Tool-assisted movies

We recommend reading the author's comments for more information on the death warp glitch and other timesaving techniques used to make this improvement happen.

If you would like to see more of the game, we also have a glitchless Aria of Sorrow movie here.

This run is so glitchy that it's near impossible to follow what's going on without help; reading the author's notes is highly recommended.

Note: This movie uses a hard reset (akin to turning the system off and then on again) and will desync unless you have a version of VBA that supports reset recording. For more information, see the forum topic for VBA.

In this run, MattyXB demonstrates how to flawlessly beat the game. What's unusual is that he also uses some glitches to completely skip parts in the game saving over 20 minutes. The "Power" option is selected on every level-up.

Those trying to follow the story in this movie will have a hard time, since the main characters were both named "A" and integral points in the story were skipped.

Air 2 (and Air) is a trial-and-error action puzzle game. Savestates are practically required to beat the game. Abuse of Super Mario Bros. glitches is required.

This run does not aim for fastest completion.

See the author's comments for more information on this glitch.

This improves the author's previous movie by about 5 seconds.

This is an improvement of only 6 frames (0.1 seconds) over the previous version by the same author.

It's an optimized version of the fast walkthrough of the game originally devised by Morimoto.

Maybe you thought Battletoads was a game full of amphibians, but it is actually full of bugs. Those beta testers really should have spent a little more time on this game...

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is the story of Simon's horrible weekend without sleep. Two years after defeating Dracula, the hero is physically weakened by Dracula's curse. He must gather Dracula's remains and incinerate them at the ruins of Castlevania in order to end the curse.

This movie is 2 minutes and 23 seconds faster than the previous effort by the same author. We recommend to read his comments for explanations on how this improvement was achieved.

This movie involves using a warping cheat code ― holding A+B on first controller then hitting A on second.

Note that this is a Famicom Disk System game. Read What is FDS for more information.

This is probably one of the best illustrations on how to create art out of a simplistic and otherwise uninteresting game to watch.

What is also different about this movie is an extra warp which significantly shortens the game, and the use of a new tool (input macro) as described in the submission text. Bots were occasionally used to generate pseudorandom input while still avoiding death.

火の鳥 = bird of fire (Japanese name for phoenix).

This is a 15.5-second improvement to the previous author's movie, through a route change and extensive luck manipulation.

This version is significantly shorter than the previous movie mainly due to the use of warps, but also from better precision and some new tricks.

The ceiling and wall physics are very similar to Bubble Bobble, which means some of them can be passed through when you wouldn't expect it. In addition to this there is a glitch that sends you through the floor, saving a lot of time in the final stages.

This game consists of four heroes with very different strengths and weaknesses. The object (and fun) of the game is to use these traits to your advantage depending on the situation.

This movie improves the previously published movie by JXQ by almost 4 minutes, due to new glitches, better strategies and better precision.

This movie aims for the best ending.

It is a 65.58 seconds improvement to the previous movie by Walker Boh -- this time played by Lord Tom.

Although the route in this movie is almost exactly the same, time was saved mostly by accumulating the tone points (for Rygar's strength) a lot faster. There were other improvements as well. We recommend reading the author's comments for more details.

Note: If you are watching the FCM, don't forget to enable PAL emulation in FCEU! It's under the Config menu.

In the game, you explore planets with a small module you fly around, towing fuel tanks and other artifacts back to the mother ship, often from planets with a ridiculous level of gravity and narrow hazardous caverns. Anyone who has played this game surely knows how difficult it can be, while being entertaining for hours after hours.

There are a few different modules to fly, and even a password option, but none of these were used in this movie.

This movie completes the game through a few secret warps, extensive usage of the afterburner, many reckless maneuvers and a few timebombs, now about 1 minute faster than the previous author's movie.

Even in simple-looking games you can always find more time-saving tricks to exploit if you look hard enough. See what's been found so far at the Super Mario Bros tricks page.

This is a sidestroller, speedwalk, or whatever you want to call it.

This is about a half-second faster than the previous movie by the same author.

June 16,2008: .avi replaced. Previous .avi was of the wrong movie. Redownloading is needed.

Most of the tricks are however the same ― tricks which were discovered by various authors, such as Zaku, Sleepz, Genisto, Phil and DonamerDragon.

If you are wondering how some of the tricks in this video work, see the Super Mario Bros. 2 tricks page.

The concept for this run originated long ago because Princess was the only character not used in the normal run aiming for fastest overall time. Since then, improvements have removed Mario from that run as well.

Wondering how some tricks work? Information is available at Super Mario Bros tricks page.

This movie is faster than the previous version thanks to the flag pole glitch discovered by klmz.

This is the real Super Mario Bros 2. It was never officially released in the USA and Europe. It was later ported to SNES, and released as "Lost Levels" on Super Mario All-stars. Phil remembers there were pirate copies of this game under the name Super Mario Bros. 3.

FDS means Famicom Disk System. It was a Japanese disk-unit version of the NES.

This is an 85 frame improvement over the previous movie by Deign.

Apparently, the team of adelikat, Deign, Cardboard and JXQ had been working some time on this movie, which improves the previous movie by some 5.5 seconds (no small feat at this point), due to a wide variety of different improvements discussed in the submission message.

And of course, a wadload of extra lives are again achieved in the mandatorily slow autoscrolling levels.

For those that still prefer to see 99+ lives, the authors have also put together an alternate run that sacrifices time in order to gain those extra lives.

It warps directly to the 19th level and fills half of the field quickly to be able to operate short distances in the top part of the field. From there on, it only gets tetrises (4-line clearings) until the score is maxed out.

A glitch involving pressing several directional buttons at once is used to manipulate luck for the next pieces. Flickering of the next piece block and piece in play results.

For the record, this is the fastest speed the NES game is capable of. For more extreme Tetris fun, please see movies from Arika Online.
There's some really awesome stuff there. (Click to download - 14 MB)

Note: The AVI was replaced due to missing author information.

Due to the highly repetitive nature of this game, the hidden 9th input button (the console's Reset button) is used to warp to the last level. This results in an unsually long grey screen at the start of the movie. Starting on the final level with 3 lives and only the initial pea-shooter for a weapon normally makes the game near impossible to win.

The author takes advantage of frame perfect timing to upgrade rapid fire to the maximum in a single level; this allows for an improvement of 3 seconds during the boss fight.

For more information about what's going on in this game, we recommend reading the author's comments at the submission page.

NOTE: Don't be fooled by the fake credits after the final level. The game is not quite over yet.

This is the first submission for this game. You will do yourself a favour if you fast-forward the boring Andy's Asteroids bonus-levels.

There have been many attemps to TAS this game, but this is the first one to be published. We recommend reading the author's comments for this video.

Top speed is mixed with warps to finish the game amazingly quickly, probably before you can figure out what's going on.

This run abuses a bug that was fixed in later releases of Pocket Monsters (Pokémon) that allows a player to warp freely though the world. Victory is achieved in a matter of minutes with this route. Normally, the game takes well over an hour at the fastest to finish.

To see a more substantial run of Pokémon, watch this movie.

Note: You need VBA version 20 to watch this run.

The author of this run discovered several new time-saving techniques. Some of them are small enough to go unnoticed, and others are jawdroppingly huge. The total improvement over the previous run is 54 seconds.

The in-game time of this run is about 38 minutes 56 seconds. (This was manually checked using a hex editor)

For a detailed analysis of new techniques as well as comments about individual levels, read the author's comments at the submission page.

Many new tricks have been found to make this movie faster, some of which are only subtle adjustments that may not be easy to notice. Read the author's comments at the submission page for more information.

This is a huge improvement over the previous movie (5 minutes and 6.33 seconds to be exact) thanks to greatly increased precision and a multitude of new tricks, all of which are explained in detail in the author's lengthy comments. The author claims this movie took him a year to produce.

This run abuses a lot of bugs with regard to motion and collision detection. Read the author's submission to learn more.

Note: this movie was recorded with a slightly modified snes9x. A soft reset feature was added to the movie file. A copy of this snes9x can be found in the author's submission, with source code patch.

Because this game deserves a good quality video, the AVI was recently replaced with a higher quality one. The download counter (was 616) was reset in the process.

Paraphrased from the author's submission:

This run uses tools - Sledgehammers, which I get from the barrels. THAT'S a real tool-assisted run!

(I know it's a bad joke but I couldn't resist it :P)

The game is very easy to win, but very difficult to play (try it). This video demonstrates one of the fastest paths to the ending, including quite a few almost impossible maneuvers ― whether playing tool-assisted or not.

This video is a 7 seconds improvement to the previous version.

See the Umihara Kawase page for more information about this game, and the author's comments for more information about this movie.

Now 24 frames faster than the preceding version.