Hey, Superman 64 is being TASed, why not do the other disgustingly terrible Superman game that Titus made?
Route/Test WIP (Goes through Stage 6):
User movie #14639344134878627
Definitely won't be submission quality when finished: I didn't bother putting any effort into making the autoscrollers entertaining and I'm not really optimizing anything until the real run.
Have some notes:
*I'll mention straight away that this game has desynced on me about 10-15 times so far, though that's most likely due to my abuse of Bizhawk's rewind feature... But then again, it's still far more desyncs than the other things I've done in Bizhawk, so maybe it's the game, too.
*This game is based on finding keys, in the same way that Superman 64 is about flying through rings and walls. You need to find a certain number of keys in each level. There are more keys than you need in each level, which is surprisingly lenient, and their locations are not random, which is even more surprisingly lenient, so it's just about finding the fastest keys to get.
*I'd love to find out exactly where the hitboxes are, because they actually make me physically ill. They just don't make sense in any way and trying to figure out when I need to punch to hit an enemy (hint: it's always earlier than you expect) gives me a headache sometimes.
*The fastest form of movement is... whatever the hell Superman does on the ground. It's a lightning quick 10 frame slide (with a couple frames of "cooldown") that's done by just pressing Up + B while standing. This can be done off of a ledge, which will send Superman literally flying...
*...except this game has awful """"physics"""", so in most cases sending Supes flying off a ledge won't go over as well as you might think. Much like Superman 64, Supes handles like a car, even when flying up and down. He has to accelerate, and then he has momentum after accelerating which keeps him moving up for a bit after you release A. Basically, sending him off a ledge gives him maximum downward acceleration, and as far as I can tell you need well over a vertical screen length to even get him to slow down, let alone start moving upward again.
*On top of that, getting hit while flying stops your upward acceleration. Either that or it just adds downward acceleration for a moment. I don't know. Attacking while flying has the same sort of effect, though much more briefly, so if you see me attacking for no good reason, it's usually to control my vertical momentum.
*This is more lag than game. In normal stages, the game lags for a frame about once every 4-5 frames. In the underwater stages, it lags every other frame for the most part. The funny thing is, there's no lag during the ground slide, which not only makes it the fastest form of travel, but the most effective form of reducing lag. It's basically the best thing this game has to offer. It's why I decided to try TASing the game and it's one of the only things I find entertaining about it.
*The other is a glitch I found in the Lexcorp stages, which I'm sure other people have found too because it is hilariously easy to stumble across. The electric beams only hurt you when you're flying. The point of Stage 3 is supposed to be needing to turn off some beams that always stay on, but I don't bother with that because conveniently there's just enough space to land on the tiny beam platform. And even more conveniently, if you're touching that bottom platform, you can just walk straight through:
Wait, there's more. You can pass through one of these beams without needing to land on the platform if you have enough speed going in. The ground dash, when done off a ledge, gives you enough speed to pass straight through the beams, but you won't be doing that much. In this case, rebounding between the beams actually gives me enough speed to push myself into the second beam, which rebounds me inside it rapidly, slowly pushing me to the right until I escape. As nice as the glitch is here, this is most likely suboptimal. Passing through the first beam could've been faster and I need to do some testing to see if I can pass through the second beam without having to slowly push myself through. I could ground dash, but given the momentum issue I'd be sent to the ground when I need to fly up to the next floor.
And yeah, the second beam I walk through is much smoother because of the tighter landing.
*Speaking of hitboxes, you can stand in an injured enemy all you want and as long as you hit it just as it comes out of its invincibility time you'll never get hurt. The boss is nothing more than punching it to the left so I can end the stage quicker.
*There are 10 stages in this game, and three of them are autoscrollers. Two of them are nearly identical autoscrollers. Exciting!
I'm tired as hell, I'll write more when I finish up the test run in a couple days or so.
Not even sure where I gained the 4 frames. I think it was optimizing sliding? I'll upload the file after I finish the stage.
Observations:
*Sliding can be cancelled by pressing the opposite direction for one frame, which allows for much earlier jumping when necessary.
*Jumping off ledges is faster only when a single frame jump is required, otherwise it's faster to just slide off.
*The fully charged shot seems to create a bit of lag whenever it's fired. Cancelling slides and using single buster shots might end up being faster in rare cases.