Submission #7491: dekutony & Alyosha's NES Q Boy in 30:29.55

The Q-Boy is Q-Back

Hey. I'm back again to submit an improvement for the Q Boy TAS. This is an improvement of 733 frames, or roughly 12.1 seconds over the previous movie, thanks to a big route change in Stage 4-4 and a much more optimized final boss fight against Dr. Mouse.

Stage 4-4 and the Final Boss are the only 2 levels that were improved, while the rest of the TAS is exactly the same, just resynced to BizHawk (thanks Alyosha).

...Well, for the most part.

This is where the most noticeable change in the TAS comes in. From the 3rd room onwards, the rest of the level was redone from scratch. This is mostly because of a completely different route for both navigation and health management. I take a different Room 8 since it's just a straight path.

And then there's Room 9 and Room 10. In Room 9 I had to waste an exact number of frames before entering Room 10 just so I can set up the RNG for the next room because Room 10 is BRUTAL. There are 3 different patterns Room 10 can give me. The best pattern is the one I got, with 2 Tank enemies placed far away from me and 2 heart spawns. The worst pattern that you can get (which is the one that you'll get most of the time, BTW) has the one of said Tanks very close to your spawnpoint, and there is nothing you can do to avoid getting hit. It was really frustrating, but I overcame that obstacle. The rest of the level has more optimized movement.

In the second to last room of the level I perform a rather curious pause glitch that messes with the graphics. On the exact frame you start the warp from one room to the other, you can press Start to pause the game and that somehow glitches the sprites. It doesn't waste any time, so I did it just for fun. The effects of the pause glitch persist until you enter a different level.

That being said, as a setback for messing with the inputs, the RNG for the final special jelly stage changed. I couldn't for the life of me resync this without wasting way too much time, so I asked Alyosha for help. He managed to resync the TAS while only losing 35 frames. Much better than my resync attempts. I wish optimizing these stages was easier without losing time but there's nothing I can do about it.

I knew from the start that the final Dr. Mouse fight could be a bit better. It's been on my mind since the movie was published back in 2016, so this is the main reason why this improved movie was made. ...I just didn't expect it to be the main source of timesave in this TAS.

The improvements come from shooting air shots at the earliest possible time where the rodent robots are vulnerable. I do this while being at the closest position possible without getting hit by the Doctor's tank. I don't know what I was thinking with the old strategy back then.

I also end input earlier by charging an air shot at the furthest position I can to hit the Doctor.

Special thanks goes to Alyosha again for taking his time to help me with the final resync and for resyncing the whole thing onto BizHawk too. Couldn't have done it without you.

Anyways, thank you for your time. I hope you have a nice day no matter what you're going through right now. Stay strong.

Samsara: Sick, I love Q-Bert. Judging.

Samsara: Very nicely done! Accepting as an improvement to the published run!

despoa: Processing...