This is an improvement of this TAS:
Ok, I've improved on my old TAS by 1 minute, and I'm proud of it! Now, I'm going to explain some things about this TAS:
Routing
So, the route is very simple to understand, you just go to the six areas to get all the Arcane Runes, the ones of which unlock the Tome of Phasing at 3, and the door to the final boss at 6. So, first is the forest area (I didn't bother to know the names of the areas) because it contains the Boots of Haste, which are needed in 5 of the 7 areas in the game, you could theoretically go to the fire area first, since no item requires the Boots of Haste in it, but its faster to go in the forest area first, then the fire area. Then, you go to the purple area, since it contains a Power Bomb, which are needed in every subsequent area, and it also contains Hops, which is both good because of higher jumps and Morph Ball jumps. Next is the blue area, which requires 2 consecutive power bombs, which demands RNG manipulation, which I'll explain why that's a problem later. Next is the water area, not much to add. And then there's the forest revisit, which is unavoidable without causing other instances of backtracking. And then its the red area, since its the final area, there isn't much to talk about, getting the Tome of Piercing early is actually faster, although it only saved about 3 seconds, and there a huge instance of backtracking when obtaining the Eradication, and if you could skip those walls, that is over 30 seconds saved! Then, after finishing the boss, you just head to the black area, collect the items there, and beat Ridley, pretty basic route.
Issues
The biggest problem in this game when it comes to TASing is the RNG: The enemy's drops, the enemy's placement, the enemy's patterns (although that only applied to the Chozo Warrior), all of that is only affected by one thing, Time. Do you see the problem already? RNG manipulation is extremely rudimentary, this means that if you want to get a specific enemy drop, or you need to have an enemy in the right place, you waste time every time you do that, and the biggest demonstrator of that is the need for the maximum amount of super missiles to the final boss. There's also the need for the 2 power bombs in the blue area, that is also a big problem, assuming the RNG could be manipulated by just pressing random buttons, I think some time could be saved.
Places to Improve
The biggest place to improve in are the power-up textboxes, the fastest way of going through them is holding A, then release and press A for 1 frame (the earliest frame possible), then, release the A button for 1 frame, then holding it again. Here's an visualization: AAAAAAAAAA_A_AAAAAAAAA. And all the way until Kraid's Arcane Rune, I just released for 1 frame and started holding the A button again: Like AAAAAAAAAAA_AAAAAAAAAAA. And if you were to add some cleaner movement, and assuming the RNG was on my side, you could maybe save a decent amount of time.
Extras
Shoutouts to
CoolKirby and
Darkman425 for fixing the once corrupted movie file, and shoutouts to everyone who told me information about the game. I hope to TAS another game again, who knows? Maybe it will be another Metroid Zero Mission ROM Hack, or maybe it will be a completely different game! Although it probably won't be now.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I got a bit mixed up on the rom used with the IPS here. :P Thanks to
Darkman425 for your help in this situation.
Nice improvements.
Accepting to "Standard" for publication.
