Native resolution encode https://www.youtube.com/embed/xYjVu1d3q74?si=ax57QxsKK2ueEhXT

Aero Fighters Assault is a 2d arcade style shooter with game play most similar to the Ace Combat series. The mechanics here are a slightly different however and the realism is even lower. There are mostly large bosses alongside enemy planes and ground units for almost every mission. Chosen planes have infinite missiles, and guns, and two specific specials. Their load outs are not changeable through the game. A chosen plane also cannot be changed in the middle of a campaign. The game auto saves on completion of a mission, but on continue you still have to use the same plane.

Missiles and guns do not have ammo, but instead use cool downs. When the bar on screen for the respective weapon becomes filled the weapon can be used again. Specials on the other hand only have two uses for the entire mission. Specials also have a cooldown after use.

Plane movement is complex by being able to climb, descend, accelerate, decelerate, roll, and yaw left or right. There is precise analog angle control with aX and aY for roll and vertical pitch. The lower values below -5 to 5 do seem to have little to no effect. Increasing the pitch to face upwards to faster than turning to face downwards.

Crashing the plane into objects does not take a life, but instead does a certain amount of damage. Only when the health bar depletes does the plane die.

The view can be changed to various points around the plane. There is also a first person POV camera. This POV saves a frame every once in awhile compared to the view behind the plane, but for personal enjoyment I have chosen to keep the camera behind the plane.

The game has two possible endings and it depends on if you complete the three bonus missions that allow you to go the moon and fight the final Flying Saucer alien boss. The first bonus stage Docking is unlocked by getting a lot of points on the first two stages. In a TAS setting it would require deliberately losing points, by getting hit, using your chaff, and wasting time. The second bonus stage Shuttle Defense is unlocked by beating the missions up the Desert level quickly. I have not tested the exact time to waste needed to avoid Shuttle Defense, but it is definitely in excess of 20 minutes which exceeds the total length of this tas so faster to complete it. The third Bonus Stage is Goliath Defense which is unlocked after completing the first two bonus stages.

The game starts you off with four planes to choose from. The F-14 uses four missiles for each missile attack and that is by far the best option for smaller units. The SU-35 is a decent plane all round, but nothing stands out. The A-10A is probably the second best plane due to its powerful gun and bomb special, but the plane is slow. If you beat all the levels the X-29A Spanky is unlocked, but this is not used since this is not starting from a savegame and the FS-X would probably be faster since it only has a short range Ninja Beam. The F-15J Mao Mao is a cheat character unlocked with a code. The F-15J Mao Mao would be the fastest plane since it has the most powerful load out, with the F-14's Phoenix missiles, the A-10A's gun, and the FS-X's Ninja Beam Special, but this is a TAS without cheats so this is not used. However the best plane for this TAS without cheats is the FS-X Hien due to its incredible Ninja Beam special attack.

The FS-X Hien's special attack is the main reason to use the plane for better or worse. The special has incredible damage which kills almost every boss in one to two shots. The special is capable of hitting targets completely across the map. This means many missions end within seconds with the FS-X. The laser like special can also potentially hit multiple targets with careful finagling. Furthermore there is a strange property that seems to make the special expand in something of a cone, or perhaps to just hit everything within a certain area of the screen at extremely long distances. The Ninja Beam is also able to go through water and damage targets underwater. As incredible as those upsides are there are some serious disadvantages to using the FS-X's Ninja Beam.

The Special attack's main downside is while it can do incredible damage most of the time it does not. Bosses can have extremely small or spread out weak points, and up close the special simply does not do high damage. The special has a tendency to cancel itself if the special hits obstacles like certain walls, areas, or even if you get too close to some bosses like the Fortress. It tends to cancel if the plane takes damage. It can cancel if the plane is even near certain obstacles within a certain distance even directly below or beside. The special can become impeded by nearby obstacles, ones not even directly obstructing the plane. Targeting the laser-like special is also very difficult. The special does not act like a typical beam like attack at all. Instead the special is better to be thought of as a series of small spread out squares. In addition most targets require the laser to hit them for a period of time to register that they even took damage. Quickly swiping through targets with the special almost always does not hit or does pitiful damage. The result of that is that to hit targets while moving means that to use it effectively you have to focus on targets by either adjusting the plane slowly, or to focus on one target for awhile then quickly change to another and keep the beam on that for awhile. There is also an element of needing to keep the enemy in the cross hair for a time even after the special visibly leaves the FS-X or damage can change. In addition to these caveats, certain enemies like the planes in Antarctic get invincible frames after getting hit with the Ninja Beam. This mean despite the special being able to one shot some bosses, one special is not enough to defeat certain normal enemies like those planes, but they are the exception as far as I know. The aspect of it acting more like a cone at long distances means that to effectively do high damage on some bosses it seems it is necessary to fire the special from extremely long distances away to do high damage.

The Missiles for the FS-X are rather quirky. If there is no target lock then it will fire a single missile straight in front of the plane. If there is a target lock on an enemy, the plane will fire two missiles that shoot out in a wide arc that then attempt to home in on the target. The missiles when locked on can be difficult to use since the wide arc often makes the missiles miss the target. In addition they tend to miss when enemies are close by the plane or when the plane is not oriented in a specific way to the target. The missiles also can have the very strange behavior of attempting to home on the more distant target if there are two of them locked on at once. Meaning the right missile would home in on a target on the left side of the screen and the left missile on the plane would go for the target on the right side of the side. This happens sometimes when turning and acquiring new targets. All missiles from the planes have the regrettable behavior to continue to home in on targets that are already dead for a period of time. There is no way to change lock on targets once acquired besides getting them away from in front of your plane. Sometimes I will be waiting for my plane to pass already dead targets to target further ones.

The FS-X's gun is really quite bad. The bullets fall off quickly so their effective distance is rather poor, the fire rate is really poor, and the damage is nothing great. This is used when the missiles are on cool down or to get a little extra damage. One oddity is that the gun is extremely effective against planes. One to two full stream of bullets takes down every plane I believe.

The FS-X chaff is never used.

There is a special maneuver possible with the FS-X where you can do a back flip, but it is not used.

Pressing a directional, and/or the left or right Yaw buttons, and the A button on the same starting frame a mission starts will make the plane change position as though the plane was flying in that direction for a while. This can be useful on certain stages. However, it is often the case it is slower or causes the plane to crash. Pressing "U" and "A" can adjust your height 200 feet or so downwards due to the inverse controls. This means a crash for most levels for example. The most common use for this bug is to move left or right, but during the Air Battle it is used to move downward at the start.

https://www.speedrun.com/aero_fighters_assault/runs/m7x3pg4y

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/196549-aero-fighters-assault/faqs/19638

The FS-X with very precise aiming takes out the boss. The boss at the start of the mission is somehow floating 400 meters in the air. This is not visible to the player, but the hit box is active and vulnerable to the Ninja Beam. The Ninja Beam needs to hit the legs to kill in one shot.

This mission requires two submarines to be defeated. Defeating the first one underwater first is possible, but then the second has to be defeated as well and it is faster to take out the one above water first. Ninja Beam takes care of the first submarine as soon as possible. The Ninja Beam is able to go through water and damage targets underwater and the second special targets the invisible submarine underwater. The death screen is an amusing buggy looking mess with ships floating above in the distance. I do not believe the developers intended for the second boss to be killed underwater like this.

Aim for the square in the floating air craft carrier. If you pass into it then the mission ends.

Too bad I was unable to find an angle to kill the giant Flying Wing boss here in two specials. Have to get in close to finish it off with a couple missiles and the guns.

Aim at the right spot and fire away with the Ninja Beam and the giant tank boss is toast.

The mission objective is to protect the shuttle for five minutes, but defeating the enemies sooner ends the mission faster. Targets are often distant so there is a not of free aiming missiles without using lock on with missiles. The terrain often times gets in the way so there are periods that some minor waits are required. Also the tanks have a strange period of invincibility after getting hit with a missile. This tends to happen if they are moving towards you and if the FS-X is also moving fast.

The overall strategy is to work from the inside out in a spiral. The enemies are rushing towards the center so they end up coming into range near the end anyway. Finished the last couple of enemies with a missile and Ninja Beams.

The fortress is built in a crater surrounded with lots of anti air missiles and guns. There are areas with an invisible shield that can be taken down if you defeat distant shield generators on the island. The fortress boss itself is made up of many parts consisting of several towers and guns. Once the fortress takes a certain amount of damage a it activates a very high damage beam weapon that shoots at you. Easily the hardest mission in the game for most planes.

Difficult mission to find the weak points of the fortress. Thankfully the 100% RTA speedrun shows a good angle for the Ninja Beam to do high damage that makes use of an opening in the island. With a lot of precise angling the Ninja Beams defeat the fortress with two specials. It is difficult to express just how terrible the FS-X is on this stage without this angle and method. The FS-X's missiles and guns do pathetic damage even on weak points. It would take dozens of missiles to take down this Fortress if not for precise use of the specials. The special however randomly cuts off due to the various walls and taking damage. Actually being able to find a target to do good damage is difficult, and if you move your plane slightly off target the damage becomes very small or the beam cuts off. In fact many parts of the fortress do not take damage at all. The main target to hit is the little bright light swathes on the top of the 3/4 towers. This is a mission where extreme distance and precise targeting makes use of the Ninja Beam's odd cone-like behavior at long distance to do high damage.

I think it is interesting to note I was unable to find any video of a completion of this stage with the FS-X.

This bonus mission has seven timed waves of enemy helicopters that continually appear and try to destroy the floating aircraft carrier. The idea is that if you are too passive the helicopters will keep piling on the damage. The main wave to defeat quickly is the final wave.

The objective is to defeat four enemy aircraft. Very challenging to be able to use the special to hit all four very distant non-rendered air planes. The first special I was able to hit all four. The second I was able to get a hit on three of the four, and finished off the fourth with a non-locked on missile fired where the plane would move through. This mission should be able to be completed more quickly if there was a solution to hit the targets even sooner. Might need a brute force solver for this.

Interesting mission where the objective is to infiltrate the base to find the boss and defeat it. There is a shortcut early on that requires some careful flying to get into. The shortcut has some tight corners which leads to the boss. The boss has an odd cut scene when the plane enters the boss arena where the camera forcibly changes to show the view of your plane and the door behind it. The door closes behind you locking you in with the boss and if the plane is not moving fast enough you get crushed. Although in this game hitting into obstacles only does some damage instead of taking all your health.

The boss, a giant eyeball has two phases. The first is where it is frozen where it just soaks up damage. The second phase has it being much more aggressive with additional things firing at you. however with the Ninja Beams it dies almost immediately with two shots to its pupil.

Final boss is a flying saucer with two main phases. The first phase has it fly around with attack drones. The second has it open up into this additional form. If you wait to defeat the boss for too long the Earth gets destroyed and you die.

We see basically none of the boss since it is extremely vulnerable to the Ninja Beam. There is a little Drone in the way, but angling slightly off center will do huge damage. Then the second special finishes it off.

I think the developers never properly tested the game with FS-X Hien. As a point in favor of this thought, in the ending sequence after defeating the boss the FS-X does not properly dock, but seems to kind of bug out, and then does it again before the rest of the ending sequence plays out.

Since this is an arcade like game at the very end I input "TAS" as the player which costs about 15 frames. A little time loss, but I like seeing those abbreviations for a TAS game.