Submission #7178: Technickle's SNES Stone Protectors in 18:28.54

Perfect Credits Loop

• 1 Loop: Frame #: 82,417

Project Duration

• 708 Hours | 29 1/2 days

Stone Protectors "Any%"/All Levels In 18:28.54

Game Logo -

Yo, DUDES! ROCK'N SCROLLLLLLLLL!

• SLAM INTO THE STONE ZONE FOR A WILD BATTLE OF THE BANDS. IT'S YOU AND THE REST OF THE STONE PROTECTORS AGAINST THE EVIL ZOK AND HIS WHOLE SUCKY GROUP. YOU GET TO PLAY CLIFFORD. CORNELIUS. CHESTER MAXWELL. OR ANGUS. MAKE SPECIAL MOVES AND ATTACKS IN SCROLLING 16-MEG. SOLO OR TWO AT A TIME. AND GO FOR A MONSTER HIT BEFORE THEY BLOW YOU OFF THE STAGE. YOU'VE GOT COOL WEAPONS TO FIGHT WITH, 10 LEVELS TO EXPLORE, AND A WHOLE GARAGE FULL OF POWERUPS. SO GRAB YOUR AXE AND LET'S JAM!

What are Stone Protectors?

• Stone Protectors is a 1993 British/American/French multi-media entertainment property consisting primarily of an action figure line and animated series. The series also had a tie-in video game released for the Super NES. It served as a late attempt to market the troll doll craze of the early 1990s to young boys. While not particularly successful, nor inspired by a prior medium, Stone Protectors generally followed in the same vein as contemporaries including Toxic Crusaders, Swamp Thing, and the highly popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Who Are the Stone Protectors?

• A kingdom built of crystals came under attack by the reptilian troll-like Saurians whose leader, Zok, desired the powerful crystals protected by the Empress. Zok broke into the castle and reached for the crystals only to see them explode into pieces and fly to Earth. After being thrown out the back door of a New York City club, an awful rock band known as the Rock Detectors found the five magical stones which gave them troll-like appearances and special skills (not the least of which is playing good music). This put them at odds with the music-hating Zok and his henchman Zink, collectively known as The Protectors.

Which Character Will You Be Playing As?

• Cornelius.

Why Play As Cornelius and not any other character?

• In short, he has the fastest moveset, both with a 5 frame window. Both of his moves have really good range and do a lot of damage fast.

Special Musical Move Names

• Twist Me Scream

• Mic Toss

How Special Moves are Used

• Corneilus can input the Twist Me Scream at 5 frames: UUR^L, l/UUL^R, l

• Cornelius can input the Mic Toss at 5 frames: DR^DDL, r/DL^DDR, r

Cornelius's Movement

• Cornelius moves kind of jerkily, but, makes up for it in the swagger walk

Glitch - Phantom Hits

• I can use the mic toss to hit bosses without actually hitting them physically. I refer to this as a "phantom hit". This 'Glitch' can be seen in fights such as Tackle Jackal, Predatron & Zok. This allows me to get extra hits in quicker than if I used the "Twist Me Scream" or the combo hits. Although not always as effective as the combo hits, which can be seen in such fights as Lava Boss.

Glider Skip

• Glider Skip refers to the hang glider enemies. Typically these enemies will glide into the screen and be that entire screen in some instances. Using the Glider Skip, the glider will act as if no enemy is on the glider flying into the screen, and if there is no enemy on that glider while on that screen, the game will skip it entirely. The reason the game will skip it is that the glider is meant to fly off of the screen anyway, so in the instance that the enemy isn't there the glider will fly off the screen. The best-known examples shown of this skip can be seen in levels such as Snowy Village & Forest of Mythrandir

Why Single Player Vs. Two-Player?

• Having 1 player is faster in this case and pretty much all cases if the goal is to use a special move. If using two players, the game will increase the boss's health, even if I purposefully have it on the easiest difficulty.

Why Easiest Difficulty Vs. Hardest Difficulty?

• Playing on the easiest difficulty allows me to kill most enemies in my way in one hit, which doesn't include Masked Guards or Bosses. If played on Hard difficulty the enemies would have more health and take longer to kill as a result.

What does the Hardest Difficulty Result If Played?

• Nothing much really, the essence of the game is to recover all the gems to save Mythrandir. The Hardest Difficulty is for changing the ending band music, that's about it. Seriously, that's the essence of it.

Genere

• Side-Scrolling Beat ‘em up

Movie Goals

• Uses Bizhawk 2.6.2
• Plays Easiest Difficulty
• Uses 1 Character in a 2 player game
• Goes for Any% completion
• Goes for Fastest Completion
• Final Input is on Final button press for the Final Boss
• Manipulates RNG

All 10 Levels

• Snowy Village - Zink
• Crystal Mine - Zink's Gem Extractor
• Volcano/Downward - Lava Boss
• Beach Party - Tackle Jackal
• Forest of Mythrandir - Wraith
• Bizarre Bazaar - Frank
• Approaching the Castle - Zink With More Health
• In the Castle - Sucker Puncher
• The Laboratory - Predatron
• Throne Hall - Zok

All Bosses & Picture References

• Zink -

• Zink's Gem Extractor -

• Lava Boss -

• Tackle Jackal -

• Wraith -

• Frank -

• Zink Again -

• Sucker Puncher -

• Predatron -

• Zok -

Per Level Frames

• Level 1: 4583 Vs. 4563 | Saved: 0
• Level 2: 4060 Vs. 4060 | Saved: 0
• Level 3: 4813 Vs. 4813 | Saved 0
• Level 4: 3806 Vs. 3806 | Saved: 0
• Level 5: 4730 Vs. 4730 | Saved: 0
• Level 6: 5867 Vs. 5867 | Saved: 0
• Level 7: 6918 Vs. 6918 | Saved: 0
• Level 8: 10038 Vs. 9942 | Saved: 96
• Level 9: 6703 Vs. 6703 | Saved: 0
• Level 10: 7126 Vs. 6951 | Saved: 175

Per Level Notes

• Level 1: Still amazed I was able to even save time here, albeit 5 frames, but, still faster.

• Level 2: Found out that stalling for a little bit saves time, which doesn't really make any sense. Had a better boss fight, which was optimized just right.

• Level 3: 20 frames saved game time, 0 frames saved TAS time.

• Level 4: Managed to get the Phantom Hits in on Tackle Jackal, which gives me the quickest kill

• Level 5: Killed Wraith quicker and when Wraith was 98% invisible.

• Level 6: Played this little back and forth game with Frank called: Miss Me With that Stab

• Level 7: Changed up the Zink fight, got in some phantom hits which saved some time.

• Level 8: Got some phantom hits in and saved even more time as a result.

• Level 9: Kept the same, the boss pattern from Predatron was unlike any other, and changing anything about the stage being played results in different patterns from the boss. I tried to make it better, but, couldn't and I was the one that did it.

• Level 10: Zok's pattern was also really nice, and I got the phantom hits in that I needed.

The 18:28.54 Beats these movies:

• 28:23 (This is so old, feels like 20 years ago)

• 27 (pretty sure exists I thought)

• 22:01 (Old submission that I still regret submitting to this day and still haunts me)

• 20:13.98 (what I thought was the limit)

• 19:54.02 (really thought it was done)

• 19:20 (didn't think it would come to this)

• 19:08 (really thought I was pushing it here & the first 'recent' submission that was bad)

• 19:00 (of course I was salty that it didn't sub 19 here at that point)

• 18:58.22 (Spike with the Co-authorship file)

• 18:54.22 (Me beating that time, by another 4 seconds?!)

• 18:48 (NOW it's sub 18:50?!)

• 18:46.16 (This is getting out of control)

• 18:46.08 (Like seriously? 8 frames????!)

• 18:45.51 (thought it was over? Guess again)

• 18:40.32 (really pushing it here)

• 18:37.88 (wasn't good enough)

• 18.30.12 (almost good enough but not quite)

• like 6 (guesstimate)

Total = 24 versions With WIPS | 18 Versions Without WIPS

Stone Protectors JPN SHA1

• F408B6132E88BB9CDCB6FBB7DCB41723F88FE76D

Overall Thoughts

• I think I really did a good job improving as I went, which albeit 24 different instances of the same game over and over again.

• I want to personally thank Spikestuff for giving me the drive to keep pushing onward towards a goal I never thought was even possible, to begin with. I also want to thank Spike for taking time out of the day to show me where I can improve, which did help a lot.

• I want to thank the Judges who have had to put up with my earlier submissions of this game.

• I want to thank the readers, the downloaders, and all the comments I got over the course of all this.

• Thanks for looking over this submission & yes I do promise this is quite possibly the last Stone Protectors TAS submission you will see from me personally, but, not the last submission on the site, as I've got more TAS'es in the works. :)