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Recorded with vba rerecording version 17.1
Goals of this movie:
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes no damage
  • Manipulates luck
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Uses SRAM to unlock Julius mode
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, played using Julius mode (unlocked via SRAM generated by the currently published TAS).
One of the first things you may notice about this TAS is that I choose the normal mode over hard mode. In this game, hard mode doesn't add anything to the viewer entertainment side of things, and simply serves to make enemies/bosses take more hits to kill, which I dont think would be overly enjoyable to watch (a hard mode run killing an extra boss would still have a graham fight as long as the one present in this TAS).
The overall goal of Julius mode is pretty much to kill Graham, and you can actually achieve this without even killing a single boss. However, doing so means you do a grand total of 1 damage per hit against him, which means it would take one hell of a long time to kill him.
Each boss you kill (and orb you grab) as Julius adds to your overall power, and the more you kill the stronger you get. In this TAS I kill 2 bosses, Creaking Skull and Manticore, for a grand total of 2 powerups.
I use a grand total of one glitch in this run, but I estimate it saves at least 35 seconds doing it. I use a Catoblepas to activate a zipping glitch which places me outside the Chapel walls, from where I can either head to a black screen, the Underground Reservoir (where i zip some more to a black screen), the previous room in the Chapel but inside the walls, or by the warp room. Going to the warp room is by far the best choice, as it links directly to the boss room.
After that its pretty much direct to Graham, as deviating for a third boss, while decreasing the Graham fight time itself, adds up to be considerably longer (this is roughly 1:30 faster than a test I did where I also fought Death).
This is a total of 251 frames faster than the previous submission, 176 of them coming from the graham 1 fight due to making him appear once less due to axe subweapon usage, and the rest coming from a slightly different strategy on graham 2.
Hope you enjoy :)
Thanks go out to Zurreco for pointing out that glitch a while back, those on IRC who commented on it, and Bisqwit for allowing me to use SRAM in this case.
Boredom made me find a better path, curses! here's hoping i dont have to redo the entire graham fight for an 8th time -_-

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1023: Atma's GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow in 06:19.25
JXQ
Experienced player (750)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
I think part of the reason I'm not too interested in this run is because for being so short, it still has to play through part of the castle twice. However, I believe I voted too harshly on the last submission. While I still wasn't too entertained by the run, it seems to be played precisely and that deserves some credit. So I'm going to vote "meh" this time. To right my wrong. :)
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)