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[NesVideoAgent]

This is an automatically posted message for discussing submission: #1824: Sir VG's SGB Castlevania Legends in 24:16.4

See details at: http://tasvideos.org/1824S.html

Submission status: published
Last edited by: ccfreak2k

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The submission message follows:

Castlevania Legends was originally intended to be the origin story of the Belmont clan. The game is about Sonia Belmont in her fight against Dracula. However, this story has been removed from the official timeline by IGA.

This run aims for 100% completion by acquiring the 5 "Belmont Treasures" (Axe, Pocket Watch, Dagger, Holy Water, and Cross). Getting all 5 unlocks a special ending, viewable after the credits are complete.

In comparison to the other Castlevanias for the Game Boy, there are several changes in how the game is played:

• Sonia is a woman. ZOMG! A FEMALE BELMONT?! UNHEARD OF! (Though she grunts awfully deep...)
• There is no scorekeeping, a rarity in the traditional Castlevania style.
• Sonia has an ability called "Burning Mode". This makes her temporarily invincible and also increases her horizontal running speed. However, it can only be used once per level/life. Also, when executed, it can not be halted.
• When you take damage, your whip power doesn't go down.
• You can get up to 5 Soul Powers, which are selectable from a special menu (the last one can be skipped, if you avoid the hidden level).
• Super Game Boy mode is supported, and is used in this run.

Since Burning Mode is refilled if you die, I take a purposeful death in Stage 4 so I can use Burning Mode on both Medusa and Alucard.

Because there is no score tally, I do not manage my heart count until the end of the game, where I beat it with 0 hearts left.

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Runners Notes

Stage 1

This stage is freaken long...about 1/4th of the movie is just this level. If you can handle it, you're home free.

The way I battle the Spearmen sometimes may seem like a mistake, but it isn't. Sometimes damage to move through them is possible (and often I use it since they have 3 HP and one whip hit only does 2). However, if they're close to a wall or are moving in the same direction I'm going, I have to fight them.

Another note is that you'll see (unfortunately) a lot of lag, mostly due to the zillions of bats around. Usually when there's more than 3 enemies the game will slow down. However, since (usually) most of the enemies are behind me, it's 99% of the time faster to suffer through the lag.

During the boss right, you may notice that when he's rising I move to the left, then back to the right. This is to manipulate him to move to the right of the screen...a shorter distance.

Stage 2

Now that I have the Wind Soul in hand, I often use it to stop the skull heads from chasing after me, instead of turning around to give them a glance (much like Boos in Super Mario World). Occassionally I'm able to use this without jumping, caused by jumping on random oddframes that recognize that the A button was pressed, but not allowing Sonia to jump (thus not stopping me when I do use a special attack). There's no real consistancy to when it can be done, however.

A very interesting moment is the pocket watch room. Check out how close I let the skull head get to me. :)

During the boss fight, I occassionally pause to either avoid damage or to prevent the boss from flying to the top of the screen.

Stage 3

"Life is a resource" indeed. While I do have the Ice Soul (which restores health to full) I can't afford the 20 hearts...not in the budget. Sometimes I have to manipulate when I get hit, what enemies to attack, etc. Due to the fact that the level is mostly vertical, Burning Mode really has minimal benefit for being used in level, so I save it for the boss.

This level is really exciting near the end, due to that I'm at 1 life and often times escaping screens by mere pixels.

Stage 4

Similar to Stage 3, this is another fine example of "Life is a resource"...in more ways than one. I use, abuse, and eventually die, all in the name of saving time. Plus this allows me to use Burning Mode twice.

First: Medusa. If I wait one more frame before using Burning Mode, I get poked by that poking stick. Poke Poke.

Second: Alucard. Yes, him. He's such a pansy here though. Probably why IGA wanted this game removed so badly.

Stage 5

This level features several awesome things. One is massive use and abuse of the Saint Soul to hit distant enemies to avoid lag. Second, an awesome mini-boss fight. Last, one freaken bizarre glitch.

The Screen Scrolling Glitch occurs when Sonia moves too high vertically on the screen, to which one of four possible results could happen...

• 1: You die. If you go off the screen, it's like you went off the bottom.
• 2: You jump around like a maniac. This generally happens when you have less than half of Sonia's height between the floor and the top of the screen.
• 3: You make a false screen transition. If you perfectly grab on a rope as you hit the top of a screen, the game will do a screen transition and move you up one screen length. In the case of Stage 5, I can move higher up the long rope, avoiding a bat that would appear about where the "screen transition" is.
• 4: You completely confuse the game, creating a temporary flash of screens, then sending you to Stage 6.

This was very difficult to pull off. Most often I ended up TOO high, but I figured out that if I made some overjumps, that I could get to a proper height. Getting what I got here (result #4) was a complete accident. I had on a prior attempt executed #3, but when I had to redo Stage 5, I was having trouble getting the glitch to go. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, this came into being. It was cool. It was faster. It was kept.

Stage 6

This stage isn't mandatory, unless going for 100% (as it contains the last hidden treasure). It's short, it's fast, and I'm spending some time way too far to the right. But whatever works, right?

The boss falls exceptionally fast.

Stage 5 (the return)

Just like my first trip here, I execute the Screen Scrolling Glitch to climb the vertical section quicker (but only result #3 this time). After this, the rest of the level is pure heart management to its best.

Dracula Fight

The nice thing about Dracula is that he has a set pattern, even on a console. You always know where he (and later, his head) will go.

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This is an improvement over the cancelled submission by 6419 frames.

• Takes damage to save time
• Suffers death to save time
• Aims for fastest time with 100% completion
• Abuses programming errors
• Manipulates luck
• Genre: Action

Recorded on VBA Recording-20. (VBA Recording-19 will desync.)

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NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Oh! I also corrected the ROM name.

• You indicated Castlevania - Legends (U) [S].sgb
• I updated it to Castlevania - Legends (U) [S][b2].sgb

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Sir VG: Reverting game name, as NESVideoAgent is incorrect. Screenshots are also messed up, since it doesn't know what version of VBA to use. I removed all but one image NESVideoAgent took and replaced them with some of my own. Others are welcome to supplement these with images of their own.

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adelikat: Good viewer response, well optimized, and entertaining. I am accepting this for publication.

[Mr. Kelly R. Flewin]

o.O [b2] ??? There's a perfectly fine rom, so I'm kinda curious why that one?


Mr. Kelly R. Flewin

[Sir VG]

Mine is listed as a clean ROM according to the No-Intro set. Thus NESVideoAgent fails at life...twice. Once for creating a new name for the same ROM (I originally used the listing it gave my ROM last time), and once for making crappy screenshots. ^^;;

I compared the bad dump, another site's "best" dump, and my ROM.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Filename: Castlevania - Legends (U) [S].gb ("Best" dump)
System: Nintendo Game Boy
----------------------------------------------------------------
CRC32: AD9C17FB
MD5: 1475824E 7262C0D6 359F43C2 87E034A5
SHA1: 91A8E49B F6EAC5FE 62EC2CC5 E6DECBD0 8CE9B515
----------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------
Filename: Castlevania - Legends (U) [S][b2].gb (Bad dump)
System: Nintendo Game Boy
----------------------------------------------------------------
CRC32: 43A9C0CA
MD5: A85DE714 A1CA7810 714B4367 E3050BBA
SHA1: 65D57057 B214CB82 1F38B499 080D8906 3A1B2A1D
----------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------
Filename: Castlevania Legends (USA, Europe).gb (Mine)
System: Nintendo Game Boy
----------------------------------------------------------------
CRC32: AD9C17FB
MD5: 1475824E 7262C0D6 359F43C2 87E034A5
SHA1: 91A8E49B F6EAC5FE 62EC2CC5 E6DECBD0 8CE9B515
----------------------------------------------------------------

I'll let you interpret the results.

[zggzdydp]

Nice, much improved. Vote yes.

[Mr. Kelly R. Flewin]

Sir VG wrote:

[Bisqwit]

Once again, the fact that the VBM movie file does not supply adequate information for uniquely identifying the ROM, has its consequences. VBM only copies a few bytes from the ROM file; not enough to count out bad dumps, trainers etc.

[Kaz]

For some reason this is the only movie I've ever watched that I couldn't use fast forward without causing a desync.

[Sir VG]

Yeah, unfortunately it's a bit picky about that. So don't worry, at least it's not you.

Also appears that the screen scrolling glitch applies to stage 3. I guess that explains the odd spawn of the bone statue and the one wheel at about 46500 frames (they're much lower than the should be, probably cause I got to the door too fast.

And also, to my knowledge, this is the first TAS of a Castlevania game that abuses death to save time. Though if there are others, feel free to point them out, cause I can't think of any others.

[MattyXB]

Looks good and great played.
So yes from me.

[Joseph Collins]

Ya know... The Belmont family has some really screwy bloodlines. Sonia's the only pure Belmont, then Trevor is the offspring of Sonia and Alucard...or used to be, anyway. Trevor then probably had a kid with Sypha, so that's the Belnades magic mixed with quarter-vampire blood and Belmont genes... (Well... Belmont genes, after the ret-con, I think.) Pretty whacked out by the time it gets to Julius, I wager.

Anyway, this is a pretty good speed run. I can't see anything that could be improved, plus it's fairly entertaining to watch. The downside comes from the movie file itself in that, as mentioned above, if you fast-forward the movie at all, it desynchs. But anyway, pretty entertaining all and all, and a good look into what used to be the past.

[Derakon]

And the silly thing about the bloodlines is that the Belmonts get noticeably more powerful in the later generations. Richter can fly, and Julius in addition has more hitpoints than anyone should ever reasonably need.

[Truncated]

I was very disappointed... to find out that burning mode did not include actual burning, only sprite flickering. :(

It was also a bit long, but there was some nice glitches at least. A yes vote is within reach.

[adelikat]

This was a fairly entertaining movie. The game was nice to watch and there were a number of tricks. The glitch where you confused the game into taking you to lv 6 was quite goofy. That made me laugh.

I vote yes.

[Wockes]

Pretty colors in this movie

I vote yes.

[NesVideoAgent]

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This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.

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See http://tasvideos.org/1065M.html

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[Deign]

What the hell?! This was published too quickly! I didn't have a chance to watch it and vote on it. I didn't get to watch it and point out all the mistakes and be a total douchebag!

[Kyrsimys]

You took the words right out of my mouth! Not everyone is a pathetic computer geek with no life sitting at their computer day and night waiting for a new submission!

[Comicalflop]

Your sarcasm leaves much to be desired. Now go be computer geeks somewhere else and sit at the screen day and night for the next submission.

[Guybrush]

Comicalflop wrote:

[Sir VG]

Deign wrote: