An action platformer for the Sega Genesis with inspirations from the movies of the 80's.
The second stage is the big piece, the half of the run, and where time can be saved.
The D3DF address is the character frame, which is often necessary, especially when the character is hidden.
It's my first TAS.
arkiandruski: Claiming for judging.
Samsara: File replaced, and picking up the claim.
Samsara: Once again, I apologize for the delay in processing this submission, especially with the conclusion I've reached.
Comparing this run directly with [2844] Genesis Flashback: The Quest for Identity by Alyosha in 22:29.99, I'm noticing a lot of time loss in directly comparable sections. Immediately, the opening menus can be improved by about half a second, as every input can be entered a few frames earlier. Three minutes into the run, there should be about 6-7 seconds of time saved through new glitches and per-screen routing, but they have been completely wiped out by poorer execution on nearly every other screen. Even if the final time is faster, an improvement run can still be rejected if the overall quality does not match the published run, and it seems clear to me that this is the case here.
I think the main reason why this happened is the simple mistake of not comparing to the published run. The overall execution definitely looks solid on its own, but the published run exists and is a lot tighter. I highly recommend redoing the run from the beginning, directly comparing to Alyosha's run as you go along, in order to ensure that you are not losing time anywhere. As long as you keep the improvements from this run and don't lose time to the published run anywhere, it's a surefire acceptance.
I'd also recommend not using that ROM: It's a pirated dump (p1), which are often modified in ways we do not allow. This run does sync fine on a non-pirated alternate (a1) dump (which is why it wasn't rejected for version), though it does not sync on the perfect (!) dump due to a change in loading early on. The published run uses the perfect dump, and using that one would help for a more accurate comparison.
I promise that your next submission will be handled much sooner than this one!