Submission #1862: Aqfaq's Genesis Mystic Defender in 05:38.32

Mystic Defender improved by 35.13 seconds (2108 frames).

About half of the improvement comes from better precision and faster boss fight strategies, the other half is due to a glitch in the last level.

Thanks to Highness for the previous movie!

Any level can be hex-edited at any time, so if you want to try improving a single level, it is possible by all means. All levels are probably improvable, even though I tried a lot to make them optimal.

The movie synchs fine with both REV00 and REV01 versions. The only difference is a few pixels of more nudity in the end with REV00.

Landing after a jump stops the screen scrolling for 1 frame, so usually jumping should be avoided. However, shooting/charging the weapon and moving forwards simultaneously is possible only in the air.

If I shoot seemingly for nothing, it is for changing the character's hit box dimensions for more precise jumps.

Most of the boss fights are not about killing the boss fast. Usually, it is more important to be in a good position after the fight. Also, the earliest frame you start charging the second shot is often more important than the frame the first shot hits the boss.

The glitch in the final level is interesting. Scrolling the screen in a peculiar way moves the elevators away from their places. I do this to access an elevator behind a wall. After that, I start floating upwards (this is the part with the long wait) to access another elevator that is located below (and also behind a wall). There is also some jumping inside the walls and other little details, which make this route possible. (You might get a better idea of what is happening, if you turn the graphics layer 3 off. [Make a savestate at 4:20:00, so you can watch that part again.]) I understand the glitch completely and know exactly what's happening at every moment. I could draw my route on a map easily (if someone provides a map), but it is hard to explain here. I suppose this glitch fits my style. :)

There are many ways to end the input. I finish the final boss with the dragon spell. This prolongs the actual ending a few seconds, but allows ending input early and is stylistically more interesting, because it shows the dragon spell.

I think 00FFE326 shows the character's horizontal sub-pixel position.

These are various boss HP addresses:

00FFE93F
00FFF2EF
00FFF1FF
00FFE66F
00FFE70F
00FFE61F

Weapon charge meter is at 00FFF631.

The current publication has luck-manipulation mentioned, but there is no such thing as luck in this game. Every boss has a predictable logic and there seems to be nothing random in this game. So the luck-manipulation can be left out from the attributes:

Enjoy the fast-paced action!

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. I'm not sure I got the right ROM though. (I tried Mystic Defender (W) (REV00) [!].gen, which was the closest match to what you wrote.) Well, here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.

adelikat: Accepting + Encoding.