Submission #1440: Maximus's NES Strider in 05:29.63

Quite different from the arcade game in many ways, the NES version of Strider introduces a completely different storyline, new characters and a new style of play, switching from the side-scrolling action of the arcade game to more of an adventure style. Hiryu learns quite a few new tricks in this new quest: the wall-bouncing Triangular Jump, the long distance Acceleration Jump, and a slew of new Power Tricks up his sleeve.

The story starts out with Hiryu being called out of retirement by the acting Vice President of the Striders, Matic, to hunt down a captured Strider and kill him. Hiryu learns that the captured Strider is none other that his best friend Kain, and sets off to rescue him, unknowing of Matic's future plans...

Through the use of some creative glitching, this run beats all known attempts by about 20 minutes. Though the game allows you to go to locations (more or less) in any order you want, you're generally stuck to a linear progression due to the need for certain items, spells or keys. This run only collects one disk, one key and skips all boots.

Throughout this run, I use two glitches (which are essentially variations of the same thing). I don't believe these can be replicated in a non TAS run since it requires frame precision to accomplish. Whenever you walk towards a wall, if you get too close, the game "bounces" you back the way you came. However, if you're doing this using frame advance, at the point where the game "bounces" you, if you change direction, the "bounce" will still occur, but you'll be pushed towards the wall (since the game thinks the way you're facing is the way you were coming when the bounds check occurred). By repeating this a few time, you'll get stuck in the wall and start cycling through it vertically.

This same glitch is used on locked doors. If you don't have access to get through (be it a game sequence or a particular key), the game treats the door as a wall. However, since the door isn't actually a wall (it doesn't continue vertically), you can progress through it by alternating your left and right movement on alternating frames.

This is used in Australia and the Red Dragon to get through doors that normally require a key or an event sequence to be acquired/completed.

Analyzing Disk 2 opens Australia and Egypt on the map. I go to Australia and use the above glitch to get through the Door 5. Note that I'm only at level 2 here with 20 HP. After fighting the boss at the end of Australia, the game levels me up to the highest point (150HP). It seems Strider doesn't check your levels prior to leveling up so it increases you to the point it assumes you "should" be at after each mission.

After Australia, it's straight to the Red Dragon. This means that 2 (possibly 3) additional trips to Kazakh, 2 trips to China, Japan, San Francisco and Africa are all skipped. In the Red Dragon, I choose the left route after the lasers to avoid a message interruption and also to set up another wall glitch. Glitching the right wall down to the door allows me to skip the fight with the spinning purple guy (anyone who's played this game knows this guy's irritating and time consuming). Another door glitch, another wall glitch and I'm at the Matic fight, whom I can beat without the plasma shot since a spark knocks the cipher out of his hand (props to architorture for figuring this out).

This final submission is now 1:30 faster than the first canceled submission. Using the method I employ in the Red Dragon to skip ALL the boss (re)fights doesn't allow me to skip the final NPC interuption, so I lose a few seconds there that could possibly be improved (not sure how to skip him, seems it was a fluke in the v2 run).

Truncated: Re-accepted, as long as you promise to not make any more improvements for at least two weeks. :P

adelikat: Seems the improvements have at least slowed down a little ;p Encoding this now.