Submission #5666: Zurggriff's Genesis Target Earth in 23:04.60

Movie Features

• Emulator Used: BizHawk version 1.11.9.1
• Aims for fastest time
• Abuses programming errors
• Manipulates luck
• Plays on hardest difficulty

General Information

• Fast gameplay relies on fast movement and destroying enemies to increase score. Most stages require travelling to the far side of the stage and fighting a boss. A high score is important because it unlocks items that make level movement faster and boss fights quicker.
• The hardest difficulty is used for this run. The only change observed was an increase in health for enemies.
• Aiming Mode B is used rather than the default Mode A. Mode A uses the LEFT and RIGHT direction buttons along with UP and DOWN to adjust aim whereas Mode B only uses UP and DOWN. Mode A would make destroying enemies above or below 45 degrees from horizontal more difficult and this was thought to be a problem in achieving scores needed to unlock items in time. This may have been an unnecessary switch, losing 5 frames over using Mode A.
• Allies are generally brown or gray and fire blue shots. Enemies are generally green or blue and fire red shots.
• Most of the dialogue is sped up by depressing any button as the text is being displayed. The dialogue that scrolls slower does not have this feature available and in some instances this only applied to part of the text within the same dialogue box.

Movement

• Maximum horizontal speed is 288 sp/f on ground and 320 sp/f in air. In areas with no gravity, the limit is 368 sp/f. While moving up very steep slopes, maximum horizontal speed is reduced to 144 sp/f. Distances that take approximately one second to travel are done faster with jumps.
• Objects travelling down a slope do not stick to the ground. This causes objects to fall in air once they reach the edge of the terrain for the particular height they are on. Ideally, Rex hits close enough to the edge that only one frame of ground travel occurs.
• Pressing FORWARD on the controller while on ground will immediately drop Rex to the maximum speed for the terrain. This also applies when air speed is above the maximum but this only occurred in the beginning of Stage 3. When landing, no input allows Rex to coast down to the maximum ground speed.
• Jump height is determined by how long the jump button is held while on ground. Regardless of how long the button is held, Rex will remain on the ground for 7 frames in most cases. If Rex is travelling down a slope when a jump is initiated, the duration becomes 13 frames, allowing for jumps that achieve a lot more height.
• Landing with low vertical speed gives Rex a smooth transition from air travel to ground travel. When vertical speed is greater than 618 sp/f, Rex will coast to a stop. This is always 16 frames in duration, regardless of initial horizontal speed, and the player has no influence on horizontal speed during that time.
• B-PACK propels Rex upwards for several seconds. Landing resets the availability of B-PACK, however, short bursts may be used before landing. This is very useful in maintaining a higher horizontal speed throughout the game.

Combat

• Rex can equip various items to fight enemies or provide protection from damage. Items gradually become available throughout the game as the score reaches the threshold to unlock them. Up to 8 items can be unlocked at a time. There is a limit of 6 items that can be carried throughout a stage and these can only be swapped out at the beginning of a stage. Additionally, when items can be swapped around, only the latest item equipped can be unequipped so the order of selection is important if an item will be unequipped later.
• Weapons have limited ammo with the exception of LG-GUN and HG-GUN. LG-GUN and HG-GUN require a reload when the current ammo is expended and reloading only occurs while that weapon is selected. Changing weapons does not reset the time required to reload.
• For most weapons, Rex can aim the weapon in one of 17 directions facing forward. The rest of the weapons can only be fired directly horizontal.
• When a weapon is fired, there is a cooldown before another weapon can be fired. Switching weapons does not remove the cooldown.
• Rex starts the game with 16 units of health. ARMOR, which is not used, improves the health capacity by 4 units per ARMOR. SHIELD, which is not used, reduces damage taken by half. Health is displayed by the red bar in the lower left area of the screen.
• Objects are not considered destroyed until the value for health is below zero. An empty health bar indicates that Rex's health is at zero.
• Health regenerates one unit every 128 frames. This does not apply to enemies.
• There are no invincibility frames from taking damage, however, there are instances where a weapon will not deal damage. Weapons such as D-D, E-AS, and the enemy's equivalent weapons, will only deal damage on particular frames, typically either once every 4 frames or once every 16 frames.

Score

• Points are accumulated from destroying enemies and receiving bonus points. Bonus points take time to count through and are avoided when they are not awarded for finishing a stage faster.
• Enemies have varoius point values which depend on the enemy type. This is determined when they load based on the value of a RNG. This is manipulated in several ways:
  • Advancing the RNG by creating dust from landing, walking off an edge, or using B-PACK near ground.
  • Destroying enemies. This creates explosions which advances the RNG.
  • Hitting enemies with LG-GUN shots on particular frames. This causes the shots to ricochet off the enemy while still dealing damage and advancing the RNG.
• Many enemies change their object type when transitioning between being airborne and grounded. Destroying an enemy on the frame when this occurs results in doubling the points awarded. When an enemy is destroyed, there is a check to determine its health and when this is below zero, it awards points and clears the object type value. On frames where the object type also changes, the change occurs after points were awarded and assingns a non-zero value for the object type. This results in the game recognizing that the enemy exists on the next frame and awards points again. It is possible for one enemy to award points three times when an enemy lands and then goes airborne the next frame.

Stage By Stage Comments

Stage 1: Raid on Ganymede

Stage 2: Escape

Stage 3: Orbital Attack

Stage 4: Front Line Assault

Stage 5: Surprise Attack

Stage 6: Headquarters Blitz

Stage 7: Space Colony Smash

Stage 8: The Final Conflict

Additional Information On Items

Weapons

• 25-SC and 40-SC fire 3 shots at a time.
• D-D fires 4 clouds of explosive projectiles at a time.
• E-AS, E-CN, D-D, and BURST are not stopped by hitting enemies and continue to deal damage at the interval specified in the above table.
• The table below shows damage rates that can be achieved with multiple shots active at a time.

Item Availablility

Memory Addresses