Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 636
Location: Seattle, WA
Link to videoDownload .bk2 file here.
Hi! I was looking for something new to play on the Game Boy and found this action adventure. Early in the original GB's existence, this Lolo-Zelda makes a simple fetch quest of Ultima 4's runes, buried at the bottom of caves. Not a very complex adventure, but it being fast-paced and flexible enough for TAS strategies made me think it would be a fun run to gun down.
So, here's a test TAS that completes the game in 30:21. A final time will be easily sub-30, as the usual mid-run discoveries taught me faster techs and provided a need to rethink dungeon order.
Fun Facts:
* There are three difficulty options, but their effects are very limited: They only decide what happens to the player upon death. Easy mode means you restart the room. Medium mode means you leave the dungeon, inventory and cash intact. Hard mode means you leave the dungeon and lose your money and consumables. Since this is a no-deaths run, the difficulty selection makes zero difference, however I picked Hard just for precedent's sake.
* You can select one of four characters. Shamino is balanced, Mariah has high MP, Dupre has high HP/low speed, and Iolo has high speed and a Bow. With Iolo being about a frame per tile faster from the start of the game, he's the best TAS choice.
* The only equipment I pick up are the Magic Rope, which can cross one tile of water at a time, the Wand of Fireballs, which costs 1/8th of an MP to burn special webs and does double Iolo's starting Bow's damage, and the Rod of Lightning, which costs the same to kill the Black Knight and does triple damage to everything else.
* The items I use are Food (a carryable full health refill,) Potions (same for MP,) Jars of Oil (A single use explosive), Magic Boots (allow you to walk over all tiles for one room.), and the Ankh (immediate warp to Lord British, all characters start with this and it never runs out.)
* Runes increase your stats on pickup based on their associated Principles: Compassion raises Speed, Honesty raises MP, and Valor raises HP. Dungeons can be completed in any order, provided you have any necessary equipment. So, I selected an order that gave me all 4 speed increases as soon as possible. So:
--2. Hatred. Speed.
--3. Cowardice. Magic Rope crosses water tiles, and HP.
--4. Injustice. Speed and MP.
--1. Deceit. Wand of Fireballs melts special webs. Needs two trips, skips rune for now.
--5. Selfishness. Rod of Lightning kills the Black Knight. HP and Speed.
--7. Pride. HP, MP, and (supposedly) Speed.
--8. The Stygian Abyss. No benefits from the rune--game doesn't end until all 8 are picked up.
--1. Deceit. At full speed, the trip for the rune is faster. MP.
--6. Dishonor. HP and MP, but the game ends immediately on rune pickup.
* Partway in, I figured out that enemies can be hurt while flashing--it's not actually invincibility. I also learned that you cannot pick up another pair of Boots if you're currently using one. For clarity sake, you also can not carry two of the same kind of key at once.
* One major source of skips is that the game only saves the state of one previous room at a time. What that means is that when you leave a room, then leave that room and go into a third room, the room you originally left is returned to its default, untouched state. This trick can be used to pick up keys or items that the level designers originally intended to only ever be picked up once.
Planned Changes:
* At one point, I go into a couple towns to buy Food, Potions, or pick up hidden Jars of Oil. Those events would disappear in the final run--I was skipping these useful pieces of gear at first assuming I wouldn't need them, and um I do
* The final dungeon order will need to change. It turns out that Iolo reaches a speed cap after three upgrades. The rune at the bottom of Pride is supposed to give a Speed boost, but he gets none. That means that it's not actually faster to save the runes in Deceit and Dishonor until after the Abyss. The bonuses to HP and MP that they give will instead be picked up earlier to make me stronger for the Pride/Abyss gauntlet.
* Deceit is split into two runs because the cave splits very early on, and each path reaches a different goal. In the same room as the rune, though, there is a transport square that sends the player back to the very start of the dungeon, meaning it's possible to get the rune and the Wand of Fireballs in one run. I will have to test my doubts whether this is faster than coming back later, since this way Iolo would barely not yet be at max speed.
* Technically, Medium difficulty (or even Hard) could be used to allow for deathwarps, perhaps. I really can't think of anywhere that it would save time, though. The Ankh does the job perfectly fine, and you're refilled to full HP and MP whenever you pick up a rune, so it wouldn't even be convenient.
Anyone familiar with the game, check it out and tell me what you think! Any ideas and suggestions are welcome. I'm honestly surprised this game hasn't been TASed yet.
*Oh also!*
Thanks to Bizhawk's neat Dual GB feature, there's also the ability to TAS the game's two-player mode! Team-based dungeon delving in a completely separate set of caves from the 1P game could also make for a really interesting run. I haven't looked into it too deeply (or even found any maps online!) It's really cool that it exists, though, maybe I'll whip up a test.
