grabbable. You Mario players will have to rethink your strategy.
The invisible barriers (which are on the very left and right of the platform) only block Sandbag, so, like I said earlier, you can run off the stage and mess around if you really want to. In this game (unlike Brawl), the barrier seems to break only due to moves that knock the Sandbag at a fast enough speed; otherwise, you can hit Sandbag between the walls all you want. The barriers disappear once the timer runs out, but breaking the barriers will launch Sandbag outside of the platform before the barriers disappear. This isn't recommended, however; Home Run Contest is all about making every second count, and finishing early doesn't really make sense. I also might add that the invisible barriers aren't invisible whenever Sandbag touches them, but you should be able to tell that when you play.
On that note, if anything was confusing, it's best to just go into Home Run Contest and try out stuff. After knowing all this, experience will probably be the best teacher.
Tips
Here's some tips that might help you out:
Tip #1: you should keep in mind is that once the 10 seconds are over, animations can still play; you just aren't able to make any inputs.
Try going into Home Run Contest with Little Mac, then try to Neutral B (pressing the Special button by itself) at the last moment possible. Even though the time already ended, Little Mac punches Sandbag much later. This is applicable to all of these methods; just replace Little Mac's Neutral B with the bat's Fsmash (which has a long-ish animation).
Tip #2: The bat's tip does the most amount of knockback. Know your character's range to hit it correctly.
Methods
In my opinion, it's best to freestyle and do whatever you want in Home Run Contest. These methods might help you to come up with your own method, but these are mostly for getting a quick easy score, whether you want to get those challenges or want to have a nice big number next to your character.
Git Gud Fast method
In a normal match, the Home-Run Bat will usually one-hit KO any character if you hit them with forward smash. Even throwing it does a good amount of damage and knockback.
Because of that, there's an easy way to get Sandbag a good amount of distance away with every character: picking up the bat, throwing it at the Sandbag several times, then Fsmashing it at the last second. Fsmashing with the bat for the first hit works because Sandbag doesn't get launched fast enough to break the barrier, and it does a good amount of damage. And that's, well, pretty much all you do for this method. It's easy because it's the best way to git gud fast.
Smash Attack method
Spam smash attacks before the final hit, which again, is the bat's Fsmash. The Git Gud Fast method might do more damage anyway depending on the character, but you can always switch to Ganondorf if that's the case.
Smash Attack + Keeping it in place (Co-op)
Get a partner and go to Co-op Home Run Contest for this method. One of you picks Ness, the other Ganondorf. Once the game starts, Ness should spam PK Fire on one side of Sandbag while Ganondorf spams smash attacks on the other side. Finish it off with a bat Fsmash, and you should get a pretty good score.
Instead of PK Fire, you can use multi-hit jabs (e.g. Captain Falcon) or spikes if timed correctly. For example, Ganondorf can Fsmash while another Ganondorf Dairs the Sandbag midair. Also, yes, Ganon + Ganon makes for a pretty good Home Run Contest duo.
Freestyle
Actually, since I'm sure somebody's going to ask me this, how do you freestyle?
Well, really, just by doing whatever. Play a bunch of times in a row, and eventually you'll find a move (or sequence of moves) that you like starting out with. After that, just react to where Sandbag gets launched off to, and after several restarts, you'l find a routine to follow. Follow that routine, and once you swing the bat at Sandbag, you should have a pretty good score.
Based on Teitoku's videos, however, I usually follow a slightly stricter routine. I start off by either grabbing the bat and hitting Sandbag with an aerial simultaneously (you can see me do this in my videos with Yoshi's Fair and Ganondorf's Bair) or by insta-tossing the bat at the Sandbag and recatching the bat with an aerial (you can find out what an insta-toss is at the bottom). Then I push Sandbag to the edge with more attacks, where I Down Toss > Recatch (again, look at the bottom to know what this means), and after that I just react to where Sandbag goes.
It sounds really complicated, but if you know how to do each of these, then it should make a little more sense. My videos should also make it more clear (link at the bottom).
What moves can I use other than bat Fsmash?
If Sandbag is at a high enough percent, other moves will actually do higher knockback than the bat. The moves I've seen are:
Advanced Techniques
Once you've gotten the hang of freestyling in Home Run Contest, try out these advanced techniques. I've gotten most of these from Teitoku's videos (i.e. I did not make these up, credit goes to Teitoku), and I recommend you visit his channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Teitoku06142
I also recommend you check out my Item Techniques guide (which I've also linked near the top of the page, by the way) since all of these involve the bat in some sort of way. I'll also use the same terminology from it, and it'll be a lot easier to do these techniques if you're familiar with how to do item techniques: http://smashboards.com/guides/item-techniques.831/
I'll use "down toss" instead of "down throw" when referring to throwing the bat downwards to avoid getting it confused with grabbing/throwing, even if grabbing isn't really applicable in this case.
Let's get started.
Bat Dropping
The wiki has a good article on this: http://www.ssbwiki.com/Bat_dropping
Down toss (or Z-drop) the bat over Sandbag, then recatch the bat with an aerial. You get to do a ton of damage in a little amount of time while also keeping the bat in your hand. It even sounds amazing when I say it like that.
Down Toss (grounded) > Recatch (using)
I do it twice in a row here. Looks a bit funny, but it does SO much damage.
If you're right next to Sandbag, you can throw the bat downwards and recatch it using the Attack button. The timing for the recatch takes some practice, but doing it several times in a row is a good way to rack up damage. Make sure that the bat hits Sandbag, however; this won't work otherwise.
Aerial Down Toss > Insta-toss
When above Sandbag, you can down toss the bat (or fine, Z-drop, but I'm pretty sure down toss does more damage), then insta-toss the bat downwards. Since the bat bounces off of Sandbag, you can quickly toss the bat at Sandbag again for even more damage. Sometimes, based on the percentage, insta-tossing sideways will work instead of down, from my experience.
Aerial Down Toss > Z-catch
or
Aerial Down Toss > Double Jump > Z-catch
I see Teitoku use this at higher percents since you can down toss after the Z-catch. You can see him chaining it several times into itself about 2 seconds into this video (when he has 7 seconds on the clock): https://youtu.be/c5ZdTQ3Np8k
Pausing
The ultimate technique, and I'm not even kidding. If you've watched Teitoku's videos and wondered how he managed to perform those superhuman feats, spoiler alert: he's actually pausing the game and doing the inputs between every pause. This is shown here: https://youtu.be/D6IfKg99IB0
The pauses aren't shown in his videos because they're replays, if you want to contradict me. Anyway, I'm not here to expose Teitoku; this doesn't even make his videos much less impressive -- I mean, try doing what he does, and you probably won't be able to do it even with pausing.
Still, pausing will help you get near TAS level of frame-perfect inputs, and helps you a lot since most of these ATs are pretty complicated inputs. Also, if you're freestyling, it helps to collect your thoughts to make a proper followup.
---------------------------------------
Anyway, that's it for now. I recommend checking out Teitoku's channel if you want to see the very best HRC player in action. Also, I have a playlist of my Home Run Contest videos because they're more realistic and also #shamelessplug
Teitoku06142's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Teitoku06142
My cringey playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwOwjpie6EbQCglWQY5TQeX9qsgDtRV8z
I might update this with GIFs, pictures, and (mostly) proper formatting; I'll make sure to make an update if that ever happens. Thanks for reading, and have fun whacking innocent Sandbags with baseball bats.
Feel free to tell me what to add or fix to the guide ~
Also, this guide won't really work for Home Run Contest in Brawl and Melee; they work a bit differently, though some things should work in those games anyway.
You'll need to know:
- Basic controls (please play the actual game before going into Home Run Contest. This is just a side game!)
- How to do a smash attack
- How to pick up an item
Basic Controls: http://www.ssbwiki.com/Controls (read the picture of your controller)
Smash Attack: http://www.ssbwiki.com/Smash_attack
Picking up items (first part of the following guide, also by me): http://smashboards.com/guides/item-techniques.831/
The easiest way to pick up an item is to press the attack button when you're near it, but the other options can be helpful in this case (for attacking Sandbag while picking up the bat at the same time, for example).
Basics
In Home Run Contest, your goal is to launch Sandbag as far as possible (to the right, please don't do it to the left) with only 10 seconds to rack up damage before launching it. You can do this with any method you want, but the conveniently placed Home-Run Bat (which I'll just refer to as "the bat") is extremely helpful for this, due the amount of knockback it deals.
Some more detail
The crowd is cheering for you, but no pressure
The starting platform has a few things to note:
- The platform itself
- The bat
- Sandbag
- The invisible barriers... which you can't see
The bat works like a normal item. Never played with items? Well, uh, you should. At least once in your life. This is a party game, after all. Anyway, you can pick it up, throw it, and attack with it. The attacks that are replaced are jab (
), Ftilt (), dash attack (), and Fsmash (). Every other move will instead be your character's normal move.Notice how I keep saying "Sandbag" instead of "the sandbag"? If you didn't know, Sandbag is an actual character (probably with some form of sentience?), but don't be afraid to hit it despite this fact. Its trophy description says, "Sandbag seems pretty content with being your punching bag, so it'd almost be mean not to go all out on it." Anyway, your goal is to hit it as far as you can, and since Sandbag gets knocked back further when it has more damage (just like normal characters) the usual tactic is to hit Sandbag to rack up damage, then hitting it with the bat when the time starts running out. I'll go over this more later on.
Oh, and Sandbag isn't grabbable. You Mario players will have to rethink your strategy.
The invisible barriers (which are on the very left and right of the platform) only block Sandbag, so, like I said earlier, you can run off the stage and mess around if you really want to. In this game (unlike Brawl), the barrier seems to break only due to moves that knock the Sandbag at a fast enough speed; otherwise, you can hit Sandbag between the walls all you want. The barriers disappear once the timer runs out, but breaking the barriers will launch Sandbag outside of the platform before the barriers disappear. This isn't recommended, however; Home Run Contest is all about making every second count, and finishing early doesn't really make sense. I also might add that the invisible barriers aren't invisible whenever Sandbag touches them, but you should be able to tell that when you play.
On that note, if anything was confusing, it's best to just go into Home Run Contest and try out stuff. After knowing all this, experience will probably be the best teacher.
Tips
Here's some tips that might help you out:
Tip #1: you should keep in mind is that once the 10 seconds are over, animations can still play; you just aren't able to make any inputs.
Try going into Home Run Contest with Little Mac, then try to Neutral B (pressing the Special button by itself) at the last moment possible. Even though the time already ended, Little Mac punches Sandbag much later. This is applicable to all of these methods; just replace Little Mac's Neutral B with the bat's Fsmash (which has a long-ish animation).
Tip #2: The bat's tip does the most amount of knockback. Know your character's range to hit it correctly.
Methods
In my opinion, it's best to freestyle and do whatever you want in Home Run Contest. These methods might help you to come up with your own method, but these are mostly for getting a quick easy score, whether you want to get those challenges or want to have a nice big number next to your character.
Git Gud Fast method
In a normal match, the Home-Run Bat will usually one-hit KO any character if you hit them with forward smash. Even throwing it does a good amount of damage and knockback.
Because of that, there's an easy way to get Sandbag a good amount of distance away with every character: picking up the bat, throwing it at the Sandbag several times, then Fsmashing it at the last second. Fsmashing with the bat for the first hit works because Sandbag doesn't get launched fast enough to break the barrier, and it does a good amount of damage. And that's, well, pretty much all you do for this method. It's easy because it's the best way to git gud fast.
Smash Attack method
Spam smash attacks before the final hit, which again, is the bat's Fsmash. The Git Gud Fast method might do more damage anyway depending on the character, but you can always switch to Ganondorf if that's the case.
Smash Attack + Keeping it in place (Co-op)
Get a partner and go to Co-op Home Run Contest for this method. One of you picks Ness, the other Ganondorf. Once the game starts, Ness should spam PK Fire on one side of Sandbag while Ganondorf spams smash attacks on the other side. Finish it off with a bat Fsmash, and you should get a pretty good score.
Instead of PK Fire, you can use multi-hit jabs (e.g. Captain Falcon) or spikes if timed correctly. For example, Ganondorf can Fsmash while another Ganondorf Dairs the Sandbag midair. Also, yes, Ganon + Ganon makes for a pretty good Home Run Contest duo.
Freestyle
Actually, since I'm sure somebody's going to ask me this, how do you freestyle?
Well, really, just by doing whatever. Play a bunch of times in a row, and eventually you'll find a move (or sequence of moves) that you like starting out with. After that, just react to where Sandbag gets launched off to, and after several restarts, you'l find a routine to follow. Follow that routine, and once you swing the bat at Sandbag, you should have a pretty good score.
Based on Teitoku's videos, however, I usually follow a slightly stricter routine. I start off by either grabbing the bat and hitting Sandbag with an aerial simultaneously (you can see me do this in my videos with Yoshi's Fair and Ganondorf's Bair) or by insta-tossing the bat at the Sandbag and recatching the bat with an aerial (you can find out what an insta-toss is at the bottom). Then I push Sandbag to the edge with more attacks, where I Down Toss > Recatch (again, look at the bottom to know what this means), and after that I just react to where Sandbag goes.
It sounds really complicated, but if you know how to do each of these, then it should make a little more sense. My videos should also make it more clear (link at the bottom).
What moves can I use other than bat Fsmash?
If Sandbag is at a high enough percent, other moves will actually do higher knockback than the bat. The moves I've seen are:
- Ganondorf reverse Warlock Punch (Neutral B)
- Roy almost fully charged Flare Blade (aka Neutral B) (Roy's Neutral B actually does more knockback if you release it right before it's fully charged)
- Bowser fully charged Forward Smash
Advanced Techniques
Once you've gotten the hang of freestyling in Home Run Contest, try out these advanced techniques. I've gotten most of these from Teitoku's videos (i.e. I did not make these up, credit goes to Teitoku), and I recommend you visit his channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Teitoku06142
I also recommend you check out my Item Techniques guide (which I've also linked near the top of the page, by the way) since all of these involve the bat in some sort of way. I'll also use the same terminology from it, and it'll be a lot easier to do these techniques if you're familiar with how to do item techniques: http://smashboards.com/guides/item-techniques.831/
I'll use "down toss" instead of "down throw" when referring to throwing the bat downwards to avoid getting it confused with grabbing/throwing, even if grabbing isn't really applicable in this case.
Let's get started.
Bat Dropping
The wiki has a good article on this: http://www.ssbwiki.com/Bat_dropping
Down toss (or Z-drop) the bat over Sandbag, then recatch the bat with an aerial. You get to do a ton of damage in a little amount of time while also keeping the bat in your hand. It even sounds amazing when I say it like that.
Down Toss (grounded) > Recatch (using
)
I do it twice in a row here. Looks a bit funny, but it does SO much damage.
If you're right next to Sandbag, you can throw the bat downwards and recatch it using the Attack button. The timing for the recatch takes some practice, but doing it several times in a row is a good way to rack up damage. Make sure that the bat hits Sandbag, however; this won't work otherwise.
Aerial Down Toss > Insta-toss
When above Sandbag, you can down toss the bat (or fine, Z-drop, but I'm pretty sure down toss does more damage), then insta-toss the bat downwards. Since the bat bounces off of Sandbag, you can quickly toss the bat at Sandbag again for even more damage. Sometimes, based on the percentage, insta-tossing sideways will work instead of down, from my experience.
Aerial Down Toss > Z-catch
or
Aerial Down Toss > Double Jump > Z-catch
I see Teitoku use this at higher percents since you can down toss after the Z-catch. You can see him chaining it several times into itself about 2 seconds into this video (when he has 7 seconds on the clock): https://youtu.be/c5ZdTQ3Np8k
Pausing
The ultimate technique, and I'm not even kidding. If you've watched Teitoku's videos and wondered how he managed to perform those superhuman feats, spoiler alert: he's actually pausing the game and doing the inputs between every pause. This is shown here: https://youtu.be/D6IfKg99IB0
The pauses aren't shown in his videos because they're replays, if you want to contradict me. Anyway, I'm not here to expose Teitoku; this doesn't even make his videos much less impressive -- I mean, try doing what he does, and you probably won't be able to do it even with pausing.
Still, pausing will help you get near TAS level of frame-perfect inputs, and helps you a lot since most of these ATs are pretty complicated inputs. Also, if you're freestyling, it helps to collect your thoughts to make a proper followup.
---------------------------------------
Anyway, that's it for now. I recommend checking out Teitoku's channel if you want to see the very best HRC player in action. Also, I have a playlist of my Home Run Contest videos because they're more realistic and also #shamelessplug
Teitoku06142's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Teitoku06142
My cringey playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwOwjpie6EbQCglWQY5TQeX9qsgDtRV8z
I might update this with GIFs, pictures, and (mostly) proper formatting; I'll make sure to make an update if that ever happens. Thanks for reading, and have fun whacking innocent Sandbags with baseball bats.
Feel free to tell me what to add or fix to the guide ~
- Applicable Games
- Smash 3DS, Smash Wii U
