The snes port Prince of Persia 2 is generally regarded as a bad port of a very hard platforming puzzle game. The controls are clumsy, the puzzles are seemingly random, and the player dies very easily. The snes port also leaves out the last level. Fortunately there is a major bug in the game that allows large parts of it to be skipped. This run follows the same general path as Nitsuja, but saves time by fixing some mistakes and better enemy manipulation. Overall about 4 seconds are saved in gameplay, but the movie is still 12 seconds longer due to more accurate emulation.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.1
- Beats the game as fast as possible
- Major Glitch Abuse
Comments
The main glitch in this run is getting hit by a ghost while lying down in a tunnel. This makes you stand up and draw your sword, even though you aren't supposed to be able to any of those things in a tunnel. This causes a persistent bug that, among other things, let's you fly and walk through walls while at the same time not preventing you from interacting with objects. Thus you can beat the game rather quickly.
Nitsuja's run is quite old, and uses an emulator that itself had some bugs (apparently even messing up the level 1 music.) This seems to not play a role in any of the tricks used however, as I was able to recreate pretty much the entire run. It did however leave out a lot of lag. About 16 seconds of lag and loading time changes were added as a consequence.
Stage by stage comments
Level 1
Here I save ~0.5 seconds over Nitsuja by avoiding a ledge grab on the third screen.
Level 2
At about frame 13000 in 2-4, I climb the platforms a bit differently, saving ~1 second. I can't tell why Nitsuja climbed them the other way, maybe he just missed it.
Level 3
I save ~0.5 seconds manipulating the skull enemies in 3-2 slightly better, so I don't have to wait to jump up the platforms.
Level 4
I save ~2 seconds with much better manipulation of a sword enemy in 4-2.
Other comments
There are a few other places where I'm pretty sure I saved some frames compared to Nitsuja (like dying right before getting the flame, I am facing the right direction so don't need to turn around.) But since I can't compare the frames I'll just leave those out. The only spot I lost frames is in level 4 at one door where the collapsing platform that triggers it falls slower in my run then in Nitsuja's, costing me a few frames since the door opens slightly slower.
This run was pretty easy to do, but not very interesting so I'm glad its done, and I do like updating runs that are made on such out of date emulators.
ars4326: Judging!
ars4326: Hi again, Alyosha. Overall, notable improvements made to another older run on the site. The ghost glitch over halfway through indeed made it more of an interesting watch. With that said, it looks like community tastes have changed over the years in terms of voter feedback. Nonetheless, another job well done!
Accepting to the Vault as an improvement (better emulation and optimization) to the published run!
feos: Let's pub.