Submission #1082: Rising Tempest's NES Zelda II: The Adventure of Link in 49:41.67

Uses FCE Ultra 0.98.15 Allow Left/Right Up/Down

Allright, this is my first TAS. I chose Zelda 2 as it's my favorite game, and I think it makes an interesting video if done fast. If you were following my progress on the forums, you'll know this is my second attempt. It's 1:28 faster than my first test run, mainly due to more precise play and better planning of items dropped from enemies.

The item drops to refill my magic (or get extra points) drop from every sixth large or every sixth small enemy, and they will drop only one of the two randomly. To get the one I wanted, I had to kill the enemy in a certain position. Most enemies were very co-operative, so this wasn't much of an issue.

What I wasn't aware of in my first run though, was that some enemies do not count toward the six count, such as blue ironknuckles, red armoured stalfos, and the fire wizards of palace five, among some others. This led to some major backtracking, and accounts for about thirty seconds of the time saved from the previous run.

To manipulate encounters on the world map, I had to wait a few frames either on the map or in the last sidescroller screen. Some enemy groups were much more co-operative than others. Random encounters I did get into were deliberate, and overwrit a preset action scene on the world map. Each time I do this it saves a couple seconds.

Now, a few notes about my route,

I do palace two before one as there as more enemies there, enough to get an attack level from points. This allowed me to level up quicker had I done the palaces in order.

Though it's faster to take the one attack level at the end of palace three, and I would end the game with levels of 8/8/1 rather than 7/8/1, this caused a ridiculous amount of problems for palace four.

It was a few frames faster (and more interesting) to get the red jar in the lava room of palace four, as opposed to going back to the entrance room.

Manipulating the encounters in Death Valley was awful. I lost at least a second here from waiting for favourable enemy groupings.

Jumping over the large wall in the Dragonhead room of the Great Palace is at least half a minute faster than going through the dungeon the conventional way.

I skip the candle and cross, they only let you see some things and aren't completely necessary. I skip the magic key as well, but with some very careful planning, I was able to get through palace six without much trouble.

For fighting against most enemies I come across, I use one of two main techniques unless the enemy is vulnerable to the sword beam.

The first I have dubbed the _Whirlwind Slash_. While in midair, if you swing the sword an alternate between left and right every other frame, you can hit the enemy three times in one attack provided you're close enough to them. I sometimes open this with a quick crouching stab followed by a whirlwind slash, allowing four hits in one attack. This is how I'm able to kill enemies so quickly even when my attack is very low. This saved a LOT of time, up until I got the downstab and it became somewhat less useful.

The second is the rapid downstab move I have decided to call the _Jackhammer Attack_ (because it sounds cool). Theoretically, you could press down every frame to hit the enemy but every four attacks or so you'll have to thrust for at least two frames to bounce back off the enemy, otherwise you'll fall through. I tried to do this with upward momentum whenever possible to not lose momentum as I strike the enemy.

I use a mix of both of these on the bosses to take them out as quickly as possible.

For those interested, here is how many hits each boss takes for the attack level I have when fighting them:

Both Carock (palace 4) and the Dark Link take 8 hits regardless of level.

I really have no idea how to manipulate Dark Link's actions, if I could get him stuck in the corner, the fight would be about a half second shorter.

Well, enjoy!

ADDENDUM: I have no idea why I named the character El Ninja. Please, do not ask me.

Bisqwit: Accepted (based on test audience response), and will obsolete the Japanese version movie. The differences of the Japanese and USA versions are too minimal to warrant a movie for each of them. Similar issue was with ヒットラーの復活 vs Bionic Commando.