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When I did a speed attack, I put the Load key between the A button key and the B button key and the Save key to the side. I think Bisqwit does it the other way around, though.
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The L (laser?) gun could also be useful for hitting a single target multiple times with one shot, but you'd want to wait for it to connect before firing another shot, heh...
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Adventures of Lolo videos would make good solution guides for players who get stuck, but I can't imagine them being very entertaining for someone who's already beaten all the levels.
I just realized that the button press recordings for Lolo could be made to start "from now" at the beginning of a level, since everything's frozen until Lolo moves. So a player who got stumped could download the appropriate movie for the level, play it as the level starts, and see the level be completed.
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Yeah, you can do an instant spin by spinning your control stick and pressing B at the same time, I think, but a lot of players don't bother to learn it when they can charge up a spin by just holding B anyway.
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Mailing tapes. Sheesh. That does sound like too much work.
And for all anyone knows, you might have just hooked up your computer into your TV from behind to play an emulator movie on it, and the NES is there just for show. Hey, it could happen! You could even practice finger-synching to the time-attack so you could record yourself with the controller in your hands and make it look like you did it all for real. Just keep that computer out of sight, behind the wall somewhere! D'oh! (Yeah, I'm being really facetious here. I just thought it would be funny to foil people looking for a "legit" speed run with all this tape-mailing nonsense or whatever.)
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Michael Fried wrote:
Speaking of not missing any shots, sometimes I was forced to miss a shot in Mickey Mousecapade since both Mickey and Minnie would shoot a star at the same time. Since I wanted to kill or shoot as many things as possible, sometimes I would be forced to let one of the stars miss. Is there anything like that in Contra?
The "spread gun" is like that in the sense that because it fires in so many directions, some of its bullets will have to miss, because there just aren't targets in all those directions around you all the time. It also seems to be programmed strangely in that when you hit something with one of the odd-angled bullets and you keep on firing, bullets stop coming from that angle until you stop rapid-firing. Or at least, that's what appears to be happening when I play. Maybe it's a little different from that. Anyway, despite its shots "missing" things, I do suppose the spread gun would save time in the game by hitting multiple targets with a single shot, or hitting a single target multiple times with one shot.
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I started a time-attack of this game, but I only got to the middle of the second area. This is the only game I've ever tried to time-attack so far, so I'm still learning what to do, but so far I've set goals to kill as many enemies as possible as early as possible (shoot before they come onscreen and such) without slowing down.
One thing that makes this game interesting is that the enemies' hit points change from level to level, so you might need to change your strategies a little when you enter a new area. You can charge up to a double shot, then a triple shot by holding B as in MegaMan 4+, but what's strange is that the game forbids using charged shots in the air, so jumping makes you fire off your shot right away, and thus you'll rarely hit an aerial enemy with a charged shot.
Successful management of the spells could be important in speeding up the game. The trick is to save more time by using the spell than you lose by selecting and activating it. I can't imagine the health restores being helpful very often when you can just undo enemy hits with save states. I don't think the enemy freeze spell will help at all, and the invincibility spell seems too short to be worth the while most of the time. The four full-screen attacks take way too long, with the exception of the fire spell, which might be useful on mini-bosses (or maybe big bosses; I never tried it on them).
The transformation spells are a little more interesting. I don't care for the catgirl one, since not only is the weapon ultra-short-range, but you can't hold the weapon out; you have to keep pressing the button for repeated use. And the jump is annoying, too, since you pass through enemies while jumping, but you don't hurt them, so you usually land right on top of them and take damage. But in a "tool-assisted speed run", you might be able to work past those problems and make good use of this transformation, since it does have the strongest weapon of all of Jake's forms.
The flying guy is great for dodging enemies that would otherwise block you and slow you up. Setting A on auto-fire makes controlling his height really easy. I'm not quite sure what the fishhead's good for, though, but you can try him if you want.
And no, I don't know why "Zebediah" has a P on his hat. Maybe his name is different in the Japanese version or something. :P I wouldn't pay too much attention to the story, anyway, since it's so badly written. Unless I'm dying for a cheap laugh involving outdated slang, that is.
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I think I saw a run like that once. It sounds pretty interesting, because your character could say, "No, I didn't kill a single possessed soldier! I'm a REALLY nice guy!"
And do you think you really need to kill the "guy on the wall" in the first level, or was that just a mistake?
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It's always annoying when I accidentally save the state and realize I wanted to do something different, but once I get it right, it really does look cool in the replay.
Say, does anyone know of any "frame-by-frame" mode for making movies? A lot of people here talk about doing something "at the earliest possible frame", but I'm not quite sure how to find an exact frame while I'm playing because I can only slow a game down so much and I can't see the frame count during play. I know Nesticle has an Advance Frame option that makes you go one frame at a time; does Famtasia have anything similar?
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That Bisqwit and his Linux. Oh boy.
Yeah, Fceu is my favorite, but I use Nester and Nesticle from time to time too. If only all the other emulator authors had also thought of being able to load save states during a movie so it actually rewinds the movie...
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Hmm, I wonder if this was that file my brother tried downloading but couldn't watch because of some "class" error...
I've also seen a video for a Deku Tree speedrun with "director's commentary" on it. It's pretty helpful for doing your own speedrun.
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Yes, I forgot that it can be interesting to try pushing two opposite directions at the same time, as the original D-pad doesn't let you do that. (It has to lean one way to register the direction, like a joystick.)
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The first Wizards and Warriors is one of those games that takes more patience than skill, seeing as continues take away only your score and nothing else. :P
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