Submission #6700: warmCabin's NES Mega Man 2 "fastest energy waste" in 01:31.60

After being forced to play the stages without cramming his body into the ceiling for over a year, Mega Man has some pent-up frustration. To let it all out, he decides to waste 100% of his weapon energy as quickly as possible.

This is a run all about wasting weapon energy by mashing at 30 Hz, with exceptions noted below. But in order to drain all your weapons, you have to get all your weapons first! That's where a neat new piece of tech comes in concerning the infamous "PASS WORD" screen.

Previously, it was thought that the fastest way to get all the weapons was to play through every single stage and defeat all the bosses. The humble PASS WORD screen never crossed our minds as we toyed with zips, delay scrolls, framerules, lag reduction, Item 1 timers, quantum shots, double death, straggling throw animations, weapon hitbox persistence, flicker-elongated animation timers... But recently, a hacker (who preferred to remain anonymous) discovered that this screen was actually intended as a means of entering stored save data into the game and continuing from where you left off. With a bit of assembly knowledge and much trial and error, we were able to isolate a specific pattern you can punch in that immediately gives you all 11 weapons and takes you straight to Wily 1. You can think of this movie as a bit of a tech demo to show off this new trick, which has major implications in any%, zipless, and even the B-button challenge. Look forward to improvements in those categories soon!

Now, on to the actual run. When it comes to wasting weapon energy, you pretty much mash them at 30 Hz or run the timers down. In order to get a perfect rate of fire, you must be at the edge of the screen so the projectiles will despawn immediately. Leaf Shield, Crash Bomb, and Item 2 have interesting caveats, which are detailed below, in addition to some other things.

The overall menuing route is actually quite interesting, as I had to start at Wood and optimize it to avoid unnecessary wraparounds. The route looked like this: W -up-> A -up-> H -down-> B -down-> Q -down-> F -down-> M -down-> C -down-> 1 -down-> 3 -up-> 2.

This somewhat counterintuitive movement contains the least backtracking.

Straight away, I equip Leaf Shield and manipulate a small energy drop. Why on Earth would I do that?

Well, most weapons in the game use an amount of energy that evenly divides 28: 4, 2, 1, 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8. The one exception is Leaf Shield, which uses 3. When you have less than 3 energy, you can't use Leaf Shield, and you're stuck with that sliver of shame. To rectify this, I collected a small refill, which gives me 2 bars of energy and effectively allows me to waste 30 energy with 10 shields.

Leaf shield can be wasted quickly by shooting downwards on the way to the edge of the screen, which makes it a good first choice even without this 3-energy quirk.

Mashing 28 shots was the fastest solution by far. I couldn't even have charged a medium fireball in that amount of time.

Because the fireballs spawn from Mega Man's chest instead of his arm, I had to delay 4 extra frames before the next pause.

For similar reasons to Atomic Fire, I had to wait an extra 2 frames before switching after depleting my blades.

Interestingly, Crash Bombs treat the edge of the screen as a proper wall. If you were to fire one while running up against it, it would actually latch onto the wall and go through its prolonged fuse and explosion. Even interestinglier, if you move a bit to the right, the bombs will spawn off screen and allow you to mash them at 30 Hz.

Finishing with Item 2 allows me to end the input 584 frames before the actual goal is achieved. I have to face left before getting on, otherwise the bird will spawn in front of me and knock me off before the energy is used up.

Thank you so much for watching! I put a lot of hard work into this run over the past year and I hope it shows. I'll see you all in the comments on TASVideosChannel.

Maru: That was fast, but so is this rejection!