Submission #2833: DarkKobold's GBA Shining Soul II in 1:12:02.43

(flowplayer module removed)

This submission of Shining Soul II includes many glitches over both the published movie and the previous submission. The run looks more like Bomberman than SS2 for the first half of the movie. Hopefully you will enjoy it. This run is 17:58.75 faster than the published movie, and 05:26.60 faster than the previous submission.

The movie, according to Sonikkustar - "This is a movie about a game that has something about Shiningness or something. No, not the movie, The Shining, something more like the video game Shining series."

Item duping requires having the item you want duped followed by a blank space in your right-hand menu. You charge up to throw the item with B, and the frame after you release B you hit R to switch items. This substracts 1 from the empty space, as opposed to the item, and thus, there is a newly created thrown item, as well as the item still in the right-hand menu.

While this wasn't the most difficult manipulation, it was still very important to the run. The random items the item seller has is decided right after the Book/intro disappears, so that means before the initial cutscene with Boken or the tournament. The need for the bomb is obvious, as this one bomb does the majority of the work of the run. The bomb does damage between 100-139, regardless of defense, and so it is extremely helpful during the entire run against high defense enemies.

Initially, after I had read about the glitch, I thought the only way to get the Power Wine was to fight four rounds in the Colosseum, which I estimated would take 5 minutes. I questioned whether or not just using the bomb for the entire run would be worth it.

To start, I the power wine drops exactly once in the 32,767 long RNG cycle. The RNG only executes 1-6 times a frame, with an average of about 1.3 times per frame. This means there are approximately 25,000 frames, or 7 minutes between each power wine drop, which I be killing an enemy on that exact frame, with no other RNG motion, to get the item to drop. I had to first figure out how the RNG worked, then, I had to record all the values the RNG took for 32K frames in advance (recorded on the title screen). Next, I fed those values into a script, and wrote all of those values back into the RNG while an enemy died, to watch it's drop. The first power wine drop is ~22000 RNG executions from booting the ROM. So, the final step was to track the progress of the RNG as I TAS'd, and watch for the power wine's RNG to come. I got lucky in the RNG loop progress, so it the power wine drop did not occur while I was in the castle, or in a boss battle. In the end, it looks like I only waste about 5 seconds to get the power water to drop, a far cry from the 5 minutes I had originally intended, which would have destroyed all the gains of the run.

Note that every time I dupe a power wine, it creates 3-5 frames of lag, giving a defined cost to creating the wine. Each wine takes ~50 frames to dupe. That said, I only dupe during forced waiting times. In total, I create 120 power wines over the course of the run. I get drunk with power!

First, after I defeat gobovitch, I dupe power wines until the chest has an orihaclron. Selling that gave me enough gold to buy the Knapsack. I then manipulate the item seller to sell a Knapsack, which extends your right-hand menu by 1 row. This item allowed me to dupe both bombs and power wines at the same time. Also, I put the bomb in two places in the menu, to save time when flicking through items.

This is only an aesthetic glitch, as it doesn't save time. If you take damage while a text box is open, the damage doesn't actually register. I technically die 3 times in the run, first against Captain Gully, my own bomb deals 67 damage to me. Later, Deatharte's green cloud kills me twice over, once for 83 damage, and once for 103 damage.

Once again, only an aesthetic glitch. I had to open the item menu to put the power wine in my right-hand menu after defeating Gobovitch. If a text box is opening, the game forces you out, and doesn't cost the 60 frames to close the menu. This also triggers the musical victory fanfare to start playing early.

Since I have free bombs, this was easier to execute. I lay the bomb, create 2 power wines while waiting for it to explode, and leave the room as her dialogue begins. This save ~30 seconds of listening to her talk, but I still get the password to the Demons' Tower.

Lazy Kenny, on bosses - "They assume that they're going to kill you, but once they get blown up and slashed by a drunk ninja, they decide to tell you everything since they're dead anyway"

klmz: Judging.

GabCM: Added FlowPlayer module. Samsara: Removed FlowPlayer module. It's literally 2022 and we don't have it anymore, haha, lmao,

klmz: Accepted as an improvement to the published run.