Submission #1484: Baxter, adelikat's NES Super C in 12:25.82

Super C improvement of 816 frames (or 13.6 seconds). Genisto did a really good job on making the previous version of this run, especially considering is was a Famtasia movie. You'll notice this movie uses two players, but we do think it should obsolete the current single player run. Using two players obviously saves time on the bosses, but also a lot of other time savers and strategy changes were made (which would have also improved a single player version) we included. A significant timesaver was not using S, since the bosses have more HP when a player has S. Instead, F was mostly used, which can be charged to do more damage than normal. A single player run could still not beat the two player version if these improvements were applied. Most of these improvements are listed below.

Jumping is faster than walking on diagonal platforms. Jumping doesn't cost time at all in this game (it did in Contra). If a boss is fought using the S weapons, he will have more HP (round 4/3 as much), so we didn't pick up the S. Instead, F appeared the strongest weapon. A boss can only take one hit each frame, but with F you are able to charge your weapon (by holding B for 33 frames) which will fire a bigger shot than normal. This will do 5 HP damage at once instead of just one (so technically saves 4 frames). There is only one F in this level, which is why the other player picks up an M. He also picks up the one R in this level. We would have given it to the player with the F, but R only applies to the weapon which was already equiped (and F appears after R). Picking up a new weapon cancels the R. Player two falling behind doesn't matter, since it's player one who makes the screen scroll.

We are finally able to pick up the second F here. With two charged F shots the tanks can be taken care of pretty fast. Note that the missed shots were to charge the weapons again. Moving diagonally is obviously slower, but has to be done once in a while. If possible it's done when the level was autoscrolling. Since we have two charged F shots, and with the right movements, we were able to destroy the wall and keep the screen scroll for the entire time. Bosses are pretty fast with two F's, especially since they have the same amount of health when playing with one player.

The first R is obtained for a player with an F. Bullets go even faster now (pretty neat, since F already had bullets that were traveling faster than the bullets of other weapons). We sometimes shot or jumped to manipulate the random enemies to avoid lag. Watching the lag RAM adress was certainly useful to make sure not a single frame of lag appeared. The spider miniboss can only be hit once it shoots, but when this happened appeared to be manipulatable. Being close to him made him fire sooner. Like mentioned before, one player falling a little behind at the earthquake part has no influence on when the boss appears.

After a short horizontal part, the long vertical part kicks in. It was sometimes hard to avoid lag and try to do something cool at the same time. Note that the second R is obtained in a very sneaky way. Also watch closely when the second elevator is reached (turning off the frame counter might help). This boss was by far the hardest.

Finally a long vertical part which doesn't autoscroll. Note that the boss can be hit sooner, but cannot be damaged sooner. In fact, hitting him before he was vulnerable appeared to slow him down in getting vulnerable.

We switch to M in this level. This is done because of the green bubbles in level 7. This would be terribly slow when using F. This means we lose a few frames on the boss for not having 2 F's, but we gain a lot of frames back at level 7 for not having two F's. The screen stopped scrolling for a few frames at the wall, but this was unavoidable. Here the boss cannot be damaged either untill way after he appeared. We were even able to kill the snake before the second form of the boss was vulnerable.

The second M is obtained, and a R for the player which already had an M. This level was very hard. The big purple enemies needed to be manipulated to fire their bullets conveniently, so they wouldn't slow us down. Lag also had to be avoided actively. The additional bullets that were shot were for either entertainment purposes or luck manipulation. Having two M's the green bubbles could be done pretty fast. By moving in the right way at the correct frames, it was possible to get inside the bubbles a little. This enabled us to make new jumping in one-bubble gaps. Jumping in these gaps reduces the jump time. It was absolutely impossible to do this part with three jumps, but it seems like we had time to spare with four jumps. Another R is obtained. A little time was saved on the purple plants by shooting down, which appeared to be possible. A lot of time was saved at the boss. Basically, first the belly must be destroyed and then the boss will sometimes open his mouth, which is when he can be hit. Since we had the advantage of two players, in combination with him having less health since we didn't have an S, we were able to kill him with his mouth only opened once. The boss couldn't be damaged before we started shooting. The bullets that hit the boss when falling down don't do any damage.

A level with two F's and an R, how cool is that? Note player two running in the wall for a sec. We were a bit unlucky with having two players this time. Since with two players, the player ahead isn't centered, but walks a little to the right from the center. This is why the player in front reaches a certain point about 18 frames sooner, and has to wait for 15 frames because of this (and this is thus not noticable in a single player run)... so this is why there is some belly sliding for half a second where the ceiling falls down.

We thank genisto for his previous run. We also thank all who showed interest, such as JXQ, Moozooh and others.

Enjoy! Baxter and adelikat