My first TA, so please be gentle :)
Let me see if I can get the formatting for the submission right:
This is a standard 2 player Contra run, without the double spread gun. It was my dream to have the characters run with two different weapons, but the Machine Gun and Fire (especially the fire) are just too slow, as is evident on the boss of base 2.
As a result, I needed to pick up the lazer for player 2 on the waterfall.
Lag was a serious issue (my first attempt was a double spread and there were spots I just couldn't avoid lag regardless of accuracy). There are a few areas that still have it. The top of the waterfall has just a touch, but somehow, this allowed me to jump to the higher platform which I had never seen before. Unfortunately, this put me at the floating island a little too soon, so it really didn't save much time (but it did a little). If anyone would care to further explore this, I would like to know exactly how it works.
Lag appears again a bit in the Energy Zone and a lot in The Hangar, but it's not really something to write home about. Once I made the decision to not grab the spreads, it made working with lag much easier.
Basically, alternating shots with the lazer can provide one solid stream of lazer. It works like:
Player A:- - - -
Player B: - - - -
They flash on and off every other frame, so whenever lag was an issue, I went with this. In The Hangar, however, it was faster to have a bit of lag than to wait to destroy the walls.
What was difficult? Well, nothing was difficult really with fce's step recording (which I used the whole movie), but the bases took a lot of patience to figure out exactly when I could fire to maximize speed and using the lazer on the first alien blockade on the final level took some serious time. He's just too far away to get any kind of serious speed with the lazer.
Letting player 2 catch up was tough in certain areas. It didn't allow the usual moves. I tried to let him get ahead by letting player 1 fire backwards some frames when necessary. This made some nice moves (at least what I think are nice moves).
I'm still learning here and would love any opinions for another run. Also, if you vets could give me some advice on exactly how I made that jump on top of the waterfall, I'm really curious :) Or find out and run with it for your own submission.
I understand if this is rejected because it can be faster with a double spread, but I just can't stand all the rapid fire missed shots. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to any tips you guys have.