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Sega Genesis Games

Golden Axe 1, 2 and 3 Game: Golden Axe

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Posted: 12/6/2016 2:21 AM

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galedog

Player (146)

Joined: 12/28/2013
Posts: 22
Location: USA

I've considered making a TAS of Golden Axe 2, but the problem is that I really don't think strategies would differ much from the RTA route. Some possible differences would be never riding the mounts because the down stab is stronger. But any time that a mount isn't available, you'd basically be doing the same thing: damage buffering before a down stab or looping high HP enemies with down stabs. As for 2players, it would certainly be longer because more enemies spawn, not at once, but in succession as you kill them. Character choice for a 2 player run shouldn't matter as the magic from both Gilius and Ax are useless, weak, and have slow animations. here is an RTA route video I made and my current personal best(worst) RTA run for reference Link to video Link to video

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Posted: 12/19/2016 3:29 PM
(Edited: 12/19/2016 3:52 PM)

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galedog

Player (146)

Joined: 12/28/2013
Posts: 22
Location: USA

So, out of curiosity, I started working on the genesis version of GA1 with 2 players to see how much faster it could be. The current TAS is very optimized, I'm only 180 frames ahead after stage 1. Link to video I think I'm losing around 10-15 frames on the second set of downstabs on the purple guys at the beginning. No matter how many re-records I tried using the change direction trick, they always dodged if I jumped too close to them, so I had to opt for a bit of distance. It still saved around a second just because Gilius is there to kill the top guy at the same time though. Some more frames are lost by default on the first bonus stage because the gnome steals magic from both characters, so he has to be struck 5 times. I considered using Gilius's level 3 magic on the boss as a trade-off to empty his slots, but the animation is way slower in the port than in the arcade version. This is the only bonus stage where that'll happen though since I can just keep him empty for the rest of the run.

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Posted: 12/19/2016 3:30 PM

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Spikestuff

They/Them

Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2631)

Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6435
Location: The land down under.

galedog wrote:

The current TAS is very optimized, I'm only 180 frames ahead after stage 1.

The current TAS is also "1 player" not "2 players". Going by Battletoads as the example. This will be accepted alongside the 1 player version.

WebNations/Sabih wrote:

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Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.

Posted: 12/19/2016 3:46 PM

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galedog

Player (146)

Joined: 12/28/2013
Posts: 22
Location: USA

Spikestuff wrote:

The current TAS is also "1 player" not "2 players".

That's why I stated how optimized it is. Even with 2 characters killing most enemies on the first frame they spawn and generally saving time, only 3 seconds were saved on the entire stage.

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Posted: 12/20/2016 9:00 PM

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Paused

Joined: 5/9/2005
Posts: 752

Ah, hoped your Arcade run would inspire someone to do a 2player TAS of the console version. That someone being you is even better. Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Posted: 12/21/2016 11:20 AM

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galedog

Player (146)

Joined: 12/28/2013
Posts: 22
Location: USA

Small update: I managed to get about 15 of those frames back from the downstabs at the start of stage 1, and I got a better AI pattern on the bonus stage which saved a few more.

Paused wrote:

Ah, hoped your Arcade run would inspire someone to do a 2player TAS of the console version. That someone being you is even better. Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Well my current prediction is not expecting much. The current 1-player TAS hardly loses any frames at all. I'm thinking at most this will be around 15-20 seconds faster. But we'll see.

Spikestuff wrote:

Going by Battletoads as the example. This will be accepted alongside the 1 player version.

Yeah that makes sense.

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Posted: 8/15/2018 9:58 PM

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Utterrandomness

Joined: 3/1/2011
Posts: 7

I don't know if anyone is interested in this game anymore, but I did a very quick test run to show how easily the published movie can be improved: Link to video Several known improvements to just this brief run:

-The woman kills weaker enemies faster, so should've swapped enemies with the man at the start. -The screen wasn't scrolled far enough to the right after hitting the elves, so the next enemies spawn late. -The last wave should've had the man and woman swap targets for same reason as first 3 enemies (the last enemy killed would not have been faster with team attack though). Despite the improvements, this is already roughly 6 seconds faster than published run. There are some other theoretical improvements too:

Using the giant instead of the sword man would give an arguably better team attack, as the giant is flung instead of the woman. As she's faster to kill weak enemies, and faster to move, having her able to act earlier is probably more advantageous. The giant's strong attack (attack + jump + forward) is possibly faster than the sword man's as well (not tested). Using the Panther with the woman could also work well, as their team attack makes them split in direction, possibly really useful when surrounded. Would also be easy to spam due to covering both directions, so position matters less. The lower range than other team attacks may hurt a bit, but this could be worked around. These two have the weakest normal attacks, but are the two fastest moving characters, and the normal attacks would only be used minimally anyway. I'd wager that having the woman on the team would be ideal regardless, as her strong attack is incredibly spammable, and her tag attacks with the other characters seem to be more useful than with the sword man. The panther+sword man may have the best team attack for speed, but it's possible that they lose too much time elsewhere, or that other team attacks can be just as quick/quicker overall anyway.

Posted: 1/13/2019 9:22 PM

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garland

Player (19)

Joined: 7/29/2018
Posts: 5

I have been trying to figure out how the RNG works in Golden Axe 1 (on Sega Genesis). Specifically, the patterns the thieves run around the screen. I think the RAM address CB20 is used in some way. If I watch it as a 2 byte unsigned integer it goes up 4 every frame the game is running (not including loading frames). It sometimes randomly goes up 8 on a frame but I could not find a pattern. By freezing this address I was able to reproduce specific patterns the thief moves around in arcade mode at the camp after stage 1. I poked the address with numbers from 0-80 going up 4 each time and found 7 patterns, but I could not see any pattern to it so I'm guessing the game generates a seed based on this address value on a given frame to determine which pattern to use. I tried going up 1 number at a time, the thief doesn't ever load if I use an odd number, and even numbers that are not a division of 4 still work. I took a screen grab of where the thief moved with each address https://imgur.com/a/ZgJ0fHW I also noticed by freezing and unfreezing the address that the direction the thief will move next is generated some time before it moves, and the address is re-used before it moves each time. I was hoping to find a way to manipulate the rng in a way I could use for real time runs but it looks like this won't be possible due to it being bound to time at such a small denominator. For a TAS though, you can pause the game to alter the rng as the counter keeps going even when paused. I would be interested to know other people's thoughts on whether my conclusions are accurate and if there is any more testing I can do? Below are the ram addresses of note: CB20: Game time counter (used for rng) C17A: Possibly another game time counter but it doesn't seem to be linked to seconds like the previous address, I don't think it's used for rng

Posted: 4/18/2019 4:59 AM

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