VBA re-recording v19 used. Desyncs on v20 so v19 must be used. Started the movie on v19 and didn't think about it til I was almost done, heh. Not sure if it'll work with earlier versions.
  • Record from Power on
  • Game Boy Color
  • No BIOS
  • I Don't use any warps or passwords. I do however heavily abuse the path of the levels in the game to make them shorter.
  • There were no programming errors in the game from what I saw, however a lot of programming quirks that make this game very fun to TAS, explained below.
  • Take hits and death to save time, mostly later in the game.
  • My goal was to finish the game as fast as possible while being as entertaining as possible.
Noteable programming quirks:
-Critical hits ignore target monster defense entirely and damage taken is equal to your monster's attack power +/- 1% or so. Makes for very entertaining under-level wins, sometimes taking 145x normal attacks.
-In battle, luck is effected by every button input on every frame until the number is final(even start and select). Downside: It was IMPOSSIBLE to go through every possiblity and combo. I tried to get the fastest possible but there were some short waits.
-It is possible to appear very close to the warp hole when entering a new maze. The final gate would normally take over an hour to complete, and possibly even over more than one sitting.
Dragon Warrior Monsters (Also known as Dragon Quest Monsters in Japan) is an RPG game similar to pokemon. The main character, Terry, has his sister kidnapped and he must go to a magical world where monsters exist to save her by winning the Starry Night Tournament. In the game you battle your monsters and level them up, then make them even stronger by breeding them. The game has monsters and scenarios from every dragon warrior before it so it's a very nestalgic game to play as well.
I made the run of this game mostly because I wanted to destroy it. This game is so hard to beat, yet so very linier like the original Dragon Warrior. The run is 138192 frames or 38m 23s long. To give just a little bit of an idea, 40 minutes would maybe get you past the first gate. That is if you've played the game before and know what you are doing. This game requires many hours of leveling up and breeding, which I never even got to.
General Manipulation stuff: I tried my best. If the 73K re-records I have in this game doesn't prove it, I don't know what will. I watch the game myself and wonder if it could be done faster. If you think you can beat me, please do it! If someone can beat this time, I want them to do it, then show it to me so I can watch it. This game takes weeks, possibly even months to complete normally. This game needed to be destroyed.
Start: Very linier. I had to grab Slib and head back to the king, he's mad that his Healer has escaped and I "volunteer" to go get it.
First gate: Nothing exciting. Manipulate the warp holes best I could.
Battle with Hale: Nothing special here. I thought it would be entertaining to be left with 1 HP, little bit of suspense I guess.
G class Battles: Probably the most fair battles in the game. My monsters were even able to defeat one of the Slimes without a critical hit. Required after getting Hale to open the gates for Dran and Golm.
Second Gate: I have to collect 100 gold so I can compete in D class to move on in the game. This takes a little time, but I think that's about best I could do.
Battle with Dran: Again, nothing special. He uses all normal attacks so no problem avoiding everything he tosses at me. The battle is somewhat longer because I'm really not suppose to just go right to him.
Third Gate: Pick up the rest of my 100 Gold and continue right to Golm.
Battle with Golm: Battle went faster due to having Dran. I did not have to go to this battle, but decided that it would save the time back to gather him up. With Golm on my team I was taking about 100HP from enemies a turn instead of only 60HP or so if I had just stuck with the two slimes.
D class battles: If one was playing this game instead of just watching, they'd realize just how lucky this is. Those monsters look harmless but they would have killed me off in the first battle within the first few turns. I defeat this class which is required to continue in the game.
Fourth gate: This gate is required, the king tells you that there are monsters flooding the area and that you must stop them. This gate was a pain in the butt. I had to gather high items to take with me and cash them in for the 10000 gold required to compete in S class. At first I thought it was going to be easy but soon realized that the programmers did actually think about this a little. No matter what I did, the item was about as far away from the warp hole as you can get, and there is alway at least one enemy in the way. Random battles cannot be avoided. One of the few things in the game that can't be effected once the number has been decided. Either it was taking what I got, or not getting it. I worked for hours and hours trying to get better and couldn't. I cashed in my items and fought wrex.
Battle with Wrex: This battle was kind of long. In fact it is the only battle in the game where I go through one entire loop of the battle music. I couldn't avoid this. It certainly made me happy that I decided to grab both Dran and Golm. If there was any time to be saved from that decision it would have all been down to this battle I think. I've skipped pretty far ahead in the game at this point. I had to kill off Hale because if I hadn't then Wrex was going to continue to cast BlazeAir which kills off all of my monsters in only a few hits. By killing off Hale it gave the chance for Wrex to just attack, which was very low mind you. It took some manipulation just to get that regular attack from her.
S class battles: This looks rather uneventful, but there were a few times I was worried about having to do stuff over. Here is when monsters started having 95% chances of using unavoidable attacks. Here is when I started getting excessively frustrated with Golm. His critical hits were so rare it took me over an hour sometimes just to get one. Ugh. My monsters are so underleveled that they seem to forget how to battle. Or maybe they get scared, I don't know. Since I can't order them to attack they just miss apparently. This has a 100% chance of happening. I never got it to change. Trust me I tried. THe final battle I tried to make epic by letting my part almost lose. Dran and Golm are so weak that at this point I was not losing much time to kill them off. I had tried leaving Wrex with 1HP but manipulation of that last critical hit required otherwise. (Mettables are so hard to critical!!)
Last gate: Required gate. After defeating S class the king requires you to do a bit of personal reflection in this gate. Not sure how that would work, but that's part of the game. Here I gather two mimics. At first I was just going to go ahead with the monsters I had, but decided it would save me a lot more time to gather two more powerful monsters. This game is a little weird about monster taming. If you've never had a monster it is a lot easier to befriend it than if you've already had it. Healing the first Mimic worked fine, but after that the mere 15 "taming points" this gave me left me with a possible zero chance of befriending(never got it to happen). I had to continue on and manipulate a room with mimics and a rib. Even with a rib it took a lot of manipulation to get the second mimic. After this I go to the Durran battle.
Durran and co. battle: The servants were the hardest! One of the servants ALWAYS cast a spell, 100%. I never got it to go any other way. However the other servant has a small tiny chance of just attacking. Terry? monster was easy, using all normal attacks it was a matter of those critical hits. Durran was also easy, if not time consuming. I took 550 HP a turn and it still took 6 turns I do believe. Youch.
Starry Night Tournament: I should note that I am SEVERELY underleveled for this tournament. To give you an idea, every battle the monsters could wipe me out in one to two turns if I was lucky. In fact on the final battle with Milayou I thought I was going to have to come up with another strategy...while the other battles I could manipulate low level spells and normal attacks, when I first entered the final battle all I could get for an hour was magic attacks. Metal King has a 100% chance of using Zap. No manipulating ever changed that. Coatal has the highest chance of just attacking (which was still very low), otherwise uses Explodet and RainHawk uses Mega Magic about 95% of the time. I felt so lucky the first time I got Rainhawk to just attack. Mega Magic kills off two of my three monsters after just once.
The ending: Long and boring waiting and text. Just fast forward through that if you want, haha.
Special thanks: Silas. Man I don't know how you were able to find those memory addresses, but they were very useful many times. Especially because VBA has this nasty habit of changing what memory area it uses every time a game starts...Couldn't use my memory watch program.

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.

adelikat: Excellent luck manipulation. This will be a good addition to the RPG's on this site. I am accepting it for publication and encoding.

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1727: DonamerDragon's GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters in 38:23.20
Dwedit
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
Excellent work there!
Joined: 3/15/2007
Posts: 131
I thought this run had fizzled out after not seeing any posts in the thread for a few months. This was amazing. While people who have never played this might not understand the difficulty this game presents normally, rest assured that this was amazing. Watching it with the input command view turned on was entertaining as well. Yessss
Post subject: Re: #1727: DonamerDragon's GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters in 38
upthorn
He/Him
Active player, Emulator Coder (387)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
NesVideoAgent wrote:
I don't believe the epic nature of this game has ever been so perfectly captured in such a short series of screenshots before.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Post subject: Re: #1727: DonamerDragon's GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters in 38
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
Dwedit wrote:
Excellent work there!
Thanks :3
Hina98 wrote:
I thought this run had fizzled out after not seeing any posts in the thread for a few months. This was amazing. While people who have never played this might not understand the difficulty this game presents normally, rest assured that this was amazing. Watching it with the input command view turned on was entertaining as well. Yessss
I hadn't even started this run because of that thread. In fact I didn't know the thread existed til I was done with Hale. I played this game because I played it through on my gameboy. Oh the batteries that went into this game, haha. I'm glad you find my "random" inputs entertaining. XD This game is a manipulation nightmare, and a blessing at the same time.
upthorn wrote:
NesVideoAgent wrote:
I don't believe the epic nature of this game has ever been so perfectly captured in such a short series of screenshots before.
*laughs* I hadn't really paid attention to it before today. That's funny. Yes my 38 minute epic battle to get from my fireplace to the king.
Soft Blue Dragon
Zai
Joined: 10/9/2007
Posts: 3
Nicely Done. Didn't put me to sleep so thats a good thing. I feel sorry for the discarded monsters though. Anyway, Nice work. *Can't vote yet but If I could It would be a Yes*
Joined: 4/12/2007
Posts: 78
Location: Atlanta, GA
Great work! Having played through the game even just a little, I see how amazing it is to get through those parts with unleveled monsters. Yes vote.
Joined: 12/29/2006
Posts: 119
Location: Japan, Anjo
vote yes. In Japanese called "ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ テリーのワンダーランド, Doragon Kuesuto Monsutāzu Terī no wandā-rando).
DiffCalc .NET Frameworks 3.5 required.
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
Zai wrote:
Nicely Done. Didn't put me to sleep so thats a good thing. I feel sorry for the discarded monsters though. Anyway, Nice work. *Can't vote yet but If I could It would be a Yes*
Thanks, just knowing you enjoyed it is enough for me. :)
The Great Morphologous wrote:
Great work! Having played through the game even just a little, I see how amazing it is to get through those parts with unleveled monsters. Yes vote.
Hehe, yes it is much more satisfying having played through the game isn't it. ;)
Naohiro19 wrote:
vote yes. In Japanese called "ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ テリーのワンダーランド, Doragon Kuesuto Monsutāzu Terī no wandā-rando).
Thanks :)
Soft Blue Dragon
Joined: 6/27/2007
Posts: 137
Location: Germany
it's a nice run^^ Allthough a 100% run would be greater of course xD Nevertheless I enjoyed it^^ Pretty awsome what you can do with Luck Manipulation XD
Dwedit
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
Naohiro19 wrote:
vote yes. In Japanese called "ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ テリーのワンダーランド, Doragon Kuesuto Monsutāzu Terī no wandā-rando).
Pure Katakana consisting entirely of loanwords is not Japanese.
Joined: 3/15/2007
Posts: 131
Snake wrote:
it's a nice run^^ Allthough a 100% run would be greater of course xD Nevertheless I enjoyed it^^ Pretty awsome what you can do with Luck Manipulation XD
What would a 100% run be defined as? Going through every gate, including the ones after the ending?
Rat
Joined: 7/17/2005
Posts: 23
Dwedit wrote:
Naohiro19 wrote:
vote yes. In Japanese called "ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ テリーのワンダーランド, Doragon Kuesuto Monsutāzu Terī no wandā-rando).
Pure Katakana consisting entirely of loanwords is not Japanese.
Yeah, we can just call it "Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry's Wonderland" if we wanna get THAT fancy. XP I've played both DWM games for GBC, and only gotten to post-game on the second one, with the first still kicking my ass. Beating this game in under 40 minutes is TRULY amazing. Nice work! *yes*
+_+
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
Snake wrote:
it's a nice run^^ Allthough a 100% run would be greater of course xD Nevertheless I enjoyed it^^ Pretty awsome what you can do with Luck Manipulation XD
Wow, 100%. That would take me weeks just to plan. Probably be a multiple hour long TAS if I did. All monsters have to be level 10 before you can breed them. Some monsters are rare and take a lot of breeding to get. You're more than welcome to try this if you think it's possible. ;)
Rat wrote:
Dwedit wrote:
Naohiro19 wrote:
vote yes. In Japanese called "ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ テリーのワンダーランド, Doragon Kuesuto Monsutāzu Terī no wandā-rando).
Pure Katakana consisting entirely of loanwords is not Japanese.
Yeah, we can just call it "Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry's Wonderland" if we wanna get THAT fancy. XP I've played both DWM games for GBC, and only gotten to post-game on the second one, with the first still kicking my ass. Beating this game in under 40 minutes is TRULY amazing. Nice work! *yes*
Hehe, thanks so much I appreciate it. i wasn't sure if anyone was going to recognize this game. It's almost as notorious as playing Dragon Warrior for the first time.
Soft Blue Dragon
Joined: 6/27/2007
Posts: 137
Location: Germany
YES XD I thought about this also... Maybe not a 100% run... But... hmm... I don't know XDD It's just so... Short... For People who don't know DWM this run shows how "easy" this game is... Only we veterans know how hard it is for real^^" But maybe a... Any% run that shows e.g how to get some Strong Monsters (like GoldGolem etc.) and completes every hole... Maybe not the Extra Holes after the Ending... Just every "normal" Gate you can find... Well... I.. don't.. know^^
Active player (308)
Joined: 8/25/2006
Posts: 287
I use to play this all the time as a kid as well. Yes vote.
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
Thanks guys I appreciate it. 8 Yeses so far, sweet. :3
Soft Blue Dragon
Joined: 6/7/2006
Posts: 53
I spent tons of time with this game over the past ten years, and I must say I was completely surprised when I first saw this submission. And the tactic was a real curveball, something I knew HAD to be possible but didn't think could actually be implemented. Not only have you taken a third of the time of the last world record I know, you managed to complete the run without ever breeding a single monster - the latter of which impressed me more. Definite Yes vote.
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
FrostyTheDragon wrote:
I spent tons of time with this game over the past ten years, and I must say I was completely surprised when I first saw this submission. And the tactic was a real curveball, something I knew HAD to be possible but didn't think could actually be implemented. Not only have you taken a third of the time of the last world record I know, you managed to complete the run without ever breeding a single monster - the latter of which impressed me more. Definite Yes vote.
*smiles and blushes* Why thank you! It definitely took some planning and then re-planning, but I'm proud of it...I certainly appreciate your yes vote cause you had started the other thread. Thanks. :3
Soft Blue Dragon
Joined: 6/26/2007
Posts: 147
This would be a terribly long and boring 100% run. I'm impressed at how much luck manipulation was done. This game usually takes weeks, but you managed to find monsters that were some sort of gods. Yes vote for how much you destroyed this game. Here's a possible screenshot: [URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
zdude255 wrote:
This would be a terribly long and boring 100% run. I'm impressed at how much luck manipulation was done. This game usually takes weeks, but you managed to find monsters that were some sort of gods. Yes vote for how much you destroyed this game. Here's a possible screenshot: [URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
Hehe, thanks. Yeah I agree it would be a boring 100% run, I still don't think I ever got to what one would call 100% on my gameboy cart. Luck manipulation is fun...especially when you know how rare critical hits are in this game.
Soft Blue Dragon
Joined: 10/8/2005
Posts: 16
Location: Quebec, Canada
Grats on the run! It's pretty close to perfection. Better than this would be to try to duplicate it while trying to save a few frames here and there (and there's not much to be saved). I'm impressed by the battle manipulation you managed to do. The mimics capture were both impressive, the first one had 4% to be captured with the herb and the second one had 5% with the meat. Good job manipulating the maps, and I do know how hard this could have been (did you build some tools to do it or did you do it manually(!)). You did a very good job at destroying the game. I'm happy I could be of some help with the memory addresses. I'm even happier to be able to see your run.
Player (103)
Joined: 6/7/2005
Posts: 290
Location: New York
Silas wrote:
Grats on the run! It's pretty close to perfection. Better than this would be to try to duplicate it while trying to save a few frames here and there (and there's not much to be saved). I'm impressed by the battle manipulation you managed to do. The mimics capture were both impressive, the first one had 4% to be captured with the herb and the second one had 5% with the meat. Good job manipulating the maps, and I do know how hard this could have been (did you build some tools to do it or did you do it manually(!)). You did a very good job at destroying the game. I'm happy I could be of some help with the memory addresses. I'm even happier to be able to see your run.
First off, thanks. I must say I am flattered to have this yes from you. You have more knowledge of this game than I could have ever obtained by myself. I agree that a few frames could be saved here and there. I would like to try again at some point... Wow, how did you figure out my chance of capturing the mimic? I manually played around with certain things until I got it to happen, both the meat and the herb were VERY rare, I do know that. I even tried the first mimic with nothing, and the second with the herb. That was epic fail. I manipulated maps manually. I'm not computer friendly...everything was manual. I'm not an RPG manipulation wizard like Nitrodon or such. Simply a perfectionist. :) Maaaany retries...maaaany retries...*shudders* Thanks again! Very glad you enjoyed my run! I couldn't have destroyed it as well without you!
Soft Blue Dragon
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [993] GBC Dragon Warrior Monsters by DonamerDragon in 38:23.20
Player (64)
Joined: 11/2/2007
Posts: 100
Location: Toronto, Canada
The game has monsters and scenarios from every dragon warrior before it so it's a very nestalgic game to play as well.
Was that a pun? :p Nice run!