Xevious Arrangement is a remake of Xevious which introduces new power-ups, enemies, bosses, and simultaneous co-op. The main goal is to rack up score as you shoot enemies in the air and destroy anything on the ground as you go through each area, there's 16 in total and 3 extras if certain conditions are met.
This TAS aims for the highest score possible on normal. Here's the extended input for the score entry.
Difficulty
There's a harder mode called Mania which adds more ground enemies and throws harder enemy variants such as the Galboss from Galaxian seen in the extra areas that will show up in area 2 if Mania is active. This TAS goes through the game on it's default difficulty. In order to play on Mania the player needs to get the first message ("This game is dedicated to the original XEVIOUS staff") by bombing a specific spot on the right side of the screen upon starting the game after that, find the two SOL towers in Area 1 and lastly, the player has to bomb the left side of the screen during the transition to Area 2 and if done right there will be another message ("Special present for you from KOSSY & YAMAM") to let you know Mania mode is active.
General Comments
While the game has an end point, there's nothing to speed up the game because it's an autoscroller so the best option is to aim for the highest score with the RTA record being 7,138,120 points for Normal. The 1st Extra Area is unlocked by not dying in the main 16 Areas and takes place after the credits roll. Extra 2 has the same condition but only applies for Extra 1. For Extra 3, all 60 of the hidden SOL towers must be found done by using a bomb. Death is intentionally used in Extra 3 to push the score further as you respawn at the start no matter what due to the lack of checkpoints. In the constant juggling between shooting enemies and finding the hidden towers, you'll notice there's moments where some enemies don't get killed. That's because it's near impossible to kill them without risking any points earned from the ground or they're just too far away to reach before they either fly away or disappear so TAS priorities anything that will give out higher points. Regardless of the fact that I learned that I was aiming for the wrong record, this was the most tedious game I've TASed yet, I don't think it can be topped.
eien86: Claiming for judging.
eien86: replacing original movie with this userfile by CoolHandMike https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638428767140434710 that achieves a higher score
eien86: I agree with CoolHandMike (thanks for the review, btw), it can clearly be seen you put a lot of effort into this TAS. The movie seems sufficiently optimized and matches the highest human score yet.
I still believe further improvements are within reach. First, as stated by the author, some enemies are missed in an effort to optimize the route (example: frame 41270). It is hard to tell, but perhaps further efforts could avoid a couple of these misses and reach a slightly higher score. Second, CoolHandMike did find some improvements and believes more can be found.
Looking forward to seeing new improvements soon. Accepting to standard
Spikestuff: Processing...