Topic by TASVideoAgent

Here is my first submission using FCEU, played on the game Ninja Gaiden. This game is the first in a series of three games about a ninja named Ryu. The game follows Ryu's adventure as he sets out to avenge his father, who was killed by an unknown ninja. My main goal with this movie was to make this difficult game seem as easy as possible. I planned to acheive this by making my way though the game as quickly as possible, without ever slowing down. This however, is more difficult than it sounds; the developers of the game put enemies in locations where under normal circumstances would get in your way, and likely knock you down a pit. Infact, the developers went through such lengths to make this happen that some monsters in the later levels have been programmed to wait for you to get close enough before moving in to hit you down a hole!

Some things that you may notice about the run:

Abuses programming errors to save time

Manipulates luck

Takes damage to save time

Gets only the necessary items, and kills only the necessary enemies

Abuses programming errors to save time:

The first bug which I exploit in the game can be found in stage 2-1, where I jump inside of a wall and use an invisible platform to boost me ontop of it. I use this exploit again later in 2-2 to jump to the top of the screen instead of climbing up the ladder. There is s similar trick where you jump through the corner of a wall and grab a ladder coming from the wrong direction, but I don't really see this as a glitch, but more of a feature.

A second major error in the game is the way the hitboxes are handled. This works both for me and against me. The hitboxes on the birds are higher than the sprite themselves, which creates some instances where I seem to jump threw, or even stand inside of a bird without getting hit. Most other enemies however have a hitbox which is much bigger than the sprite, which sometimes only leaves a window of one or two frames where I can jump over them without being hit. I get screwed again by the craziness of the hitboxes at some of the bosses; the best two examples being the boss of act 3, and the second last boss. The boss of act 3 can only be hit in the lower portion of the sprite, and the second last boss can only be hit in the upper part, which explains why I am not always hitting them.

In alot of places you can climb up and over the top of a wall. I use this to my advantage in 5-2, but most walls you can do this type of thing with. Some of the time you end up grabbing onto something in the inside of the wall, landed on an invisible platform, or even falling down a pit. Give it a try, it's easy enough to do on a console! Of course, there are other walls which you can't climb high enough to get over/ontop of. These are usually the ones that I need to get on top of. An example of this can be seen in such places as 2-1 where instead of climbing all the way up a wall I must jump off of it onto another platform to get enough height to get ontop of what I was climbing

Another glitch can be heard if listen carefully in 2-2. Take note where I kill football player and three bullets as I drop off screen, and again when I kill the next enemy. While this doesn't help me at all in my run, it's still kinda cool.

Manipulates Luck:

Well only kinda. In 3-1 I pause a frame while i'm in the ghoul to make it throw a dagger which wouldn't hit me out of the air. Also in 5-3 I jump to make a jetpack ninja spawn higher so it wouldn't fly right into me.

Takes damage to save time:

I do this only very rarely, as in MOST cases it will acually slow you down because of the stun peroid where you cannot control Ryu and move extra slowly. The times where I do get hit are to boost myself up to a ledge I cannot normally reach with a normal jump.

Gets only the necessary items, and kills only the necessary enemies:

Some might think this isn't as entertaining as collecting/killing everything, but I beleive this is the type of game where this is not the case. If you have played the game you know that you can't just run through it, you must sometimes pause for enemies. Dodging these enemies can be extremely hard to do, such asthe birds, oh how annoying the birds can be. With this in mind, dodging and weaving through enemies without ever slowing down is quite a feat, especially in the later levels. Plus, killing an enemy takes a frame anyways, so technically dodging is faster, heh.

Other notes:

No enemies don't just die when they touch me! I'm using the button combination of down+b! Pushing these two buttons at the same time midair causes your sword to extend for a frame, which is how I kill some of the bosses so quickly. This also lets me save my jump-and-slash move, the sumersault move which I use to kill most bosses, for later instead of it being automatically used when I slash.

When running you have to stop to slash, when jumping you keep movie. Another example of crazy ninja logic.

It seems ninjas can just hover up the sides of walls, who knew?

Sometimes between jumps Ryu never touches the ground with his feet, and seems to bounce back upwards without touching the ground. Watch for this when I go from one jump directly into another.

It's acually a stranger game than you think; how many games do you know has football players, jetpack ninjas, and the undead as enemies? Not that many!

This movie was made stepping through the game frame by frame to get the best possible precision. Although at time it got pretty tedious.

Jumping off the top of the screen instead of using a ladder works, falling off the bottom of the screen instead of using a ladder kills you

It's possible to grab the ladder falling off the screen at just the right time so when the next screen loads, you appear dead. Well atleast you update your continue point!

There are two places where you need to move right to unlock the camera so you can move left, one in 2-2 right after I jump into the wall, and the other is in 6-2. So yes, i'm making that extra movement for a reason.

I pick up a hourglass in 3-1, which freeze all the enemies on the screen, and stops any more from spawning for a short peroid. I grab another in 6-3.

In 3-2 you can jump above the exit door onto a pixel of ground, and then make your way over the top of the wall and fall behind it. Every other exit door touching the wall triggers a map change.

The tactic that I used against the boss of act 3 makes it really easy. If your playing on a console you can use it, just stand in the middle and shoot your fire as he passes over you! Although, unless you have unhuman reaction time, only attempt to hit him once per jump.

Getting hit by that axe in 4-3 while i'm climbing the wall acually warps me up the wall a fair amount, lets try to see you explain that!

The boss of act 4 is beaten under 40 frames, shame on the developers for putting it right beside the entrance point.

Strangely enough, in the final levels the developers decided have the easy guys from the first levels. Kinda nice, as after the jetpack ninjas things couldn't get much more difficult (Ninja wearing Jetpacks!? INSANITY!)

In 6-1 that one bird seems to just give up and fly away. I was getting tired of jumping over it anyway.

6-3 features the magical waterfall of enemies! Watch as those crazy jumping things rain from the sky! Just to be killed almost instantly of course.

Against the final boss not only do I not get hit, but I manage to kill him in one jump. How many of you can say you have done either?

That small wait against the last boss, sadly, was necissary. I could have jumped to attack a few frames earlier, but I could only do enough damage to leave it with one bar of health.

There are two screens of only climbing, I would call them a breather but the clock is ticking!

You go from a green forest type area with a large lake in 3-1 to a snow covered mountain in 3-2. Maybe those cutscenes I skipped would explain just a bit...