#1705: Baxter's NES Arkanoid "Warped" in 04:26.72

What's new?

This is an improvement to my previous warped Arkanoid movie. It is 324 frames faster, which is almost five and a half seconds. These are the differences:

I lost 2 frames for changing the title screen palette. Seeing something unexpected during the long wait is well worth the 2 frames.
Bisqwit used Bisqbot to optimize the laser sequence during the demo, where you have to get killed as quickly as possible. Since you only have to press A, and the timespan wasn't really long, it was perfectly suited for Bisqbot. There is a reason why it's quite possibly as fast as it gets now, since the weapon that will always drop after getting the laser powerup is the weapon that kills you. Bisqbots was able to get killed 138 frames faster than the previous version. Note that the rerecords that Bisqbot made are not included in the rerecord count of this run.
The reason why I redid the run was the obvious improvement on level 26. Those who paid attention at the full run I made would have noticed that level 26 was cleared faster there than in this previous version. In this version, level 26 is played exactly the same as in the full run, and it's 181 frames faster.
7 frames were saved from having better luck with randomness.

For those who watch the fcm version of this movie, there is another difference to the previous movie. I tried to make the start of the run, where you have to wait a little more entertaining by doing some stuff with the input. If you want to see all of it, use fceu 0.98.16 with four controllers when watching the input (select all four by pressing "," a few times).

This were the differences, so the rest of this submission text will be copied from previous submission texts.

FCEU 0.98.15 / 0.98.16
Uses Warps and Cheats
Abuses Programming Errors
Uses Death
Uses Game Over
Aims for Fastest Time

Playback

To playback this movie make sure:

To set the second player input to 'Gamepad' instead of 'Arkanoid Paddle'
To use the US version
Probably FCEU 0.98.12 and higher will work, but 0.98.15 and 0.98.16 will work for sure

Note that the movie won't desync if this is done... not even when you think it desyncs. Let me explain what's going on:

The glitch

There are two main cheats in this game:

Pressing start+A will teleport you to the next level. (this only works for the first 16 levels)
Holding A+B and pressing select 5 times, will allow you to continue from the level you died. This second trick is of importance.

If you wait long enough at the title screen, you will see the story of the game. If you wait a little longer a demo will start playing. The computer controls the arkanoid paddle, but the player is in control of the "A"-button. This allows you to launch the ball, and to shoot if the computer happens to pick up a power up like laser.

The demo will play 5 different levels if you wait long enough:

demo 1 = level 14
demo 2 = level 15
demo 3 = level 23
demo 4 = level 30
demo 5 = level 5

Level 30 isn't influenceable with pressing A, because of the nature of the level. Level 23 (the third demo) however is influenceable! By pressing A at the right frame, the computer picks up the laser power up, which gives you even more influence on how the demo will end. The computer is programmed on staying underneath the ball, but if you change to laser, or from laser to something else, your arkanoid paddle will shrink for a short moment. With the right manipulation this enables you to die in the computer demo. The computer will go game over and you will be at the title screen again... pretty neat, but why would you want to do that?

As said before, there is a cheat (holding A+B and pressing select 5 times) to continue from a game over. This means you can continue from the place where the computer demo went game over! In this case level 23. Completing the levels this way is even faster than using the regular level skip cheat.

For the levels that follow (all numbered differently since level 23 is seen as level 1 now) I use warps most of the time. The blocks that give you powerups are determened by the game, and aren't manipulatable (certain blocks will always give you a power, others won't ever). However, which powerup a certain block gives you is manipulatable. Getting the warps all the time required a great deal of luck manipulation. This movie aims for the fastest possible time, using all possible means.

Movie end

The movie stops at the last hit. Stopping the movie earlier would have been possible to complete the game, but you would be able to keep the movie from finishing by pressing start after input time, so I stop the movie after the point of which this is possible.