Submission #896: AngerFist & DeHackEd's NES Mega Man 4 in 35:11.48

It began with a hobby and ended being a dead-serious project where every single frame I could gain was like a big reward for me...

This is my first Tool-Assisted Speedrun. During the time I worked on Mega Man 4, I really enjoyed every single moment of it, as it was very fun to do, pretty enlightening although very hard and frustrating sometimes.

People I want to especially thank:

Boss-Killer! aka. DeHackEd! aka. My awesome partner! Of course, this project would NOT be possible if it were not for his special knowledge of killing bosses. DeHackEd, thanks bro for everything you did, I sincerely appreciate all the effort you put into our project even during hard times when circumstances were not always the best.

My inspiration to complete this run, came from kopernical, Bisqwit, FODA and Truncated. Bisqwit helped me several times, and one of those times were during a very crucical stage in Bright Man where he actually helped improving the spike area with more than a half second. He always gave constructive critique every time when I finished a level so I humbly thank him for his patience and advices and he is also one of the main reasons why I even started working on Mega man 4 because he always encouraged me to even start working on this project :)

FODA, Bisqwit and Truncated all helped me understanding how to record and save properly with FCEU. It only took me about a week (!) and 30-40 private messages to them to finally understanding how to properly record and save :) So A BIG thanks to them for even replying to all of my messages I wrote to them.

Kopernical, for using his run as a reference or as a guidance for some stages I was stuck on. I want also to thank mister comedian aka BagofMagicFood, for letting me know a pretty obvious aspect for the game; facing left during a hit, and his advice saved quite alot of time during many different places. Finalfighter for showing many cool tricks, which some of them we used in our run. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported, showed interest, cheered and always keept my motivation up, you know who you are (--> Baxter, Walker, Vatchern, Randil, Shinryuu,Thereisnospoon, Bisqwit, DeHackEd etc).

Folks remember that kopernical DID NOT have frame counter when he did his mega man 4, meaning, he did NOT have the ability to check if a certain jump, slide, shot, lag, doing this and that is faster so you really have to stand on your feet and give a standing ovation to kopernical for doing a magnificent work on his mega man 4.

The run itself contains several new and original features compared with the former published run. We changed the route by simply picking Bright Man after Pharaoh Man. This new route gave us great opportunities to explore things via Balloon Adaptor and Flash Stopper. This is evident in Bright Man, Toad Man, Drill Man, Skull Man, Dive Man Cossack 2 and Cossack 4.

I'm not very good at writing these, so my section will be a bit more terse.

It started as a friendly gesture to Angerfist when he was having trouble with the Pharaoh Man battle. Not long after, I was his battle partner.

For the mostpart I only fought bosses. I also played the final zone of Bright Man's stage, the first zone of Cossack 3 (the auto-scroller) and everything starting after the Toad Man refight.

I tried to make all my battles look clean and smooth (minimize twitching) while still reducing lag and shooting at the earliest possible chance. The best lag reducing technique I found was keeping both feet on the ground (gravity = lag), so I'd rather take hits than jump unnecessarily.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Bright Man's special ability is to freeze Mega Man in place, though you'd never know from watching the battles.

Thanks to Bisqwit who contributed a non-trivial amount to this run.