Submission #7945: nymx's C64 Rambo: First Blood Part II in 05:24.35

The game takes place in approximately 1 million sq feet of jungle featuring the P.O.W. camp, a secret Template and many different types of terrain.

Colonel Trautman, your C.O., has given you a very precise orders....Find the P.O.W. camp, photograph the evidence using the automatic cameras which is part of your standard equipment and then make your way north to the extraction point where a helicopter awaits you. You will then be flown back to the safety of your base in Thailand. Your orders are specific:

"Do not engage the enemy." "Do not attempt to rescue."

However when you arrive at the P.O.W. camp and see your former comrade Banks tied to a Bamboo Cross in the compound, you know that another scenario will unfold, one in which you are the Hero! You must decide...Ignoring your C.O. and using the knife, you cut your buddy free - now there is no turning back as you have alerted the camp guards. Taking Banks with you, you battle your way north towards the helicopter in an attempt to get transport to free all the P.O.W.s.

You are JOHN J. RAMBO, a highly trained jungle fighter with instructions to gain entry to a P.O.W. camp and photograph evidence of American prisoners - but having found them will your conscience let you walk away?

Here is a link to support my use of a disk image. This was actually the same version that I had in my youth. https://ia803200.us.archive.org/11/items/Rambo_First_Blood_Part_II_1985_Ocean/Rambo_First_Blood_Part_II_1985_Ocean.pdf

This is one of my more exciting submissions, as I refused to submit this game over the past 22 months. I started back in March 2021, and found myself in a delima. Should I submit a movie that almost resembles a human run, or wait until I find something substantial? On the 6th of January, 2023...I found what I was looking for! The details below, describe the biggest items that I focused on...which includes a glitch that made all the difference. With all the techniques I discovered, I ended up beating the WR by about 7 seconds.

My first concern, was a choice in routing. I saw two speed-runs that were about 2 seconds apart. One entered the camp from the left side, and the other from the right. I ended up going to the right, because of a glitch (which is explained below) that made the left side completely obsolete. This choice of routing allowed me to pull off this glitch twice, before moving on to the second part of the mission.

I discovered, that the use of LEFT + RIGHT, causes Rambo to start cycling through different animations from enemies and objects. At first, I didn't see use for it, until it happened randomly (from changing inputs) at specific locations on the screen. At first, I didn't know what was causing it, but the result was something that I couldn't resist using. Basically, it was a "Zip"...where it could only be done when walking left and when the screen starts to scroll. At the first frame of screen movement, you can execute a LEFT + RIGHT and hold it until you travel a desired distance. Once I got this situated out, this made all the difference for finalizing my work and submitting. In this movie, it is executed 3 times.

This was the biggest problem I faced, over the past 22 months. Basically, my run was slower than the WR...because the prisoners randomly exited the cage. This behavior couldn't be controlled directly, since it was determined at the start of the game. Because of the long walk to the right side of the screen, it was evident that this is not going to help in cutting time. When I discovered the "zip glitch", another idea came about...zip past the cage and push the screen to the left so that the walk is shortened. Well, this worked out amazingly and gave me the cuts that I was looking for over the human WR. Plus, I didn't have to worry about the predetermined RNG of their exit...since they would pop out faster as each prisoner dissappeared to the right.

I have come to love lag reduction. It is one of my favorite tasks in any game. Super Metroid was heavily laden with lag and gave me enough skill to carry on to other games. Most of my games don't have this level of lag intensity, but Rambo showed a fair amount of it. In fact, I made a final decision to run through the entire game one last time to remove 68 frames of unaddressed lag. As it stands, I don't see one frame of lag, until the helicopter fight scene...which seems to be unavoidable.

This runner is extremely good and I doubt that this run will ever be beaten.

arkiandruski: Claiming for judging.

nymx: Replaced movie file with a lag-less version (6 frames shorter)

arkiandruski: I'm having trouble finding the bios needed to check this movie, so I'm unclaiming.

feos: Claiming for judging.

feos: Looks great, accepting.

despoa: Processing...