You are a knight charged to save the four kingdoms of the world, except normal weapons are ineffective against the monsters. Instead, you must use your sword to strike a glowing orb called the Trialight like a pinball around the screen. The Trialight is used to destroy enemies and obstacles as you make your way through dungeons.

The goal of the game is collect the four elemental crystals to unlock the path to the final boss. Each temple where the crystal is located requires a specific character to be unlocked beforehand, and you must use that character for that temple. This TAS takes advantage of a programming error that allows you play as the required characters without ever needing to actually unlock them. On the very first frame of the character select screen you can pick any character before it blocks the characters you haven't unlocked yet. BUT, this only works after you have unlocked your first new Striker. I go to the fire kingdom as soon as possible and unlock the bird-like striker since he has the fastest movement. I'm then able to skip the character unlock stages in both the Earth and Water kingdoms.

D-Pad - Movement

A Button - Swing your weapon (16 frame duration)

Y Button - Use the special attack - Causes to Trialight to turn red and move very quickly in only the upwards direction while busting through up to four blocks at a time. Does not cause any extra damage to bosses or enemies. You need to collect the POW item drops to use it.

While the Trialight is in your swinging hitbox it will move in whatever direction you are holding. This means you can control the movement of the ball every frame that the swinging animation lasts (or until it leaves your hitbox).

The trialight will only follow a rough approximation of pinball physics. The RNG and your current position have a great deal of influence over how the ball will act once it hits a wall or enemy. And the RNG changes with every action.

Each Kingdom has 3 stages (except the first one which has 2), and each stage is composed of multiple rooms. For the most part, each room will require you to either get the Trialight through the opening in the top of the level or to defeat all the monsters in the stage.

This is your starting location, and you have to complete this first.

Bird Striker unlocked! So much movement.

The special character you're supposed to unlock is the only one that can open the gate in the first section of the temple level (for all kingdoms). So I just make sure the trialight is as close as possible to the barrier for the mermaid striker when she catches up. This is the only check the game makes to ensure you're using the right character.

Since you only get one frame in the character select screen to choose a locked character I need to make sure my pointer is only one spot away from the required striker when I enter the temple level of this kingdom. This is why I don't have both 1P and 2P as the bird striker for the first stage. (Which you're also not supposed to be able to have both players be the same striker, but we've already proven that the character select screen isn't very robust)

The earth dude moves SO slowly. Fortunately, he can still prove useful.

You have to re-fight one of the bosses, so I choose the path for the first boss which takes the fewest hits.

The final boss just take a bunch of hits against his weapon, his shield, and then finally his vital point.

And that's it! World Saved.

I chose this game for it's simple and unique gameplay and because it hadn't been done yet. It was a fun little project, and I hope to find more like these in the future.

14275, 18153, 20441, 26773, 29163

slamo: This is a nice choice for a TAS. After seeing some of the unassisted runs of this game, I can appreciate the manipulation that went into controlling the Trialight. You make it look easy, while it most definitely is not. Branchless is correct for this run because 2-player is faster and the content is the same between 1- and 2-player.

The voting was very positive despite the lack of posts, and I personally enjoyed this run. Accepting to Moons.

feos: Pub.

feos: According to the Publisher Guidelines, if the movie showcases an internal condition, it should have a label, so I'm adding it.

feos: The box cover and whatever is available of the manual show the game name as FireStriker, so using that.