Submission #2568: Mukki's GB Avenging Spirit in 08:29.18

Here is a run of a very nice GB gem. From wikipedia: during a walk with his girlfriend, the player is ambushed by unknown enemies who take his girlfriend away and shoot him to death. Now, as a wandering spirit with the ability to possess most others, he is summoned by his girlfriend's father (who researches ghost energy) and is given a mission to save her from the mysterious crime syndicate that holds her hostage, enabling the player to rest in peace.

I am aware that this game is an arcade port, however I'm not sure if it is playable on FBA (it doesn't show up on the list). Due to the very different nature of the hardware the two games are quite different, but I wouldn't be opposed to an arcade run obsoleting this should this run be accepted.

This run aims for the good ending. I did a run with the bad ending finishing in about 6:07 with about 5s of improvement. The bad ending isn't really much of an ending at all so I felt that this was the best option. To get this I must collect a key from levels 2, 5 and 6 (the 6 key requires you to collect the letters G.H.O.S.T from within the level). This allows you to rescue the girl.

This game is interesting from a TAS perspective in that you can possess any normal enemy in the game and harness their abilities. Some characters are faster than others, whereas some have higher jumps opening up new routes and some have more powerful weapons allowing you to dispose of bosses more quickly. When in ghost form you can pass through walls, skipping large portions of some levels, but you can only remain in ghost form for a matter of seconds before you die so it must be carefully planned what walls you pass through. I found the fastest characters (fighting girl and robot) to be the best overall. I tested with some higher jumping characters and was able to use some new shortcuts, but the faster characters always caught up eventually.

This game does lag quite a bit in places, but the VBA lag counter is very unreliable in this game at least. At great personal strain I was able to eliminate most of the lag, but the counter suggests that there is still quite a lot when in fact it isn't lagging at all. This resulted in me having to redo large portions of this run.

A cool glitch I found is that usually you can only fire your weapon once per second, but if you hold down + B for one frame, down on the following frame and then releasing input you can fire again immediately. I use this extensively against the bosses. Also if you turn one frame before taking damage you can get a damage boost that acts almost like a double jump allowing you to access some platforms faster.

Enjoy!

cpadolf: Accepting as a well done first run of the game.