Recorded using Snes9x 1.43+ improvment9
Emulator sync settings:
Movie goals:
- Aim for fastest time
- Play on hardest difficulty
- Control 2 players
First off I would like to thank Ash Williams for his great discoveries in this game; he made a very nice run. At first I didn’t know if his run could be improved, but after playing around with the game I realized small improvements were possible. This run is 683 frames faster than Ash’s run, or about 12 seconds. Most of the time saved is from mini/boss fights, several frames being saved in almost every single fight. Additionally, several frames were saved on the title menu and score tallying screens. The memory watching function was excessively utilized in this run; it made optimizing each boss much easier. You may notice that both the players will occasionally merge together to form a grey looking player; in many cases this is done to keep the screen scrolling faster, to avoid lag, and to damage bosses quicker. Sometime is looks like I miss shots or continue shooting after a target is destroyed, this is intentional. In certain cases holding down the fire button will continue to do damage to an enemy even if no shots come out of the barrel.
Stage 1 (81 frames gained)
I use homing missile for entertainment value, killing more enemies without having to turn around. The homing missile is as weak as the default weapon, dealing 2 damage points per hit. Each guard tower is improved upon by hitting the core at better frames, and the boss is improved by few frames as well.
Stage 2 (12 frames gained)
This level is a pain, and tough to optimize. The same path is used as in the published run. I only gained a couple frames for this level, and I managed to gain a minuscule amount of frames in the boss fight as well. Fooling around when the boss is exploding is a bad idea because it induces extreme lag, so I go off screen and play pong with player 1.
Stage 3 (83 frames gained)
This stage had lots of little optimizations, other than the improved boss fights. The part with the wall crawling robot was improved by some frames just by staying close to the top of the screen, I don’t know if it was less lag or if it made the screen scroll faster. After the defeat of the wall robot, the climb to the top is more optimized than the published run. The jumping part inside the warehouse was substantially improved with a new route.
Stage 4 (252 frames gained)
The green tank mini boss was insanely difficult to get correct. The tank must be off the screen when it is destroyed or the lag produce from the explosion will cause half a second of delay. The flying grey men must also be off the screen when the tank explodes or more lag will occur, I managed to manipulate some of them not to show up at all. The mini boss that comes out of the hole from under the blimp was improved dramatically compared to the published run, simply by shooting him from an angle. A huge amount of time was saved at the blimp fight. Using memory watch I was able to more accurately remove the guardian bits to take out the blimp much faster, this saved over 3 seconds alone.
Stage 5 (70 frames gained)
Same strategy here as in the published run, gained over a second from more accurate movements. Not only was the level the most difficult to one to complete, but the boss itself was a nightmare.
Stage 6 (177 frames gained)
Well I made one incredible discovery here. The flying metal demon was always a 2 round fight until Ash Williams found that the bomb can make it a one round fight. Bombs cause a ton of lag though, so I was determined to find a new way of killing the demon in one round. I found a way of one rounding him without the bomb!! The timing absurd and the amount of factors in getting this to work is unimaginable. I managed to gain even more frames from Red Falcon’s first form. Many more additional frames were saved during the brain form.
Score tallying & title screen (8 frames gained)
Oddly enough the title screen will appear at different times depending on weather you loaded a save state before the title screen appears. The fastest way to make the title screen appear is to record a movie and not load any save states until the title screen has appeared. Not using save states is ok because the start button can be turboed on odd/even frames for both player 1 and player 2 controllers which means that every frame is pressing a button to advance. The score tallying screens also use the turbo technique to ensure the fastest possible transition.
adelikat: Accepting as an improvement over the current published run.
