Crusader of Centy is an old Zelda knock-off that replaces useful items with useful animal companions. You can have only two animals out at a time, and some will combine their abilities for unique effects. Despite being an action-RPG, very little killing of monsters is actually required other than bosses. Most of the gameplay is centered around swinging and throwing your magical boomerang sword to solve puzzles. This run contains gratuitous use of abusing slide physics, abusing wall collision, abusing monster collision, abusing the bosses, and literally skipping through many of the game's challenges.
This is my first TAS and it's quite a doozy. I started almost a year ago but gave up in a few weeks, only to start over from scratch about a month and a half ago. Previously I'd been using my keyboard to record the run, which was painful to say the least. Using a wired 360 controller was much better, allowing me to hit all four buttons at once and mapping out frame advance, pause, and two sets of save/load commands.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Gens Movie 10A
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors in the game

Animals

Mac: My faithful hound. Bites enemies to make them hold still.
Use: Advances the plot.
Chilly: Penguin rescued from the Octopus. Adds ice element to sword, 2 damage.
Use: Roxie, Georama, and Mother Monster fights.
Cecil: Flying squirrel rescued from the Shuffler. Adds distance and rebound to your thrown sword, and locks your movement.
Use: Activating switches in Iris, Camellia Desert, Castle Freesia, and Tower of Babel.
Flash: Cheetah recruited from the Lily go-kart track. Doubles your top speed.
Use: Quicker movement, used whenever possible.
Pieces: Caterpillar found in Iris who won't stop following me.
Use: ...no really, stop following me. I mean it.
Dippy: Dinosaur bullied out of the oasis. Crosses "dangerous terrain" without taking damage.
Use: Advances the plot.
Inferno: Lion freed from a cage in Castle Freesia. Adds fire element to sword, 3 damage.
Use: Just about every boss fight after I get him. Combines with Chilly for 4 damage over time, Moa for 4 damage plus fireballs, and Dodo for 5 damage over time. Also, unfreezes Amon the ice block.
Leviathan: Mythical monster recruited from the Root Temple. Cuts sword swinging and charging time to 3/4, and adds speed and range to the throw.
Use: Various puzzles in Tower of Babel and Black Night, and the Chameleon and Spirit Energy boss fights.
Monarch: Butterfly transformed from Pieces after totally ditching us at Babel. Grants remote control over your thrown sword.
Use: Tower of Babel ground floor, and Black Night.
Rio: Armadillo recruited after a very Eeyore moment in Past Iris. Becomes a throwable platform when C is pressed.
Use: Sets up various epic jumps in Iris, Past Camellia Desert, and Black Night.
Moa: Ancient bird rescued from Chameleon. Enhances the abilities of various animals.
Use: Triples top speed with Flash equipped. Boosts Inferno's damage to 4 and adds fireballs, used in many boss fights.
Dodo: Extinct bird rescued from a lava platform in Past Burn Daisy. Makes things stick to the thrown sword.
Use: Begins Puppetmaster boss fight, used in conjunction with Inferno for 5 damage over time in the Spirit Energy fight.

Techniques

Early zoning: You can change zones a few frames early by approaching the screen border or doorway and then stepping back.
Damage boosting: Touching a monster repels you precisely at the angle you approached it from, so it's very easy to line up where you want to go. The speed boost is reflected in what I call "Slide" speed, which adds with your controller momentum (the direction you push) to give your total speed.
Swing interruption: Pressing and holding A usually swings your sword and begins charging. Some things can interrupt your swing and allow you to begin charging immediately, such as a monster, a slide, or a spring. This is useful because while swinging, you lose control of your momentum and slow down.
Jump charging: You retain control of your character if you swing while in the air. Jumping is therefore used often to begin a sword charge. Completely replaces swing interruption after Dahlia Valley.
Slide boost: Your Slide values increase every frame you are on a slippery slope, like a cliff or waterfall. By maximizing the time I spend on a slide, I can build up a lot of momentum and make previously impossible jumps, especially ones the developers didn't think of, and to cross distances quickly.
Rope hop: Some ropes will prevent you from jumping onto them, but the game is very wishy-washy about enforcing it.
Block stop: You are given 3 frames to move before you push a block. If you hide yourself against an obstacle, the game cannot move you.
Wall-hack: When there is an obstacle next to a diagonal wall, you can squeeze in between the two to pass through, or press into it to force the game into resolving that collision, resulting in you being pushed into the wall. If you end up fully in the wall, you are allowed to walk freely around so long as you stay away from legal squares.
Jump swing: With Flash equipped, you move faster than your thrown sword. To clear breakable obstacles without slowing down, jump and swing 16 frames before you land, and your sword will be active for that single frame.
C strafe: While holding C, your angle is locked in. You cannot hold a sword charge while strafing, but it is useful for talking to NPCs and manipulating Rio's position.
Post-menu input: Press any buttons you like while holding Start to exit the menu, and it will be inputted as the screen loads. This allows for sword-charging one frame sooner, quicker movement, and jumping off Rio when he no longer exists.

Stage comments

Rafflesia

If you go through all three courses in this area, the King gives you a Holy Sword, which does double damage. This is a long and tedious affair, and boss fights take an average 15 seconds to begin with. Instead of going through the beginner course, I collect 20 Malins, learn the sword throw, and leave.

Dahlia Valley

Here I demonstrate damage boosting off of monsters, and swing interruption on the spring and waterfall. Dahlia's boss, the Wolf, attacks you with the stars and planets he sees when he hits himself with a 1 ton hammer...the stars allow me to swing interrupt and kill the Wolf quickly, but on the final hit I damage boost into the door before he gives his death speech. By reaching the door early, I completely skip a 20-second dialogue with a grateful Granny.

Anemone Beach

The third screen typically requires >90 seconds of running back and forth hitting switches, but a quicker way is to slide boost off the cliffs and skip over the water.

Hot Daisy

You're supposed to equip Chilly here and freeze that lava pond that I instead slide boost across.

Burn Daisy

The block pushing in screen 1 sets up the wall-hack that allows me to use the last staircase first. Goodbye, level. I collect the money bag here because you need 20 Malins for Flash and 50 Malins for Past Iris. The Shuffler fight is easily the longest wait in the game, so I try to make the most of it with Red Light, Green Light, sword tricks, and other shenanigans.

Iris

This is a long segment. The second wall-hack goes into the cliffside, then up into the trees. The go-kart race against Flash held me up for days as I tried to figure out the physics behind it. As a slime you have instant acceleration, so I use that and the respective waiting times to give the screen a nice shake or two. The last jump in this area was tricky to set up, as it goes onto a switch, then off of another one instantly.

Camellia Desert

Some block-stopping here, slide-boosting with the quicksand pits, and some funny bouncing around with breakable obstacles. Second money bag collected on the second screen.

Tower of Babel

Roxie has several attacks, only one of which leaves him vulnerable. If my luck were better, I could have killed him in two phases.

Castle Freesia

The entire floor is slippery here. Jumping gives you control back while adding your current Slide speed, so you can travel at ludicrous speeds if you build it up enough. Towards the end there is a jump across a pond with a breakable boulder across it; this was one of the hardest jumps in the run to set up. It is possible to exit the Georama fight early and go straight to Babel with the seeds, but it takes a while to go back through Freesia, and Leviathan is very useful.

Root Temple

With judicious use of slide-boosting, I made a mockery of this level's twistiness. Some care was given not to get hit by a bubble. It is also possible here to exit to the world map, but since the temple hasn't been raised, the path going past Castle Freesia is blocked off by a glitch. The Leviathan fight requires you to knock his fireballs back at him, but throwing the sword at him while they appear works better.

Tower of Babel

Abusing the rubber bands was fun and useful. Unfortunately there is a LOT of block pushing here.

Place of Peace

Instead of going through a long, tedious set of switch puzzles, I hitch a ride on a single bumblebee and steer him by moving a few pixels left, right, up and down. I didn't have this idea until I reached the level, but I'm proud of the trick. Maldra was completely emasculated because he didn't know how to turn around...his parts didn't even have time to hit the ground.

Past Iris

I collected the last money bag quickly and re-entered the cliff without hesitation. Once I reached Past Iris, I knew I could easily jump across the water without getting Rio, but I also knew I needed Rio for several puzzles later. He turned out to be a huge asset to me in his chasm-crossing abilities.

Past Camellia Desert

You'll see some C strafing here as I make use of Rio. Chameleon was tricky; the fight went well, but a few frames had to be sacrificed because of his quick shuffling around and grabby tongue in the second phase.

Past Anemone Beach

The Moa+Leviathan switch/throw was difficult to set up, but it looks impressive now. Baron was slightly difficult to deal with, and I couldn't manipulate the fireballs to hit both purple blobs at once.

Past Dahlia Valley

Wall-hacking in full force! I wish I could follow the wall all the way north and transfer to the horizontal wall, but it is impossible without trapping myself on the upper shelf.

Black Night

The very first jump in this segment was hands down the hardest, yet most rewarding. I had to time Rio tracking me and invent a new glitch that involved jumping out of the menu. There was literally no room for error except for four frames that I could manage using diagonally. Although the very next part could be done quicker with Flash+Leviathan, the 122 frames necessary to switch again is just not worth it.
The boss fights were very interesting. In Smell Sense, tiles crack when you walk over them, and turn to spikes when you jump on a cracked tile; after a few seconds, the spikes begin to disappear, but quicker than the appearing spikes. If you make a long enough trail that the disappearing spikes catch up to the appearing ones, the spikes that remain stay there permanently. Unfortunately, when I trapped the boss on a permanent bed of spikes, he remained invincible half the time and it took far longer to kill. Touch Sense was so-so; half the time the fireballs were not co-operating, but I killed them both just in time, so the white-out happened early.

Other comments

I hope you guys enjoy this run as much as I tore my hair out making it. This run would not have been possible without Upthorn contributing a basic RAM watch list for me to reference. Here is an updated version of the watch list:
0
17
0CC4B	00FFAC4B	b	s	0	Angle
0CC4D	00FFAC4D	b	s	0	Target Angle
0CC1B	00FFAC1B	w	s	0	Height
0CC5E	00FFAC5E	w	s	0	Button Accel.x
0CC60	00FFAC60	w	s	0	Button Accel.y
0CC3B	00FFAC3B	w	s	0	Slide.x
0CC3F	00FFAC3F	w	s	0	Slide.y
0CC22	00FFAC22	d	s	0	Speed.x
0CC26	00FFAC26	d	s	0	Speed.y
0CC66	00FFAC66	w	s	0	Position.x
0CC68	00FFAC68	w	h	0	Subpixel.x
0CC6A	00FFAC6A	w	s	0	Position.y
0CC6C	00FFAC6C	w	h	0	Subpixel.y
0D0C5	00FFB0C5	b	s	0	Sword Charge
0D0CB	00FFB0CB	b	s	0	Sword Return
0D0D4	00FFB0D4	d	s	0	Sword Speed.x
0D0D8	00FFB0D8	d	s	0	Sword Speed.y

Suggested screenshots


adelikat: Good votes and viewer response. Accepting for publication and processing.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2434: Eratyx's Genesis Crusader of Centy in 43:40.17
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EDIT: I love this game very much,this game is develop/test wisdom. I am now enjoying it,nice jump and nice glitch,Eratyx,thank you for your TAS.You play it easily and skillfully.
work hard
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Wow.
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Surprisingly good run for an RPG game. The speed and glitches were very nice, the music and atmosphere was very enjoyable to watch, Yes vote.
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mklip2001
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This was a spectacular watch. The sliding and damage boosting were pretty awesome, and they seemed like they'd be really hard to control outside of a TAS. It was tough to see sometimes which animal helpers you had at which points, but that didn't end up mattering too much. You definitely took a big game and made it pretty short. Yes vote. Also, I laughed when I saw Sonic on the beach. I realized shortly afterward how much of the music sounded like it could be from a Sonic game.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
honorableJay
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Definitely a cool watch. I never even heard of this game, but I was kept entertained from start to finish :)
Joined: 6/4/2009
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wow i'm totaly caught of guard, a TAS of soleil ? i'm gonna watch it ASAP, one of the best genesis game (it was called the genesis " zelda" back then when the magazines reviewed it and it's seriously as good as a zelda)
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If any of the encoders would deign to make an encoding of this movie, they'd gain some instant karma. :)
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easy yes vote, it's always incredible to see how a game look so short when tased..... realy good use of physics too !
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mklip2001 wrote:
Also, I laughed when I saw Sonic on the beach.
It's not only Sonic, even Link made a cameo in this game: I agree with all the previous comments, the run is pretty good, there's no need to fast forward in any part of the game, unlike other RPG's... I was entertained the whole run, hard to believe it's your first TAS, Yes vote to you.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
Post subject: Updated Encode 3 with Archive.org link
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That was great! Yes voted. Encode 1: Archive.org Filesize: 138 megabytes Bitrate: 350 Audio quality: 0 Encode 2: Mediafire Filesize: 99 megabytes Bitrate: 250 Audio quality: -1 Encode 3: Archive.org Torrent (Will be inactive when publication is made) Filesize: 105 megabytes Bitrate: 250 Audio quality: 0 Video streaming website: DailyMotion Note: This video comes in three parts, if DailyMotion fails to tell you to go to the next video when nearing the end of a segment, there is a manual link inside the video description. Of all the encodes I suggest downloading, I recommend the first one, I consider the third one most publish worthy (If a publication happens), but I get the feeling a certain someone will 1-up me. ^_^ Only the second encode is on Mediafire due to its 100 megabyte file size limit. The torrent exists due to earlier problems with uploading the video, now it is just up just in case you are unable to use the archive.org upload. =3
Post subject: Re: Replaced torrents
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Downloading and sharing, anything to spread awareness of this game :3
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Okay, I managed to get the Encode 3 Archive.org link working, but I'll be seeding the torrent anyway.
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I hate to nitpick, but the sound on your encode is a bit off. The sword throw sounds hollow and grating, the jumps are higher-pitched, and some sound effects seem to have different priorities (i.e. throwing sound being more important than a jump sound). Did you use Gens to record it?
upthorn
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I suspect what you're hearing is either the presence or lack of "PSG high quality" and/or "soften filter" options in the sound menu. If either of those are different in the encode than your settings, the sound will be significantly different than what you're used to hearing. Incidentally, PSG High Quality and Soften Filter options should be off for site encodes, due to the way they change the audio.
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Voted yes on this one. Really a nice run. :)
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upthorn wrote:
I suspect what you're hearing is either the presence or lack of "PSG high quality" and/or "soften filter" options in the sound menu. If either of those are different in the encode than your settings, the sound will be significantly different than what you're used to hearing. Incidentally, PSG High Quality and Soften Filter options should be off for site encodes, due to the way they change the audio.
Yep, they're both turned off for me. Mainly because when I watched the Shining Force run, the altered PSG really sounded horrible, though I am happy to see this also applys to ordinary encode standards too. And before I forget to mention it (Prompted by questions from confused people), I suggest Encode 1 if you want the highest quality possible and Encode 3 if you want a more publish worthy encode. I did make this point in the original post... but uh, evidently, I must have edited out in some point. The torrent for Encode 3 is NOT one using the TASVideos.org tracker, it uses a completely different tracker, I half did it because I figured the archive.org upload would screw up (Which it did).
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This is one of the few games that I ever liked for the Genesis console. I'm glad someone remembered it and decided to make such a high quality run. Entertainment was high and precision was pretty spot on. Good work! Yes vote. Oh, and thanks to Flygon for the encode.
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Much thanks to Flygon for the encode. I quite enjoyed the run, especially the way you made a complete mockery of the game's various puzzles and obstacle courses. Clear yes vote. If I could change one thing about the run, it'd be waiting to start charging the sword throw until right before you need it. The charge sound is a bit grating, unfortunately. Still, that's a minor thing.
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Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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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. ---- [1378] Genesis Crusader of Centy by Eratyx in 43:40.17
Joined: 11/4/2007
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It has come to my attention that the DailyMotion uploads both have inaccurate end types and audio/visual desyncs. I'll reupload it to DailyMotion in a few days with a hand done encode when I am at my fathers house (My Mothers house has a 5gb download limit, and my plan is to literally just upload the H.264 lossless/PCM encodes rather then the official publication). It will be the exact same encode in content, but uploaded with a different codec (And perhaps ironically, the DailyMotion upload will actually have a higher quality of video then the published encode). I really do apologize for any inconvenience, due to the circumstances, it is completely out of my control.
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Wow, thanks for the award! I'm glad that my movie even made it to completion and publication, but the fact it got a "Best of 2009" award made EVERYTHING worth it!
EZGames69
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[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing