This Fire 'N Ice (a.k.a. Solomon's Key 2) TAS saves ~136 seconds over the WR that existed at the time the TAS was finished, and ~52 seconds over the current WR, using the current WR speedrun routes, and including pausing to reach the fastest possible cycles, faster than possible in real time, in 11-5 and 14-10.
Emulator used: BizHawk v2.11
About Fire ‘N Ice
Fire ‘N Ice is a 2D NES puzzle game that has 101 levels in any%, which isn’t in this TAS, and 50 bonus levels that are part of this TAS. The base mechanics are walking, climbing onto one tile high walls (or climbing into pipes), falling, placing and removing ice, pushing ice, and pausing the game. There are also pipes that take you from one side of the pipe to the other. There are jars that get lit on fire when a fire falls on top of it, (with the fire not getting destroyed,) and lit jars melt ice that get pushed onto them or fall onto them, and kill Dana if he walks on them. There are stones that get pushed one tile at a time instead of sliding until running out of ground or hitting a wall like ice does, unless the stone is on top of ice, in which it slides until the ground is no longer ice, or it hits a wall. Stones also stay on top of fire jars without melting, and extinguish flames without melting like ice. The boss levels of Fire ‘N Ice (every level ending in 10 in any%, or every level ending in 5 or 10 for the bonus levels) are either scrolling levels, or moving enemy levels (with the one exception being D10-10, which isn’t in this TAS).
Timing and Comparing the TAS
What time is this TAS?
From power on, the time all TASes start at, this TAS is 38:20.245, and from the RTA start time, the first frame that 11-1 is fully visible, this is a 38:17.800 time. Either way, the end time is the same one listed on SRC’s bonus levels rules, being the frame that Dana’s win animation starts in 15–10. I'll use the RTA start time to compare to previous WRs, and the TAS start time in all other instances.
For the 150 Levels TAS, which is just adding the any% TAS time to the bonus levels TAS time, it’s 1:36:46.471 from power on, and 1:36:42.050 with RTA timing.
Comparing this TAS time to others
There have been no previous bonus levels TASes to compare this to.
I won’t go over the times of the IWs or ILs in this TAS, the improvements over the IW WRs and the IL WRs, or the improvements over the IWs and ILs of the full bonus levels WR, as this is shown in video and text form in the
commentated TAS.
Other Bonus Levels TASes I made
I made a
commentated bonus levels TAS you can watch, that compares the TAS, HTTAS, my current WR, and my sum of bests, and gives commentary.
How I found the routes for this TAS
Non-Boss Levels
For every level that isn't a boss level that has a pausing route (11-5, 12-10, 13-5, 13-10, 14-10, and 15-10), I used the current bonus levels speedrun route. This was created from a combination of routes found that happened to be faster from the
minimum climbs challenge run, which was worked on by me and link_7777, and regular discovery of faster speedrun routes for improving the bonus levels speedrun route, by SmartBall, link_7777, and me.
For example, I found a faster 15-3 route when trying to set the
current WR, which made it so I had to update the TAS to v3 and HTTAS to v2 due to this happening after I finished the initial versions of the TASes.
Overview on Spawn Pausing + Gameplay Pausing
One speedrun strat that I brought into the TAS is gameplay pausing (and spawn pausing). Spawn pausing refers specifically to pausing the game during the spawn animation, as this is the longest animation that gives you a long time to pause*, and it was discovered before gameplay pausing, which is just pausing during any and all other animations Dana does during gameplay. The benefit of pausing during Dana’s animations is that Dana’s animation will finish before the pause comes into effect and Dana doesn’t move anymore, but the scrolling screen, moving enemies, and the fire coming from Druidle’s wand (not in this TAS) all pause immediately. This allows Dana to get on earlier cycles, as your movement continues while the cycles are paused, and this saves lots of time.
*unimportant for TAS as you can pause and unpause at the perfect times no matter the animation
The New Boss Level Routes
12-10, 13-5, 13-10, and 15-10 all use the same boss level routes as the world record, so the HTTAS and TAS are exactly the same for these levels, but 11-5 and 14-10 have faster TAS-only routes. For 11-5 and 14-10, I created my own routes from scratch by pausing at many more animations than normal, and this made Dana reach earlier cycles and save plenty of time over the humanly viable routes. To see the difference between the humanly viable routes and the TAS route, I recommend watching the
commentated TAS.
Closure
I’d like to thank the following people: