Submission #4645: The_Brookman's SNES Demon's Crest "100%" in 35:19.16

SNES Demon's Crest

Prologue

About This Run

Movie Info

• Movie Version: BizHawk v2.0.0
• Rerecord Count: 36297
• Emulator Version: 1.9.1
• GameName: Demon's Crest(USA).sfc
• Frame count: 127359
• Up/Down + Left/Right Enabled

Goals:

• 100% completion (All bosses, all items)
• Aims for fastest time
• Manipulates luck
• Abuses programming errors
• Takes Damage to save time
• Uses death as a shortcut
• Uses speed/entertainment tradeoffs

About the Gameplay

Stage I:

• Zombie Dragon: The Dragon is set on a timer so I tried to narrate the fight as a sort of struggle for the recently wounded Firebrand.
• Graveyard: Pretty straight forward. I have to waste a few frames to manipulate the boss. Grab Useless Paper #1 and head to mini-boss.
• Hippogriff 1: Courtesy of ES.
• Mountain area: Every time you start or stop flying your character is frozen for 1 frame, so I try to minimize the amount of times I do either. I get Urn #1 because I'll need it for the return trip for the life vessel in the next segment
• vertical Platforms + Arma 1: Courtesy of ES

Stage II:

• Town: pretty straight forward. Just cutting through to get to the next section.
• drowned abbey: The first of my optimizations is noticeable here. back in ~2010 while playing on console I casually attempted to cancel the recoil of hitting statues and I succeeded (1 frame margin). It was at this time that I decided I would attempt to break the TAS Record. I go for a swim to grab the hand talisman which allows you to shoot extra spells. I manipulated a health and 20 GP. Bumping the statues saves 40 frames going into the cave.
• Cavern 1: Pretty straight forward. The fire monsters cause a lot of lag dead or alive. I kill 1 to get through, then I take out the owls in my way.
• Cavern 2: You can disable BG layers to see in the dark. Making sure ememies I kill and statues I break don't drop items because that causes a lot of extra lag.
• EyeBallSoup: Waking the eye ball up later to manipulate the fight. The trip up the tunnel is very laggy. I spent a lot of time trying to improve this fight just as ES had in his run. The eyeball pulses up and down and checks how many eyeballs are left. Both ES run and mine complete the first phase in 4 pulses. Although we hypothesize that it can be completed in 3. Unfortunately, I could not crack the code and decided to move forward like this. However, I am able to take down The big eye himself in 6 hits vs. the currently published 7 so not all was lost.

Stage III:

• Forest: Laggy enemies abound, a few movement optimizations here let me Grab Urn #2 and get out just a little faster.
• River: More Laggy enemies. I take damage at the end because it is less laggy than taking extra damage in the next screen
• Forest Fire: Flame Lord pops in to set the forest on fire. I get through while minimizing lag from giant fireballs and tentacle monsters. Pick up useless Relic #1. Then Die to flame lord to pick up a health vessel that was hidden under the forest fire.
• Flame Lord: I took a new tact to try and Kill Flame Lord Low to the ground. I don't hit flamelord in the air because he only has 2 HP left and the ground shot will OHKO. I get the Platform Maker (key to my ~1,500 frame improvement) and head to Stage IV.

Stage IV:

• Pillars and Snakes: Cut down a lot of waiting and unoptimized movement by making my own platforms. Pick up a Urn #3 and head onward.
• Floating zombie knights: Increased horizontal movement is blessing and a curse. I try to minimize the number of times I start/stop flying and utilize increased movement speed by staying airborn.
• Hippogriff 2: Courtesy of ES
• Jungle Tower: The platform allows me to make another huge improvement. Optimizing the tornado jumps is pretty awkward but this segment is not as laggy as the next.
• outer wall: I have to drop to get useless relic #2 and Tornado Jump to the top right to grab Useless Paper #2. This segment is a little more laggy and also vertical movement is altered in this room making falling speed lower and icreasing my jump height significantly.
• Jungle Tower 2: Platform maker again saves a lot of time here.
• Arma 2: Courtesy of ES

Stage IVb:

• Pillars and Snakes: Same as the first visit, but I don't need to switch off the tornado so that makes the next section interesting.
• Zombie Knights: Again, just stay air born and reduce the amount of flying.
• Flyer 1: I hit flyer before the fight starts.

Skull Bash Game:

• Courtesy of ES.

Stage V:

• Ice Hell 1: Tornado Jump to Urn #4 then Tornado my way through.
• Ice Hell 2: Tornado to the top of the mountain and Dash my way down. Grab Useless Paper #3.
• Animal Abuse: This boss is pretty easy. Not much to say. He gives me a powerful weapon.

Stage Vb:

• Ice Hell 1: Again, Just tornado through the mountain up to the castle.
• Ice Castle: Tornado jump up the surprisingly lag free passage. Headbutt the Ice block to reveal a door which leads to a life vessel.
• Owls and Axe Men: I take this time to use Useless Relic #2 which increases the drop rate of coins. I collect ~100+ GP here for virtually no reason. No time is lost so...
• Flier 2: Hit before the fight starts.
• Bats in the Dark: Kinda laggy, after I splicedin the skull bash game this segment became a little more laggy. I switch to ground gargoyle to bash the statue revealing Useless Relic #3. Then Just navigate out while trying to reduce lag from bats.
• Arma 3: Very Happy with this fight. Using the new weapon I'm able to reduce the number of hits needed to kill from 36 hits to 12 from the ES fight. Although I love his Arma 3 for entertainment value.

Stage IIb:

• Town: I stop into the potion shop to fill my 4 Urns with 2 mercury and 2 sulfur (32 GP total). These allow me to save boat load of time and are worth the minor side track and then some.
• Drowned Abby: Grab Urn #5 and head to the boneyard.
• Boneyard: Dash and Jump through, grab the Life vessel from bone Pile and head to the boss, pretty straight forward.
• Skeletor: Skeletor pops of of the ground and seems to beckon you to finish him off?? Crest of Time Wipes him out in record time and Mercury #1 saves me a trip to the world map.
• Drowned Abby: Just a straight shot to the caverns.
• Cavern 1: Grab Useless paper #4. Having more health lets me get through with a little less lag.
• Caver 2: a quick trip to the bottom to grab a health vessel and Sulfur #1 saves me the treck through the rest of the stage and teleports me to world map.

Stage Ib:

• Graveyard: Hop, Skip, Dash, Jump Straight through.
• Mountain Area: Same deal. mitigate lag between dashing and pillars collapsing.
• Platform Area: Tornado Jump again saves a lot of time and Sulfur #2 saves me another hike to the end of the stage.

Stage IIIb:

• Forest: Dash through. I opt to cut the vine for appearances, although with all the pause menu it is not as fast as it appears.
• water cave 1: pretty straight forward. Useless paper #5
• Water cave 2: Water floods pretty quick and owls at the top of the cave cause some lag. I have to break into the cave to grab another Life vessel then I head to the easiest boss in the game.
• Scula: Scula is a 2 piece boss. The roly poly part requires 2 hits from the Crest of Time while the main body requires (IIRC) 4. In ES run he kills the head first, which freezes the game till it dies. I took a que from SOTN and killed the bosses simultaneously. They drop 1 health vessel.

Stage VI:

• Moat: Skeleton Birds and fishmen make this segment a little hard to navigate while the pots dropping coins can cause lag.
• Castle: Dash up to the hidden section, fly up the hole, break the statue for a life vessel and head up to the boss. Crawler Drops down behind you and tries to scare you into moving forward but I take damage and walk through him and head up from where he came to grab a life vessel. I noticed that when I drop down from this room, my character is in standing animation so I am able to ground dash in mid-air.
• Crawler: manipulate crawler to throw babies at you so you can hit him three times a cycle. Mercury teleports me back to where crawler came from. Drop down, Dash down back to the bottom floor of the cavern and take a swim.

Stage VIb:

• Under the sea 1: Use the standing animation trick to dash and switch to tidal gargoyle before I take damage. Moving around in this section is awkward so I use the spikes/enemies to propel my character in the right direction. The latter half of this section and the next section were definitely the laggiest/most awkward section to TAS.
• Under the Sea 2: Lots of lag from breaking blocks and dealing with awkwardly placed enemies/hazards (come on Capcom. . .)
• Holothorion: I kept wondering why I wasn't able to hit him till I removed BG layer 1 and revealed Holuthorion is two separate hit boxes that aren't attached. After I did this the fight became much easier.

Final Stage:

• Cathedral: Pretty straightforward walk to the end. Dashing is laggy here due to enemies breaking windows/shooting arrows so like ES I opt just to use Crest of Time.
• Hippogriff 3: I kinda style on this boss. I know in the guidelines it says . .. not to spam excessively but as a stylistic approach I think I did a good job so I hope this will be accepted.
• Bell tower 1: Tornado to the top, knock the bell for the last life vessel. Long wait time allows me to create some shenanigans.
• Cross the gap: Another section with improved horizontal speed. Using the Claw spell allows me to stick to the spikey stage hazards. Grab Useful Relic #2 which increases the damage of my spell attack.
• Bell tower 2: Getting the floating bull heads to behave was kinda funny. Otherwise, thanks ES.
• Mummy Hall: Straightforward, no lag or anything. Just a walk to the next boss.
• animal abuse 2: with Crest of Time and Fang Relic, This boss goes down in 4 hits.

• Phalanx 1: Tornado platform allows me to jump higher and thus optimize the hits a little better.
• Phalanx 2: Not much to say about this 1.
• Phalanx 3: Very Laggy. I used excessive shots on this boss again because I liked the effect it had making him flinch over and over and I like to think it reflects Firebrands wrath.