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I've never met nor seen anyone who even claims to be able to beat Battletoads on the console. But I think everyone here knows how horrible that game is. Still, it belongs in that article.
Wizards & Warriors 2 was, indeed, the easiest in its series. It was still an arduous task to defeat, though.
I've beaten Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts like twice in my life without the warp thingie. It's not hard, but you have to go through it twice, which is trying of your patience. Never played the NES version, so I can't comment on it.
Space Ace. That game's first level was ok. Then you get to this high-speed maze thing and you're lucky if you can even find the next level. And I've been lead to believe that there are levels after you finish everything in that maze, but I wouldn't know since I never beat it.
I'll go ahead and say that the first Contra was really hard. I never finished it, myself, but then again that was so many years ago I might be mis-remembering how hard it was.
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Crazy Mode in particular. I have never literally feared a video game before I took it upon myself to get 100% in Crazy Mode for that game. I swear, "Crazy" is apparently the code word for "masochistically difficult" at Konami. I wouldn't actually believe that I've beaten it were it not for the saved game I have on my memory card to prove it.
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Please tell me you're thinking of Golden Sun. That game was awesome.
Uhmmm.... can't think of any particular area of memory; data's usually just put where it fits. Use the cheat search function. It helps a lot.
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Actually, I think the ideal two-player setup would be Cleric + Mage. The Cleric levels up ridiculously fast, so he has tons of life to spend on magic, and the Mage's magic is the strongest. The Elf's arrows aren't any more powerful than the Mage's spell shots, but I believe they get weaker the farther they travel, so their range is a moot point.
I think a run using the Dwarf would be interesting, simply because I have a hard time finishing normal with him. But that's neither here nor there.
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Voted yes, though I haven't watched the full run, yet. But from what I've seen it's very excellently done and highly entertaining. I think Megaman X2's star should be given to this movie when/if it gets published.
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Trial and error is the simplest way to do it, but it's also the most time consuming because there's no way to predict the results of a given trial until you do it.
Variable watching takes a lot of patience and a lot of time to figure stuff out, but once you've figured things out you can predict results with "deadly accuracy."
Actions taken is the big determination factor. In some games the amount of steps taken will affect things, in others the game's clock will change stuff. Most turn-based games don't care about the actual time spent in a given menu, but they do care about how you traverse the menu. (I.e: which options you scroll through.)
Since we're talking about an RPG, your characters' health is sometimes an issue. Test out what happens if you let the monsters hit a different person. (Do they get more critical hits? Do the monsters continue targetting them?)
Can't really help any more without knowing which game (or even which system) you're thinking of.
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Meh vote. It's well-done, but it's just not that entertaining to watch. The path is mostly straight lines, and there's really nothing to break the "monotony."
Also, I really don't think it was worth the amount of work it must've taken to beat the world record by half a second. But that's just me.
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Wind + Sacred Fist is the most MP efficient form of damage for most bosses, especially in the last three battles. If used properly you can get two hits from each shot on both Maxim and Dracula's second form, and you might be able to get a third hit per shot on Dracula, I'm not sure.
Wind + Cross might be better in terms of time, though, I don't know. Depending on the boss, Fire + Cross might be faster, as well as Lightning + Holy Water.
I remember being impressed with some of the Knife's spells, but the only one I remember is the Wind one, which is just Richter's Knife crash from Dracula X. I seem to recall that the Fire spell can do major damage if you do the rotating pad thingie to get more fireballs.
I don't recommend taking anything but the Cross to a boss fight, though. Once you run out of MP the cross has the best damage potential.
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Looks nice, but sadly I think I'm the only other person here who cares. :(
Also, I think a carefully planned 1-player tool-assisted run of this game would be about 30 minutes, a 2-player version would be about 22-24. So your time isn't bad, considering. (Especially since this game is so hard. I honestly don't believe it was intended to be played solo.)
I wonder if you can find a rom for the arcade version of this. And if there's any difference between the two.
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Oh what tangled webs we weave.....
when first we try to cheat at Contra.
Allright, so it just doesn't have that ring to it.
Isn't there some stupid punk or emo band that has a song by that name? (The code being the name of the song, i.e: "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start.")
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I don't have the patience for that. I might re-do the run in the future, after it's (hopefully) published, but I just don't have the patience to go through this game twice before I have a finished product. It just takes too much work. Everything except walking on the overworld and normal walking in dungeons has to be done frame-by-frame, and walking in dungeons has to be done at 10% speed because the game has a screwy input system.
(Anyone who played the game on the console and ever wondered why you kept walking into walls? It's because the game only acts upon the input received two frames before a given step is taken. Subsequent input does not matter. Since each step only takes four frames, that means human reflexes just aren't fast enough to turn before you actually reach the wall. Hence people take lots of unnecessary steps when they play at normal speed, and since that's the primary determination variable, the pseudo-random factor for this game is incredibly high.)
It totals up to about 2 seconds right now. If I keep averaging that much, it'll be like 30 seconds of wasted time by the end of the run. That's less than the standard improvement between first and second run, anyway, right?
Meh. I dunno. I'll have something worth posting by next weekend.
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Actually, ideally you would finish this game with exactly 0 credits and 0 lives left. There are so few healing items in the game that it would most definitely save time to die in order to be able to use magic again at some points. I also believe that when you're resurrected you actually hit nearby monsters, but it might just be that you knock them back. Then we get into the magic rock they give you when you use a credit, which can deal massive damage depending on what they send you, and it's clear to me that lives are actually a resource to be spent in this game.
Enh. Haven't watched your faster run, but I'm sure the time can be beaten. I just don't have the time to beat it right now. =\
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Don't we have people here who have done both? (Authored a Time Attack and a Speed Run, that is.)
If not, I could see about submitting a Speed Run for Megaman X6. :p
To be honest, I don't see why it matters to them. They're video games. What kind of person needs to defend their ability to play a video game? (With the possible exception of multiplayer ones, but still....)
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No. :(
First, I'm trying to figure out Hex-editing so's I can fix that stone I push two steps more than I need to in Alunze's basement. It's taking me a while to get used to looking at the code. Sorry. =\
Second, I've hit an inner turmoil about the run as it stands. I have counted four different mistakes in the run, right now, and two different facets of my personality are at war over them.
On the one hand is the perfectionist in me, which can't stand to see mistakes in my work, even minute ones.
On the other hand is the lazy part of me, which doesn't want to go through Tanbel Tower two more times. Especially since one of those mistakes only loses 8 frames; most people watching the run won't even notice. (Next shortest loses 16, then the two which cause desynchs lose 19 each.)
I really am very torn over this, as it would be a lot of work to go through that Tower again. (Twice, at that, plus the short visit to Tanbel itself.) In any case, once I've fixed the Alunze basement thing I'll come to a decision and either fix the two runs on the tower or just move on to Clamento.
Also, I had a huge paper due this Monday which I spent most of last week on, but that's not why I still haven't made any progress.
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Best Hacked ROM movie can be eliminated since it's mostly a sub-category of the "not published" category.
I think the two multiplayer categories should be just one category, with weight given to single-author movies accordingly. Either that or just remove the "Multiplayer with two authors" category alltogether.
Longest and Shortest should be removed. That's determined more by the game chosen than how the player recorded it. (And longest would inevitably fall to whichever RPG got recorded that year.)
Best PAL movie probably isn't necessary.
An idea for a player category: Most Entertaining. Would go to the player who made the best effort to make his movie more entertaining than simply running through each level. (Or maybe that should go to a movie? I dunno.)
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Eh, for this game taking no damage would be very impressive, but I don't think impressive enough to compensate for several minutes' extra time, which it looks like it'd be. Still, the DSS glitch is impressive enough, so there's really no need for extra "wow" effect.
Yes vote, which doesn't matter since it's already on queue.
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Can't you whip just before you land to cancel the sliding animation? Making it actually faster to backflip? Or does whipping mid-backflip lose the same amount of frames that just walking does?
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On the contrary, encounters are determined based on the number of steps you've taken.
Taking a different path (almost) never changes the encounter rate. There is one exception to this: for whatever reason (and I don't know why) you cannot enter battle on a bridge. That's why my battle-free stretch between Sudeltan and Alunze is so long.
Pausing between steps doesn't change anything, either. I tried that many times, and it never seems to affect which step you encounter something on. (Nor the group you encounter.) In fact, pauses don't seem to affect anything in this game. If it weren't for the clock in the menu screen, I'd almost think the game doesn't actually keep track of time. Everything seems to be mostly step-count based. (And opening the menu affects way more than it appears to, as well.)
Also, the amount of time spent in the menu doesn't seem to affect the encounter rate at all, nor does flipping through the options or entering sub-menus. It may have a very subtle effect (like changing the encounter after next) but it doesn't do anything immediately noticeable.
I know it's annoying, but at some point it becomes less of a bother. (For a number of reasons. I get the Warp spell when Selan joins, the towns get closer together after Aleyn, and when I get Excerion or whatever the ship's name is I shouldn't have to avoid nearly as many battles. Once I have the sub, I can avoid overworld battles effortlessly.)
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Kyrsimys wrote:
quietkane wrote:
If you're referring to the multicolored blocks puzzle, there are no unnecessary movements for that solution.
Actually I meant a different block. You do it again in the beginning of Tanbel tower, so I'm probably just missing something. It just seems to me that pushing a block is slower than walking, but you simply push the block as far as it goes instead pushing it a few times and then walking beside it. (the block in the question is in of the first rooms, you push the block to get to a pot)
Ah. If it's the block in Tanbel Tower that I'm thinking of, going around it involves fighting the scorpion there, either because it blocks my exit or because it runs into me while I'm walking around the block. If I stop pushing the block two steps earlier I can keep it from blocking my exit, but I have to take a couple of extra steps to do so, so it turns out to be exactly the same number of frames.
Edit: Oh, I just found the one in Alunze basement. I'm not sure why I push that one so far. Might just have been carelessness. I guess I can test it. If there's no reason for it, though, it can be hex-edited out. Shouldn't change anything relevant in the rest of the run.
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Yeah, I only spent 10 minutes on that one and haven't touched it since. No surprise, I guess. Out of curiosity, anything in particular I did wrong? Or was my timing just generally a bit off? (Which I know it is. I still haven't quite got the hang of the physics of the clay world. Inertia's so weird when it's in video games, don't you agree?)
I'm still not finding a good route through Africa's stages, and I'd also like to know if there's a warp in that world somewhere that I don't know about before I go and record more than I have to. I'll come back and do these over once I clear Africa by hand, but anyone else is welcome to try their hand at it in the meantime. In fact, they're welcome to use either of my runs as a starting point for their own, if they want. (Although we've just heard testimony that that's not a good idea. =\)
I've gotta say, though, that I just absolutely love watching the mouse haul ***. Very fun. (Hell, it's even fun to record. I definitely can't say that about Lufia.)
And RPGs don't take much precision to record, just planning. I guess that's why I'm doing well with that one. =p (I always do enjoy planning out routes and strategies and whatnot for games more than I do actually playing them. I'm kinda weird that way, I guess.)
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Bleah. I've noticed a mistake: in Tanbel, I waste two steps going to the weapon shop. Unfortunately, I don't know how that affects the rest of the run, but I suspect it requires a complete re-record from that point. (I hope I'm wrong, though. I'd hate to have a stupid mistake like that in the run, and I'm not re-doing that tower again. Not to mention the fight with Camu.)
Also, I was wrong about not wasting steps with the alternate puzzle solution. I take 4 extra steps the first time and only gain two back from the crab's changed movement. So it's slower. But changing that would require that I redo that tower twice, so I'm going to go with an "entertainment factor" plea on this one.
As for no more levelling, the extra trip up the tower was to prevent having to level for the next two bosses. It remains to be seen whether I actually saved myself time on it, though. Beyond that, the only level wall I forsee is the first battle with Idura at the northern lighthouse. (That battle's hard even with good levels.) I might get surprised by something, though.
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Nope. There's a Genesis version of it.
Ys 3 - Wanderer from Ys (U) [!].bin
I've never played the Genesis version of this, but from what I see, the Snes version is a little cleaner. It's probably better to do the run with that one, unless you can find a useful glitch in the Genesis version.
Never finished the game, so I don't know if it'd make an interesting run or not. I guess it depends on how optimized you can make it. Good luck if you give it a shot.
