Shadow Blasters was realeased in 1990 in Japan and North America.
The evil god Ashura has unleashed hordes of monsters and demons onto Earth.
The good god Hyprion arrives to earth and shares his powers with four humans to defeat Ashura.
Movie features:
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.2
- Takes damage to save time
- Hardest difficulty
- Genre: Platform
Memory addresses:
1B15 - Boss hp
0CAA - power
0C04 - speed
0C08 - jump
0BFE - health
123E - last boss hp
1 or 2 players?
There's no more power-ups in two-player mode so it takes a lot more time to get characters as fast as in 1-player mode.
Characters
There are four different characters to choose from, but in this run only Horatio is used because his attack is the strongest.
Moving
Jumping saves a little time over walking. Being at the apex of jump when "awakening" a boss saves 349 frames compared to just walking.
Power-ups
Killing an enemy always gives a certain power-up. Making enemies spawn is only slightly manipulatable.
Power-ups are:
-power (0-9)
-speed (1-4)
-jump (1-4)
-health (0-9)
Upgrading power shortens the charge time of more powerful attacks.
JUMP GLITCH:
Used in Future level, if you are under a platform and jump into it and press left and right you get a push forward.
At first I only used it in the heaven level as a shortcut to go though the wall.
STAGES:
You can choose the order but it isn't trivial.
Mountain has to be first since you can max your power and thus kill the boss faster.
There you can also get two speed-ups.
Then it gets trickier. Boss of Harbor stage has an estimate of 300 frame cycle when it can't be harmed.
So you have to do other stages first to minimize the waiting time at Harbor boss.
Glen is the second choice for the fastest speed-up. After that speed is maxed and the order doesn't matter anymore.
After the first six stages you have to go through hell and heaven stages.
01,160 - First speed-up.
02,140 - I intentionally miss the power-up because I can get the last one faster just before the boss.
03,000 - I have to sacrifice a few frames killing enemies and getting two power-ups (power and speed) without actually collecting them.
05,475 - A lot of enemies on screen creates lag, so you have to throw a few frames to keep the screen clear enough.
06,500 - Golem boss is the first one where you shorten the wait time by jumping at the right time.
11,955 - The beast boss has to be manipulated by slowing down a frame.
14,550 - The waiting time in Slime boss is very close to minimal.
17,060 - Jump glitch pushed me forward to save about 20 frames.
17,880 - Same as above.
18,300 - You can damage the Brain boss through it's force field.
21,200 - Improving the previous run by 81 the Demon boss now is very cooperative to come down to play earlier.
23,800 - Jumping through the wall saves about 40 seconds of walking around.
24,300 - The boss can't be damaged when it is attacking so an awkwardly looking 28 frame wait.
Thanks for Memory! Questoning my strategy made me look for improvements. Also the mentioning the character position addresses made looking for improvements faster.
Memory: Replacing with 275 frame improvement.
Memory: With the improvements, optimization seems fairly solid.
While the beginning parts of this run can be fairly repetitive, there are some fairly cool glitches towards the end, especially after the improvements. Audience response was almost non-existent, but I think this is solid enough.
Accepting to Moons.
