Submission #4699: FatRatKnight's NES Gauntlet in 11:38.92

One character versus countless monsters. We all know the result. Though, usually, for relatively new players, it doesn't end well for the one character.

Just a note: This submission is slightly different from my last WIP upload, as I make the ending ever-so-slightly more exciting, though with an identical frame count. Anyone who likes seeing numbers go down to 1 without actually reaching 0 may want to rewatch the ending of this submission. (Oh, and sorry about that, solarplex. Love your temporary encodes!)

You must run through a maze of rooms, filled with treasure, monsters, secrets, and monster generators, in order to finally reach the last room and retrieve the orb, all while your health is slowly draining. Along the way, there are eight clue rooms that tell you a piece of the vault combination, which is slightly randomized when you start your game, and is preserved in the password the game gives you at each treasure room, saving your progress and all those nifty power-ups you got.

You can select from four different characters, each of whom have their advantages and disadvantages. If it's too hard to go alone, the game even lets you play with a second player to help out. The pacing is rather fast, especially in the endgame areas, and there are some rather devious traps, including an exit that takes you directly to the title screen (effectively a game over), and one room which has no exit. All that stuff does get rather insane, so if you can manage to win it, you've done very well.

Since I was thinking pretty heavily about Gauntlet at the time, I thought I would go about fooling around in it for a bit. Initially, I was playing around with the idea of a two player "100%-like" run, of which I never even reached the first door, let alone finish the room, but then decided upon improving FODA's run when I figured out a faster way to fight the dragon. But just in case, I would go through every level in hopes that there might be other sorts of improvements to make, not just the very end. Turns out there are plenty of other improvements to make. One more old TAS obsoleted.

I pick Elf because a lot of moving needs to be done. Speed is usually a priority stat in speedruns. Elf also has pathetic damage for shots, with the one point boost from Extra Shot effectively doubling his shot power. I pick the same password that FODA did, so the only thing different I did was try to fake you out with Warrior showing up momentarily.

On a side note, the invincibility I pick up in room 87 so "conveniently" runs out just as I start attacking the dragon. Leading me into doing things such as getting the dragon to breathe fire onto one of its other heads, which sadly doesn't provide extra damage, but does get rid of the flame quickly for lag purposes and also saves what little HP I have.

Finally, a quick thanks to a number of people in the IRC channel for being supportive of my subtitles when I felt some doubt. All I wanted was a few quick words, and it seemed ais523, RGamma, and atma were there on IRC, as well as Derakon on the forums. So, subtitles are done a bit faster with added motivation behind them. And I shouldn't skip thanking FODA's TAS, the run this one aims to obsolete, as it gave a nice comparison point and some kind of route already worked out before.

Just a few sorts of things that come to mind. Nothing elaborate I can really think of to say, though.

FODA already did plenty of work here, and I'm merely following that work at face value. The vault combination is determined by the first character of your password, and that is affected by when you confirm your character.

If trying to "push" a wall, either straight on or diagonally, this is likely to add lag frames. FODA frequently did this; Most sorts of lag I removed was due to simply avoiding walking into walls.

An enemy can move onto a square that you're just barely on; Since you're technically in this square as well, you can freely move through it. FODA seemed to know of this just fine.

The end boss has 100 HP for each head. While a head is breathing fire, it can't take damage. Therefore, it is best to activate each head at different times so that you can attack one while another is breathing fire.

Even better lag management, mostly. Especially room 09. Trying to figure out when a good time to spend a frame or two attacking/shooting something to reduce future lag leaves a lot of uncertainty whether you really did get the best path. I suspect even the random music might be useful to manipulate for lag purposes.

Even so, the RNG runs every frame, and one rather pronounced source of randomness is that treasure rooms select an exit at random. If a room uses the RNG to locate an exit, it is possible that your eight frames of savings are all lost by that RNG getting the right exit. I'd like to call it a "frame rule" based on RNG.

Then again, I hate every bubble I've come across. Not one of them made me feel good about passing them. Their random movements make me feel I could get past them more quickly. I just took anything that looked reasonably fast and called it a good day.

I haven't considered too deeply the consequences of the route done in a speedrun by Jeff Feasel at SpeedDemosArchive. The 10 potions in the world 2 clue room look real interesting, as lag is immense wherever you go. Still, something to think about in case someone wants to improve on this run.

Nach: Nice run, good audience response, accepting as improvement to existing run.

Spikestuff: Things to cry about and do, Publishing.