Submission #2442: Comicalflop's GBA Gunstar Super Heroes in 18:32.22

Here we go, after well over a year, the Gunstar Super Heroes TAS is here to show the Genesis version that while the game itself is inferior, when you can control the characters, you can go much faster and yell and shout more than should be possible in a game!

Gunstar Super Heroes is a sequel for the Genesis Gunstar Heroes. However, the game ends up being more of a remake than an actual sequel, seeing as you play as the same characters, with the same weapons, the same music, and play inside the same stages. But there's a few new things. Here are the major differences:

-You can now play as *either* Red or Blue. You can't control both at once.
-Each character has only access to 3 weapons.
-Each of the weapons has a super charge. The super is activated by pressing R twice. More detail later.
-New moveset. While most of the moves are the same, there's a few new moves, and most importantly all of the moves can be interrupted by another move. This is why the movie is so fast paced.
-Weapons can't be combined.

Settings

This run uses the hardest difficulty, and uses Blue. When it really comes down to it, Red and Blue are essentially the same. They have the exact same moves, and have pretty much the exact same weapons. The key difference between Red and Blue is the Laser/Force difference.

Blue's Laser is a consistent stream of inconsistent damage. Red's Force is an inconsistent stream of consistent damage. When using the super forms, Red's Super Force is immensely effective in regenerating the Charge bar; using the weapon essentially refuels itself. Super Laser, however, drains much faster, and is only self sustaining in very few instances. However, Super Laser's damage is inconsistent enough so that over time (and especially if you are right next to your target) Super Laser will deal more damage. Thus, Blue was chosen, to deal more damage and because it increases the difficulty even more.

And really, Blue is way cooler than Red. His voice is way more manly, and his attacks look cooler.

Just about every motion can be canceled into each other. This is useful in stringing together long chains of actions to be used in movement and for showing off. In movement, if you jump 3 frames before you touch an enemy (or any object) you will continue at normal speed. Then, 3 frames after you jump, do a slide kick, then a slide. This is the optimal form of movement. The slightly more optimal form, which I use during long segments where I do not collide into anything, is to replace jump with uppercut, waiting 8 frames, then doing the slide kick/slide. This extends my slide speed by an additional 5 frames, since aerial kicks are slower than slides. Also, if you press B 6 frames after you do an uppercut, you will slide along the floor at slide speed even more, which allows for tiny optimizations when trying to reach a loading zone.

When in the air, a side kick can be canceled by a slide kick or a down kick. A slide kick can be canceled by a down kick. A down kick can be canceled by a sword swipe or a super charge weapon.

The normal shot weapons are funny in that it takes 11 frames of holding B before the shot appears. If you hold B during a different animation, as soon as that animation ends the shot will fire automatically. This can be used to great effect in that you only waste 1 frame during physical attacks in order to fire off a normal shot. This is really useful with fire shot, since at max a fire shot can deal 18 damage.

The other use for this is that it can be used WHILE SLIDING. Simply hold B while sliding, jump, wait 4 frames, then do slide kick/slide. This slows you down very slightly, but it allows you to fire a shot without losing any speed. Very useful for approaching Targets.

Fire is awesome. It has the wonderful ability to linger, so it is used the most during this run. Having a shot linger is great for two reasons. One, you can fire the shot, and then attack physically while the shot is dealing its damage, thus dealign twice as much damage as possible. And second, because fire shots take a while before they start dealing damage, you can use it to fire once before the fight even begins, for extra 18 damage with no time lost.
Super fire is amazing. Used wisely, you can launch these babies one after another and roasts bosses alive. You have to be careful though, not every boss is weak to it, and very often your energy bar can get drained and it can take a lot of damage before you can fire one off again.

Laser is fast. It is ideal for certain bosses, like some of Green's forms, Orange, Gold Silver, etc. The super form is used always against Laser-weak bosses except Orange, who is mostly immune to it.

Chaser laser is weak and pathetic. While the concept of it is cool, it deals way less damage than the other forms. It's super form deals, I kid you not, 1 damage every time it hits. it hits multiple times, but c'mon, 1 damage per hit? Super laser deals 10 average per hit. I only use it for entertainment. And Super chaser requires like a full max energy bar before you can even fire it. Lame.

The physical attacks all do various damage. Some do about the same, and some are better in some scenarios than others.

Slides and kicks do about the same damage.

Uppercuts are good in getting into the air while dealing damage at the same time.

Sword slashes deal the least damage, but you can hold R to fire off weapon shots in between each slice, which is useful. Used primarily in Moon 3. Only in certain circumstances where no other attack can be used will sword slash be used, because it also helps you hover in the air somewhat.

Down kicks are the best at dealing damage. So I try to use them whenever possible.

You have a 1-3 window frame before a screen loads, so it's optimal to start doing the first motion in a room during this pre-loaded period.

If you are in the air, your animation in firing the super weapon is shorter to the point where it's 99% more useful to fire supers in the air.

1:11
And we're off! Look at Blue go. Keeping that one robot alive makes him start shooting, and by slashing the shots, I can get a freebie energy bar. Yum! I'll take it. Gray is totally the most evil I-am-never-present villain. Then, down comes a Boss, tries to steal Yellow from me, but I can't have that so I'll force-feed him some lovely super fires.

2:33
For the record, I hate autoscrollers. A lot. It was immensely draining to spend over a year working especially with this stage, Moon 3, and Moon 5. But, I digress. That energy bar in Moon 1 helped with the blue robots. The flower boss is super tricky because those little spores he shoots LOVE to drain my energy, so each super fire had to be carefully placed to minimize energy drainage.

Saving the chicks was tricky, since I needed to test every single possible route. The firing tricks helped in getting rid of those pesky enemies. Blue reeeeeeally loves moving frantically during waiting times.

Pink is really hot. But she dies very fast.

1:56
I tried killing lots of enemies. R and L make you spin but do not affect your speed. It's at this first boss that I took damage on purpose to gain time, since hugging the boss's nose and firing took him down real quick, but I suffered one hit as a result.

And then we get in the air, and things become more fun. I show off the holding B trick A LOT in this section, especially in using the chaser laser. The timing for the shortcut up to the 3rd ship, and up on the landing is very, very tight, and saves 4 seconds.

The strategy for Orange is optimal. Leaving the dialogue box open makes him stand there doing nothing, and the reason I slide is that it helps me fire off the first laser at him a few frames sooner. Then I have to keep sliding in order to maintain the pattern. And it looks wayyy cooler to slide-jump-fire-slide like I do, rather than sitting still holding B.

2:26
An entire stage autoscroller. Fun. I try to show off as much as possible here (my favorite segment is when I move vertically down the first tunnel. Happiness) I checked each section to determine which enemies I need to kill as fast as possible, and which enemies I can toy with.

Green fight. Oooh boy. This was a pain. First off, I manipulated the first four forms to be horizontal bosses (thanks to pirate_sephiroth for pointing this out to me.) Each form is weak to one type of damage. Or, they could be resistant to most forms of damage. So, each boss is handled in a specific (and fastest) way.

The cat thing is super laser.
The arrow thing takes super fires (kinda laggy though) and slash/fire shot combos
The running guy is super laser (I get too close to his face, then back up away slightly since super laser deals more damage the closer you are sometimes)
Crab thing is same as arrow thing.
Urchin is MASSIVELY weak to fire. That is why in the 2nd Green fight I manipulate the Urchin form to appear every time.
Phoenix must be done super laser style, but I hug next to it so close that I saved a lot of time. To hell with safety.
And the dragon thing, I gotta be careful of its tail, since it absorbs all damage.

Sometimes you'll see me deal the last damage slower on purpose, this is to manipulate the next form that will appear.

1:42 I made an initial run of Moon 4, and I was able to slide into Black's legs every time except once. I looked through the stage, and the closest HP powerups are the 3 waiting below at the beginning. So I grabbed them. The 2 second slowdown saved like 4 seconds, so it's worth it.

The dice palace's route is optimal. 4-3-1-1-5. The first 3 stages are the fastest ones in the first half of the palace (I checked every one). Minion goes down super fast. The lasers one goes down super fast too. And the vertical stage is also done insane fast.

The second half, even though kitchen is very laggy, it's still faster than the rest of the stages. The second closest would be the teddy bear, but by the time you can start damaging him, you'd have already beaten Melon bread. so...

And that leads us to Black. Fire deals no damage to him. PHOOEY. Guess we'll have to wait for his legs to raise up.

Or do we? With enough HP, we don't! That's where the 3 HP powerups came in, to leave me just enough HP to take a hit every time.

When Black is on one side of the spider, he can't be physically attacked so super laser is best. But when he's on the other side, he is wide open to some nasty down kick attacks.

5:08
My least favorite stage, to be honest. Long sliding segment where I really get to show off the holding B trick. I also found a funny glitch where pressing Start optimally caused the red general guy to not run away, but still make the fleeing sound. The two space autoscrollers, erg. Even though combined they are not as long as the space autoscroller in Gunstar Heroes, it wasn't as fun to do. Especially since pressing R and L moves the camera around, and I don't get to spam any missiles.

The one part that might look weird is that I show off a glitch where I go underneath the lasers that fire, and then go through walls. This was a very laggy segment, and I prevented ALL lag by going underneath here. Bonus!

For the 2 bosses, these are optimal. The first laser, you cannot damage him when I stop firing... so I stop firing. The second fight, again I have to wait a while before attacking, and I shit the position slightly in order to dodge those annoying shots.

But then this level ends and we get to.....

2:14
YAY! The most epic of the stages as we face all of the bosses in more advanced, and difficult forms.

Pink is supposed to be tough, since there's 3 targets... but some well timed super fires, and BAM! she bites the dust.

Orange... well the technique from Moon 2 doesn't work here, and Red's technique of bouncing him off stage doesn't work either. It took me a lot of experimenting before I came up with this strategy, where I attack with lasers and bounce him using physical attacks to prevent him from attacking at all. Good thing for me it came out looking good.

Black round 2? Oh hell yes. This one IS my favorite boss fight in the entire game. There's SO much action going on. He can only be dealt a certain amount of damage each time he pops up. And then when you think you have everything under control, MORE SHIT comes flying your way. I think this fight is the highlight of the entire run.

Next we move on to Green #2. So sorry Green, btu I can manipulate your forms (but it's very hard t0 do) and make you transform into Urchin every time. Neener neener! This most epic of fights is cut short. And I took damage on purpose to allow that one nifty final super fire in order to defeat him way earlier.

And now, onto the last fight... Golden Silver. UGH. Fire is not effective here at all (except once which I'll explain.) I managed to do this without taking any damage, which I swear to god IS NOT INTENDED TO BE POSSIBLE. You know how I said chaser super laser is worthless? It is SHIT to TAS against, it was literally one of the hardest boss fights I have ever TASed in my 3+ year TASing career. It deals like 1 damage, but I need to NOT get hit, and the green thingie was SOOO good at doing that. That ^&%*%^&%$&ing green snake kept homing in on me at all the wrong times, and my stupid super laser doesn't sustain itself. So, I make do. But I still think the fight turned out well, considering how hard this fight is to avoid getting hit. And thank god super fire causes the other gems' weapons to go away logn enough for me to make the killing blow.

17:13
I end input to get the credits. I mean, I could also hold start during the credits, then enter my name and make the game reset, but nahhh.

17 minute in-game time in an 18 minute movie... sure beats the hell out of other movies I've made. (Mischief Makers anyone?)

Youtube Playlist

A HUGE thanks goes out to pirate_sephiroth, who previously was running this game bu stopped in the beginning of Moon 4. His run was very strong to compare against, and it also set the standard for how the game should be TASed. In the end, I saved 22 seconds (technically 24 seconds because of grabbing those 3 HP powerups in the beginning) compared to his WIP. A lot of the strategies were found by pirate, especially the superfluous use of super fires against most bosses. Hats off to you mate. Arrr!!!!!

Those other guys who tried TASing this game.

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