Easiest/Worst Obstacles in Stages 1, 2 and 3

[cb]

Here's my opinion on what I think are the easiest obstacles in each stage bar stage 4. Let me know what you think are the easiest/worst.

Stage 1
Quad Steps - This obstacle is way too easy for the first obstacle as you can take your time on it and also use your hands. The only way I can see people failing it now is rushing it or having the wrong foot placements. It would have gotten a 100% clear rate in 39 if Yamada and Kaisei Takechi didn't make their mistakes. This obstacle is not only easy, but also boring, lazy and uninspiring.

Honourable Mentions
Taki Kudari/Maruta Kudari/Log Drop - I don't know why they considered this an obstacle, you're literally just jumping down with the assistance of log, but I'm putting this in the honourable mention as I don't really count is as an obstacle.

Bungee Bridge - With a 100% clear rate, bungee bridge is one of Shin Sasuke's worst obstacles. Nagano just literally just walked over it. I'm glad it was replaced by the HPA.

Stage 2
Narrow - In my opinion, this is the worst Stage 2 obstacle ever. For the first obstacle of Stage 2, it didn't really waste that much time, it does not drain the competitor's energy and does not look failable. Due to this, Sasuke 6's Stage 2 had a 100% clear rate with Sasuke 32 having the same clear rate.

Honourable Mention
Net Bridge - This obstacle wasn't really meant to be failable, it was meant to be a time waster. What did it do? The three competitors that faced it cleared the obstacle easily and quickly, thus resulting them clearing the stage with over 10 seconds. This is also another unimaginative obstacle that was in Shin Sasuke, really just a cargo net.

Stage 3
Hang Move - Easily one of the worst obstacles in Sasuke, the hang move did nothing in the tournaments it was in. Even with the "buffs" in 3, all six competitors managed to clear it without problems.

Honourable Mention
Rope Junction - For an obstacle where people had to use their upper body strength, this obstacle proved to be extremely easy with everyone who attempted it, making it look like a piece of cake. It didn't drain competitor's upper body and it wasn't failable.

[zoran]

The fail rate on the quad steps is misleading and deflated as competitors who fail the jump from the steps to the rolling hill are treated as rolling hill fails despite being more tied to the steps.

[cb]

I'm talking about the obstacles on its own but technically they failed the rolling hill because they completed the quad steps.

As a combo, the quad steps rolling hill combo is a meh for me. The fact that it takes people so long to complete it is a con for me.

[brz0ny]

Check my thread about worst obstacle course of all time, where I polled every obstacle and people voted for the worst of the worst. I also had a best obstacle course thread, and started the best tournaments ranking poll, but mod stopped me because its "filler posts" even though people interact on those type of posts the most.

[subtleagent]

Stage 1: Hazard Swing

When an obstacle can be jumped over it's not an obstacle anymore. Plus virtually no one who cleared actually did the obstacle correctly bar Mr. Octopus.

Stage 2: Shoulder Walk

IDK, seeing how dangerous it can be and how pathetically easy it was compared to the Galleon makes it hard not to look back on it not so fondly.

Stage 3: Kudari Lamp Grasper

Okay what the hell? The original Lamp Grasper wasn't that hard, but at least it was fun and memorable. This takes said obstacle and completely bastardizes it to where competitors can just cheese down one side and it does f*** all in draining stamina. And it somehow stays in Stage 3 for almost 3 years. They don't even make the lamps glow.

[dakohosu]

I don't know how they counted the Log Drop as an obstacle but not the Brick Climb, given that you could literally jump past the former, which is hilarious thinking about it now during the era of disqualifying competitors for skipping a Fish Bone peg. To me that's the equivalent of counting the fireman's pole after the original Spider Walk, or the slide down from the Backstream, as an obstacle. The Brick Climb was a pretty good time waster, and a mandatory obstacle you couldn't just skip, yet it didn't count for some odd reason; hell, Yamada even failed it lol.

In terms of the Quad Steps/Rolling Hill debacle, technically if you make the jump from the last step to the Rolling Hill but then slide off one of the rollers that does count as a Rolling Hill fail as that's both the place at which, and the reason the competitor fails, regardless of whether the fail was caused by a bad jump from the former or not. Successfully dismounting an obstacle imo classes as a clear even if you fail straight after. If someone completely missed the Rolling Hill after the last Quad Step then that could potentially be classed as a Quad Steps fail, but no one's ever failed in that way due to the embarrassingly short distance between the two obstacles so I guess we'll never know.

Even so, the fact that less than 10 people fail the actual Quad Steps every tournament (only 2 in Sasuke 39) is just embarrassing to the point that there may as well not even be an obstacle before the Rolling Hill, if the only way the Quad Steps can reliably cause any damage is from the transition to the Rolling Hill. The clear rate of the Rolling Hill was actually it's lowest in Sasuke 31 with no Quad Steps preceding it. I do like the idea of a step obstacle into Rolling Hill, but rather something like the original Godantobi where you had to rhythmically run across the steps and transition to the hill while maintaining a fast pace, rather than grasping on for dear life to each step making the whole first act of Stage 1 a 60-second slog. If I was being mean I'd say bring back the Dome Steps, but Inui clearly doesn't like the idea of joke competitors failing the first obstacle, even though that's kind of the point of their presence....

My choice for each stage would've been exactly the same for Stages 2 and 3, but for Stage 1 (also discounting the Log Drop as I refuse to accept that as an obstacle) I'm going to go with the Bungee Bridge. The bridge obstacles have always served as glorified runways for the most part often being sandwiched between two difficult obstacles hence I've never taken much note of them, but imo the Bungee Bridge is the most offensive as it's almost harder to fail than clear. I really have no idea what they were going for this one; same with the Daasu Bridge from Sasuke 10, but the former is worse for me purely because it was on a renewal tournament and placed a fair bit later in the stage. The Silk Slider also isn't far off purely because of how it's single-handedly turned Stage 1 into a slog where joke competitors now reach the Dragon Glider.

Having said that, I still think the Hang Move is the worst obstacle of all time, I've genuinely seen children's playground obstacles that are significantly harder than this penultimate Stage 3 obstacle.....

[Ninja Relaxer]

I like all the Stage 1 Step obstacles, including the Quad Steps, but there's no doubt that it's a weaker, less interesting version of the other Step obstacles. I think it's almost certainly due to Health & Safety standards that the steps are as big as they are and padded, so there's probably no going back to things like the Twelve Timbers or the Sextuple Steps. Too bad. Watching Takeda hop gracefully across the Twelve Timbers was one of my favorite parts about Shin-Sasuke.

Oh, and I would point out that the Quad Steps can be pretty difficult when wet. More than one competitor has slipped on them when it was raining.

[dakohosu]

Sept 2, 2022 18:23:32 GMT -5 Ninja Relaxer said:

I like all the Stage 1 Step obstacles, including the Quad Steps, but there's no doubt that it's a weaker, less interesting version of the other Step obstacles. I think it's almost certainly due to Health & Safety standards that the steps are as big as they are and padded, so there's probably no going back to things like the Twelve Timbers or the Sextuple Steps. Too bad. Watching Takeda hop gracefully across the Twelve Timbers was one of my favorite parts about Shin-Sasuke.

Oh, and I would point out that the Quad Steps can be pretty difficult when wet. More than one competitor has slipped on them when it was raining.

Every obstacle can be difficult when wet, you could slip on the Narrow if the footholds were slick from rain, and it would be much harder to grip wet metal chain on the Hang Move. If anything the Quad Steps were proven to still not be much of a threat even with the rain in 39, as only Yamada out of the last 20 runs failed it. 

That is a fair point about the H&S; when I first got into Sasuke the Twelve Timbers seemed like a cool idea but now looking back on it those slanted hard wood steps a few feet above the ground were hella dangerous lol. 

That said, surely there must be a way to make the steps more difficult without doing so at the expense of safety; like how much less safe would just steepening the steps and blocking off the handholds be, if they were still padded etc? The past variants were only dangerous due to the lack of knee and elbow pads and the fact that the steps were made out of hard material, neither of those are the case anymore.

Either way, we still have the Warped Wall (two now, unfortunately) where one bad fall could result in you smacking your head against a rock hard platform which would obviously end pretty badly. So I don't think making the steps as easy as they are can be entirely attributed to H&S. 

[subtleagent]

Well Masami Yusa almost thwacked her head on the Godantobi in the SASUKE Trials though tbf it was raining pretty hard then too (to the point where Shingo failed the wall because he couldn't get ANY traction).

[Ninja Relaxer]

Sept 2, 2022 18:58:34 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

Sept 2, 2022 18:23:32 GMT -5 Ninja Relaxer said:

I like all the Stage 1 Step obstacles, including the Quad Steps, but there's no doubt that it's a weaker, less interesting version of the other Step obstacles. I think it's almost certainly due to Health & Safety standards that the steps are as big as they are and padded, so there's probably no going back to things like the Twelve Timbers or the Sextuple Steps. Too bad. Watching Takeda hop gracefully across the Twelve Timbers was one of my favorite parts about Shin-Sasuke.

Oh, and I would point out that the Quad Steps can be pretty difficult when wet. More than one competitor has slipped on them when it was raining.

That is a fair point about the H&S; when I first got into Sasuke the Twelve Timbers seemed like a cool idea but now looking back on it those slanted hard wood steps a few feet above the ground were hella dangerous lol. 

Yeah, it was dangerous. The Danchigaibou from Kunoichi 7 was even crazier, and similar to the Twelve Timbers in that it involved hard logs that the contestants could easily fall and hurt themselves on. It's kind of crazy what they were able to get away with back then.

[Messup434]

Say what you will about pointless one-offs like the Net Bridge or even pointless things they kept around for awhile, I miss the time when there was the potential for these random obstacles to just be introduced and pulled quickly for any reason aside from an injury/copyright (as the TIE Fighter was).

Now you basically get the same course every time with the occasional obstacle imported directly from America or just a new twist on what’s basically still the same obstacle.

[dakohosu]

Sept 2, 2022 19:39:44 GMT -5 Ninja Relaxer said:

Sept 2, 2022 18:58:34 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

That is a fair point about the H&S; when I first got into Sasuke the Twelve Timbers seemed like a cool idea but now looking back on it those slanted hard wood steps a few feet above the ground were hella dangerous lol. 

Yeah, it was dangerous. The Danchigaibou from Kunoichi 7 was even crazier, and similar to the Twelve Timbers in that it involved hard logs that the contestants could easily fall and hurt themselves on. It's kind of crazy what they were able to get away with back then.

Yeah I mean we also had the Rope Glider as well. Didn’t some guy get a shoulder injury that took like a year to heal because of that?

That said I’m still amazed that ANW even now is as dangerous as it is, if anything it’s more dangerous than 10 years ago because of the desire to get more and more creative with obstacles often coming at the expense of competitor safety….

[YourResidentKojiFan]

Sept 3, 2022 5:17:17 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

Sept 2, 2022 19:39:44 GMT -5 Ninja Relaxer said:

Yeah, it was dangerous. The Danchigaibou from Kunoichi 7 was even crazier, and similar to the Twelve Timbers in that it involved hard logs that the contestants could easily fall and hurt themselves on. It's kind of crazy what they were able to get away with back then.

Yeah I mean we also had the Rope Glider as well. Didn’t some guy get a shoulder injury that took like a year to heal because of that?

That said I’m still amazed that ANW even now is as dangerous as it is, if anything it’s more dangerous than 10 years ago because of the desire to get more and more creative with obstacles often coming at the expense of competitor safety….

Yep, that was Ryuichi Kosugi, #2. I believe it took six months to heal. Honestly surprised the guy didn't sue, but then again, he signed a contract, yada yada.

As someone who watched all of ANW 4, it is definitely more dangerous now than it was then. Back then, the most dangerous thing was probably falling with one leg on either side of the Bungee Bridge, whereas nowadays you have tons of obstacles that can cause potential injury if done slightly improperly, and don't even get me started on the height of some of those obstacles. If you fall weird on Wingnut Alley and do a belly/back flop... Yeah, sorry I put that thought in your head.

[dakohosu]

Sept 3, 2022 9:24:19 GMT -5 YourResidentKojiFan said:

Sept 3, 2022 5:17:17 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

Yeah I mean we also had the Rope Glider as well. Didn’t some guy get a shoulder injury that took like a year to heal because of that?

That said I’m still amazed that ANW even now is as dangerous as it is, if anything it’s more dangerous than 10 years ago because of the desire to get more and more creative with obstacles often coming at the expense of competitor safety….

Yep, that was Ryuichi Kosugi, #2. I believe it took six months to heal. Honestly surprised the guy didn't sue, but then again, he signed a contract, yada yada.

As someone who watched all of ANW 4, it is definitely more dangerous now than it was then. Back then, the most dangerous thing was probably falling with one leg on either side of the Bungee Bridge, whereas nowadays you have tons of obstacles that can cause potential injury if done slightly improperly, and don't even get me started on the height of some of those obstacles. If you fall weird on Wingnut Alley and do a belly/back flop... Yeah, sorry I put that thought in your head.

Ah thanks for the clarification; true, although I'm sure the same was done for that Kinniku Banzuke boulder run thing but it still got cancelled after 2 people got injured. They were pretty lucky to have gotten away with just saying "sorry we'll get rid of it for the next competition" lol. Sasuke have genuinely been incredibly lucky in terms of getting away with a lot of injures caused by obstacles, like Takeda breaking his shoulder in 12 due to banging it on an exposed support with no padding when he failed the Pipe Slider jump, Drew's Half-Pipe Attack injury in 27 (seriously, why did they decide to make the landing platform from a 5+ feet jump out of hard wood for that specific tournament), etc. I'm actually surprised more injuries haven't occurred from like failed Warped Wall attempts or Cliffhanger transitions, among other things as well.

Yeah for sure about ANW. ANW4's course was basically Sasuke 26-27 which still wasn't particularly risk-free by any means but the kind of stuff they come up with now is just a hazard waiting to happen. I don't watch ANW regularly but occasionally see snippets of runs on YouTube and am frequently thinking 'wtf' as to how some of these obstacles made it past the H&S regulations (I always thought they were fairly strict in the US as well?). I mean Wingnut Alley is obviously dangerous as hell as you mentioned, but s*** like the Corkscrew or Grim Sweeper were literally just endangering competitor safety for the purpose of entertainment. I'm not surprised so many of the Ninjas I see on Instagram all seem to have dislocated their shoulders or broken a bone in their leg or something, because they're all making surgery-related posts. I will say that their obstacles are way more creative due to NBC's bigger budget to change things up every tournament, but some things are better just left as ideas than actually being brought to life.

For as much as I crap on new era Sasuke, they are at least way more mindful of competitor safety than earlier eras and way more so than ANW; the only competitors that have injured themselves recently have been Takeda and Kanno, both of whom have shoulders made of glass lol. In ANW it's almost a regular occurrence. 

[azn]

Just to make it relate somewhat back to the Original topic of worst obstacles, The Quad Steps (and really all of the step obstacles) do have the potential to create some non-contact lower body injuries or really just bad ankle injuries. Especially the old steps considering their material, if for some reason a competitor planted their foot awkwardly or too hard, perhaps that could cause some injury, although considering that is something I don't remember happening, that is also something that I feel would be very unlikely.

Also just my take on the quad steps, while I personally think the Hill Climb/Wicked Wall is worse, the quad steps are not great either. While I understand their size and padding for the sake of H&S, they should at least enforce something to bar competitors from cat-crawling on them or placing their hands on the steps. Not for the sake of ease but for the sake of speed, some quad steps clears shouldn't take an incredibly long time and yet thanks to cat-crawling being legal in the SASUKE "Rulebook" they unfortunatley do.

On the subject on H&S (which considering everyone's opinions on the subject, both from the SASUKE and ANW sections should honestly just be one thread altogether) I do think that while obstacles past and present on either show appear dangerous, I personally think H&S procautions should be enforced if it is so glaringly obvious that it needs to be changed. Basically where it is no longer a freak accident type of injury, and instead, an injury that is directly a result of a fault of the obstacle itself (Rope Glider in SASUKE for instance or the plethora of ANW obstacles already mentioned in this thread)

[subtleagent]

ANW4's course actually ended up going in the opposite direction. The design was so bad it caused multiple fails through no fault of the competitors.

*The Half-Pipe Attack being a complete half circle which ended up injuring Michael Pericoloso's face when he tripped and hit his face.
*The Warped Wall had a flat bottom
*The Spin Bridge being padded and bouncy because they used bungee ropes to support it IIRC.
*The Slider Drop's bar was too short and caused friction on the tracks that it made the Stick Slider look passable by comparison.
*The Double Salmon Ladder's rungs were made of wood and frequently broke during runs.
*The Unstable Bridge's boards were too thick and the chains were too short from where they were suspended.
*The Balance Tank was a perfect circle and had stoppers which ended up making it go too fast and the padding on it made it basically impossible to hold your balance.
*The Metal Spin was covered in shrink wrap and the wheel was too loose to where it just spun way too fast.
*The Wall Lift jammed when lifting which I speculate might've been because the pulley mechanism got stuck.

IDK I do agree that ANW does compromise safety way too much these days (just look at David Campbell in ANW 13, guy almost got his head cracked open like an egg thanks to Drop Zone), but you know my rule. If you have to dumb down an obstacle or give it such an a** backwards design just to make it safe then you shouldn't use it at all. Granted many of the above examples were rectified in later tournaments but my point still stands. So really it's kind of a happy medium you need to find. Make your obstacles safe, but don't dumb them down to where a toddler can do them.

[dakohosu]

Sept 5, 2022 11:35:47 GMT -5 subtleagent said:

ANW4's course actually ended up going in the opposite direction. The design was so bad it caused multiple fails through no fault of the competitors.

*The Half-Pipe Attack being a complete half circle which ended up injuring Michael Pericoloso's face when he tripped and hit his face.
*The Warped Wall had a flat bottom
*The Spin Bridge being padded and bouncy because they used bungee ropes to support it IIRC.
*The Slider Drop's bar was too short and caused friction on the tracks that it made the Stick Slider look passable by comparison.
*The Double Salmon Ladder's rungs were made of wood and frequently broke during runs.
*The Unstable Bridge's boards were too thick and the chains were too short from where they were suspended.
*The Balance Tank was a perfect circle and had stoppers which ended up making it go too fast and the padding on it made it basically impossible to hold your balance.
*The Metal Spin was covered in shrink wrap and the wheel was too loose to where it just spun way too fast.
*The Wall Lift jammed when lifting which I speculate might've been because the pulley mechanism got stuck.

IDK I do agree that ANW does compromise safety way too much these days (just look at David Campbell in ANW 13, guy almost got his head cracked open like an egg thanks to Drop Zone), but you know my rule. If you have to dumb down an obstacle or give it such an a** backwards design just to make it safe then you shouldn't use it at all. Granted many of the above examples were rectified in later tournaments but my point still stands. So really it's kind of a happy medium you need to find. Make your obstacles safe, but don't dumb them down to where a toddler can do them.

Lol how do you know all this? I'm pretty meticulous when it comes to analyzing obstacles but I didn't get any of this bar the Metal Spin point. It's not surprising though, I did always find it weird how 9 out of 14 of the Americans' attempts on Stage 2 in 26-27 ended up being clears, but then we technically got 0 out of 24 in ANW4 which had an identical Stage 2 setup and 15 extra seconds (allegedly Brent didn't actually hit the buzzer in time but they wanted to avoid the finale just being 20+ straight fails). 

One thing that you didn't mention which I've noticed not only on ANW4 but on other seasons as well, was the Salmon Ladder bar's tendency to just derail and fall off the ladder entirely, even sometimes just coming off randomly not necessarily a missed transition, which has like never happened in Sasuke. The rungs are way too small and the bar is too thick by comparison; Sasuke's rungs are much more steeply angled to keep the bar hooked in and the bar itself is much smaller. Obviously one could argue ANW's variant requires more meticulous bar placement yada yada but if the bar is going to just suddenly derail the number of times it has you may want to revise your design lol. It's also something that's been prevalent for 10 years now and hasn't been addressed whatsoever; it still happens to this day.