Submission #6912: arukAdo's Saturn Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Pacifist - Alucard Scenario" in 28:58.04

Sega Saturn
(Submitted: Castlevania Symphony Of The Night)
Pacifist - Alucard Scenario
(Submitted: Pacifist - Alucard Scenario)
Bizhawk 2.5.2
104079
59.8830284837373
79563
Unknown
! BK2 begins from SRAM
Submitted by arukAdo on 10/18/2020 12:03 PM
Submission Comments

Summary

  • "Pacifist" Main Objective
  • Alucard Scenario Sub-Objective
  • Abuses Programming Errors
  • Uses Game Reset Sequence
  • Emulator used: BizHawk (2.5.2)
  • RealTime:28:54.650 GameTime:26:22(last input) Frames:104079 Re-records:79563


Introduction

This run feats finishing the game without killing any monsters, or trick the game into thinking that.
It use the save bug but pick alucard scenario base instead of maria, this mean you have to get the relics and make your way to dracula from a "blank" state (no relic).


Explanation

Character choice

On my previous sub, I was assuming that it was only possible to get the best pacifist by starting with maria, turns out its possible with alucard too.
But to make it work I had to figure a technique to glitch the library boss "gate" in order to get the soul of bat, prior to this discovery it was still impossible to get to the end without killing one boss (bat or medusa).
Richter is still unsuitable because of the 10 mana stat he gets.

SRAM Usage

It is necessary to use "replay" mode to get the duplicator, as its required to skip shaft at the end (with many heart refresh), you must use dirty sram.
The verif movie is placed inside the bk2 directly, its called CV-NitM-unlock-replay.bk2 (advance to frame 47407 to generate the sram)

Flaws, Glitches'n'Routes

  • The 4 "events" unlocked in this run are "prologue" "meet death" "meet maria" "meet librarian", I believe its not possible to skip any of those, note that if you start with maria/richter they get all the 5 "exclusive" events unlocked (includes meet maria).
  • Richter and maria are used to reach relics sooner and sequence break everything, despite theres no "stop screen" when you pick one, it function the same than in alucard game, because there is no "alucard game" anyway, everybody use the same everything.
  • It is necessary to "meet maria", because when richter get there, its the cutscene layout, that mean top access are blocked, the room doesnt even have a Y scrolling, you cannot access olrox quarters before you trigger that event basicly.
  • You could just "meet maria" after richter unlock the marble gallery/pick the cube of zoe, but then you will be blocked at outerwall with doppleganger.
  • It is possible to skip richter with a wingsmash, that will trigger the sequence "saved richter", Ive decided to use instead the glitched keep because this mean im not "saving" richter (time attack event).
  • It is possible to go by medusa instead of the bat boss, and it will most probably go faster, because any other sotn run use the medusa route, ive arbitrarly decided to go by clock tower (again).
  • The axe armor, as well as the diamond plate/baseball hat are not required, it was to maximize my DEF and have an alternative to skip the bat, turns out they was pointless as the duplicator offset is still too high and the bat did spin attack directly.
  • In the prologue im taking damage to make my HP as low as possible (75); theres no indication that its required, but for a while I wasnt sure about that, its something you would do by default so that you get lowest HP.
  • Most of the wolf action is done for entertainment and would be slightly slower in most situations.
  • You cannot see it but the damage (from one of the shuriken hits) on dracula is 9999 and its the maximum, to obtain this you need to have a negative luck value, in this run alucard got 11, equiping a duplicator means -10, so you need 2 duplicators to make this work, dracula got 10000hp so the second hit kills him regardless whats the dmg from it.
  • The bestiary showing dracula from prologue is something that unlock in any case scenario, even if you dont do the prologue, the mention on psx run that only dracula is unlocked in bestiary is wrong, anything you "touch" will unlock it, in this run theres 24 total unlock.
  • Compared to the other pacifist run, there is many "touch" and some "hits" on invulnerable monsters (dyplo, plant, golden skull), but no damage is deal to anybody aside dracula like on the other run.
  • Joseph cloak / pink color cape are another "artistic" choice of mine, they arent required.
  • The name input ARUKADO, PACIFIST, TASVIDEO, ZEROBEAT are not necessary of course.
  • The rerecord count is inacurate, im reusing the other pacifist to make the sram, it is actually ~ 30k.

PSX vs Saturn

The psx pacifist run does use "revenge" tech to trick the game into thinking you didnt defeat a monster, and of course cannot obtain all relics like in this run, and feature different routing.
I dont think cross obsoletion should happen, simply because the run paramaters are far too different, instead I think if a psx run can manage to lower the number of (revenge)kills then it should be obsolete with that.
I may attempt that later but no promise on wether its possible or not, I just dont know.

Alucard Scenario vs 1 Touch/2 Hits

Shimata ! I mean ive got near zero hopes that both movies would be accepted, I think it was worth making a new sub tho. So ill let this up to the judge/audiance.


Youtube


The lua script is included in the submision bk2, note you will need the icons subfolder to display them
The left bottom icons are the 4 "events" encountered, on the right the bosses that you skip.

Screenshoots


Time Attack
Status Screen

Un-cancelling due to rules changes over the years
feos: Judging...

DrD2k9: Claiming for judging.
Last Edited by DrD2k9 2 days ago
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