Submission #6901: arukAdo & EZGames69's Saturn Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 10:11.80

Summary

• Fastest Completion
• Abuses Programming Errors
• Uses Game Reset Sequence
• Takes No Damage
• Manipulates Luck
• Emulator used: BizHawk (2.5.1)
• RealTime:10:11.8 GameTime:09:03(last input) Frames:36708 Re-records:37520

Introduction

Explanation

• The save bug is very easy to perform, you only have to soft reset a few frames after you select your file to load, at this point, you can create a new file and you will be "warped" in the glitched room in entrance, with all equipment/stats (and map!) you had in the file you loaded. Its important to mention that there is zero memory corruption involved, what happen is that those values arent cleared in the ram when you start a new game.
• In this run, we start by making a file with maria, we then get her to the save point at the end of entrance, soft reset, select the file and soft reset right when it start loading, then start a new alucard file > he get 200mp and we activate all the relics in the menu
• The bug only works in the entrance, in any other place in the castle, you will be locked in the glitch room, with the library card been the only possible exit.
• It is possible to soft reset in a different place inside the entrance; for exemple, after saving we could go inside the cdroom with maria and soft reset; when you start a new game with alucard you will be effectivly in the cdroom and the edge will load the labs; this is slower than just saving with maria and directly soft reset. The conclusion is we are using already the most optimized spot possible.
• Maria and Richter both have all relics unlocked by default, for most they are turned off, only alucard has the flag that lock all relics when starting a clean new game from power on, this is where reside the major error in the code, it doesnt reset properly the ram on soft reset and this lead to your ability to "unlock" everything, in reality you arent unlocking anything but simply reusing maria/richter ones (unlocked by default).
• The Time Attack screen when you glitch alucard into a richter/maria game
  • 1. defeat minotaur and werewolf 0:00:01
  • 2. defeat sucubus 0:00:01
  • 3. defeat death 0:00:01
  • 4. save richter 0:00:01
  • 5. meet maria for the first time 0:00:01
• This is why maria/richter dont get to fight those boss; if you load maria or richter into alucard scenario they will be able to fight death/minotaur and hang on subucus, maria and richter dialogue wont process but the rooms are active, and unfortunatly the game checks who you really are when you use the elevator to shaft, of course, this is also why in this run you never get to meet maria or save richter (despite we skip those steps, they still arent present anyway due to be unlocked already)
• Richter stats are unsuitable for this tas, he start with 32HP and 10MP, note that maria start with the dragon helm (it reduce monsters DEF stat by half;wich increase your dmg)
• Unlike on psx, we have much less capabilities to alterate the rng, in this run we are using the bat sonar to increase the rng by 1-3 frames per use, this reduce the wait for the sword drop by some 15 frames'ish.
• The run is highly sync'able, the clean sram movie was made by copying all the input and simply redoing shaft/dracula, the whole run input is identical and nothing interfer with the rng or lag (except on colosseum with the minotaur).
• This updated run use a one stop screen ET with a slide... this is something thats suppose to be impossible (yet already recorded, just never understood how). I dont have all the tech details surrounding this finding but essentially, you can only squeeze alucard in the shiftline with a specific subpixel/pixel or it will just "bump" you into the next room, we probly should call that "tiny shift", or something like that. Note that since this, ive managed to get it working with a backdash, 1HR and in others places.
• Note that the bigtoss+lvlup is not possible in this run, because alucard has 200HP and no poison source, Ive been told on saturn its possible to do it with a smaller toss... I think the slide with subweapon is really good and a toss would just be slower.
• The trick to squeeze the bat in olrox quarter... and previously in marble gallery as well... is very simple on the paper too, you simply have to get the bat to be on Y=8, the 8th horizontal row is unsolid (missing "glue"), it is not limited to this 2 places, any room connection is also affected, basicly in places cut in half between 2 rooms, its interresting to note this vulnerability is also present on psx, but on psx you cannot squeeze the bat like this, only richter can exploit this with the "special mode" (richter using bat hitbox)

Further Improvements

• If you can manage somehow to get the previous drop of the sword in the rng pattern (and get there faster...), you will save time.
• In the maria part, there is too much monster killing, as a result when we start the new game with alucard we get the level up stop screen, avoiding this would save a hundred'ish frame, it will introduce new challenge(s) in the chapel if one of the bat gives you a level up tho, and will cost you frames with maria to remove the killing.
• The hippogryf fight was improved, but most of the improvement is denied by refilling mana with the lvlup, this doesnt alterate the waiting on the sword drop by much, and allow to skip the lvlup on medusa (otherwise you would be left empty mana after medusa if no prior refill).
• The part after medusa outside chapel still look bad overall, it just happen to be the fastest method (bat/mist/grav) and ive tryed many things to improve it but without any faster result, if you can manage somehow to load directly the colosseum from outside chapel without going into the cdroom, it would save frames.

Youtube

• Clean SRAM

• Replay Mode

• New Game+ ?!?