Submission #5544: Challenger's SMS Dragon Crystal in 00:49.10

Sega Master System
baseline
BizHawk 1.13.0
2942
59.9227510135505
12201
Unknown
Dragon Crystal (E) [!].sms
Submitted by Challenger on 6/11/2017 4:34:21 PM
Submission Comments
Dragon Crystal is an early Roguelike RPG in the vein of Fatal Labyrinth and Azure Dreams, thus it's naturally vulnerable to the same type of luck manipulation in its random level generation to allow the protagonist to miraculously find stairs up in the opening area of each floor and complete the game in record time.
As the most of European MS games, this game was released on Brazil.
981 frames (16.36 seconds) saved at the published run due of a more heavy luck manipulation, using a 'pause' button.

Game Objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.13.0
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Takes no damage (Because of new exits)

Story (from GG version, I think)

As the player rides a bicycle one late afternoon, he turns down an alley never before noticed and enters an antique shop. There, a mysterious glowing crystal is sitting on a shelf. Upon approaching the crystal and gazing into it, a powerful force pulls the player in, causing a blackout.
The player awakens in a forest with a large egg following behind. This forest is a huge maze, crawling with dangerous creatures. The player finds weapons and other items scattered around with which to fight the monsters. The only way out is to continue onward, defeating monsters and growing in power along the way.

About the 'pause' button

In this game, this pause has 2 functions: During a gameplay, pausing makes the game to run slowly (like 30 fps), but, pressing pause during the loading times, you can manipulate every floor to a different floor, depending of each frame.
This game is very, extremely hard to manipulate even with pauses, because some of the floors, i didn't get better closer exits. Yes, almost all of the floors, I got better closer exits, saving a lot of time. And on the last floor, thanks of a manipulation during the previous floor, the crystal ball appears on me!
Other thing: This game isn't very well programmed, because of 3 flaws that I noted:
1 - You can stuck on some of the maps.
2 - Sometimes, this game will can crash, or restart when you picks the crystal ball (Also, that's why I didn't used the pause before of the last floor).
3 - The credits has some graphical glitches. In this run, is minor glitched than the published run.

Special Thanks

Synahel, for the published run.

Other Comments

Because of very random RNG, TASing this game wasn't fun, but despite this, I wanted to TAS this game for 2 reasons:
1 - It's a short game to TAS.
2 - Despite I'm not familiar with this game, I decided to test the 'pause' button, to find improvements for a new run of this game. Because of this improvements, I'm impressed how much time I improved, reaching to sub-50 seconds!
In case of a possible new TAS, this game is tough to manipulate.

Noxxa: Accepting as a improvement to the published movie.
Fog: Processing.
Last Edited by adelikat on 10/23/2023 12:11 AM
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