Submission #9818: Induviel's NES Beauty and the Beast in 15:28.93

Game Objectives

• Emulator used: FCEUX 2.6.6
• Aims for fastest time
• Takes intentional damage

Tech and glitches

• Jump up slopes : Tho the jumping and landing animation takes a while, if you jump over enough slope it ends up being worth.
• Avoid getting hit from the back : When Beast gets hit from the back, he'll turn around, which is very slow, in those cases its better to just stop and get hit from the front, tho, this doesn't apply if the ground is slippery, since then Beast will continue moving forward while on the turn around animation.
• Enemy despawn : It's possible to despawn almost any enemy if you stop and go at certain frames before an enemy is about to enter the screen, the amount and frequency of the steps depends on the type of enemy, whether its moving and in what direction, Beast speed. With this method only enemies that appear from the left or right of the screen can be despawned, not if they appear from the top or the bottom. There's also a few random enemies that couldn't be despawned, a candle in 2-3, I think because its moving right fast enough that Beast stutterstep speed is too low to catch up, and a random book in 3-2, which I think its because there's a book in the level below that you despawn before it if you try.

Level-by-level timesaves

• 1-1 : Saved 218 frames, from jumping up slopes and despawning enemies, plus jumping down earlier to the lower path at the end.
• 1-2 : Saved 469 frames, from jumping up slopes, despawning enemies and avoiding the climb up animations at the staircases before the boss, also optimized the Griffons boss by hitting both twice with just two jumps.
• 1-3 : Saved 379 frames, from jumping up slopes, despawning enemies, avoiding a hit from a chandelier, jumping off the top of the curtains to avoid the turn around animation, and by waiting for two frames before one of the candle enemies so Beast gets hit from the front, avoiding turning around, which also avoids getting hit again by the next candle.
• 1-4 : Saved 508 frames, from better movement when moving to the right of the room to get the Knight boss to go right as much as possible, and by spacing the attacks to the boss slightly, since depending on the frame you attack it may or may not deal damage to the boss, seems like 3 hits per color is the best outcome. Also, staying in the right also had the side effect of letting the level transition happen earlier.
• 2-1 : Saved 8 frames from despawning enemies, one hit is taken from an enemy that could be despawned just because then another enemy would spawn, that would also have to be despawn, and it would lose time at that point.
• 2-2 : Saved 389 frames from jumping up slopes, despawning enemies and avoiding taking damage from random falling rocks. A few geysers are despawned just because slowing down to get better RNG would be slower.
• 2-3 : Saved 145 frames from a slightly different route that avoids some climbing animations.
• 2-4 : Saved 239 frames from deloading one enemy, and optimizing the Wolf bossfight at the end of the level by getting inside of him to get more hits in as it gets pushed backwards. There's a few enemies here that are not despawned just because the floor is slippery, so the despawn process takes longer that boosting through.
• 3-1 : Autoscroller
• 3-2 : Saved 361 frames from despawning enemies, stopping for 2 frames on a few falling blocks to avoid getting hit, which in those cases is slightly faster than despawning, jumping twice around the end of the level instead of jumping once and getting a climb animation, and optimized the boss of this level by getting hit as Beast damages it, so that the stall from the stun animation allows for damaging the boss a second time in the same jump.
• 4-1 : Saved 66 frames from despawning enemies, avoiding a climbing animation at the end of the level and jumping up slopes, the first level is somewhat on a cycle, because the spikes on the background activate when the lightning effect happens, which is on a timer that starts at the start of this level.
• 4-2 : Saved 349 frames from despawning one enemy, since apparently all the enemies in this room are all one guy.
• 4-3 : Saved 178 frames from optimizing how Gaston climbs up the tower, since by staying near him he climbs up faster than if you just went up and waited for him there, one side effect is that he really wants to shoots Beast with his bow if you do this, but I wasn't able to stop him from doing it while also making him climb fast, or at least fast enough that it saved time over how it's done here atm. Also saved time by needing only 4 punches to throw Gaston off the edge, instead of 5.