Alright, this is my second attempt at a Clash at Demonhead run, at 22:17, 1:26 faster than my first attempt.
- Takes damage to save time
- Aims for fastest time
First the specs, I used FCEU since Famtasia messes the game up pretty bad.
Clash at Demonhead is a fun game that is sadly not as well known as it should be. You play as Bang, a special ops agent sent to Mt. Demonhead to rescue Professor Plum and retrieve his Doomsday Bomb. The came is comprised over various 'Routes' which are connected at certain nodes. Each Route is a side-scrolling stage with two exits, which will take you to two other nodes. You progress along the map like that, ando nce you get the Hermit's teleportation ability moving around becomes much faster. Your main goal is to collect the 6 Medallions, four of which are gotten from beating four standard bosses, the other two require a bit of runaround to get. There are a couple of other goals that need to be reached, and there's even one or two that are not required to finish the game (beating Pandar, meeting Joe) which I have opted not to do for the sake of speed.
I won't get into the huge description of the run like I did last time, I'll just document them major changes over the first unpublished version:
Early on I made a minor route change, instead of backtracking out of Route 3 I continue on and enter Route 11 from the other end, this shaved off probably the single greatest amount of time.
Just about every boss battle is improved a bit, especially Max.
I summon the shop much earlier, as soon as I beat Gahz, actually. As a result money was a tad tighter but it still made the run much more fast paced, overall.
As a result of being short on cash, I make a brief detour after beating Shark, and go to Route 22 in order to exchange my gold bars for cash. I spend about a half a minute or so getting there, but I get $12000. In the end of the run I have spent virtually all of my cash, so I beleive this side trip was worth it.
I buy one Scuba Suit, compared to using none in the first version. Swimming is much faster in the Scuba suit, and the battle with Shark is made faster with it as well.
Another time saver I discovered is the fact I managed to skip one brief dialogue scene. On Route 39 as I approach the top of the Demon's Tower I manage to enter it before Bang starts speaking about where the entrance is, shaving off a few seconds.
As a result of having more items than I did the first time around, climbing up Mt. Demonhead on Route 42 is much faster.
On that same Route you'll notice I summon the Shop twice. This is because the first trip Jetpacks were not available, but they were on the second. This is something that cannot be manipulated by luck, the stock in the Shop is set by a pattern. Either I summoned the Shop twice there, or I summoned it for no reason early on. Either way I needed that other Jetpack. I couldn't buy an extra one in the previous Shop call since you can only carry a max of 3. Planning out the item use and shop calling was probably the trickiest part of this run. There may still be some improvement in that area, though I haven't seen it yet.
Not much is different in the final battles, That Samurai Guy is beaten just a bit faster.
The few times I remove items throughout the game, even though it looks like I didn't have to, I did. In those cases I had to keep myself from losing the item sooner than I needed it.
Again, I'll state that the life I 'lost' during the first battle with the Demon was mandatory, and there was no way around it.
I believe I have 100% accuracy this time. I take less damage as well, so all n' all this run is much much smoother compared to the last one.
The planning of this run had a few stages, first there was deciding on the optimal Route to take, and even that was revised a few times in the process of making it. Secondly was the planning of item usage, which was no easy feat. Taking into account that Bang moves much faster with the Boots, faster still with the Jetpack, they cost $5000 and $8000 respectively, you can only carry 3 of any item at one time, the few other items I HAD to buy, and the fact that the stock in the shop wasn't always available each time, plotting item usage was a real pain. Though it has improved greatly in this run over the last one.
So that's about it. I'd like to thank everyone who has given comments and criticism on the first version, and hopefully this second version is up to everyone's standards of a good time attack.
DeHackEd: By popular request (and a good-looking run) I'll encode it.