Submission #9100: CUI & warmCabin's NES Rockman no Constancy "normal" in 25:30.80

- warmCabin -

This is an odd situation. I contributed to the first stage of this run, but the rest of it is all Cui. However, his English is not so good, so he asked me to write up an "essay" for him. Well, you all know how much I love yapping about Mega Man 2, so I was happy to oblige.

Thanks for the comparison, Fractal. You always come in clutch on these things. Since I participated very little in the creation of this run, this is going to more or less be a reaction to your upload...

Last December, cui sent me a nearly complete version of this run and asked me for ideas. I saved a surprising amount of time at the very beginning (30 frames!) using the blocky body glitch (walkies through blockies?), thereby doing to this run exactly what I did to zipless. This glitch is a menace, man.

This stage is where my direct contributions to the run end.

Unlike hard mode, we don't have access to infinite Item 1s, so certain minor tricks have to be sacrificed. It helps that walkies-through-blockies saves two Item 1s throughout the stage. By saving a third Item 1 on the frog, we now have enough spares to make an extra delay scroll work! But we are not able to take the upper path anymore because there's no time to charge the Proto Charge. Still well worth it.

Cui is a whiz with those delay scrolls. Anyone who can figure them out is a friend of mine, because I haaaaaate doing them.

The bulk of the timesave in this stage comes from clever Item 2 placements that graze past ledges and result in more ride time, although it looks like a frame or two were saved by tighter movement with the Item 1s.

Once again, cui flexes his might with delay scrolls. The first one is new. The second one was in the last run, although he approaches it with a longer zip at the bottom of the level. I'm not sure if this zip actually saves time, or is just a necessary evil because he has 3 less Item 1 energy.

Obviously nothing new to add to the boss fight, although you might like to know that this Time Stopper reskin is called ZA WARUDO.

Lots of fun to be had with Item 2 here!

The setup for the Item 1 zip is surprising to me. I thought he was trying to conserve Item 1 energy for a delay scroll, but no. However, pausing wastes i-frames, and the old setup barely seems to work as it is, so I'm guessing this is the best way to get hit after switching.

Not much to say here. Same strats, tighter movement.

Here is the collision we are dealing with in the boss fight:

65 frames saved with a claustrophobic zip in the lasers section.

Holy shit, Item 2 delay scroll. Those are not easy.

It seems we got better RNG on the scworm so it leaps a little further toward us.

Item 2 used instead of Item 3. It's faster, and also saves a damage boost, but we're going to have to grab some extra energy later.

There is an invisible ledge in this screen. Cui is NOT placing a new Item 2 straight off of the first one, which would have made me very jealous...

It's a shame that Rising Sun can't kill the dragon. With these new Item 2 strats, we switch to it purely for glitches. I guess that's kind of funny, at least!

Saved a small amount of time due to a better delay scroll. The stage is slower overall because of the extra Item 2 refill, which we manipulated from the proto wall (can't exactly call them crash walls in this hack). I don't know how much time this Item 2 route saves overall.

The zip at the beginning isn't any faster, but cui found an earlier delay frame (not to be confused with Delay Flame) for the ladder tech. That's why he has to place 3 of them, btw.

I'm not sure how much time this alternate setup for the second delay scroll really saves, since we're already hitting the bottom of the screen as soon as possible.

It looks like cui saved a couple of frames on the... Robotnik Tank? But it's just screen flash framerules. The actual fight is the same.

At the beginning of the stage, we grab a bigger refill to set up an extra little zip. After that, we reach the next screen with the same amount of energy.

A clincally insane new strat involving screen wraps saves us from having to mash down all those walls. This is cooler than you think.

Usually for screenwrap strats (like in Metal Man's stage), you have to be one screen over, where shooting from the left edge will spawn projectiles on the right edge. But since Proto Charge is a reskinned Atomic Fire, it inherits a very useful glitch: it exists on screen for one frame before it realizes it's not supposed to. This means we can be anywhere we want respective to the actual boss screen. Cui takes full advantage of this while navigating garbage tiles to destroy the boobs as fast as he can charge his Proto Charge.

Here is the garbage layout, back to back.

blue = solid, gray = water, green = ladder

No major differences here, just some tighter movement in the fights saving a frame or two here and there.

Again, nothing major here. Just some tighter movement saving a few frames.

We've saved 16 frames across the first two stages. I can probably tighten up movement in a few more places and apply menu anisotropy. I also need to make sure the bosses have FULL QUANTUM OPTIMIZATION.

The original disclaimer and submission notes follow:

Submission Author Notes: Since the original author's English description is not very good, this submission was made to TASVideos on behalf of the author with the original author's permission. In addition, the actual completion date of this TAS is in 2023, due to time reasons therefore delayed until today to submit the manuscript, please judges understand.

The description from the original author of the submission is below:

Rockman 2 No Constancy is a very well made Rockman 2 hack by IKA. This version of last year's TAS record has a lot of improvements over the original TAS.

This time, compared to the previous movie, the bug provided by warmCabin was used. the pillar-type monsters that appear in the first two levels can be walked through without injury, which helps a lot in the first and second levels.

Another thing is that the Wily Castle stage 4 bosses were not carefully studied before when doing the [5415] NES Rockman no Constancy "hard" by CUI in 27:39.20, and after half a day of fighting one short of always hitting it. After all, it was a step short. This time in the normal mode was picked up is not a loss. bug advantage in the do not have to tear down the wall, this saves a lot of time, there is also a can avoid in the water of the crazy frame drop.

Compared to only [5349] NES Rockman no Constancy "normal" by CUI in 26:02.53, the number of frames increased as follows: