Vectorman is considered to be one of the last great games for the Genesis platform. The hero is a robot with rocket-boosters in his shoes and a photon gun strapped to his hand, set to stop another, somewhat crazy, robot from destroying Earth. Oh, and the crazy robot has a nuclear warhead bolted to him.
This game was a ton of fun to make because it’s so versatile and there are a lot of little nuances that keep it surprising. My motivation for this run was Zer0’s previously rejected run, and I’d like to thank him for making the template that I worked off of. I improved his run by almost about 53 seconds, and did so without taking damage. This was also my first experience with using the Gens RAM viewer, and the extremely quick bosses were due mainly to this. A day by day breakdown would be a little bit long, so here’s some highlights:
- Day 1: A straightforward first level to show off Vectorman’s jumping and rapid fire shooin’.
- Day 3: The most boring level of the game, so it’s good to get it out of the way early. Vectorman moves fastest in the air, second fastest underwater, but the delay in between the two kills almost all momentum. Unfortunately it can’t be avoided.
- Day 4: The bosses name is Aurora Borealis (ie the Northern Lights), and Aurora is taken out nice and fast thanks to the slickness of the ice and Vectormans ability to shoot once every three frames up and diagonally. Borealis was one of a couple bosses that I couldn’t get a RAM value for, no matter how hard I tried, so he may be improvable a little bit.
- Day 6: This boss is a PITA, just because of all the projectiles he throws and his long invulnerability time. However I think it looks very pretty with all the fire raining down around our hero.
- Day 7: I could not manipulate the right hand to land enough to the left for me to hit it the first time it comes down, so this is the only level that is longer than Zer0s (by a whole 15 frames)
- Day 9: This slinky-like boss has 160 HP. Watch the wonders of the rocket-boosters in action.
- Day 11: If only disco had lasted as long as this level did.
- Day 14: The corner cutting in this level is optimized. I take a couple downward shots because this causes Vectorman’s descent to slow, while not changing his horizontal velocity, thus allowing him to barely clip some corners.
- Day 16: WARHEAD… he lasts a little longer than it took me to type his name just now.
This game has been known to suffer some desynching issues, so make sure you use the right ROM and correct version of Gens just to make sure. I had several problems with desynchs, especially with the Day 6 boss, so I hope things work for everyone. Here’s the important info.Gens9Z_20070209 was used, and I didn’t change any settings except remapping the keys. No warps or passwords were used. Played on the hardest level. My Goals:
Primary: Take no damage.
Secondary: Complete the game in the fastest time possible.
Tertiary: High score.
Enjoy! :)
EDIT: Due to discussion, back to the drawing board.