Note: I'm aware that there is already a Golden Axe topic, but for what I am doing I think it'd be better to do this in one topic rather than having three.
For a few months now I've been picking at trying to improve the current Golden Axe TAS by Trazz with a few to going on to TAS Golden Axe 2 and 3 in the future. However, I've noticed that I get the best results when working on it solidly so I'm going to work on all these games at the same time.
Golden Axe
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/833501175/goldenaxe.gmv
This is an improvement of 26 frames to level 1. This is more than I expected considering how little room there is for new strategies.
Screen 1 is improved by 4 frames by hitting the longmoan higher in its hitbox. The strategy is the same.
Screen 2 is not improved. The Longmoan and the Heninger both have 16HP. The downward stab does 16HP worth of damage and I was able to manipulate the enemies so that I hit them both with it but doing so takes too long. Manipulating them to cross over so that they can be hit with two 2HP slices and 12HP back attack is difficult in itself and there is not much room for change.
Screen 3 is improved by 10 frames. 6 frames were saved by manipulating the Storchinaya to walk into the back attack earlier. 4 frames are saved by a nice little oddity that let me get in behind the chicken leg and use a back attack and move out of the way before Tyris mounts it.
Screen 4 is essentially two one-on-ones and so nothing is improved.
Screen 5, the boss battle, is nicely improved by 12 frames. 10 frames are saved by a nice little glitch that lets me hit the upper bad brother before he comes on the screen :-) a further 2 frames are saved by a cool new battle strategy.
I have a massive amount of respect for Trazz's run. If anyone has any ideas for improvement please raise them because I hope to make a very good job of this run.
I've chosen to make this a single player run. A two-player run would be considerably faster, but because there are no more enemies or challenges it would essentially be a two player run of a single player game. I don't believe this would be as entertaining from a TAS perspective, but I'm very interested to hear other people's opinions.
Golden Axe 2
This is still in the planning stages, but I should be able to start recording this week. All I can say now is that there will be a lot of AI abuse in this run :-)
I made a very half-assed real time speedrun of this game a while ago. I made it so I could watch something along with the RAM to make better notes about enemies and strategies without having to physically play the game at the same time. However, if you have never played Golden Axe 2 before and are curious as to how the game looks then you may like it.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1803778989/Golden%20Axe%20II%20%28W%29%20%5B%21%5D.gmv
I've still not decided wether this will be one or two player. I'm leaning towards single player but I may change my mind. Opinions are very welcome.
Golden Axe 3
This is the game I'm least familiar with having never owned it (it was only released in Japan). There is the option to take many routes through the game and I have yet to decide which is the fastest so it may take a while to get this off the ground. This game is quite long aswell and would work best as a two-player run.
Like above I've made a (quater-assed) speedrun of this game that some people may find interesting. Unfortunately, there is not huge potential for stupidity abuse in this game (but there is some), but the wealth of routes, attacks, magic and characters should make up for it :-D
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1725825929/Golden%20Axe%20III%20%28J%29%20%5B%21%5D.gmv