Gargoyle's Quest II is a sequel to the Gameboy game Gargoyle's Quest both of which exist within the Ghost n' Goblins universe. In this game you play as a gargoyle named Firebrand and you must try to save to land from the "dark light."
Game objectives
- Emulator used: fceux 2.1.6 with TAS Editor
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes no damage
Comments
In this run you have two different gameplay elements, the LoZ style overworld and the platformer in level sections. The overworld section is trivial to TAS as there is no lag, no random encounters and movement exists on a grid so you can only change course along lines causing optimization to be extremely simple.
The platformer section is a different beast entirely. I am almost guaranteed the reason why this game has not had a submitted run is that without TAS Editor no one would have to will to finish due to lag. In the levels there is a ridiculous amount of lag that is entirely unavoidable and quite random. It appears to be dependent on the frame you enter the level, the frame the enemies (or any item that can move for that matter) enter the screen, the items that you use, whether or not your character is moving, etc. etc. This large amount of random lag causes optimization to become extremely painful as if you change any movement at all the rest of the run will desync. It is also seemingly random as sometimes killing an enemy removes the lag and saves time, but other times the process of firing creates far more lag and then other completely unexplained lag persists so it becomes slower.
In the platforming sections there are a few possibilities of movement. You can walk which happens at a constant 1 pixel per frame, you can jump which randomly alternates between 1 pixel and 0 pixels per frame, and after you have jumped you can "fly" or glide for a certain length of time which is also at a constant 1 pixel per frame. Early on in the game your jumping ability is quite poor so there has to be trial and error to decide if in certain situations 3 small wall jumps or 1 large jump would be quicker. As the game progresses your jumping and flying abilities increase greatly so the 1 large jump becomes increasingly more effective.
The weapons in the game increase in strength by two for each one you receive but for the most part the enemies follow suit and essentially only take one hit to kill. A problem with the weapons is that while the "claw" that lets you land on spikes and the fire attack at the end are the strongest moves, you have to use the buster move to break the blocks so you have to at times switch out weapons. Another strategy that must be looked into is that debate between the "claw" and the tornado moves in moving vertically in levels. It depends on the height you must traverse, the shape of the walls and the area between the walls to determine if the tornado or the claw are more effective and thus why I alternate which I use. The final factor to take note of is that all of the weapons except for the final fire attack allow for two shots to exist on screen at a time. This leads to a few other lower level attacks potentially being more effective in boss fights where multiple hits are required. The problem is that, like on the boulders that require the buster attack, the final boss only takes damage if the final fire attack is used so while it theoretically would be faster to use a lower tier weapon, in practice they coded him so it does not work.
Other comments
Overall I hope that you enjoy the run. The dialog runs at a readable pace (and is in my opinion entertaining) and I tried to optimize and make the movie entertaining without sacrificing time.
Cancelled
Due to improvements I was informed of in the comments and a large amount of free time in my near future I am restarting this run. Please look here for updates on the improvement or wait a week and vote yes then!
Nach: Judging.