Flashback is a prince of Persia style platformer for the Sega Genesis. It has some major glitches which allow for large portions of this otherwise long game to be skipped. The present TAS implements a new version of the Walk through walls glitch along with improved routing to save over a minute over the published run.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.9.4
  • Beats the game as fast as possible
  • Heavy glitch abuse

Comments

Currently the longest non-obsoleted movie on this site, Flashback has been known to be improvable for some time. The current strats are all contained in an RTA run done here. The game does not scroll at all, so every screen requires a transition ~1 second in length, so it's no wonder no one was eager to improve it.
The major improvements of the run come from a new way to walk through walls, which is faster in many (but not all) such circumstances. This also allows for some small route optimizations here and there along the way. Also a new route in the final level saves about 20 seconds.
There are two spots where I do lose time compared to the original run, right at the end of level 5 and right at the start of level 7. In fact in general, I was not able to recreate any of the strats employed in the previous run that involved the behavior of enemies. In most cases this wasn't a problem, I was able to find slightly better ones, but those 2 instances cost about 2 seconds combined. A final instance where I lose time is in fighting the boss on top of the tower in level 4. For some reason, his animation takes noticeably longer to perform between hits then in the original publication.
I'll forgo the stage by stage comments, there is nothing particularly new.

Other comments

Overall this run was somewhat easy, but also a bit boring to make. The constant screen transitions do get tedious. It would be accurate to say I made this run purely for the sake of obsoleting another 2004 run. Also for those who are interested in statistics, only one run from 2004 remains assuming this run makes it to publication, Combatribes. Also, only 3 games are left in the 2xx series of publications (Umihara Kawase was the last of the 1xx series.) There will always be a new 'longest non-obsoleted movie' of course, and when the last of the 2004 movies is done you can just replace it with 2006. When does this cease to be a relevant measure of anything? Was it ever? What represents the State-of-the-Art in TASing?
Anyway...I think this movie could be improved if a consistent way to manipulate enemies is found. So far all I can see is time (you might notice me stop for a couple to a couple dozen frames for this reason.) Of course a sequence break could also save significant time, but I'm not sure where such a thing might be found.
Enjoy!

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: It's an interesting game, and the new walk-through-wall glitches help to make the run a bit more interesting, but the majority of the run is plagued by repetitive, slow and somewhat boring gameplay. Accepting to the Vault as an improvement to the published run.
feos: Yep.

TASVideoAgent
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I'm currently making a temp encode. A temp encode is being uploaded. My internet is slow right now so it'll take some time to upload, but hopefully it shouldn't take too long. Link to video (Edit) Ooh, I forgot to comment on the actual TAS. By the way, Yes vote. Though given the nature of this TAS I had to go back and refresh myself with how the game is actually played in order to somewhat understand what was going on. The screen transitions do get a little tiresome, but if you like the game in the first place or have played it at all before then you're probably used to that.
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I wanted to ask why you took damage some times. I can't remember the exact times you did. But watching the Longplay, combat is a SLOW ass thing in later parts of the game.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Alyosha
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Thanks for the encode Tehberral! Taking damage, let's see... A few times taking damage knocks you back in a convenient way, such as falling down to a platform without having to turn around, take a step, turn back around, and drop down, you'll see this in level 2. A few times it is for the invincibility frames that let you get by a group of enemies, you'll see this in the tower. One time it was unfortunately just unavoidable at the start of level 7, although it wasn't so bad as it knocks you forward to a convenient spot. And yes combat in this game is not fun at all, it is incredibly rare that killing an enemy is worth while, the only time this happens is in level 2 with one of those sentry spheres, that would otherwise prevent you from doing a wall clip, and the enemies in level 1 that would otherwise shoot you, but they only take 1 shot.
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Thanks for your quest of updating old movies. It's been doing good things for the site, I think. This run is pretty good, but Flashback has always been a game that's more fun to play than it is to watch. With everything getting skipped, it gets even more monotonous. The new glitching is pretty neat though, especially in the last level. I am a little confused about that level though. What actually is necessary for it to end? (You take a detour to some item in the lower-left, for instance.) And how do you get stuck in the wall on one of the falls you do?
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.
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The "Ending" is triggered when you take the charge (The Red Stick) and place it at a particular point in the map (I think) then the player reaches a point on the map that triggers the ending.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
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I hated this game as a child, could never figure it out. Great Job!
mklip2001
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hegyak: That's what I would think, but that point is never visited. When you reach the spot where you're supposed to drop the charge, you get a dialog bit with a voice in your head that tells you to put the charge there. This run never goes deep enough in the planet to find that spot. Now, the door to the escape ship is only supposed to open when you reach that point, but the walk-through-walls glitch renders that useless. I guess I'm wondering why the player doesn't just go for that door right away and instead goes down the vertical shaft with the wallclip.
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.
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222999
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Alyosha
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The item you have to go get in the final level is a key. Using that key on the locked door where I drop the teleporter triggers a cutscene, which is what tells the game you are in the final area. (You might notice that an enemy that is standing right next to me disappears after the cutscene.) So in this particular instance it is not skippable. You land on that wall by turning around after dropping off the platofrm above you, a rarely used move by itself. Another glitch in a game full of glitches.
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I'm glad you're updating all these old unobsoleted runs, the improvements are more fun to watch and it's usually surprising how much time can be saved. This movie was nicely optimized and included some funny tricks, though I found it to get kind of repetitive after a few minutes. I did watch the whole run though, so I'll vote Meh. I suggest 11014 for the screenshot, or somewhere around it. It just looks really funny to see the character dramatically jumping around in the one area of the screen he's not supposed to be in.
feos wrote:
222999
I liked that too, it reminds me of the aesthetically pleasing 12:23.34 of the Mega Man run.
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great improvement, yes vote on the emulator side in tehberral's encode the second counter (lag counter) seems to only count loading zones and not slowdowns ( frame drop or real LAG? ) am i correct or do i get something wrong there ?
Alyosha
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Nicos wrote:
great improvement, yes vote on the emulator side in tehberral's encode the second counter (lag counter) seems to only count loading zones and not slowdowns ( frame drop or real LAG? ) am i correct or do i get something wrong there ?
oh good point I forgot to mention this. The game doesn't lag in the traditional sense, it just does less each frame when there is too much to keep track of. I'm not sure of the details, but I think it is something like only updating a fixed number of actors on the screen per frame. I'm not sure of any other examples of games that do things this way to compare it too. Can anyone think of any?
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I think Phoenix has a maximum of three enemies attacking at a given time. And there are some Beat 'em ups in which some enemies won't actively pursue the player as long as there are other enemies doing so. Double Dragon II comes to my mind, though I'm not sure about that.
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So basically, this game is "Out of this Oddworld"?
LOAD TO SUNRISE
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derula wrote:
So basically, this game is "Out of this Oddworld"?
it's the same editor, Delphine Software, and both are based on prince of persia....
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. ---- [2844] Genesis Flashback: The Quest for Identity by Alyosha in 22:29.99
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I greatly approve of this.