Rolanmen1's Mega Man X6 "All Stages" TAS in 39:31.35.
The In-game time is 14:28.
Recorded using: PCSX RR v0.1.3
Aims
- Hardest difficulty
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Use deaths to save time
- Manipulates luck (not much)
About the Game
This game is Mega Man game which was rushed, with untranslated voices and bad translation. Some bosses were poorly designed and look like a mess as well. Some stages are also poorly designed, being impossible to pass with the wrong armor or character, or structure randomization. The difficulty of the game is very hard, even on Normal.
In fact, things in this game exist just to kill you, that's for sure. Not to mention that Xtreme mode turns entire stages into enemy soup. This game also introduced a new hazard enviroment system, wich means that a stage will have some enviroment variations depending on the stages that you went previously, some of these being incredibly annoying and some not being much of a problem. A Stage will only have 1 hazard at a time, meaning that if you went to 2 stages that would cause hazard in a stage, only the later one will take place. This game has 8 different hazards, and those are:
- Nightmare Bugs: After going to Commander Yammark Stage, this stage along with Blaze Heatnix and Shield Sheldon stages will have this hazard. They are just some bugs that will fly along the player, sometimes you will be getting hit if you go to fast, these can only be destroyed by Commander Yammark power.
- Nightmare Wind: After goung to Rainy Turtloid Stage, Commander Yammark and Ground Scaravich Stages will have some kind of wind that will slow the player a bit.
- Nighmare Mirror: After going to Shield Sheldon Stage, Rainy Turtloid and Blizzard Wolfang Stages will appear some kind of illusion of the other player you are not playing with, after appearing, they will ram at you, you can only avoid this using Shield Sheldon's Power.
- Nightmare Ice: After going to Blizzard Wolfang Stage, Ice will appear on the floor of Metal Shark Player Stage, this can be destroyed by using Blizzard Wolfang Power.
- Nightmare Fire: After going to Blaze Heatnix Stage, in Blizzard Wolfang and Infinity Mijinion Stages will appear falling fire balls that will constantly hit the player, these can be destroyed using Blaze Heatnix's Power.
- Nightmare Darkness: After going to Infinity Mijinion Stage, Commander Yammark and Rainy Turtloid Stages will have darkness that will make the player not see most of the stage.
- Nightmare Iron: After going to Metal Shark Player Stage, Blaze Heatnix, Infinity Mijinion and Ground Scaravich Stages will have iron rectangles that will smash down the player and sometimes even block you, these can be destroyed using Metal Shark Player Power. Also, when getting hit by these, it allows you to pass through other Nightmare Irons before your Invulnerability runs out.
- Nightmare Cube: After going to Ground Scaravich Stage, in Shield Sheldon and Metal Shark Player Stages some cubes will appear in different colors, some of these can be destroyed and some can only be pushed, these can happen only by using Ground Scaravich Power.
About the Run
There are 3 ways to reach the fortress stages:
- Beat all 8 Mavericks.
- Beat High Max in a secondary area.
- Obtain 3000 Nightmare Souls.
For this "All Stages" run the first method is faster.
This is the route used:
- Intro Stage (X)
- Rainy Turtloid 2nd Area (X)
- Infinity Mijinion (Zero)
- Shield Sheldon (Zero)
- Commander Yammark (Zero)
- Rainy Turtloid (Zero)
- Blizzard Wolfang (Zero)
- Metal Shark Player (Zero)
- Ground Scaravich (X)
- Blaze Heatnix (Zero)
(All 8 Bosses Beaten)
- Gate 1 (Zero)
- Gate 2 (Zero)
- Final Stage (Zero)
Run Notes
Intro Stage:
This was hex editted from my Any% run i did with FractalFusion, the reason is that it would look the same anyway, the only difference could be the "messing arround" part near the end.
Rainy Turloid 2nd Area:
Hazzard: None
The idea here was to unlock Zero, along with getting 2 reploids in the secondary area, these 2 gives Hyper Dash and Saber+. The first part of the whole stage was hex editted from my 100% TAS, the second part was remade. Improvement here is from better movement and better decitions and maybe a bit more of luck.
Infinity Mijinion:
Hazzard: None
Since the player gets 200 Nightmare Souls per boss kill, the idea is to get to the shortest stages so Zero is able to get 500 Nightmare Souls to use Hyper Dash and since this is the second shortest stage, this is ideal to make Zero get some souls, plus, this stage is full of Nightmares. Improvements here are killing Ilumina with 3rd Slash spamming.
Shield Sheldon:
Hazzard: None
Not that much improvements here, just had better movement in general.
Commander Yammark:
Hazzard: Nightmare Darkness
Zero now has Hyper Dash equipped. Improvements here are the better movement and picked a better route in the last part of the stage.
Rainy Turloid:
Hazzard: Nightmare Mirror
This is where the routes starts to change compared to Mothrayas TAS. After analyzing some stuff, i noticed that you can save a good ammount of time from Shark's stage if you have Rainy Turtloid power and Nightmare Ice Hazzard in Metal Shark Player stage (will detail later). Not that much frames saved.
Blizzard Wolfang:
Hazzard: Nightmare Mirror
Zero has Saber+ equipped now. Abused the ice glitch here, while jumping with dash speed, before you touch ground you release forward, and you will slide, that plus dashing allows zero to travel at great speeds, this can only be done in plain ice terrain. I also used the Invencibility Glitch wich is achieved by using Rainy Turtloid Power in a momment where you can't finish it because of an absent floor, in other words, i got a fast slide because of ice, used the technique, since i leave ground before it finishes, i end up being invincible. I also discover that you can avoid the first big pits with falling ice with Zero. Later i manipulated the final ice rows part while i was waiting for the ice to fall in the second big pit.
Metal Shark Player:
Hazzard: Nightmare Ice
I went here to make Nightmare Iron Hazzard effect on some stages, and it makes it benefitial. This is one of the main points where i save a lot of frames. Using the Invincibility Glitch im able to avoid getting trapped by the compressor once. In the second part of the stage, using Ice allows you to advance faster and avoid to be trapped by the compressor once aswell. I also manipulated the midboss to drop the bombs and his vulnerable area sooner.
Ground Scaravich:
Hazzard: Nightmare Iron
Here's where X is useful in this TAS. X with Blizzard Wolfang's Power to cause invincibility and pass through ghost totem poles. This alone saves more than 3000 frames since Zero will have to go to all 4 different areas, while X doesn't. This is one of the main improvements.
Blaze Heatnix:
Hazzard: Nightmare Iron
Most of the improvements came from getting more lucky at killing midbosses and also using Blizzard Wolfang power while climbing offscreen.
Gate 1:
Improvements here are better movement and better bossfight.
Gate 2:
Improvements here are better movement, and also managed to get to High Max faster by climbing above a totem pole (Mothrayas didn't get this totem loaded, so he had to wait for the platform to go down). I also manipulated Gate to always shoot the sphere right after his stun period finishes.
Final Stage:
Improvements are better movement like always :P and a better Sigma fight.
Tools
Other than the usual tools, I created 2 Lua Scripts that helped me a lot in the process of making this TAS. The First one is a script that just show you the values of the common adresses you would be using on RAM Watch, these includes: Player's HP and Inv values, Souls collected by X and Zero, the X and Y Speeds and Positions with SubPixel of the player, the dash meter and a charge meter that only shows when the charge of any of the 2 weapons is greater than 0, that prevents it for showing when using Zero. It also shows the Boss HP and Inv if there is one. Also shows the RNs that got burned in the previous frame.
The Second script makes Zero use his Giga Attack then restart and delay a frame and do it again until it has been done 15 times, then the script moves Zero 1 pixel to the right and do it 15 times again and again and again. This script is used for Nightmare Snakes (midboss in Blaze Heatnix stage). The user would have to determine the fastest/convenient set. Sadly enough, it can only be done in flat terrain.
Noxxa: Setting to delayed while the author works on an improvement.
Noxxa: Replaced submission file with a 3067-frames improvement by the author.
FractalFusion: Accepting for Moon+ publication to obsolete the current published run.
feos: Nice job, PCSX. Goodbye.
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