Submission #3750: MESHUGGAH's NES Battletoads "Glitched" in 00:56.94

Nintendo Entertainment System
Glitched
FCEUX 2.1.6
3422
60.0988138974405
64458
Unknown
Battletoads (U).nes
Submitted by MESHUGGAH on 11/11/2012 10:30:12 AM
Submission Comments

Introduction

Since 1 year feos and me made a #3356: feos & MESHUGGAH's NES Battletoads in 11:04.72 run, 10 months later Dylax and DjTheZlomus made #3690: TheZlomuS & DyLaX's NES Battletoads "Glitched" in 01:02.68. That motivated me to come back to the tasing community and improve the game to it's glory.
Notice the date (2011/11/11 and 2012/11/11). Also my birthday is 11/12.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.1.6, syncs on 2.1.4a (thanks Ilari)
  • Aims for fastest possible time
  • Entertains without losing a frame
  • Uses warps
  • Manipulates luck
  • Manipulates cutscenes
  • Manipulates musics
  • Manipulates game

Detailed informations

This is the result of tasing the game for 41 times after realizing that Dylax and DjTheZlomus's last effort #3710: TheZlomuS & DyLaX's NES Battletoads "Glitched" in 00:58.07 is not perfect. Note that the actual rerecord count is more than 100.000, but I kept switching between my different versions.
The notable improvements are these:
  • minimizing the actions (jump length) to get better subpixel positions and do actions (pressing B) as fast as possible to recover from it's animation and go forward.
  • running faster as soon as possible rather than going to the right side (it's faster because the camera doesn't moves forward if it's blocked by the 2nd player)
The combination of these two lead to this movie. This way I could get a faster spawn of the rats which is spawned after every 16th frames. This means, you need to be there in 17 frames earlier, otherwise you won't improve anything just wait for the enemy spawn. This happens in the next rat too.
And I'm also reduced the manipulation part, this way it's impossible (to me) to make a "no game over" version.

The possible improvements

  • The only thing I tried without luck or even close to the resolution is manipulating the game end without pressing input at the manipulation part (after the lagframes around 3406). The problem is that the complexity of the manipulation. You have to reset pointers, get correct values for different objects. Most of the time when I thought it will works, it suddenly either stopped the manipulation.
  • And of course, you can try to reduce the manipulation part, but that's will results in a much longer wait until the end, if it would be possible, but the same happens as earlier mentioned. And this has something to do with the actual framecount (lower framecounts are harder to manipulate)

The impossible improvements

  • A 1P run would be much slower
  • Resetting at the 1st possible frame when the intro finished costs frames
  • Because of the timers, Level 1 (enemy spawn) and Level 3 (rat spawn timers) is impossible to improve

List of techniques and oddities appeared in chronological order

Manipulating cutscenes/texts
Using different input, it's possible to save 1-3 frames by loading those texts that gives fewer lag frames.
Manipulating music/background
Pausing very fast alternating on thetwo joystick mutes the music channel. The sideffect is flickering the background on level 3.
Synchronizing actions that costs lag frames
Kicking, dashing, brutal hit etc costs lag frames so hitting something with both toads in the same frame halves it.
Optimizing movement
Starting fast running earlier is always faster, but sometimes it needs different input (LR instead of UL, empty, UL).
Z-order mess up
Pressing left and right simultaneously brings up or down the player rapidly. Also used to get different subpositions.
Manipulating the game end
I have to depress you, but I don't know the technical side of this. I've done it with a "visual test" that sometimes changes depending on odd or even frame is the last frame before the respawn or different input before the manipulation begins. You should ask DjTheZlomus.

Miscellaneous

For entertainment...
  • look the input of the beginning and cutscene manipulated parts (TASeditor is adviced)
  • P2 joins later
  • Level 1 music changed to play 1 note
  • P1 falling blow
  • Level 3 music muted, soundeffects added (by unmuting) to jumps and spawns
  • Level 3 background flickers
  • random jumps
I hope you enjoyed my TAS, I think I will check maybe other platforms too. And would like to thanks the help to feos, Dylax, DjTheZlomus, Ilari, adelikat for giving me tasks instead of tasing this 0-24 a day and everyone from #tasvideos.
See you until my next tas =)

Nach: I let this stew for a week to see if anyone has any more improvements. Since no one mentioned working on anything significant, I deem this ready for judging, and obsoletions can always be submitted later like with everything else.
I found the improvement quite impressive, and good audience feedback throughout the frame war. Accepting.
feos: Precessing.
Last Edited by on 1/1/2022 6:13 PM
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