Submission #4951: Neofix, Alyosha's Genesis Strider in 07:22.39

Strider for the Sega Genesis is a pretty faithful port of the arcade original. The game is unique for it's movement mechanics which allow you to slide, climb, and cartwheel through the air. This run is ~2.5 second improvement to Neofix's run with better platforming and boss fights. It also loses about ~ 2 seconds to due added lag in Bizhawk.

This run is a modification of Neofix's original run and thus uses most of his inputs. I was pretty impressed by how optimal this run was considering how old it is. My improvements are scattered throughout the movie and would be easy miss unless you watched both runs side by side. Unfortunately, while I saved lag in some places I lost far more due to emulation differences. I also chose to leave the difficulty set to hard, as the optimized boss fights Neofix came up with were pretty impressive.

I saved ~45 frames here due to jumping up a pipe that Neofix climbed up. I'm not sure why he missed this trick as he used the same thing later in level 2. I also saved some scattered lag frames around the level. One note here is that in Neofix's submission thread a poster mentioned being able to completely bypass the first mini boss with a jump over his pit. There seems to be an invisible wall here though so I don't think it is possible (I couldn't do it.) so this trick might be arcade only (video I watched didn't have the same invisible wall.)

I saved ~55 frames here. The savings come from a slightly better manipulated mini-boss and a better route to the stage boss.

I didn't save any frames here, Neofix did impressive work on the level and the boss as well.

I saved the most in this level at about 100 frames with a better route that also reduced a lot of lag.

This level was frustrating as Neofix got significantly different spawns then I did which messed up the route in the reverse gravity section. I was able to come up with a work around but what should have been a 30 frame savings evaporated. Also, the dragon re-fight takes over 1 second longer due to a lot of extra lag once the 3 fire dragons spawn. They seem to have a fixed pattern so I see no way in which to reduce this. I did improve the last boss fight a bit though.

I thought I was doing quite well on this run until I got to the last level. The de-sync in the gravity area and the large amount of extra lagged sapped a lot of my savings, but can't win them all I suppose. I was impressed by how optimal the original was considering how complicated the mechanics are and the minute adjustments that are needed to get things to work out just right. Ultimately I'm just glad its done, and am glad this run is now on a more current emulator.

Tompa: Judging!
Tompa: A short game made shorter, always a good thing! Accepting the improvement.

Spikestuff: I'll just quote something from IRC. <Tompa> Cancelled?!