After the dark queen’s long-thought-out plan to conquer the galaxy was painfully ended by the Battletoads in
a mere 11 minutes, she vowed to get revenge on the Battletoads, and to rule the galaxy. At the same time as this, the shadow warriors were still angry from being beaten by Billy and Jimmy Lee in
9 minutes. Realizing that they had a lot to gain by working together, the dark queen and the shadow warriors decided to team up to conquer the galaxy.
The two forces built a giant ship called the Colossus, which then emerged from the moon and destroyed the earth’s military. Realizing the danger that the world was in, the 3 Battletoads (Rash, Pimple and Zitz) and the 2 dragons (Billy and Jimmy) decided to team up to defeat the dark queen and the evil leader of the shadow warriors known only as the shadow boss. In this TAS, Pimple (player 1) and Billy (player 2) are dropped off on the tail of the Colossus to start off the game. Will Pimple and Billy together be strong enough to save the world, or will the combined weight of the dark queen and the shadow boss overwhelm them? Stay tuned to find out!
Now, I will go through a more specific description of the techniques used in each of the 7 levels to save time.
Level 1:
We start off with an autoscroller on the tail of the ship. There’s not a lot to say in this level. Some time is saved by destroying capsules on the same frame we kill enemies, so 2 lag frames happen instead of 8, but other than that, there’s not many tricks going on here. When we reach the hands that throw balls, we charge up an attack on one player that would kill them but hit the hand instead, causing it to die instantly.
On the first level boss (Abbo), we save some time over the old TAS by skipping an extra hit on him, which saves about a second. To start with, we hit the boss through the wall before he appears to reduce his health. Then, we charge up an attack on one player and unleash it on Abbo, which kills him in one hit. And with that, we enter the interior of the ship!
Level 2:
This level is also pretty straightforward. Note that we are often able to charge up a fatal kick on a capsule, and then unleash it on an enemy to kill them in one hit. If you look closely for the spots were I start a kick right next to a capsule in mid-air, then you can tell where I used this technique. When fighting the two dynamite-throwers, I used RNG-Manipulation to make them throw their dynamite the shortest possible distance, and then grabbed the dynamite as it was going through the wall to duplicate it so that I could kill the dynamite-throwers without having to wait for their next dynamite throw.
After 2 sub-stages, we arrive at a section closely resembling the turbo tunnel from the original Battletoads. By jumping as we grab the bikes, we do a really high jump (which doesn’t actually save any time, btw).
In this section, you are chased by an onslaught of enemies on bikes. No matter how many you kill (or don’t kill), they won’t go away until you have travelled a certain distance, which makes this section effectively an auto-scroller. Normally, these enemies are a pain to beat casually, since they can stun lock you with repeated punches (which have a hitbox that goes up vertically very high and across horizontally very long) and then kill you. However, since this is a TAS, I just jump over these enemies and make them look easy. Additionally, I show off how the enemies in this game only chase one player (which is chosen when the enemy spawns), since player 2 doesn’t move during this section but still never gets attacked, even though the biker enemy goes right through him multiple times! Such is the fate of primitive AI…
At the end of this section, we fight the boss, Big Blag. He also has a life bar, so we charge up a hit on one player and hit Big Blag instead, causing him to die right away.
Level 3:
We are now in the innermost section of the ship. This level contains many women with whips who come out from behind doors. Some of these women can be hit through the wall before they even open the door, which will cause them to come out the door already in a recoil state and one hit away from death.
In the vertical sections with the ropes, we time our hits on the cameras so that we generate only 8 frames of lag (normally, you generate 16 total lag frames, with 8 of those coming from hitting the wall after hitting the camera).
However, the main time-save of this level (and of this TAS) comes in 3-2. Here, we cross the long pit using repeated void jumps, which saves 20+ seconds over the old TAS!
In the auto-scroller horizontal rope section in 3-3 with lots of lasers, there is normally a lot of lag. However, by taking damage on the lasers, we greatly reduce the amount of lag that occurs, which allows us to save a few more seconds. This technique is also used in other sections of the level with laser beams as a means of lag reduction as well.
Finally, at the end of the level, we reach the boss fight with Roper. Unfortunately, he takes a fixed number of hits to kill, so our earlier boss-fighting techniques won’t speed up this fight. After many hits, he goes down, and the two players jump into 2 mini-ships to try to destroy the Colossus from the outside!
Level 4:
We start this level off shooting at some asteroids. Then, we fire at the 4 UFOs. By getting really close to the UFOs, we can fire more shots before the game “blocks” us from firing more shots (I don’t 100% understand how this mechanic even works, I just know being closer is better). Also, I make a 1-up spawn to use it as a target for a homing missile (which is activated by holding down B). By firing as the 1-up despawns, the missiles gains the ability to hurt any enemy (normally, it can only hurt the enemy initially targeted). This lets me destroy one of the UFOs very quickly.
I also take an intentional gameover as soon as I kill the last of the UFOs. I then respawn immediately at the level 5 boss fight, without having to wait for the ship to move into position in front of the toad (normally, after killing the last UFO, you have to wait several seconds before the game lets you begin the boss fight). This ultimately saves about 4.5 seconds over just waiting for the boss to appear. Special thanks to Koh1fds for pointing out that I could use this strategy to save time here!
In the boss fight against the ship, I am able to save a few seconds over the published run by shooting the ship while really close to it, which seems to prevent the game from getting into a state where no bullets can spawn for a second.
After 5 phases, the ship is destroyed, but the dark queen and the shadow boss escape using a missile from the ship’s interior, which is now headed towards earth! The players fly onto the missile and land on it, which is where we start level 5.
Level 5:
In this level, by holding Left+Right, we disable all collision with walls and floors, and can jump perpetually in mid-air. This is of course abused to save time whenever possible (which is pretty much everywhere in this level). We also have 3 mini-boss fights against General Slaughter, who requires a specific number of hits to kill him.
Other than that, there’s not a whole lot of strategy in this stage: just kill the enemies as fast as possible, and run+jump through all the walls, floors and ceilings in sight. At the end of the level, we arrive at a boss fight against Robo-Manus. He also takes a specific number of hits to kill. After we kill him, we are able to enter the inside of the missile, which is where the final showdown will begin!
Level 6:
We start this level off by fighting a lot of enemies in quick succession. There’s not a lot to say about this: just kill every enemy on screen. After a few fights, we arrive at the level boss: The Shadow Boss! Much like the last few bosses, he also takes a specific number of hits to kill (in this case, 32 hits). Normally, after every 10 hits, the shadow boss becomes invincible and smashes accross the screen several times. However, if our 10th hit knocks him into the air and we hit him for the 11th time as he is landing back on the ground, then he will skip becoming invincible and continue fighting us normally. This in turn saves about 13 seconds over what the old TAS did here. Special thanks to Koh1fds for pointing out this strategy to me!
Since the shadow boss bases his movement/attacks on where player 2 is relative to him, the position of Billy is manipulated throughout the fight to stop the shadow boss from pummeling us. After all 32 hits have been administered, the shadow boss is defeated, and we run right and through the door to exit the level. This takes us to the final level, where we will have our final showdown with the dark queen!
Level 7:
Much like level 6, this level also starts off with a bunch of quick fights with regular enemies. After this is all done, the dark queen appears for the final battle! By having player 2 (Billy) body slam her at the right time, we can prevent her from going underground and teleporting somewhere else on the stage.
Since I was aiming for fastest end-of-input in this TAS, I re-worked the final blows to land the last hit sooner, and cut out all of the play-around stuff that was in the original TAS after the last hit, which saved about 10 or so seconds.
And with that, the dark queen is defeated, and she and the shadow boss are forced to retreat away from earth with their missile to recoup their losses, thus saving the day. Hooray!