- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1 (MAME)
- Neo Geo BIOS: Asia NEO-MVH MV1C
- Aims for fastest time
- Uses hardest difficulty
Introduction
Ganryu (Japanese name: Musashi Ganryu Tale) is an action platformer game released in 1999 by Visco for the Neo Geo MVS. Although it was never originally ported to its home console counterpart; the Neo Geo AES, officially endorsed aftermarket conversions of the game made by indie developer and publisher JoshProd were released for the AES and Sega Dreamcast in 2016 and 2017.
This is a 5030 frame improvement over X2poet's TAS from 2011, thanks to better movement, boss fights, and the addition of a Wrong Warp glitch on Stage 4.
You can fast forward through the "Ready, GO!" text at the start of each level with any of the three useable buttons (A, B and C), and you can skip entire pre-boss dialogue sequences with C. About 25 seconds of time-save come from this alone.
- Stage 1 - Avenger
The fastest form of movement in this game is sliding (Down + B), so unless it's a few frames faster to casually walk up to something, that makes up most of what you'll be seeing throughout the levels.
About half a second is saved on this stage from using my chain on two poles to get up to a higher place and cut down on some wall hopping.
When you watch the two TASes back-to-back, the first boss demonstrates how they'll react depending on where the player is and what they're doing (attacking, jumping, etc). In X2poet's TAS, Yasha-hime spits out fire from her mouth once, fires her gun three times, and jumps once. In my TAS, Yasha-hime spits out fire from her mouth once, fires her gun twice, and also jumps twice. I wouldn't necessarily call this "RNG manipulation", but then again, it's not like most of the bosses follow consistent patterns on a casual playthrough. Because I ended up getting a different pattern, I'm able to sneak in an extra hit before Yasha-hime breaks apart for her second phase.
A big difference during the second phase is that after I land my fourth hit on Yasha-hime's face, I deliberately stay grounded so I can lure her into doing her fire breath attack to get more hits in on her. 16 frames are saved on this fight.
- Stage 2 - Assassin
I save 15 frames pretty early on by holding Down so that Musashi doesn't grab onto a platform on the first drop down.
Two seconds are saved towards the end from using the chain to grab onto a tree trunk and skip wall hopping altogether.
12 frames are saved on the Kikunojo fight. Aside from him moving away from me differently once, the patterns X2poet and I got are pretty much the same.
- Stage 3 - Ambition
This stage was already optimised enough as is, so I ended up tying with the old TAS here.
31 frames are saved on the boss here, and aside from the larve-like things spawning at different times for me, our patterns were once again identical.
- Stage 4 - Evilgod
Now here's where most of the time-save comes from: the Wrong Warp. At the beginning of this stage, there are pillars rising from the water that you have to swing across using your chain. Normally, you'd just die if you say, miss one and fall off-screen, but if you grab onto a pillar at the last moment while falling out of the screen, instead of dying, you somehow skip the rest of the stage and go straight to the boss. A whopping 56 seconds are saved thanks to this Wrong Warp.
There are a lot of other attacks that the Demon God doesn't end up using because of the aggressive playstyle that X2poet and I adopt in his fight. Whereas X2poet gets four sets of falling rocks and a fire breath attack, I just get the four sets of rocks. 62 frames are saved on this boss.
- Stage 5 - Ganryujima War
9 frames are saved on what is essentially "Jump Up: The (Brief) Level" from touching the boss flag earlier.
If you stay too close to Chaos after he's done with one of his attacks, he'll warp to the other side away from you, so to rectify that, I back up just enough so that Chaos will do another attack instead of warping, and that I can still land hits on him in the process.
Special Thanks To...
- X2poet for their original TAS
- ghegs for "accidentally" discovering the Wrong Warp on Stage 4 during a one-life clear attempt
Darkman425: Nice improvements with the small level and boss fight optimizations as well as the big skip in Stage 4.
