This doesn't appear to have been mentioned yet:
I'm sure that there's a way to speed up text faster than just holding A. My memory is a little hazy, but I recall that holding "start" did the trick.
I apologize if people are angry about it, but I can't just start from scratch now.
I wasn't so much angry, as annoyed that people switched versions without properly researching it. For all we knew, the Japanese-to-English conversion could have made some abilities weaker, and others stronger.
But, on further reflection, the statement I made last post doesn't make sense. As far as we know, the Japanese version is 100% superior to the English version, so we might as well use it in case you need to attack with Missile.
Unless, of course, there may be some odd situation where you want to blast yourself past an enemy without defeating it, thereby making the English version better....
Okay, I was wondering just what the version differences were, and here are my results:
There was one change: Missile does less damage in the English version.
All other abilities do the same amount of damage, and all bosses have the same HP, weaknesses and resistences.
I updated my earlier post, and cleaned it up a little.
The current run does not ever attack anything with Missile that has enough HP to make a difference. So I don't see any reason why any follow-up movie shouldn't use the English version. Perhaps there are other version differences (less lag, etc.), but unless a new run actually attacks bosses or tough enemies with Missile (unlikely), the claim that attacks are stronger isn't valid.
Of course, two heads are better than one. If anyone else could verify my results, I'd be grateful.
On a side note, reducing Missile's strength was a stupid move. If anything, they should have made it stronger.
It's by-far the lowest-tier ability, at least for fighting bosses. I've soloed the arena (unassisted) with every ability except for that one.
The ability should have been this game's Ball ability: hard to use, but insanely powerful to make up for it. It's really too bad, as I otherwise really like this move.
I've been doing a little thinking about the battle strategies for this new glitch run.
[useless stuff cut]
Perhaps we could get a red-swirl in Peaceful Rest Valley to quickly give Ness a cold, timing it so that he collapses just after recruiting Paula. But, in the current run, Ness is already almost out of HP by the time he rescues Paula, so that probably won't matter.
I see two ways to beat Ness's Nightmare:
1) Forget about reviving Paula & Jeff in Magicant -- unghost yourself from the glitch at the door to Flying Man's house. Recruit a Flying Man, grab the Magicant Bat, and SMAAAASH! Ness's Nightmare to death. Ness is already going to receive massive level-ups, so he might as well just absorb everything himself from the battle.
2) Revive Paula & Jeff with Ness's Mom in Magicant, and use Paula's prayer to confuse Ness's Nightmare. It can blast itself with rockin' omega, while Paula helps out with some light-chasing prayers. Jeff can drop, but Ness must stay conscious so that he doesn't disappear into the ether after Magicant (stranding Paula in Saturn Valley after beating Giygas).
As for Giygas...
1) Just have Ness (and maybe Flying Man) SMAAAASH! Pokey's lights out, while you manipulate misses from both Giygas & Pokey.
2) Have Paula put them to sleep with prayer, and beat them down while asleep.
3) Have Paula confuse them, and let them blast each other (manipulate Giygas to miss himself).
For phase two of Giygas, let him blast himself with reflected lightning while you suppliment with PSI Rockin & light-chasing prayers. For phase 3, just have Giygas do nothing on his turns.
Jeff & Poo are useless in the Cave of the Past without doing some preparation. Jeff's speed is much too low to hit with Bottle Rockets on Pokey or Giygas without detouring for the Rabbit's Foot. That would involve either beating Electro Specter or doing the walk-through-walls glitch a 3rd time, but if we do, then we could steal a Multibottle Rocket on the way to Giygas.... Poo simply doesn't have enough PP to use Starstorm Omega, and he missed out on learning the alpha version. Detouring for the Bag of Dragonite in Magicant may be worth it, just to give them something to do. Or they could be meat shields to absorb reflected blows from phase-1-Giygas.
Nitrodon wrote:
Floogal wrote:
2) Revive Paula & Jeff with Ness's Mom in Magicant, and use Paula's prayer to confuse Ness's Nightmare. It can blast itself with rockin' omega, while Paula helps out with some light-chasing prayers. Jeff can drop, but Ness must stay conscious so that he doesn't disappear into the ether after Magicant (stranding Paula in Saturn Valley after beating Giygas).
I'm not sure why I didn't think of confusion on Ness's Nightmare, but now that the possibility is out there, I'll improve it:
3) Revive Paula & Jeff with Ness's Mom in Magicant, and use Paula's prayer to confuse Ness's Nightmare on turn 1 after it uses Shield beta. It can blast itself with a glorious light (i.e., Flash gamma) for an instant kill.
As for Giygas, strategy 1 is out of the question. It's just too much manipulation, even for a TAS. Strategy 2 is intriguing, and strategy 3 might require too much luck. I'm not sure what causes characters to wake up or return to normal.
Floogal wrote:
Ha, ha! Awesome -- I never thought to have Ness's Nightmare flash itself.
Regarding the status ailments, this what I've got in my notes (most taken from various places on starmen.net):
The only way to cure feeling strange status (aside from PSI Healing beta or higher) is to be hit with a non-SMAAAASH!ing bash-like attack. Unfortunately, both of Pokey's attacks are bash-like. So we'd need to have him use gas, miss himself, or SMAAAASH! himself.
And Giygas only has a 16% to miss himself with his own attacks. I think confusion is out of the question.
Sleep wears off with 50% probability when hit with any damage-dealing attack, and wears off naturally with 25% probability on the character's turn.
Probably the best strategy is to put Giygas to sleep, let Pokey wake up, and have Poo keep him frozen while he gets smacked with Legendary Bat physicals from Ness & light-chasing prayers (or PSI Freeze) from Paula.
I'm using FCE Ultra 0.98.15.
You don't use the Japanese ROM with a patch -- you need the ROM of the actual translated (but unreleased) NES game. There should not be a "Zero" on the title screen. The name of my ROM file is "Earthbound_(U)_(Prototype).nes"
This is all very excellent.
Hopefully I've caught you before you do too much more: you missed a tiny shortcut in the second-last section of the Mt. Ioti caves. Rather than try and describe it in my wordy fashion, I'll just point you here (look at the last screenshot).
EDIT:
I can't think of anything else that wouldn't be 100% obvious to you. I guess you're planning to fight a Star Miner, R7308xx, and 39 Last Starmen (within 12 fights) with EVE? Have fun manipulating them to all hit Ninten with PK Beam gamma AND getting maximum strength bonuses from level-ups.
And good job on remembering to detour to use Telepathy on the Magicant castle guards while going through with Ninten the first time -- I completely forgot about the PP-requirement there (combined with the PP-loss from death-warping back to Magicant). Although, it wouldn't have cost very much at all to just restore Ninten's PP where you revive Lloyd (but it would still be slightly slower).
I also appreciate how you do a few zig-zags while running around (when it doesn't cost time, obviously). Just to spice things up a bit without making the viewer queasy. I know if I were doing this, I would have been tempted to make the party wobble back and forth in time to the music, but that doesn't work when the screen is always centred firmly on the lead party member.
That trick to damage Gyorg without using the Zora Mask is ...unintuitive.
I guess this means that soloing the fight with Goron Link (for fun) is completely impossible -- you can stun Gyorg, but not damage him. Could you time a Deku Bubble & water-hop to fall under just before the bubble hits, or would that be considered not "underwater" (probably so)?
Fierce Diety's energy blast must be hardcoded to work anytime.
That was quite efficient. Good job.
However, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed with the entertainment factor. Rather than just following Kirby, Gooey should be doing all kinds of silly antics. Especially, since grabbing or dropping powers do not halt gameplay, Gooey should be showing off the abilities that don't help in a speedrun.
For example, why did Gooey not obtain & play around with Cutter, Parasol, and Spark on the first level? Also, by having a power stored, Gooey can show some of the helpers' abilities while carrying them. Why didn't Gooey stay with Chuchu on 1-2 & showcase some of her abilities?
Also, you seemed not to know that with Coo + Stone, you can fly while Kirby is in rock form. Just some extra entertainment factor for the forced auto-scroll sections.
I wouldn't restart the run because of this, but try a little harder in the following areas of the game. While dashing/Coo-flying forward is technically impressive, it can get repetitive.
Ah. Thank you for the explanation.
I'm not sure why the designers had you warp to a dummy room as opposed to just pausing on the black screen, but we should be thankful because it helps us.
As a third option, we could go the speeddemosarchive route & make each sub-game a separate TAS/movie. Or has this already been shot down by the mods previously?
Uh, wow. That was great. Very well optimized.
Sorry for not being entirely clear in my previous post. We thought we needed to be able to teleport to the Lost Underworld, but that was fixed once we understood why the game "froze" after death-warping.
Before your latest video, this was the plan after Jeff joined the others:
1) Save at Threed Hotel.
2) Go back to graveyard.
3) Do glitch.
4) Walk straight to Lumine Hall hole.
5) Use Sound Stone.
6) Enter hole.
7) Death warp back to Threed hotel.
Your way seems much faster, as you skip most of the map-walking by warping right above the Lumine Hall area. I'm sure that even taking into account the time needed to ghost yourself a second time, it's quicker.
...Wait a second. Why do you not freeze if you walk above where you did the glitch in Summers after arriving in the Lost Underworld?
And after doing the glitch in Summers, I stopped the movie & instead took a tunnel in from the pyramid that put me where Poo leaves you, and the game froze there, even though it's almost as low down as Threed....
Argh! Whenever I think I have the nuances of this glitch figured out, it throws a curveball! I'll leave it to the experts.
I still don't see the point of doing the arena. You're just going to use the same Wheelie Rider strategy that's used throughout the rest of the run, leading to a much more anticlimatic ending to the run. Remember, entertainment is almost as (if not more) important than speed.
Unless the arena goes for in-game time rather than real-time, in which case it gets much more interesting and varied. But that would make timing hard -- real time until final hit on Marx, and then lowest arena in-game time? Might as well split them into two runs then.
If going for real time, the only real competition I can see for Wheelie Rider would be a Stone + TAC combo. Even then, the time lost from manually running to bosses like Computer Virus & Wham Bam Rock, not to mention Meta Knight's sword pickup requiring luck manipulation to get Stone after the fight, makes the race seem uneven.
pirohiko: Interesting Exit Mouse glitch.
Before we understood why the game froze when death-warping back from the Lost Underworld, I came up with some convoluted method of setting the Exit Mouse Warp point at the start of Lumine Hall, death-warping back to Threed, beating Magicant, ghost-walking to Stonehenge Base (shares same tileset as Threed underground tunnels), and using the Exit Mouse to warp to Lumine Hall (where you could beat Electro Specter & enter Lost Underworld, and teleport out of there).
The problem with that was that in order to get Saturn Valley as a teleporting location, you needed to enter the place from the tunnel linking it to Peaceful Rest Valley. And entering that cave reset the Exit Mouse point.
Regardless, that whole mess was put to rest when we discovered why death-warping back from the Lost Underworld "froze" the game -- the death-respawn point (where Jeff joins you) was too low down. Saving at the Threed Hotel first solved this.
I'm not sure I fully understand your Exit Mouse trick. Could it be used to avoid saving at the Threed Hotel?
Also, being too busy lately to mess around, I never tested to see if there was a difference in doing the ghosting trick on the top of a staircase instead of at the bottom. It makes sense in hindsight.
It's useless for the current run, unless we figure out an earlier place in the game to start ghosting. Jeff is useless for Magicant, and I have the feeling that he'll just magically appear with Poo after Ness's Nightmare if we ghost before acquiring him.
gocha: Those are excellent tricks.
1) Stutter-stepping over the Starman Jr. hotspot.
- While this isn't nearly as cool as death-warping home (mainly because stutter-stepping is virtually impossible to do on a console), it is much cleaner, and (probably) faster. And this is a TAS -- we should be doing tricks that you can only do on a TAS.
2) Extra Peaceful Rest Valley "ledge jumps/climbs".
- Those are some nice shortcuts. I guess your research from a few posts ago is starting to pay off. Too bad they won't be used, being obsoleted by your 3rd video.
3) Teleporting through walls.
- Cool. Is it possible to use that as a shortcut, or is impossible to get out of there? What happens if you try to walk off the left side of the area?
4) Ledge Climbing/Jumping past the Twoson Tunnels.
- Wow. Now only the Frank-to-Towson & Jeff-in-Winters stuff isn't broken wide open. For Pete's Sake, both Paula & Poo are just going to appear out of thin air in this run!
Not to ignore gocha's excellent research, but I thought I'd throw out another thing to think about:
We're already death-warping a bunch, so we might as well abuse it as much as we can. We're already doing the following:
- use death to skip fighting Starman Jr. (quicker than stutter-walking over hotspot, as you'd need to spend time walking home)
- use death to warp from Happy Happy Village back to Twoson Bus Station
- use death to warp from Lost Underworld back to Threed hotel
The only other place I can think of using it would be to warp from the end of Giant's Step back to downtown Onett. If this is even possible (talking to the police officer by Giant's Step's entrance may be required to trigger the Capt. Strong in the Police Station), it may still be slower due to the lack of PP for the Onett Police Squad. We could stay at the hotel or visit Frank to recover PP, but that seems really slow.
EDIT: I recently submitted a stat & experience guide to gamefaqs. It may be helpful in your planning. Warning -- it's big (over 1 MB).
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/file/588301/54159
When you exit the pyramid, you are unable to teleport, most likely to prevent you from avoiding the "Poo leaves" hotspot via teleport crashing.
Huh. Good on the programmers for realizing that you could teleport-crash over hotspots.
So, yeah, a bit more testing, and it seems that Dungeon Man leaving you causes you to regain the ability to teleport, even if Poo is with you. The hotspot that causes Poo to leave you is only active when you enter the desert area from the pyramid exit (and Poo hasn't already left you).
So entering & exiting Dungeon Man will allow you to walk over the hotspot with nothing happening. After Dungeon Man leaves you, enter & exit the pyramid to reactivate the hotspot & again lose the ability to teleport.
Anyways, one question is whether this stutter walk is considered a "big glitch" like the walk-through-walls. Would it be used on a new non-glitched any%?
Hmm... So this stutter-step technique can be used to pass over sufficiently-thin hotspots....
Perhaps we could skip the whole meteorite mess at the start & just go south to Onett? But that's not a hotspot according to PK Hack, so it probably won't work.
Anyways, I quickly tested the pyramid thing. Nothing gets messed up -- the game is perfectly happy with a party of six (Chosen 4, Dungeon Man, Super Plush Bear). The end of the Master Barf fight is exactly like before -- the boss's death action must have some kind of "add Poo to the party if he's not already in it" command. Poo still learns PSI Starstorm alpha.
The trigger point for losing & regaining the ability to teleport is from adding & dropping Dungeon Man from your party, respectively. Poo's presense has no effect on this. I'm not sure what other teleporting-loss event you're referring to.
Those skip-Starman-Jr. videos are awesome.
Now, how exactly does the skip Buzz Buzz trick work? The hotspot extends from the top of the room to the bottom. Anyways, the trick should be used in a non-glitch run, but unfortunately not this one.
One other thing I've noticed -- the sanctuary hotspots. As you can guess, each sanctuary has a large hotspot that causes you to heal & record a melody when stepped on.
But Giant Step & Lillyput steps have TWO hotspots -- one that you must pass over before hitting the sound-recording one. My guess is that they set flags.
Now, if the one by Giant's Step happens to trigger the cops ready to fight you in the station, then we could skip actually recording the melody.
EDIT: Nope, I just tested it. Stopping just before where you record the melody & backtracking has no apparent effect. Who knows what that hotspot does?
It could just be an old artefact that does nothing -- there is a hotspot in Magicant lying in a completely unaccessible area.
I remember I used advanced Splash Bros. on Queen Bean's hands in my segmented amateur TAS that I made for my little brother.
No, no, no -- you completely misunderstood me.
Don't bother wasting time attacking Queen Bean's hands. Use the advanced version of Splash Brothers to directly attack her head right off the bat. Luigi will have to waste his turns hammering Queen Bean (to prevent her getting close) or jumping on a random hand (if Queen Bean getting close enough to punch you ends up wasting less time).
The thing is that Queen Bean herself resists hammer attacks, meaning that they will always do only 1 damage to her. She takes normal damage from jump attacks, but with that crown on her head, she's considered "spiky".
But the advanced version of Splash Brothers, while doing slightly less damage than the normal version, allows you safely jump on spiky enemies. In fact, you do double damage on such enemies! So you don't need to waste time destroying Queen Bean's hands, and then suffering her long "bean spit" attacks -- just go for her head right off the bat!
The issue is learning the advanced version of Splash Brothers before the fight. This may involve Luigi using just normal attacks on some of the earlier boss fights so that Mario can get a few extra uses of Splash Brothers in. Or, possibly enter a random encounter to practise it -- Luigi can always run from battle after Mario attacks.
Are you planning any changes to the strategies used in the current run at SDA?
The only two things I can think of:
1) Perhaps use Splash Brothers Advanced on Queen Bean? The time saved doing so would probably counter the extra time upgrading the move earlier.
2) Forget about upgrading Knockback Bros. for the final fight -- just use Chopper Bros. exclusively after getting the Mush badges.
No, I've had it happen every time on my NES, regardless of which Bowser I beat.
Are you sure that you weren't resetting the game? My memory is hazy, but I'm pretty sure that you had to wait until "The End" appeared, and then hit start on the controller.
Ha, ha! Awesome -- I never thought to have Ness's Nightmare flash itself.
Regarding the status ailments, this what I've got in my notes (most taken from various places on starmen.net):
The only way to cure feeling strange status (aside from PSI Healing beta or higher) is to be hit with a non-SMAAAASH!ing bash-like attack. Unfortunately, both of Pokey's attacks are bash-like. So we'd need to have him use gas, miss himself, or SMAAAASH! himself.
And Giygas only has a 16% to miss himself with his own attacks. I think confusion is out of the question.
Sleep wears off with 50% probability when hit with any damage-dealing attack, and wears off naturally with 25% probability on the character's turn.
Probably the best strategy is to put Giygas to sleep, let Pokey wake up, and have Poo keep him frozen while he gets smacked with Legendary Bat physicals from Ness & light-chasing prayers (or PSI Freeze) from Paula.
I've been doing a little thinking about the battle strategies for this new glitch run.
I think that death-warping past Starman Jr. will save a little bit of time, provided that setting up the Spiteful Crow takes little time. Provoke a red-swirl & luck-manipulate 2 SMAAAASH! attacks to defeat Ness before Buzz Buzz attacks even once. You'll still have enough money for the Tee Ball Bat, I think, and beating a random punk on the street will give as much experience as Starman Jr. for a much quicker battle (if the extra experience is truly needed).
Perhaps we could get a red-swirl in Peaceful Rest Valley to quickly give Ness a cold, timing it so that he collapses just after recruiting Paula. But, in the current run, Ness is already almost out of HP by the time he rescues Paula, so that probably won't matter.
I see two ways to beat Ness's Nightmare:
1) Forget about reviving Paula & Jeff in Magicant -- unghost yourself from the glitch at the door to Flying Man's house. Recruit a Flying Man, grab the Magicant Bat, and SMAAAASH! Ness's Nightmare to death. Ness is already going to receive massive level-ups, so he might as well just absorb everything himself from the battle.
2) Revive Paula & Jeff with Ness's Mom in Magicant, and use Paula's prayer to confuse Ness's Nightmare. It can blast itself with rockin' omega, while Paula helps out with some light-chasing prayers. Jeff can drop, but Ness must stay conscious so that he doesn't disappear into the ether after Magicant (stranding Paula in Saturn Valley after beating Giygas).
As for Giygas...
1) Just have Ness (and maybe Flying Man) SMAAAASH! Pokey's lights out, while you manipulate misses from both Giygas & Pokey.
2) Have Paula put them to sleep with prayer, and beat them down while asleep.
3) Have Paula confuse them, and let them blast each other (manipulate Giygas to miss himself).
For phase two of Giygas, let him blast himself with reflected lightning while you suppliment with PSI Rockin & light-chasing prayers. For phase 3, just have Giygas do nothing on his turns.
Jeff & Poo are useless in the Cave of the Past without doing some preparation. Jeff's speed is much too low to hit with Bottle Rockets on Pokey or Giygas without detouring for the Rabbit's Foot. That would involve either beating Electro Specter or doing the walk-through-walls glitch a 3rd time, but if we do, then we could steal a Multibottle Rocket on the way to Giygas.... Poo simply doesn't have enough PP to use Starstorm Omega, and he missed out on learning the alpha version. Detouring for the Bag of Dragonite in Magicant may be worth it, just to give them something to do. Or they could be meat shields to absorb reflected blows from phase-1-Giygas.