Introduction
Ninja Gaiden 2 is a game with ninjas and swords. In this run, we eschew the latter.
Category Rules:
- Hurting enemies is forbidden during normal stages and only permitted during boss battles.
- No scenery or bonus orb can be hit either.
- Taking damage to progress faster is allowed
Previous Work
Xipo had submitted a pacifist, damageless run for the japanese version that reached the end in 12:10. In my interpretation of the ruling, the choice of damageless introduced many long waiting times that made the movie a bit akward. More recently, Gong Lue has a new pacifist, damageless movie that reaches the end in 10:58. He, however, allows himself to destroy orbs and gather Ninja Power and weapons that he later uses against the bosses. Comparing my work against either of these movies is apples vs oranges, but they serve as the closest comparison point.
On the other hand, I find it strange nobody (that I know of) even tried to go for a pacifist% of this game. It is, in principle, a simpler game than its predecesor.
Strategy
Just like in my Ninja Gaiden I pacifist movie the main problem towards the later levels is HP management. Using damage as boost is very useful, but Ryu is limited to 16 HP and each enemy hit removes at least one. So one needs to plan the route very well and know where it is worth it to introduce short waits instead of getting hit. After level two, I manually routed all levels to finish with 1 HP, maximizing speed. After routing this, I programmed the bot to balance speed and damage skips as much as possible.
Software + Hardware
Rom Information
- Rom: Ninja Gaiden II - The Dark Sword of Chaos (U) [!]
- SHA1:B1796660E4A4CEFC72181D4BF4F97999BC048A77
- MD5:2B9570720145F760AEF1EF04814ABE92
Emulator
- EmuHawk 2.8.0 (Core: QuickNES)
Routing Bot
- Bot: JaffarPlus
- Routing Core: QuickNES
- Platform: 'The Jaffanator' - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X (64 cores, 128 threads) + 256Gb RAM (Average Exploration Performance: 1.2M States/s)
Encoder Info
Please use this movie for encoding, as it contains extra inputs for entertainment purposes.
ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: 1 blank frame removed at the end.
Excellent goal choice! It maximizes the differences from the fastest completion movie, as it introduces the new TASing challenges of routing the damage abuse and gives you a handicap against the bosses! Accepting as a new branch for Alternative.
despoa: Processing...