Wow, huge congrats on finishing this TAS. I've been running the game real time for about 10 years and currently hold the record for this category too, so to see this be 20 minutes faster than my time was a big surprise. Unfortunate that a few bits of movement come out looking slow, but I know they really aren't. The strict score requirements combined with Bomberman's awkward jump rigidity, only two jump heights and essentially two air speeds, having to wait for some jumps to finish and a little backtracking is inevitable sometimes. I want to take my perspective as a real time runner and comment on a few stages. There's been a lot of times I've thought "man it'd be cool to consistently do this" and your TAS humors every one of those thoughts and more.
- Seeing the attacks from above in Secret Room was super cool, I've never manged it myself so to see it actualized was fun
- Dropping down at the end of Dragon Road was cool, always been too scared to do it. Very stylish
- I appreciate the optimization of Killer Gate, the rising and falling for the bombs and spacing them such that their expanding radius hits the subs just right seems like it took a ton of work to optimize. Seriously, this stage owned
- Appreciate Baruda for the same reasons as Killer Gate. Real time we tend to sit still at the start and drop a bomb while rising once the score timer hits a certain point. Everything after that is always a mess so it was dope seeing this bird be put in his place
- I popped off a little when you did the clip off of the generator thing to grab the safety vest in Magma Dam; I think real time runners had only discovered that one 2 years ago so I wasn't expecting to see it. How long ago was Magma Dam TASed? Don't mean to imply you like hid the trick or anything, mind, the only reason it wasn't known real time is because US 100% had gotten nearly 0 attention until just before I came across that clip. It's a little obvious even, so I'm just curious to know how long you had known about it
- Death Garden was satisfying to watch, you made the cycles like perfectly. Did that just end up being the case with the fastest movement, or did you prevent having to watch Bomberman wait by discreetly moving a little bit slow at some parts?
- Float Zone 🙉🙉🙉 real time I always made sure to destroy the car alarm guy even though I knew it was slow lol
- Hard Coaster in general is such a snoozefest, and the long throw powerup makes dealing with the enemies even worse at the end. There's not even much you can do to make the downtime here entertaining. Like you can run around the platform or like move the camera around and that's it. I'm sorry you had to TAS that.
- I spent a lot of time routing Dark Maze for my runs, maybe more than any other stage, and seeing your TAS come up with more or less the same route was super validating. There's a lot of interesting routing decisions to make swapping between the normal and salt bombs. I really love the bomb kick to hit the box in this stage
- In your notes for Mad Coaster you mention the slugs regenerate when they die right as you leave their range. Do you happen to know how far this range is? And do other enemies share the same range? There have been a couple real time runs of 100% where the bomb rat in Warp Room respawns and we weren't sure how to replicate it well. There's also the tree beneath the Adok Bomb in Great Rock that you can duplicate too, though that's done by dropping the killing blow bomb from all the way above on those small floating platforms and waiting a second before dropping down, but that one doesn't seem to be timing based
- Move Stone was hype as hell, you moved those stones like no other..
- Eye Snake seemed tough, were you manipulating the movement of the snakes at all or are they actually just random? Never been able to tell
- The wait in the Cronus refight was super unfortunate, but as I understand it the RNG value only advances on certain events and isn't tied to any global timer or anything, and I don't think your actions as Bomberman can ever affect it directly. Really, really unfortunate that you got stuck with Cronus not playing nice
- Your Natia refight was beautiful. Seeing them just stand there was almost cathartic
Overall, you put together a great TAS and its release was such a cool surprise. Bomberman Hero is a very simple game in some ways, but in knowing the ways in which it's not I can tell you put a ton of effort into this. Seriously, good job. I had a ton of fun watching it and I'm sure I'll be watching it again in the future
