- Used Gens -Movie Build 9f (1-6 Buttons, 2-6 Buttons)
- Abuses programming errors
- Takes no damage
- Aims for fastest possible time
ABOUT THE GAME
Pulseman stars a superhero born of a human man and a virtual woman, creating a boy that can travel freely between both worlds! ...Somehow! He can use electricity at will, but to perform his signator volteccer, turning into a ball of electricity and bouncing off walls to maintain static and sailing through electrical wiring with ease, he has too build up static, either by running a good distance or with a quick dash type movement. He can also do bicycle kicks and sweeping kicks but they do half damage and so aren't used for anything serious in the movie.
His nemesis is the demented Dr. Waruyama, this game's Robotnik, created (I think) as a side product of Pulseman's creation. Or something.
SO Pulseman uses his radical powers to stop crime and cybercrime all over the world! You can even select the order of stages you go in (in groups of 3, beat the first 3 go to the next etc.), but obviously it wastes time to mess with so it's not done in the movie, the levels are done in order.
One of the last games released for the Genesis/Megadrive, it never made it on its own to America or elsewhere because they were moving on to the next console, which is unfortunate. This game is an absolute gem, inarguably one of the best platformers of the era. The graphics, music, sounds, controls are all absolutely phenomenal with interesting characters, gorgeous trippy backgrounds, and tough-but-not-too-tough bosses and puzzles. I'm very confident in saying that it's one of the best games you've probably never heard of.
That said, I admit this movie doesn't entirely do it justice. It glitches through the game so quickly that you often have little time to relish the world it takes place in, so do yourself a big favor and play the game either before or after watching the movie! ;)
ABOUT THE MOVIE
This is the third version of the movie, the second complete, the first submitted, and the last I'm gonna make, hehe. The whole process took roughly 8-9 weeks to complete, much of it taken up by inactivity from me being unmotivatable during rough spots...anyway YEAH. This movie heavily abuses a movement glitch caused by freaking out the system by jumping and twitching while in a state of skidding when doing a 180. It only works when running to the right and never uphill (but it does when downhill, though glitching quickly will usually send you right back into the hill which stops the glitch when you potentially don't want it to stop).
Furthermore, using a volteccer while glitching will send you a couple screens over in the direction you were moving, right through everything in your way, including walls! This can often be used to exit a stage early.
Other glitches used are explained below in the stage-by-stage descriptions at the points that they are used.
The rerecord count is a bit smaller than actual, I used separate movie files when I was remaking certain parts to make things easier, and hexeditting them in doesn't increase the rerecord count so yeah, just so y'know.
The last main thing to know about this game is that hexeditting in parts is HELLACIOUS. Seriously, it usually was very difficult to get the movie back on track--Of the 10 seconds gained in this final version, half a minute was lost to getting the movie to not desync by adding/removing frames and fiddling around. I did the best I could. It sucked to do, but everything works now, so please enjoy!
One last thing: Previous save states after Stage 1 will not work anymore, just so the few people that it applies to know.
STAGE BY STAGE DETAILS
STAGE 1
Starts off right in your face with the glitching; notice how many guys I dodge at the end of the TV station area. ...Well you'd need slowdown to see them ;P The boss is sped up by only using more damaging attacks and by fighting at the top of the stage so I don't have any time wasted waiting for him to come down to my level every other round. Second to last hit looks late; seriously couldn't get it any earlier for whatever strange reason. But! The little cutscene after the boss where you normally hit the guy and watch him explode before going to the reporter lady? I skip it by glitching through the wall and taking the In monitor. This somehow goes to the reporter ANYWAY and yet saves a good two seconds from cutting the waittime the explosion sequence causes! Finally, the bonus stage is a great example for what to expect from future bonus stages; I redid the end of this from my WIP and it looks much cleaner and takes much less time!
STAGE 2
...However, the desync caused by editting in the new Bonus Stage 1 made Stage 2's first area absolute hell, somehow the frogs at the start just wouldn't behave the same and kept getting in the way. It's working now obviously but gish. The second area is left very early by glitching through the wall--(almost) whenever you exit an area through the right side of the screen, glitching out of it is possible and cuts off a ton of time from the vertical stages. The boss can only be hurt by a full volteccer, making killing this guy in one round very difficult. I managed a way somehow, saving a lot of time there!
STAGE 3
The first boss's optimisations came merely from frame perfecting Ideamagnate's fine work; it appears my last hit is late, but that's because for some inexplicable reason it does extra damage at the frame I actually hit him, cutting a few frames off there. I think it has to do with him starting his second phase of attack possibly resetting his invulnerability period or some such thing.
The first casino area (yay USA?) shows off another piece of the movement glitch: volt-glitching into a wall and then jumping repeatedly, dislodging Pulseman onto the 'roof' of the stage and glitching across to the right saves a good amount of time and used again in Stage 6! There isn't any actual zipping going on, the game just pushes Pulseman out of one block and is done with it; all upward movement is actually just repeated jumping. VERY COOL in the end though!
This boss is the first to show the weird behavior of sparking to fight: sparking right after the invincibility period wears off from a previous spark increases the damage done, sometimes more than double even, letting me kill him before he ever gets a chance to strike back!
STAGE 4
Like all noncontrollable cutscenes that don't start with a volteccer, the one at the start of this stage can be screwed with, never to any benefit. There's one frame of input possible at the start of these scenes, and causing Pulseman to spark with that one frame of input causes the whole scene to go black until it's done and flashes strangely when Pulseman exits the area. Cool, but wastes half a minute.
Yes, the last two non-boss areas let me glitch out of the area long before the actual end of the area is reached. I have no idea why. NOT COMPLAINING!
This is a fun, tough boss, too bad it's beaten so quickly. ;P The bonus area here is interesting in the sense that my improvements result in 6 saved seconds over Ideamagnate's WIP according to the game clock but only half a second in real time because of so much LAG!
STAGE 5
This level may look less interesting glitchwise, but some of the ice maze's rooms are especially precise on a frame-by-frame level, getting the scene where I glitch to the LEFT to work was really difficult and required finding that ONE frame that would work for EVERY move.
The one area just outside of the ice maze is where the glitch doesn't work to get me out but using it to descend quickly is where it really shines!
The boss needed a glitch that I myself found; to damage him, you have to knock him out of a volteccer by colliding with him using one of your own and then hitting him before he hits the ground. I found that spamming the volteccer button right when you collide will let you go back into a volteccer despite having lost the charge! This will then damage the imitator AND he's programmed to go right into a volteccer right when he lands from a fall, so it removes the waiting period otherwise required to get him to make himself vulnerable again. Only once do I have to break volting to hit him faster, it doesn't waste much-if-any time to get into a better position, so this battle turned out really well!
Oh, and this bonus stage is great: Keep a close eye on that green paddle...
STAGE 6
This stage has a lot of water. Water screws up vertical movement and takes away all electrical power, meaning no volt-glitching. Which, fortunately, wouldn't help at all in this area; the first area, I speed through because of the water's reduced gravity, and the second area, I believe, is truly as fast as possible, once I get good horizontal movement by jumping into a ceiling I don't stop or lag once the whole rest of the way down. (And, yes, many times I DO get as close to those mines as possible, the detection doesn't allow too much comfort.)
The last two areas were both redone, one removes a pseudozipping bit and the other gains a pseudozipping bit...The missile tube lets me glitch out early as well, but in the meantime, watch Waruyama's monitor at the bottom of the screen. It keeps track of Pulseman's sprite at all times, even when I'm glitching...
Without somehow reducing lag (unlikely), the boss cannot be done any faster. It releases the bombs on a set timer, so the final hit is the only one where speed counts. This allows for some playing around, hehe. This is also the first time that I jump into a pit at the very same frame as the stage ends; it starts the 'You are fail' sound effect but doesn't go through with the dying mechanism, any later and I'd lose a life and have to redo the boss altogether. It doesn't really change anything but it's cool to see.
STAGE 7
Autoscrollers in a platform game. This game isn't as flexible as Super Demo World, sadly...I try to keep them interesting, but any volt-glitching done while the screen is scrolling will often cause immediate death, and getting pushed off of screen usually doesn't even let you back on without killing you some of the time. So yeah, these areas were the biggest motivation killers personally of the entire run. The four first areas nearly took longer to do than the rest of the run. NOT volting while glitching, though, does do some pretty unusual things at times, and I abuse these for entertainment at will!
The boss at the end of autoscroller 4...yyyyyeah...about that...
The next couple horizontal areas let me glitch early also, I don't know what it is about the second half of the game but hey!
The first of the final bosses is like the boss of Stage 6; only the very last hit matters framewise, allowing a good amount of time for playing around. And the final boss is susceptible to the same strategy as the last boss of stage 3, and sparking gives me the invulnerability needed to get cross-screen to the other half of 'im!
And, yes, in case you're wondering, I end the movie at the last NECESSARY frame; you have a couple seconds of control over Pulseman after that while the boss does his death animation--This is when the damage happens, caused by one of those little dolls that were the focus of the previous battle, so I STILL MAINTAIN MY NO-DAMAGE STATUS. TECHNICALLY. ...YEAH so enjoy the nearly-cheesy ending!
MY THANKS GO TO
- Ideamagnate, his fantastic WIP of a glitchless version was excellent competition in the areas where my glitches are unhelpful, namely the bosses. I hope he can clean up his movie and get it accepted with mine, being glitchless it gives a better feeling of the game for people that haven't played it, so I personally don't think it should be obsoleted by my run...Check it out in his sig!
- Nitsuja for finding the glitch used throughout the movie in the first place
- Sega and Gamefreak (yes, the Pokémon Gamefreak) for making this excellent game
- Everyone involved in Gens and its movie cousins for making this possible of course!
- Pringles. I think they were right about the whole 'can't stop' thing...
adelikat: Good use of glitches, high quality, and good votes. Accepting for publication.
Bisqwit: Processing...