Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
I just did a normal mode run in 11:43. I'm not going to submit it, because it's only normal mode, but it shows some tricks you may or may not know for some parts. I may later feel inclined to do an expert mode run, but I'll want to get the password from you that starts me with the gravity fireball.
http://abharrie.misterdotnet.com/cheez-MetlStm.zip
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
The reason I took so long on Boss 6, was because I used the gravity fireball for pretty much the whole game. I started with the P-gun, but only because the only password I found for expert mode started me that way, so I thought you were supposed to start with it. I knew my run was really sub-optimal, it was just fun. Especially a lot of the crazy stuff I pulled on Stage 5. I'd really like to see your run with the gravity fireball to see how you do that stage.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
The biggest problem in your run so far, is that you need to kill more enemies so there isn't all of that slowdown, it will really cost you a lot of time. Also, in 3-1, you should get the gravity fireball, it can be done without bumping the walls. And if anyone out there has my run, it would be nice if you could upload it somewhere for me (a little faster than Blechy's two week wait).
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Sadly the link will be broken. I don't even have the run myself anymore, I lost it in a crash. It was a good run, hardly optimized though, since I learned stuff towards the end that I could've applied to the beginning. I'd love to get that back though.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
I did a run of this a long time ago, but it generated no interest, so I didn't submit it. Firstly, you definately should've put in the hard mode password.
Second, You should never give up the gravity fireball, ever, it's the most powerful item in the game. Here are a few observations:
Stage 1-2:
- 375 : You can get the gravity fireball without bumping the wall if you jump right.
- 360 : Gravity fireball the crap out that big thing blocking the hall that you stop and shoot. If you use the firebounce, it dies really fast.
Stage 2-1:
- 390 : When you jump up between the second set of green things, you hesitate a little and move backwards, if you do it right, you never need to stop moving to the right.
Stage 3-2:
- 361 : Fire bounce off the spikes at the top then back down to slip between the platforms without bumping them.
Stage 3 Boss:
- You can Fire bounce continuously inside the boss and kill him much faster.
Stage 4-1:
- Don't get rid of the Gravity Fireball and waste less shots.
Stage 4 Boss:
- This is *much* faster if you Fire bounce the boss.
Stage 5-1:
- Using the Gravity fireball to just flip through the lasers will save a lot of time.
Stage 5-2:
- Again, the Gravity Fireball will make this much faster.
Stage 5 Boss:
- See notes for previous 2 stages. You can just bounce back and forth over the spikes and do this really fast.
Stage 6-1:
- 392 : You pause for a moment here. No idea why.
Stage 7:
- Gravity Fireball....
Note, this is all a *lot* harder with the code, which makes for a far more interesting movie.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
feitclub wrote:
So far as I can tell, here are a few "rules," so to speak:
-Sliding is faster than walking, so always be sliding.
Right, though you can't stop mid-slide, so I chose to walk a couple spot before jumping over some spikes in Africa, though it might be faster to jump on the spikes, I'll have to play with it, and see how much life I have
feitclub wrote:
-Taking hits doesn't stop or even slow Hiryu, so enemies can be largely ignored.
Taking hits *does* hinder your jumping so you can't jump as high, so I have to be wary of that.
feitclub wrote:
-However, attacking doesn't slow Hiryu either, so pick your spots for fighting vs sliding. If possible, a few kills to pick up health could allow for ignoring more enemies (like those spiked walls).
I also discovered later in the run, that you can slide, then let go of down and hit attack, and you keep running at sliding speed while you attack, and as soon as you finish the attack, you go back into the sliding animation. So you can keep moving at sliding speed while attacking, which a huge plus. And I'll try getting some more life to avoid the spiked walls and things to see if that's faster.
And I'm a little annoyed at that magnetic wall near the very end where I had to stop and wait for the enemies....the first time I went through the game, I was able to hit them without stopping, but I couldn't get that to happen no matter what I tried when I was recording. And FYI, those enemies did 15 damage per hit, and hit like 5 times while trying to walk through them.
feitclub wrote:
-Death makes an excellent shortcut in many areas.
Very true
feitclub wrote:
Given these premises, there is (almost) no reason to EVER stop moving. But what's up with that "plasma" thing? Does that have a point? Is it more powerful?
Another spot that annoyed me was in the cave part in Africa where I had to stop and wait for a platform, had I been able to do a super jump off the edge, I probably could've caught it. I can typically get the super jumps about 1 in 4 tries...but it refused to let me do it on that ledge for some reason. If I waited for the platform to leave the screen, I could hit it though, so it was a bit frustrating.
And the plasma thing, is pretty much the only way to kill Matic at the end, I tried doing it without it, but it's pretty much not doable.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
well...the playaround video was pretty cool...but I finished a complete playthrough today...26:50. It's hardly optimal, as I learned a few tricks later that I could've done earlier, but it sets the bar. I crashed a total of 0 zero times making this movie. I used Famtasia for it.
http://abharrie.misterdotnet.com/Strider.rar
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
hmmm..I'm not sure what could be making your rom crash, as I've played through the game a few times without a single crash. I've played around with doing a run, and have the first couple of stages done (though not optimal, just a quick run through to set the bar), so seeing some of your tricks would be cool, just send them to (abharrie at takklesoft dot com)
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
yeah, definately one of those games that sounds like it would be better than it is. A lot of the sub-optimal moves are to affect the enemy spawns, but some are just because I didn't care, because really, why should I have? ;)
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Okay, I finished it...however...as a grand insult to my effort, it locks up at the very end right after I glitch-kill the last boss. However, if you still want to see a run through of the game (just no ending) here it is in all its craptastic glory: http://abharrie.misterdotnet.com/Fester.rar I have no intention of running this again, so if someone else wants to do a run, this will show the fastest path.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
3 levels down. It's fairly annoying to do, since I haven't quite figured out what makes different monsters spawn...it seems like there's only 2 or 3 possible spawns in an area, and they almost always seem to drop the same thing, so getting keys can be a pain, so I've got quite a few suboptimal movements just to try and influence the randomness.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
I'm using famtasia....and it turns out, that it gets far less interesting after stage 1. every other stage you'll have 5 invisibility potions, which is more than enough to get through any dangerous areas....so every level is just walking straight through, killing some enemies hoping they drop a couple keys...
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
haha, it's just their customer service that really sucks, the computers themselves are pretty good, so long as nothing goes wrong.
side note: just finished the first level.....and it's boring....boring to play, pretty boring to watch....I'm not sure if I really do want to finish this....
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Actually...I *just* got my laptop working about a week ago....and always remember kids....Dell sucks....I haven't restarted the run yet, but I will shortly...
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
My run at this game is now on temporary hold due to catastrophic hard drive failure, I should hopefully have a replacement with everything up and running in a little over a week
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Back from the dead, I started doing a run of this. First area done in 4:17, but I'll probably redo it. The random monsters/items are a pain to manipulate, since they seem to decide what they're going to drop as soon as they spawn, and they spawn about a full screen ahead. The only plus this far, is that you can beat the bosses (except the last one) really fast via a glitch. Just have keys selected, go down and left while mashing the A button at the start of a boss fight, you'll enter a door, get 5 invisibility potions, then be outside of a building, you wait around for about 4 or 5 seconds, and the boss dies and you get put at the stairs to the next area. The invis potions come in pretty handy too.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Nice. Could I beat it? I absolutely guarantee that I could. Will I? Nope. The only reason I really did it to begin with was because I had that glitch to exploit and better jumping off ledge techniques. Even if I were bored enough to do it again, it wouldn't *look* any different, so it's just pointless. If any of the other glitches I found were explolitable so that you could save time, I'd do it, but none of the other glitches are at all useful, unless you enjoy killing yourself.
Oh, and your re-records showed up right on mine, and you were only about 960 higher than me ;)
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
yeah, that jump is a little tricky. Would you believe it only took me about 3 mintues to figure out that glitch after I did it once earlier in stage 1 on accident? Except in the spot I did it in stage one, it just turned an enemy into a floating blob. So I looked around for other ladders to try it on, and found that one pretty quick. I spent about 3 minutes trying to do the glitch there before I got it, then another couple minutes doing it a few more times to make sure it wasn't a random one-time thing. I spent maybe 10 re-records to actually do it during my run.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Good luck. I improved it by 94 frames, so it's more like 1.5 seconds faster ;) I played at least 10% of the game on 5% speed to get frame by frame control, especially when jumping to and from ladders. I didn't waste a single boomerang, except for right before the end boss, because I didn't want to just stand there for 5 seconds. I avoided hitting my head on any jumps except for during the crusher things in sector 2 where you can't really avoid it. I didn't pass up any grenades this time either. I tried to do a few fancy stunts along the way too. And of course, I used the glitch in sector 4 to make that enemy disappear to save myself a couple bars of life. Unless you can find another shortcut, I think you're going to have a really hard time beating my time. I thought I found a couple shortcuts, but you end up just a couple pixels short.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
The only time the falling thing is really faster is when you're jumping off a ledge with a ladder going down that you have to go down like right near the very beginning of sector 5. If you take a full jump, you still progress to the right at the same speed, but by the time you're back even with the ground and still falling, you'll be falling faster and save about 3 or 4 frames.
Also, I discovered another slight glitch. I had done it once in my run in an earlier spot where it wasn't too useful, but recorded over it since I needed to go back and redo a spot. If you are falling and grab a ladder at the last possible pixel so you instantly go down to the next screen instead of having to climb down the ladder at all, it can mess up the enemies on the next screen. I've only found 1 useful spot for it so far...here's a quick video.
http://abharrie.misterdotnet.com/pbglitch.zip
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Well, I think it's more like your 6th, but it's actually like version 12 or so, the times went: 20:12 -> 20:00 -> 19:43 -> 19:41 -> 19:27 -> 19:20 -> 19:19 -> 19:12 -> 19:11 -> 19:09 -> 19:07
Also to note in the movie is the killing of all the enemies we do. Each one killed in order to get the powerups and grenades we get, and some of them are really hard to get right, but you can't tell just from watching.
Another spot you lose a few frames is in sector 2, in the first room with the 2 big heads that spit bubbles, you could've grabbed the ladder at the very top instead of having to climb a short ways. I spent about 100+ re-records on that spot trying to get it just right. Also, the further you fall, the faster you fall, so if you take a full jump off of edges instead of a short one, it's actually a little bit faster, but they're just minor details.
-Cheez
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 72
Location: Michigan, USA
Okay, I think I'm ready to put this game to rest. I can see where you could've saved a few frames, but I'm pretty tired of the game, and I just don't think it's worth running it again just to save an extra 10 frames. Awesome job on the run, we need more competitions to get more runs of this quality.
-Cheez