Hello! This is my TAS of the Genesis game Sparkster! I hope you enjoy!
This improves Ferret Warlord's run by 00:41.77 seconds.
Settings
- Emulator used: Gens 11a.
- Controller 1: 6 Buttons
- Allow Up+Down: Yes
Goals
- Takes damage to save time
- Heavy luck Manipulation
- Uses hardest difficulty
- Best Ending
- 100% Completion
| Level | Frames Saved |
|---|---|
| Prolouge | 72 |
| Stage 1 | 61 |
| Stage 2 | 43 |
| Stage 3 | 160 |
| Stage 4 | 104 |
| Stage 5 | 846 |
| Stage 6 | 26 + 1194 |
| Total | 2506 |
Tricks & Glitches:
Super Turning - This trick comes into use for manuvering through turns after a rocket boost. By pressing the direction you are going for one frame and then pressing the opposite direction, you can turn around faster than just holding down the opposite direction.
Example: Pressing right for one frame after you boosted right will reduce your speed to 768 as opposed to just holding left.
Pseudo Wall Jumps - This isnt really useful anywhere, but with the right speed adjustment, you'll be able to sink into a block and jump from it. I just show this glitch to fool around.
Recoil Cancel - Normally, when you boost off an enemy, you get hit back. But, if you do the boost just right, then you will be able to avoid the recoil from the enemy while doing damage to it. If you look closely, you can see me use this trick in Stages 2, 3 & 5.
Stages
Prolouge
Some people dont really consider this an actuall stage, but I believe that this is substaintal enough to be one. 72 frames
were saved by taking more damage and doing more wacky manuvers to avoid Axel's attacks.
Stage 1
You can see me skip some crystals here in the begining part here. I'll tell you why later on in this submission text. ;)
Anyways, there wasnt much time saved in 1-1. Only a few frames were saved by grabbing the boost item and boosting earlier
which made me break through the small wall faster.
5 lag frames were saved through different input. However, There were no frames saved on the boss.
Stage 2
And now we are inside some pyramids. How....mildly uninspiring!
Time was saved here from better boosting & general optimizations. I also did a slightly different strategy in 2-6.
Boss:
For this boss, I did a spin as the final attack rather than a boost. This removed many of the "invisible frames" from the
fight and therefore saved me time.
Stage 3
This was a very surprising result I had with this stage. When I entered it, I thought I would never save even a single
frame in this stage. But this happened to be the stage where huge savings started to occur.
Most time was saved due to general optimizations.
Boss:
I save about 20 frames before the battle by boosting diagonally. Im not sure how this saved time whatsoever.
The phase progression depends on the skull leaving the screen. So I did some boosts & maneuvers to get it off screen as
optimally as I can.
Stage 4
This stage may not look bad at first. I mean, its basically an autoscroller. But this is one of the most annoying stages I
have ever TASed.
The time it takes to advance onto the next segment depends on how long the mech stays on the screen. The first mech is an
exception to this rule (I delayed the hit by one frame). The last mech on the first part however seems to be operating on a
frame rule of sorts (Ferret Warlord's predition). So no frames cant be saved by killing off that mech early.
Boss - Axel Mech:
I take some more damage and do some more wacky maneuvers which resulted in saving 35 frames from this fight.
Stage 5
You remember those crystals I avoided way back in 1-1? Well, This was to manipulate it so that a bomb is spawned later in
4-1 here. This helped me save 28 frames in this section.
A lot of time saved in this stage from better optimization. There is a slight speed/entertainment tradeoff in 4-2 since I
used the wall jump trick, but I felt like it was neccesary to make this movie special.
The minibosses have been improved from hitting it at earlier frames. You can see me do a rolling charge rather than an
upward boost on the first miniboss because this allows me to reach the floor earlier so that I can attack faster.
The Guard Robots have some unique properties. It seems like there are no invincibility frames for the robots when they are
being hit by mines. However, they clearly have invincibility frames when you normally attack them. The trick here is to hit
the mines so that they overlap the robots. Doing so will cause 1 HP of damage per frame. After the frames
have died out from the normal atack, you strike again and the robot is instantlly killed.
Boss:
About 5 seconds of time was saved from manipulation of the robots and a trick from the Green Robot.
Stage 6
This stage is basically a boss rush. Tis what has to be done. ;)
Boss - Axel Gear:
Saved 26 frames on Axel here by delivering the final hit at a better position. This caused him to avoid his little "bounce"
like in Ferret's movie.
Boss - Gedol:
No frames saved here, although I did try to make it more interesting.
Boss - Super Gedol:
No real frames saved here. I end input early so there really isnt much of a fair comparision with this boss. Also, There
was a glitch here that Ferret didnt mention with this boss. It allows me to end the fight early even though Gedol has 2
more HP.
Thanks To:
- Ferret Warlord - For giving me feedback and encouragement on this movie. Also for already doing a run which I used as a guide.
- The IRC Channel - For giving me a vast amount of encouragement which helped me finish this to the end.
- You! - For watching this movie.
Closing Comments
- This is the last serious project I had on my agenda. What do I do now?
- I feel very proud of this submission. I had to learn lua just for the sake of this run's quality.
Encodes
Youtube
Suggested Screenshot:
FractalFusion: Accepting for publication as an improvement to the published run. The entertainment of this TAS is really good. Too bad Stage 4 ruined a lot of the enjoyment.
Velitha: Processing...