Gekisou Sentai Car Ranger - Zenkai! Racer Senshi (激走戦隊カーレンジャー 全開!レーサー戦士) in 7:43 (best ending).
Youtube encode, which is 30fps, uses some blending technique.
Emulator used: Snes9x v1.51
This game uses the Sufami Turbo. To play it, you need the Sufami Turbo BIOS (stbios.bin). You must put the BIOS in Snes9x bios folder. To load it in Snes9x, you must select File -> Open MultiCart... . In Slot A, put the game ROM. The BIOS filepath should show up in the BIOS field automatically. Click OK.
- Good ending
- Aims for fastest time
- Uses Up/Down + Left/Right
- Genre: Platform
About the game and the run
Even though this game doesn't really seem that bad, it sits in serious obscurity, like the majority of subpar titles, and pretty much Sufami Turbo itself. At least I made a contribution about 3 months ago, even if it was the bad ending run. :P
Despite being a Japanese game with no English release, this game has more English than Japanese, though it's not like the game is so complex that it needs any sort of written language to describe what to do. I go for the good ending this time, which does award you at least with a congratulatory screen, and a rank depending on how many parts you collected.
There are five stages. You get to choose one of the five Rangers for each stage (with repetitions allowed). Each Ranger has something special about them:
- Green Ranger can float in air if you hold jump.
- Pink Ranger can double jump.
- Red Ranger has a bigger punch.
- Yellow Ranger runs faster.
- Blue Ranger can slide (sort of) with down+jump.
For the purposes of this run, I only use Yellow Ranger (for speed) and Red Ranger (for bosses with long recovery cycles). When Red Ranger obtains the weapon powerup, his sword does 2 damage to bosses. As far as I know, this is the only way to do 2 damage in the game; all other attacks and Rangers do 1 damage. Green, Pink, and Blue Rangers have projectile weapons as powerups, but they only do 1 damage.
To get the good ending, you need to end the game with at least 250 gears/parts/bolts/whatever. If you do, you get all the Car Ranger parts and RV Robo shows up in the ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending. I carefully planned out the 250 parts, visiting areas that have a large number of 10-part boxes. I often obtain parts through careful kicking, without even slowing down. Interestingly enough, I managed to find improvements relative to my bad ending run as well, even though the run is about a minute slower due to going for the good ending.
Every 50 parts, there is an orb delay. In addition, unless it is the last stage, there is an additional cutscene after the stage of you collecting these cool vehicles. If you get all vehicles, RV Robo appears in the cutscene as well. The fastest way to reduce all this cutscene time is to collect 49 parts in the first three stages, then at least 201 parts in the last two. However, there simply isn't enough parts in the last two stages for it to be worthwhile, having to go well out of the way in order to get the 201 parts. The next best is to collect 99 parts in the first three stages, and 151 parts in the last two, which I do. Also, I collect 100 parts in the fourth stage, so that I only obtain two cars, rather than three.
I decided to do the good ending run because there were some people who wanted to see it. I still think the bad ending is funny, though.
RAM Addresses
7E1101: X position
7E1A50: enemy's HP
Progress Log
- Mar. 5, 2012: Testing. About 1 hour.
- Mar. 6, 2012: More testing. Less than an hour.
- Mar. 10, 2012: TASed until the first part of Stage 2, about 2 hours.
- Mar. 11, 2012: TASed until beating the midboss of Stage 4, about 4 hours.
- Mar. 12, 2012: TASed up to but not including the final boss in Stage 5, about 3 hours.
- Mar. 15, 2012: Finished the last boss.
Like the previous run, this is a short project.
Run Info
Beginning
Here's where Up+Down comes in play: pressing Up+Down skips the company logo screen! Note that Up+Down is the only one which works; Left+Right certainly does not work, and no other button combination skips it either. Too bad Up+Down/Left+Right serves no other purpose as far as I know.
Stage 1
I choose Yellow Ranger.
There was a bit of lag due to kicking the parked vehicles for parts, losing 3 frames.
It is faster to kick the midboss dead rather than use the laser on it. The laser destroys it faster, but the delay makes it slower overall. For enemies like the midboss, I use a kick-jump cycle in a way such that landing cancels kick delay as soon as a kick hits. It can be used to cancel delay on every third kick. I saved 8 frames here.
I didn't mention it in the previous submission, but running off ledges saves a frame as opposed to jumping off of it. So I saved some frames in the next part.
The boss dies to a flurry of kicks. The kick-jump cycle works here too. Note that the boss is stunned when hit at a specific timing.
This run is 10 frames faster than the bad ending run at this point.
Stage 2
Yellow Ranger again.
Throughout the game, there are pits that look like bottomless pits, but are just different routes. Most of the time, the different routes are slower. This time however, taking the first pit is much faster than the over route.
Through luck manipulation of the boss, I manage to make him not attack as his first action. This saves many frames. Similarly to the previous boss, he dies to a kick-jump cycle. Normally, he is hit with a couple kicks every time he jumps. This is good, because he alternates between attacking and jumping, depending on whether his HP is even or odd. If he attacks, he cannot be hit.
This run is about 70 frames faster than the bad ending run at this point. So far, the paths are still the same.
Stage 3
Now I take Red Ranger. This stage is where the two runs diverge.
In the previous run, I took damage at the first miner, using recoil to throw me forward. However, I found a way to avoid taking damage, and even save time. So now the run no longer has the "Takes damage to save time" tag. (There is some extraneous damage after beating the third boss, but I don't even consider that taking damage to save time.)
I need to luck-manipulate to get past one of the miners. I go out of the way to collect the two 10-part boxes, although it takes 10 seconds or so. In one of the parts, you're supposed to go down in a vase, just like Super Mario Bros. 2 (U), although the going-down part is not visible.
In the next long part, I get the sword and some parts here. The middle section is glitchy, especially when there are a lot of sprites.
The boss takes 8 hits from the sword; 16 with any other attack. His recovery cycles are long. So you see why I used Red Ranger here. Yellow Ranger is maybe 5 seconds or so faster running through the stage, but 15 seconds slower at the boss.
Stage 4
I take Red Ranger again.
I somehow gain a lot of parts just by kicking. In order to gain the great number of necessary parts, I go into the bottom section, where there are three 10-part boxes. I somehow gain two weapon upgrades, although it doesn't do any more than one weapon upgrade. Near the end of the bottom part, I have to destroy the left gun, because it is too hard to avoid the shots otherwise. I still gain 2 parts from it.
I found out that you can hit the midboss twice every cycle. This makes it almost twice as fast, and saves a lot of time.
The next part has some falling missiles. But they can easily be jumped over without slowing down. I also gain a lot of parts here.
The boss takes 12 hits from the sword; 24 with any other attack. His recovery cycles are long like the Stage 3 boss. Normally, he uses the bubble and tornado attacks unpredictably, but when using the sword here, he just alternates them.
Stage 5
I take Yellow Ranger.
Inside the building, I need to take the underground route for the remaining parts. Against the midboss here, the kick-jump cycle is actually slower than just rapid-attacking on the ground. I blame it on the hitbox which is rather low in height.
I end the game with 250 parts, the bare minimum for the good ending. It's still enough for a "Hero" rank at the end. And no, the game does not say "GOOD END".
Nach: This run and the bad ending run are pretty similar. Since there is little uniqueness to each, and this run is more optimal, and the longer parts are actually more entertaining, I'm accepting this as an improvement to the existing run.
In fact, the moon screenshot and the princess screenshot were used for the Nicovideo video thumbnails for the bad and good ending runs, respectively. May not be exact, though.
