WarioWare: Inc.: Twisted! is a the second Game Boy Advance installment in the WarioWare series. In this game, you must twist and turn through crazy-fast microgames to solve the problems of Wario and friends using the cartridge's unique gyro sensor.
In this TAS, Pellets completes the main story mode as fast as possible.

The Objective

The goal of this TAS is to complete all eleven stages of the game's main story mode, triggering the final cutscene and the "credits," in as little time as possible, whilst also completing the microgames in unorthodox and humanly impossible ways.

Technical Tripe

  • Made in Bizhawk 2.9.1
  • US version
  • Native framerate

Explaining a Few Things (a.k.a. "why'd you do that?")

  • You'll notice that the microgames are played with a set amount of time, thus the only microgames you can actually shave time off of are the bosses and the WarioWatch microgames. This means the TAS must focus on entertainment or playaround factor, so you'll see a lot of completing games at the last possible moment/immediately and being way too close for comfort when dodging things.
  • You'll also see a lot of soft resets (B + A + Select + Start). These are done to skip most of the stage cutscenes. This is not done for the intro to Family Scramble, as this one can be skipped from the start, unlike the other cutscenes.
  • In Super Mario Bros., I intentionally stall at the stairs to finish the level with the time at 190, which is faster than finishing at 191 and triggering the fireworks.

Potential Improvements (a.k.a. Pobody's Nerfect)

  • For Jimmy's boss stage, the RTA world record, using the GameCube, flips the entire GameCube in the air, instantly warping the player to the finish. I was unable to replicate this through BizHawk's gyro input. In the future, there might be a way for this to be possible through emulation.

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: When I was first made a judge, I wanted to pick at games and bring out optimization issues as a sign of rejection. Our staff, though, promptly stated.."Does it look obvious to all that are watching?". What they were getting at was that we all have different abilities and knowledge of certain games. AT the time, I was referring to Super Metroid...a game that I am very familiar with. So...our judges are not to be the brutal hammer on anything missed, as I have missed things myself. So, when RetroEdit stated the following..."Requiring the movie to be redone as an acceptance requirement would be disrespectful of the author's time; this movie, while imperfect, is solidly constructed.", it is the right thing to do. After-all, we are not asking for perfection...since we know details will always be found through lots of experimentation and examination of any game's responses to our inputs.
Here, this run is roughly 26 seconds faster than the WR, considering a comparable starting point. This alone, gives us the reason to accept...since there is absolutely no "sloppiness".
Thanks to RetroEdit for your in-dept review, it helps out and I completely agree with your assessment.
Accepting to "Standard".
fsvgm777: Processing.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #10155: Pellets's GBA WarioWare: Twisted! in 27:52.312
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There is actually a way to do the Jimmy boss skip. I did it by using the tilt value of 31500, but I'm sure is can be slightly faster. I assume you just tried 32767 and thought it was impossible, which is a pretty reasonable mistake. Also, there seemed to be places in Crygor's where you could maybe be faster, but I'm not sure if the moments where the robot is standing straight are for optimization or not.
"He who is tired of TASing is tired of life" Something Homer Simpson definitely said
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TAS review: The use of rotations and mix of both super fast and perilous play made this TAS a fun watch. I particularly enjoyed the blatant disobedience of the "Copy!" prompt in the "Sync or Sink" microgames. Once again, I've compared it to the current WR like I did for Mega Microgames!. This one uses an updated script and accounts for regional differences (the intro screens after each soft reset are 52 frames faster in the Japanese version). For brevity, I've only listed non-trivial segments, excluding menus and segments that are within margin of error (<0.050 s):
Notable time *saved* (-):
        Kat & Ana, games: -0.353 (TAS: 1:38.262, WR: 1:38.616)
        Kat & Ana,  boss: -5.937 (TAS: 1:16.145, WR: 1:22.083)
       Dr. Crygor,  boss: -3.031 (TAS:   33.468, WR:   36.500)
       WarioWatch, games: -4.082 (TAS: 1:35.500, WR: 1:39.583)

Notable time *lost* (+):
            Wario, games:  0.428 (TAS:   39.378, WR:   38.950)
            Jimmy,  boss:  2.164 (TAS:    6.847, WR:    4.683)
          Dribble,  boss:  0.881 (TAS:   32.715, WR:   31.833)

[Total]: -21.369 (= -24.924 +3.555) (TAS: 27:19.730, WR: 27:41.100)
 menu: -11.377
 games: -4.024
 boss: -5.966
First the positives: the TAS is definitely faster than the WR. Besides faster menu navigation, the time saved is from:
  1. A much more efficient defeat of Kat & Ana's boss.
  2. More aggressive and risky play than the WR in Dr. Crygor's boss.
  3. Sprinting through WarioWatch to take advantage of the only "real" non-boss time save
  4. (the WR accidentally pausing briefly at the start of Kat & Ana's microgames)
The TAS also has three time losses compared to the WR:
  1. Jimmy's boss missed the fast cycle, but there's a good reason for that: it was probably impossible in the emulator version this TAS used. For reference, Mikewillplays' post above suggested a tilt value of 31500, which doesn't work in BizHawk 2.9.1 but does in BizHawk 2.11.
  2. In Dribble's boss, the initial high-speed back-and-forth movement seemed to be too fast and made the initial acceleration slower.
  3. The Wario games time loss is specifically from the sixth microgame "Step On It"; this microgame is apparently not fixed-time, and the TAS had bad layout RNG that led to a few frames slower finish, which was then magnified because the ending is cycle-based, where time can (mostly?) only be saved in multiples of ~25 frames.
I made some (unoptimized?) movies demonstrating the improvements: Jimmy's boss (saves 00:02.160), Dribble's boss (saves 00:00.871), Step On It (saves 00:00.385) Nonetheless, in light of the challenges presented by the gyroscope issues, I strongly believe that this movie is acceptable for publication, fulfilling the current site standards of being "as optimized as [the author] can make it". Requiring the movie to be redone as an acceptance requirement would be disrespectful of the author's time; this movie, while imperfect, is solidly constructed.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6969] GBA WarioWare: Twisted! by Pellets in 27:52.312