The fastest lethal strategy for Vamp 1 is to fire stinger missiles at him at the start of the fight. Make sure you have enough Stinger ammo before starting the fight. The amount of Stinger missiles required depends on difficulty, they are as follows:

There are few areas to collect stinger missiles:

• Shell 1-2 Connecting Bridge: During the Harrier fight
• Shell 2 Core, 1F: In a vent in the Prez's room.
• Shell 2 Core, B1: During the swimming section prior to the Vamp fight.

• In a run, it is faster to pick up the ammo in the vent and then following it up with Swim Glitch or Swim Skip instead of swimming normally and picking up ammo on the way.
• Firing Stinger shots at Vamp is done at the start of the fight before he dives into the water. This has to be done in a rhythm otherwise the loop is dropped.
• On consoles such as the PlayStation 2 and 3, firing the Stinger causes a lot of lag. This makes the fight last longer, but gives you visual cue to fire the Stingers. Whenever the red bar in Vamp's health begins to deplete, fire another shot.
• Using turbo can also help, but requires almost twice the amount of Stinger rounds.
  • Stand close to Vamp and aim directly south.

• Lethal Vamp 1 (PC) on all difficulties.

• Lethal Vamp HDC strategy, shoot while the red bar depletes.

The fastest non-lethal strategy for Vamp 1 is to get him stuck in a loop where he tries to knife Raiden while the player throws punches at him. This must be done after he dives into the water for the first time. You can also shoot Vamp once with the M9 to have him dive into the water faster and do a little bit of damage.

To start the loop, go into the hanging mode or crawl on the floor. Vamp will slowly approach Raiden. As he gets close and tries to knife Raiden, get up and walk away from him. Throw in a few punches then get really close to him again. This will reset the loop, and repeat until the fight is over.

Optimally, ten punches can be thrown at Vamp per cycle, however 6-8 is a more realistic goal. Keep track of Vamp's health or the amount of punches thrown as having the final hit be a kick ends the fight quicker.

Note: Having different weapons equipped while punching does NOT change how much damage is dealt to Vamp.

The amount of hits (punches and ending with a kick) increases per difficulty, they are as follows:

• Lethal PC/nonlethal strategies for Vamp - any difficulty

• Vamp is sped up monumentally by doing lethal Stinger strategies over the European Extreme punch out strategies, but takes some time to get used to. For PC, the audio cue is when Vamp shouts after being hit, while on the HDC, the cue is to watch for his health bar to begin draining.
  • Lethal PC: 7.5 seconds (RTA)
  • Lethal HDC: 17 seconds (RTA)
  • Non-Lethal PC: ~33 seconds
  • Non-Lethal HDC: ~33 seconds

• At the middle of the letter A in VAMP, do a complete PPK combo.

On European Extreme Vamps Damage Values are:

Vamp; critical M9 + 55 punches with a weapon equipped Non critical M9 + 61 punches with weapon equipped Non critical M9 + 61 punches with no weapon equipped Non critical M9 + 61 AK swipes

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