Submission #2813: arukAdo's GBC Castlevania: The Adventure in 15:13.82

Game Boy Color
(Submitted: Castlevania The Adventure)
baseline
VBA-rr
54829
60
8823
Unknown
Konami_GB_Collection_Vol.1_(Europe).gbc
Submitted by arukAdo on 8/19/2010 1:52:23 PM
Submission Comments
I am the wind, I am the sun... oh wait...

Summary

  • Colors a Castlevania
  • Takes Damage To Save Time
  • Manipulates Luck
  • Unofficial Encodes [1]
  • Emulator used: VBA-RR (v23svn217)
  • Length:15:14 Frames:54829 Lag Frames:13643 Re-records:8823


About the movie

This is a (02:53.37) improvement over the previous rejected movie.

(some copy paste from wiki)
Castlevania Adventure takes place before Castlevania events, you play an ancestor of Simon, Christopher.
The game consists of four stages, and unlike other Castlevania games, there are no sub-weapons, hearts are used to restore health.
Whip can be upgraded with crystals, but any enemy damage will downgrade an upgraded weapon. (start with leather whip, then chain, and chain+fireballs)
There are no stairs, unlike other Castlevania games. At the end of each level, there is a "primary evil" to confront.
There is also a point counter, and at 10,000 points, a player receives an extra life, and also receives one for every 20,000 points after that. Each stage also has a time limit in which to complete the level.

The main improvement come simply from trying to manage the lag instead of fully submitting to it, the rejected run yielded 23676 lag frames, and this one 10'000 less.
Lag is the main problem while tasing this game, the previous runner just ignored it, although i think he didn’t have a lag counter, he obviously didn’t care about the issue.
In this game, even if there’s nothing on screens (no enemy, no candles, no animation) it will still lag a lot, apparently the lag would come from the music, in boss sequences, there’s no lag (the music is looping and very short).
Basically the main strategy for lag reduction i used was to kill enemies as fast as possible, avoid destroying candles, don’t "land" jump on a lag frame etc... etc... nothing too fancy.
Taking damage is not very cool since you would loose whip power, in first stage i take damage from an eyeball because it shorten a rope climbing, and i regain power 2 candles farther.
For Dracula it went very helpful to take damage, this shortened the fight considerably compared to rejected.
Although the quality of the rejected run is more than doubtful, he did find some neat trick (luck?), depending on subpixel adjustment, you can jump toward a rope and get to the bottom of it, this sadly only works in 1 place but save a bunch of frames.
I didn’t take care to note it, but i get a higher score than the rejected movie.

Improvements


Ill list here all know improvements
  • The start screen can be shorten by about 20 frames, im not sure why or how but i missed it (found by mugg)
  • Manipulating the second boss could be better, i get 2 top holes spawn (the rejected movie get 3), if dropping to 1 or 0 would save some here (100 frames per top hole, can use pause to manipulate, found by mugg).
  • In stage4, on rejected movie the runner managed in 7th room to get on the floor before the boomerang would hit him, this was impossible in my run somehow, i tried many things to manipulate it but nothing worked, few frames can be saved maybe.
  • Dracula might be improvable, i don’t know how though
  • More later!

Closing

This movie is not perfect, and could be better eventually, yet i hope youll enjoy it, i have to say this game was assy to tas.
Its really not fun and extremely rigid controls, on top the lag is the biggest i ever had to deal with, this is also the worse Castlevania game on consoles i think.
Btw, the reason im not using the Konami Collection (J) is simply vba hang on loading games, there’s no usa release, also the color game is less laggy than old grey usa one (not by a lot thought).
Special thanks to fsvgm777 for pointing me a rope shortcut in stage4 while i was broadcasting :p Also thanks to Nach for convincing me to do this tas.

Nach: Votes for this run were rather interesting. Many many yes votes, as well as excited comments about the run in IRC, but also more than a handful of no votes. This game is a bit ridiculous in how hard it is to jump, and to the extent the player gets attacked unexpectedly. For those familiar with the game, this run is easily identifiable as a superplay, as enemies are consistently shot at before they appear on screen, no missed jumps, things manipulated well enough that Christopher is never unexpectedly attacked, as well as insanely fast boss fights. This run it is also much faster than other runs made for this game till now. Based on the demand for this game, and positive responses, I'd be willing to discount no votes by those unfamiliar with the game. Some runs like Gradius look amazing to anyone, even those unfamiliar with the game. Some runs like Super Metroid are appraised highly by the majority of members, but those unfamiliar with the game find it long and boring, and it gets its share of low ratings. Castlevania Adventure suffers from being less well known, like most early Gameboy games, hence several thinking the run looks too easy. However, there were several no votes by those who were familiar with the game for this run being noticeably suboptimal to them. Therefore, I'm going to reject this run because it needs more improvement.
arukAdo: Allright
Last Edited by adelikat on 7/24/2015 10:28 PM
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