Rolanmen1's and FractalFusion's Mega Man X6 "Any%" TAS in 25:34.
This is an improvement of FractalFusion's TAS, improved by 00:19.00 seconds. In-game time is 9:39.
Recorded using: PCSX RR v0.1.3

Aims

  • Hardest difficulty
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck (not much)

About The Game

This game is Mega Man game which was rushed, with untranslated voices and bad translation. Some bosses were poorly designed and look like a mess as well. Some stages are also poorly designed, being impossible to pass with the wrong armor or character, or structure randomization. The difficulty of the game is very hard, even on Normal.
See the all stages run for the kind of stuff the game throws at you. Things exist just to kill you, that's for sure. Not to mention that Xtreme mode turns entire stages into enemy soup.
For more information, read the previous run's submission text.

About The Run

There are 3 ways to reach the fortress stages:
  1. Beat all 8 Mavericks.
  2. Beat High Max in a secondary area.
  3. Obtain 3000 Nightmare Souls.
The second method is fastest, but requires beating a Maverick, since High Max requires a special weapon in order to be damaged. Along the way, the run obtains Zero.
This is the route used:
  • Intro Stage (X)
  • Commander Yammark (X)
  • Infinity Mijinion (X) (Secondary Area)
  • Infinity Mijinion (X) (Secondary Area)
  • Gate's Lab 1 (Zero)
  • Gate's Lab 2 (X)
  • Sigma (Zero)

Weapons, mechanics, and other stuff

Yammar Option is a useful weapon, as it gives Zero a ranged attack. Furthermore, X can easily hit enemies with the charged attack, and by wobbling so that the fireflies go in and out of the target, it hits the enemy repeatedly, assuming no invincibility period.
Contact is strange in this game. Apparently an attack only makes contact if no other attacks are in it (hence the need to wobble with Yammar Option). This is also related to the main SDC method in this run, which does 2 damage every 5 frames.
As in all other PSX Mega Man games, X can use both a special weapon and X-Buster at the same time.
Duck dashing and saber climbing are tricks that saved time during the run. Saber climbing, which X can only use, eliminates X's recoil from the wall when jumping.

Run notes

Intro Stage

Most of the improvement here was from duck dashing and saber climbing.

Commander Yammark

We planned to go on this stage as X because Yammark's power was really helpful for Infinity Mijinion's stage. We lost some frames, but more time is saved afterwards. One of the big enemies which Zero can jump cannot be jumped by X and so must be destroyed.

Infinity Mijinion

Now, the lost time is made up. Charged Yammark Option allows X to quickly destroy Illumina's Cables. Although the previous run went to Shield Sheldon's stage to get Zero, this stage proved to be more short. Passing through this stage without Yammark Option was not an option though, since X would have to pass using his Saber.

Infinity Mijinion again

And now we have to return to the same stage, this time, to beat High Max. High Max is a special boss, because he can ONLY be damaged using certain weapons, and the initial weapons don't affect him. He only goes berserk when he has 16 or less health.

Gate's Lab 1

Zero finally comes to kick some ass. As you can notice, at the beginning, X couldn't pass the spike walls unless he gets the Jumper part, so Zero has to use his double jump ability to skip through them, another new trick is the Ice Glitch, when falling in an ice floor, releasing the forward button just before touching it, allows the character to move forward alone, this combined with duck dashing proves to be really helpful. Against Nightmare Mother (the boss) it is faster to use Yammark Option to hit the boss's eye instead of the Saber.

Gate's Lab 2

X was used mainly because this stage changes depending on the character, after beating the first boss. The stage changes to an Acid Rain Scenario (as X) or as a Junk Compressor Scenario (as Zero), which is the main reason of using X, Zero can also skip half of the stage, but, the Junk Compressor part would take more frames than saved. There is an old trick used in the previous TAS against High Max, by destroying his shields twice, he goes to Berserk Mode, allowing X to damage him faster. As for Gate, if the character destroys his spheres as quick as possible, Gate instantly throws another right after getting hit, but to do this, X needs to get hit, this was done until X's HP was down to 1.

Sigma

This is the classical "Beat the 8 bosses" stage. Zero uses a technique called SDC (Saber Dash Cancel), which allows him to use the 2 first saber attack from his triple combo to harm the enemy quickly and cancel with a dash and attack again. Repeating this process makes the boss fight realy quick, since these 2 attacks doesn't trigger invincibility barrier on bosses.
A new glitch was found against Phoenix, when he is about to use his special attack, he is SDCable (normaly he isn't). Mijinion is a unSDCable boss, is better to use the Z-Buster in this case. After a few other bosses, Scaravich comes, this fight was shorter by a good amount of frames by making him get hit by Yammark, instead of letting him go offscreen to come back. 6 frames were sacrificed to manipulate Metal Shark Player, this attack is faster than his usual dive attack. 7 frames were sacrificed to manipulate Wolfang, his ice ball attack makes him stand still, allowing Zero to SDC him.
After a short passage comes Sigma. His second battle was faster because of a new way to beat him, using the Z-Buster.

Final Stats

  • Nightmare Souls obtained: 0 (this has to be wrong)
  • Reploids rescued: 7
  • Clear time: 9:39
  • X Rank: C
  • Zero Rank: D

Comments

Rolanmen1 Comments: Wow, working with someone like FractalFusion saved me great problems, because of his knowledge about this game, his helpful advices saved some difficulty, but this game is hard to TAS AND to optimise, but overall, I liked the final result. My thanks goes to Atma and Mothrayas, Atma was already familiar with Megaman PSX TASing, letting me know some anomalities from this area wich is was new. And Mothrayas for helping on some bosses and letting me understand how the system works.
FractalFusion Comments: I didn't do too much of the run. I did Infinity Mijinion stage (visit 2), a little bit of Gate 1 boss, and part of Gate 2. The biggest trick I found was to spawn the vertical platform earlier than the last run did in Gate 2. You'll know where it is because it looks like it wastes time even though it doesn't.
What pleased me is that Rolanmen1 is as much a thinker as I am. Discovering tricks in TASes often comes down to "What if I did this?". In other words, thinking outside the box.

DarkKobold: I haven't judged a PSX run yet, so I'll claim this.
DarkKobold: Accepting as an improvement to the published run.
Aktan: Processing....

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2925: Rolanmen1 & FractalFusion's PSX Mega Man X6 in 25:34.02
Sir_VG
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FractalFusion Comments: I didn't do too much of the run. I did Infinity Mijinion stage (visit 2), a little bit of Gate 1 boss, and
and...? Don't leave us hanging, FractalFusion!
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Noxxa
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
Nightmare Souls obtained: 0 (this has to be wrong)
Maybe it only displays how many souls were collected by the character you finished the game with (Zero)? He didn't collect any souls, only X did.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Before commenting on the movie, will start the SD & HD encoding
[18:51] <scrimpy> Oh, nothing [18:51] <mmarks> oh [18:51] <Nach> I think scrimpy is just jealous of you mmarks
GabCM
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mmarks wrote:
Before commenting on the movie, will start the SD & HD encoding
Good luck mmarks, because PSX is the hardest console to encode.
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Joined: 12/27/2008
Posts: 873
Location: Germany
I encoded FractalFusion's old run, so I encoded this one too. http://www.mediafire.com/?na6voauo6sa7kud EDIT: After some effort, a lot of help from sgrunt and two disconnects while uploading, here is an SD encode: http://www.mediafire.com/?k1fiahfd4305lmz Regarding the run, this game is notable for using both X and Zero, being amazingly fast and, with its challenging level design, it looks very impressive for those who have played the game. The technical quality is obviously present and this game is one of my favorites. Easy Yes vote.
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Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Thanks for the encode p4wn3r. I can really see the difference the Yammar Option does in damage, especially in the seconnd High Max fight. Crazy TAS of an insanely hard game, and an improvement to boot. Gotta vote yes.
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p4wn3r wrote:
I encoded FractalFusion's old run, so I encoded this one too. http://www.mediafire.com/?na6voauo6sa7kud
p4wn3r: I was in charge of coding (counting to Aktan too, who knows this). But I must say it was a good encoding, of course And this movie, Yes voted, for improvements of the previous movie
[18:51] <scrimpy> Oh, nothing [18:51] <mmarks> oh [18:51] <Nach> I think scrimpy is just jealous of you mmarks
GabCM
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mmarks wrote:
p4wn3r wrote:
I encoded FractalFusion's old run, so I encoded this one too. http://www.mediafire.com/?na6voauo6sa7kud
p4wn3r: I was in charge of coding (counting to Aktan too, who knows this). But I must say it was a good encoding, of course And this movie, Yes voted, for improvements of the previous movie
Anyone can make a temporary encode even if anyone claimed the official encode.
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Posts: 272
This run was really cool. I love watching this game get destroyed. Yes vote for sure.
mklip2001
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Thanks, p4wn3r, for the temporary encode! Comparing this run to the published run, although this run is faster, I gotta say I like the published run more entertainment-wise. In this run, the first fight against Commander Yammark doesn't have that ridiculously fast SDC. It's annoying to see Infinity Mijinion played twice in a row (even though Illumina is cool). And in this run, it seems that X takes a lot more damage fighting High Max for the second time, which makes the dodging less impressive. However, there were some other nice touches to this run, like the refights against Heatnix and Scaravich. Also, I like the menu-switching to the music in an autoscroller of Gate 1. Yes vote.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Noxxa
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
A new glitch was found against Phoenix, when he is about to use his special attack, he is SDCable (normaly he isn't).
Should be noted this isn't "new" per se, I had already discovered it and used it in my all-stages run.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Rolanmen1
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mklip2001 wrote:
Thanks, p4wn3r, for the temporary encode! Comparing this run to the published run, although this run is faster, I gotta say I like the published run more entertainment-wise. In this run, the first fight against Commander Yammark doesn't have that ridiculously fast SDC. It's annoying to see Infinity Mijinion played twice in a row (even though Illumina is cool). And in this run, it seems that X takes a lot more damage fighting High Max for the second time, which makes the dodging less impressive. However, there were some other nice touches to this run, like the refights against Heatnix and Scaravich. Also, I like the menu-switching to the music in an autoscroller of Gate 1. Yes vote.
Yeah, i aswell dislike going to Mijinion's stage twice, but this is the fastest way to beat the game, and speed > entertainment, and idk, but i think that the Yammark fight looks more entertaining than SDC (have a long time seeing the same thing).
Joined: 5/19/2010
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Z-Buster on Sigma 2nd form doing crazy damage. LOLWTF Yes vote.
#3201
Joined: 10/17/2007
Posts: 63
Voting yes for awesomeness and new strategies. I liked the alternate take on Gate 2 in particular, and seeing X run all over the place in the Gate fight was fun.
Joined: 7/25/2007
Posts: 109
Rolanmen1 wrote:
Yeah, i aswell dislike going to Mijinion's stage twice, but this is the fastest way to beat the game, and speed > entertainment, and idk, but i think that the Yammark fight looks more entertaining than SDC (have a long time seeing the same thing).
Not necessarily. I'd name some specific examples here but I'm too lazy. Speaking of entertainment, am I the only madman who wants to see a no damage run of X6? Considering how hard it is to not take damage from what I've heard, it could turn out really nice. Also, preferably without using Zero, because honestly, his method of destroying bosses just got old the third time I saw it. :/ Probably why I don't enjoy the PSX MMX videos as much as the SNES ones.
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Well, System Error, there are people who have undertaken such a monumental task. HideOfBeast has a minimalist X Only run on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/HideofBeast#g/c/9A7DD8572486C671 Oh, and it's also on Xtreme difficulty and a No Damage*** run. And non-TASed. ***Not taking damage is slightly bent, as the acid rain segments in Rainy Turtloid and Gate Lab 2 are unavoidable as X. (Zero gets a trash compacter segment instead, but this is X only, so yeah.) HideOfBeast also did similar runs for X4 and X5. (X Only, No Damage, Final Destination)
#3201
Noxxa
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System Error wrote:
Rolanmen1 wrote:
Yeah, i aswell dislike going to Mijinion's stage twice, but this is the fastest way to beat the game, and speed > entertainment, and idk, but i think that the Yammark fight looks more entertaining than SDC (have a long time seeing the same thing).
Not necessarily. I'd name some specific examples here but I'm too lazy.
I don't get it. So you either say that this route isn't faster (which is pretty much true), or that speed > entertainment is false (well, this is a speedrun, so it's pretty much true as well that speed > entertainment) or that the Yammark fight here is less entertaining than SDC, even though you post below that you're sick of seeing Zero SDC all the time. And neither make sense with the "specific examples" thing you post after that. So what are you trying to say?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Posts: 109
Mothrayas wrote:
I don't get it. So you either say that this route isn't faster (which is pretty much true), or that speed > entertainment is false (well, this is a speedrun, so it's pretty much true as well that speed > entertainment) or that the Yammark fight here is less entertaining than SDC, even though you post below that you're sick of seeing Zero SDC all the time. And neither make sense with the "specific examples" thing you post after that. So what are you trying to say?
What I'm saying is that in some cases movie speed is not superior to entertainment. I was referring to "going to Mijinion's stage twice, but this is the fastest way to beat the game". In this particular case, it's acceptable, but in other cases, pure speed has proven to be bad to watch. Also, disregard the SDC thing. Didn't see it wasn't used in the one fight. My brain was working at half-capacity when I posted that. Still stand by it being annoying most of the time, though. :P Don't get me wrong - I like to see bosses absolutely destroyed. I just prefer every boss' absolute destruction to be personalized.
sameasusual wrote:
Well, System Error, there are people who have undertaken such a monumental task. HideOfBeast has a minimalist X Only run on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/HideofBeast#g/c/9A7DD8572486C671 Oh, and it's also on Xtreme difficulty and a No Damage*** run. And non-TASed. ***Not taking damage is slightly bent, as the acid rain segments in Rainy Turtloid and Gate Lab 2 are unavoidable as X. (Zero gets a trash compacter segment instead, but this is X only, so yeah.) HideOfBeast also did similar runs for X4 and X5. (X Only, No Damage, Final Destination)
Sounded promising, up until I heard him flapping his gums. :/ Sue me - I have an irrational dislike for people talking in gaming videos. Unless they're leaking charisma through the pores, which, unfortunately, most do not. EDIT: Oops, didn't see there was a commentaryless version at first. Whatever the case, I'd still love to see it in TAS format.
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Watched this yesterday and it's a definite Yes vote from me. Love the way you handle this insanely hard game. And by the way: I think this game deserves a 100% run.
Bein' away for like five years, and not a single new post in the ZSNES forum... :'-(
Noxxa
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Mazzic wrote:
And by the way: I think this game deserves a 100% run.
I'm not sure if it's worth it. All 100% adds to the game is seeing all secondary areas (except amazon secondary area) and all reploids rescued. On the other hand, 6 out of 8 stages will be partially revisited and you'll see Dynamo SDC'd six times. Plus, there's no interesting route change or anything either: aside from going after some reploids near the ends of the main stages, it'll be virtually identical to the all-stages run, just with 6 stage revisits tacked on in the middle.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1692] PSX Mega Man X6 by Rolanmen1 & FractalFusion in 25:34.02
Joined: 8/31/2004
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Mothrayas wrote:
I'm not sure if it's worth it. All 100% adds to the game is seeing all secondary areas (except amazon secondary area) and all reploids rescued. On the other hand, 6 out of 8 stages will be partially revisited and you'll see Dynamo SDC'd six times. Plus, there's no interesting route change or anything either: aside from going after some reploids near the ends of the main stages, it'll be virtually identical to the all-stages run, just with 6 stage revisits tacked on in the middle.
You may have a point there. I'm just weak for this game since I've fought with it hours and hours and hours. But I can understand your argument fully ^^
Bein' away for like five years, and not a single new post in the ZSNES forum... :'-(