I decided to make a TAS of this game because nostalgia. I played it as a kid, and was never able to beat it (got into the high 50's but couldn't find the route to the boss). I was surprised the game had no submissions or even WIPs here on TASVideos yet, so it was a great opportunity to green field an NES game.

This is a game very similar to Gradius. However, the game caps speed upgrades to 3 (its artificial actually, if you remove the cap and get upgrades you continue to get faster and faster similarly to Gradius). Sadly it means I won't be able to advertise to eat at Joe's this time. Bummer. So while this TAS does try to make the most of auto-scrolling sections, it simply aims for fastest time.

The game is mostly an auto-scroller. The main component for speed is routing.

There is a 16 frame rule for warps, warp backs, and bonus screens. So a lot of small improvements do not amount to anything.

A warp back is used in one place, where you get crushed by a wall with low health on purpose to "death warp" back to the first section of the zone. There's 2 opportunities to do this, but the 2nd one turned out to be slower.

Ideally I want speed 3, to maximize entertainment value, and because it can help on at least 1 boss and warp screens. However, speed 3 is slower due to screen transitions. You want to be as high as possible when going up and low as possible when going down. With speed 3, you move in increments of 4 pixels which limits your ability to get the ideal amount. With speed 2, it turns out you can always get the optimal value. When going down, you have to ensure you never hit the top of the screen. When going up, you must hit the top of the screen at least once. The differences is typically 2 frames per screen transition. You can minimize this by carefully setting your y position when getting the final speed upgrade to avoid losing time on the screen you got it. The hardest part of this TAS is carefully manipulating speed upgrades at the right time and when to get them and lose them, and whether the gains in warp zones are negated by teh eframe rule.

Every 9 kills of an enemy type yields a random drop, that can be energy (needed for missles), speed (usually not needed) or nothing. Energy is important for boss fights but only the level 45 boss NEEDS full energy. I mostly manipulate energy to "show off". Its maybe not that impressive but the game gives me little to work with for entertainment value :)

For the most part, you will probably have the upgrades you need so long as you kill most enemies, but I do manipulate luck to ensure i have the proper resources

This is the real part of the TAS, a vast majority of the planning and TAS time when to optimizing this boss. You must have full health. The boss attacks in cycles, so minimizing them is key here, and managed to just barely get the boss defeated in just 3 cycles.

The missile is weird, you press A+B to have it appear on the screen in the center, and you need to hover over that area to grab it. While it is in the air, if you get another, it doubles up the damage it does when it hits a target. From there you can rapid fire press A+B to keep hitting the boss immediately, so long as you are in the center of the screen to pick up the missile. . Most bosses can be clobbered seemingly instantly. However, Some bosses artificially lock damage to 1 hp of damage per hit. Unfortunately level 45 is one such boss.

The M weapon is theoretically best because it does 4 dmg (5 if done at point blank range). However, all bosses are killed by the missile trick unless they are locked to 1 hp per hit anyway. So it ends up not mattering for saving time. However, it is slightly better than the pea shooter for larger hit box and helps with the level 45 boss.

The 3-way M upgrade is not good. While it shoots 3 at once, you still can only have 3 on the screen at once, so you have to wait for one wave to disappear before shooting another.

A few bosses are not required to beat. These levels are long and the game assumes you will dispatch the boss by the time you get to the end. If you time it so that you kill the boss and the kill sound effects are still happening while leaving the level, it gets stuck playing for the duration of the next level. Its a silly glitch but a glitch nonetheless so might as well show it off, yeah?

credit Synopsis Grim's speedrun for route, I did try to plan other routes including a warp back situation, but nothing was as optimal as this route.

Darkman425: I'd make a joke about how I'd need to judge Sections A-Y in order first but that's just the arcade version of Section Z's progression. Anyways, claiming for judging.

Darkman425: what do you mean you never go to Section-Z in this port this is bu

Having the VG Maps page for NES Section-Z routes on hand helped tremendously with following along with the routing in this game. The routing looks solid and the death warp was a clever way to save a bit of time over continuing from a boss in the 2nd part of the game. The boss fights are all well optimized and the playaround was quite fun to watch. Nice work!

Accepting to Standard.

fsvgm777: Processing.