Vicarious Visions took their own spin on a Power Rangers Time Force game, this time for the GBA. Being made by a western developer rather than a Japanese one, it certainly is a whole other beast compared to Natsume's GBC game. In life, there are two constants: flying kicks, and screen nukes, and in this TAS, you'll see more flying kicks than in a Bruce Lee movie, and more nukes...
To start, here are some basic, but very important things of note for the sake of TASing this game: The game's difficulty has been changed to Kid Mode, so not only will bosses be a bit more fragile, but the Ransik boss fight is skipped entirely, allowing the game to be completed quicker. Hints by Circut were also turned off, since every pop-up text box pauses the game for several frames.
Each ranger has a set of different stats that help with defeating enemies or traversing the levels. Health, Power, and Speed (and unlike the GBC version, speed actually makes you move faster. Yeah what a concept). However, not shown on the character select screen is a fourth stat: Jump. Yes, each ranger has a different jump height, and the difference is staggering. For example, the pink ranger is the best jumper in the game, and while the blue ranger beats her in speed, he is actually one of the worst jumpers in the game, making it hard to leap over multiple enemies at once. The only two important stats in a speedrun are in fact Speed and Jump, because you aren't going to fight enemies, and hardly bosses. You will instead spend much of your time dashing and jumping over enemies and across gaps, so rangers with more mobility are naturally going to be favored.
Energy is also a crucial part of the game. While every ranger starts with none, lightning bolts are scattered EVERYWHERE within the levels. The smaller onces fill a small portion of energy, while the larger ones max out the bar. The ranger's energy reserve is stored, even when switched out, and once full, holding down B allows the rangers to charge up a screen nuke. Having several of these stocked up allows you to quite literally nuke a boss into oblivion (although in Power Ranger speak, that means pushing the button that makes them grow.)
Weapons can be picked up to use as stronger attacks, such as slashes or laser blasts, both of which cost energy to use. They can also be used as stronger screen nuke variants. However, whenever you clear a level, they're gone and must be found again in the next one.
Note that, while you can switch rangers at any time so you can pick up another lightning bolt or clear that one gap you so wish to cross, you have to keep in mind that every time you open the character menu, you waste dozens of frames, as the game makes you wait before you can press A to select the ranger. At the same time, switching out rangers in boss fights to send out one screen nuke after another is still infinitely faster than actually hitting them with your fists and feet. As a result, optimizing routes for the least amount of ranger swaps and the most energy gains is highly recommended.
Another wrinkle to this whole routing thing is that levels also contain at least one Quantum Morpher, which temporarily adds the Quantum Ranger to your party, which has basically maxed out stats and his own energy bar. However, you'll lose the quantum ranger ability if you switch rangers or clear the level. There's also the matter of the Red Ranger, who is taken out at the end of the prologue level, and (like the other rangers in the game) can only be revived by picking up the regular Chrono Morphers scattered in the levels. Because of mid mobility, he is only useful as another energy stock, and frankly you don't need so many screen nukes that he would be useful.
In terms of advance techniques, one of the biggest abilities used in this TAS is dashing, a technique that is done just by double-tapping forward. Seems simple enough, right? ...Yeah, it is. However, you will first need to get a running start to do so, so every dash takes several frames to start up. Thus, you'll need to maintain as much dash momentum as possible. The first one is the dash punch, which is done just by pressing B as you propel forward. This is a pretty normal move, but, when used near the end of your dash, can be used to give yourself a bit more distance. This is not used very much in this TAS, as a much more powerful technique is present.
That other technique is the flying kick. This game has two jump kicks, depending on when in the jump you press B. When you are going up, you'll do the flying kick. This is usually unremarkable, and jumping kills your momentum. However, pressing B the VERY FRAME AFTER pressing A will start the kick before your momentum is lost. This will let you shoot forward in the air at a greater speed. As a frame-perfect input, it's exceedingly difficult to preform RTA, but fortunately doesn't have much punishment for failing. You also can't change the trajectory of your flying kick, so the only control you have is how long you hold A for. An important thing about the dash punch and dash flying kicks is that you can't chain them together for one particularly long dash, so you have to decide which one to use on a moment-to-moment basis.
The dive kick, executed by pressing B while falling or double jumping, will send you going straight down at a diagonal. This actually doesn't make you fall any faster than just... falling... (as a matter of fact it kills your falling momentum) but it does nudge you forward a bit faster than just letting the ranger fall. More importantly, it'll stop your jump completely and let you land for another jump faster.
Another, much more baffling technique is the "triple-jump". For some reason there's a weird quirk in the physics where pressing A a third time during a specific window in your jump gives you a small but potentially useful boost upward. This, in some parts of the TAS, allows me to clear certain jumps I couldn't otherwise, like over an enemy or onto a particularly high edge. Sometimes it's visually subtle, other times you can feel the laws of physics break all over again whenever it's preformed.
Finally, in megazord battles, you have a dash attack along a regular attack, but because of some very poor design choice, the dash attack has a much shorter wind-up than the regular attack, making it much better. Speaking of megazord fights, Dark Queen, the fourth boss, has a move where she leaps away from you, however it will only activate at a certain point once she's hit, and you can manipulate the RNG by just waiting before you wail on her again.
On the branch: We will let it branchless as the difficulty in this case where the final boss is not present but only on harder difficulties is not enough to be considered its own branch. atleast, for now.
On optimality: watching in realtime, some area looked to me optimizable but when testing I haven't managed to keep my frames saved and the overall time to be gained if there is one is not anough to garrant rejection.
That's why I accept this movie.
