- Emulator used: FCE Ultra 0.98.16
- Aims for fastest completion time
- Takes no damage (doesn't die)
- No programming errors abused.
About the game: Solstice is a one-of-a-kind game for NES. It's kind of a puzzle-game, where you both need to have brains in order to solve some of the puzzles, but also reflexes, because the game's controls are pretty hard to learn.
The story in this game is that the evil wizard Morbius has kidnapped the princess Eleanor. The only way to defeat Morbius and rescue the princess is to defeat the evil wizard using "The staff of Demnos. The goal in this game is to collect the 6 pieces of "The staff of Demnos", and then confront Morbius. The staffpieces are scattered around the castle, so it's quite a task to find them all.
One of the first things you'll notice when watching this run, if you haven't played the game before, is that there are lots of blocks falling from the sky. You can jump on these blocks, getting up much higher than you normally could. It will become obvious why I jump on these blocks when you watch the run. You can also jump on other stuff as well, such as coins.
There are also potions in this game. You have to enter the menu and select which potions you want to use, before you can use a potion. A potion used potion only lasts for the room you use it in. In this run, I use two different kinds of potions:
Blue potion: This potion turns you invincible, so that you can touch enemies without dying. This means that you can jump on enemies, reaching places you can't reach otherwise. You can still die if you're touched by spikes on the ground. This potion is used twice in this run. Once at frame 7881 (about 2min 11s into the run), and once at frame 16785 (about 4min 40s into the run). Both of the times it was used, it was in order to reach a door that I couldn't reach otherwise, if I don't jump on a enemy.
Purple potion: This potion deletes all objects and enemies on the screen. It is used once in this run, at frame 10822 (about 3min into the run). This was because I saved some time by killing this enemy off, instead of waiting so I could walk under it.
If you hold down B when jumping off a block, you will carry it with you, and when you press B again, you'll put it down. This is very useful, and is used a lot in this run. When you get the magic boots, you can pick up and carry a block with you twice in the air, this is necessary in order to beat the game.
You will see me take some keys during the run, keys open up a new path for you. It might be a door that turns up where there wasn't one before, or it might be some blocks that appear, that llows you to continue in the game. So keys are items that open up a new path for you.
To put things short, the goal in this game is to find and collect all 6 staffpieces. The route used is most surely perfect now, seeing as this is actually the 11:th version of this run, Exim made the first 9, I made the last 2, including this one.
ROM Change: Per request (and because I wanted to), I chose to use the U ROM for this run instead of the E ROM, which was used for the previous runs. The reasons for the ROM change is, simply put, that there is no reason to use the E ROM. The game runs really slow on PAL-speed, and there are no significant differences between the two versions. The ROM-change stands for a lot of the time that has been cut off in this run, about 50 seconds or so. About 15 seconds come the new route.
Closing: The limits of how fast this game can be completed has been pushed once again. As of right now, I'm 99,9% sure that the route is perfect, and the movement practically frameperfect in this run, as I tried many different strategies in a lot of the rooms, and played every difficult room with frame advance.
Anyway, this is probably as fast as Solstice gets. I hope you got something out from reading all this text. Enjoy the movie! :)