A post-apocalyptic Contra clone from 1989. The story is about finding a stolen truck.
You can skip the long loading time with this savestate: UserFiles/Info/639147122952271839 (You may have to rename the file extension to .state to load it.)

Game objectives

  • Emulator: BizHawk 2.11.1
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck (random enemy spawns)
  • Genre: Action

Gameplay

Run right. Kill boss. Win game. Like Contra but simpler.
Mutant Fortress is a nicely programmed game that does not lag even with 5 enemies and bullets on screen.
There are 5 enemy slots. Enemies spawn endlessly until all slots are filled. If we defeat an enemy, then a new enemy will spawn immediately. The player is constantly chased by 5 enemies that spawn from random positions, so the game is quite difficult.
There are 3 levels with bosses. The first two bosses are the same but they have different graphics.
Weapons: rifle, flamethrower, laser, rocket, the B.
The player has 3 stats: health, radiation, ammo.
Hazards: mines, beartraps, sandpits, radiation.
Radiation causes damage over time, so we want to avoid it. We start each level with some radiation that slowly reduces our health. It can be stopped by picking up a radiation shield.
Health is refilled between levels, but we can also avoid damage without losing time.
The B can kill everything instantly, so we use that on bosses, except in the 3rd level because it wastes too much time to collect the B.
With random player movements we can manipulate luck so that enemies spawn behind us. We can then safely carry 'the B' all the way to the boss without needing to exhaust the weapon or health on regular enemies.
Regular enemies are automatically deleted when a boss appears. It is not possible to delete enemies faster with our own weapons.
The player can't move left or right during a boss fight, so the last fight may look weird because of that.
It takes 583 frames to get the B in the third level. It takes about 111 frames to defeat the boss with rifle instead of the B. So the rifle route is about 472 frames faster. Laser/flamethrower passes through the boss and does not allow rapid fire like the rifle. Weapon locations are always the same and I have never seen a single lag frame in this amazing game, so I can't think of any way to save time other than some undiscovered glitch or the human element.
You could increase entertainment with different moves or secondary goals like min/max score/jumps, so I am okay if this movie is obsoleted with one that does some secondary goal even if the framecount is the same. This TAS is coincidentally almost minimum score and almost pacifist.

Useless oddities

You can spam 'the B' to make enemies die 3 times instead of dying just once. You can glitch into the ground in some sand pits. You can die during boss fight and still finish the level if the boss also dies at the same time. None of these oddities save time.

Framecount

13657 level 1
19296 use the B
22909 level 2
28571 use the B
32241 level 3
37996 end input
Framecount per level:
Level 1: 5639
Level 2: 5662 (slower because of more sand pits)
Level 3: 5755 (slower because we don't have the B)

RAM

1633 HP
106E Ammo
09CB Boss HP
Suggested screenshot frame: 19302 (first boss visible for 1 frame)

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: As long as you keep moving to the right, there is no optimization issues. The only thing i can think of that has potential to be improved, is finding a way to keep water/mud from holding you those few frames. Would be interesting if a "Zip" glitch was discovered. It could really energize this run. Everything looks good on this one.
Accepting to "Standard".

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #10458: alexheights1's ZXS Mutant Fortress in 12:38.704
CoolKirby
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Encode (skipped most loads): Link to video I thought a Contra-like sounded cool from your submission text. Ultimately I didn't find it interesting (partly due to my opinion of the limited ZX platform), but I like the metagame of having to avoid all the enemy bullets in level 3 because they respawn anyway so there's no use eliminating them. IIRC, sometimes you dodge before they even shoot, the kind of superhuman touch that makes a good TAS.
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Thank you for the temp encode, Coolest Kirby! I agree with your assessment of the run.
CoolKirby
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alexheights1 wrote:
Coolest Kirby!
Aw shucks, I'm honored!
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nymx wrote:
Would be interesting if a "Zip" glitch was discovered.
Yes. I wonder if anyone has discovered a zip glitch in a ZXS game? The zipping is perhaps based on an innovation in game programming that usually does not exist in old games. I can't recall any zip glitch in an old C64 game either?
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. ---- [7204] ZXS Mutant Fortress by alexheights1 in 12:38.704