In this TAS, the game is played on Normal difficulty and without the use of zips. This means the route is quite different in some stages. The most notable example is Pinball Zone, where the last 2 major rooms in the escape are played out instead of completely skipping them. The motivation behind this TAS is to compare to the main RTA speedrun category. There were actually quite a few strats found during the creation that have already been implemented, such as in Big Board, Pinball Zone, 40 Below, and Golden Passage.
In terms of optimization, it's mostly the same as the baseline normal TAS with some very slight improvements here and there. The most likely stage for improvement in the future is Pinball Zone due to how open-ended a lot of the movement is; it takes a lot of effort to optimize throwing objects and when that's extended to an entire stage with lots of platforms it only makes it more difficult.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: There are some complicated things, needing to be discussed. Not because this isn't optimized, but because of the classification and lack of enthusiasm for placing this into "Alternative". I've been discussing with the judges and I'm dropping this so that I can see what a more senior level judge has to say about this submission.
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: The run got good feedback, and I watched it side-by-side with
[5096] GBA Wario Land 4 "Normal" by Reseren in 35:51.82 to determine how different it is. Without knowing the game, given its insane pace, it was really hard to tell what just happened and why everything is different now, and it took a rewatch each time to see how the published run clipped though something and is now in the next room, while this submission has to use a route closer to intended. Not all clips/zips save huge amount of time, because levels are relatively small, but there's a lot of them, so overall the 5 minute difference is explainable.
Even if the difference between this and the run with zips may not be giant overall, it still makes sense to start by accepting things to standard and Alternative, and only then when we see overlap - to obsolete things as needed. Also it doesn't even have to be insanely entertaining, because we want to encourage people to make more of entertainment-based content like playarounds, and the only way to incentivize it is by lowering the requirements so people feel safe while experimenting.
So while this branch may be obsoleted in the future by a fully glitchless run, it's still worth having it in Alt until then (if that even happens). Accepting.
