Let me bring you up to speed. This is the third submission of this game, but my first NES submission. A little bit of time was shaved from it again, 534 frames to be precise.
Run Objectives
- Takes Damage to Save Time
New Tricks
Guns N' Roses
Usually, when you draw Garth's gun you'll lose some speed in the process. But if you release the directional pad at the same time you draw, no speed is lost.
Skid Roll
Just press Down+B during some of Wayne's animations and he will keep doing that animation, but he will also skid along the floor. Useless most of the time, but you can keep the maximum speed in the bonus stages for some weird reason.
The Kicks
As long as Wayne's kick animation lasts you can't change his direction. But you can overcome this limitation; press the opposite direction one frame before you kick. It's also useful if you want to lose speed for some reason, like avoiding falling off a cliff.
I know that my last April Fool's Day submission was a failure, I even promised to avoid making them. But this one is not a joke, the game might be, but not the run. Well, as always, enjoy the run.
Level 01
Part 01 – Garth (14)
Drawing his gun faster allowed me to change the strategy of this stage a little. Samsara mentioned something about his Sprite Overload trick, and how it would save time if one was able to figure out how to do it consistently. Well, you'll see it used a lot more in this run, but to tell you the truth, I also don't know what triggers it. Sometimes I have to shoot seven bullets, but there are rare occasions where just one bullet is enough to cancel Garth's falling animation.
Part 02 – Wayne (47)
Using different strategies always gives you different results, and sometimes faster results. The strategy which works best in this game is the one that allows you to keep jumping. Easier said than done, I know it, but this stage was nothing short of an easy one to work on.
Bonus Round (13)
Samsara used these bonus stages to trade some speed for entertainment. I was trying to keep the same approach using the skid trick to slide on the floor for a few frames, but then I noticed that the speed of Wayne was not decreasing. So, there are no more trade offs in this run, sorry about that. But don't despair; Wayne's animations are quite funny, and I think that you won't miss the trade offs so much. Oh, I saved the best for last, so keep watching, please.
Level 02
Part 01 – Garth (1)
Garth is regarded as the best character of the game, I won't deny it, but Wayne would have cleared this stage a lot, and I mean a lot faster than Garth. In any case, this stage is now one frame faster.
Part 02 – Wayne (81)
Something I was wondering, but afraid to ask and look stupid, is if it is really necessary to kill all those thugs. Turns out it is not, so I just took a lot of damage here. Not elegant, I know, but faster.
Part 03 – Wayne (+3)
This is the first slower stage of the new run. Why? A worse boss fight, but I just realized it was slower by three frames, and not faster by, at the end of the run. There are other slower stages in the run, but this is one of the two stages that I know the reason why they're slower.
Part 04 – Wayne (1)
One of the reasons I didn't fix the last stage can be found here; it's too random. If you change a single button press on previous stages, Wayne will fail to clear this stage when you splice the movie.
Bonus Round (7)
I could have used another animation here, like sliding backwards, but even clearing this stage in the same amount of time, the enemy placement in the next stage will be different if you press other button combinations here.
Level 03
Part 01 – Garth (142)
The worst enemy of the game makes his first appearance here. No, I'm not talking about the ninjas but the cats. Samsara said that if you wait even a single frame you'll won't be able to kill the boss with a given number of shots. He also said that he doesn't want to know why, but I'll tell you anyway; he recovers his energy over time, so the faster you shoot him the better.
Bonus Round (13)
Finally, a different animation in a bonus round. Not that it makes a lot of difference, but enough is enough, I guess.
Level 04
Part 01 – Wayne (144)
The ability to change direction after kicking allowed me to have better fights with the TV screens. It in turns opened a whole lot of possible routes for me to choose. The boss fight seems slower, but since I'm closer to the door, it was faster.
Part 02 – Wayne (+3)
Those spiders seems to like to hinder Wayne's progress. A really bad placement and this stage is now three frames slower, sorry about that.
Part 03 – Wayne (2)
The spiders decided to cooperate this time, and I managed to save a little bit of time in this stage. Oh, and by the way, I think you've already noticed, but in case you don't; those numbers in parenthesis are the frames saved on each stage. A plus sign means that I have lost frames in that stage.
Bonus Round (25)
I don't want to spoil the surprise, but the animation you're about to witness will blow your mind... not!
Level 05
Part 01 – Garth (8)
This the last one of Garth's stages, and I still don't know why sometimes shooting cancels his falling animation. A good example is when he jumps on top of those two vases; no matter how soon or how often I shoot, I was not able to cancel his animation in those cases.
Part 02 – Wayne (26)
Jumping is the fastest way to travel in this game, everybody knows this by now. But here, walking a little longer allowed me to reach the upper platform a lot sooner.
Part 03 – Wayne (-8)
After some retries to avoid losing these eight frames, I finally gave up. I did exactly what Samsara did, but my version is still slower somehow.
Part 04 – Wayne (0)
That's what I'm talking about; I used the same strategy and then got the same result. Why it was not the case in the previous stage is something I would like to know.
Part 05 – Wayne (24)
I wish I could say that I did something better here, hence the time saved, but it was just a better boss behavior, sadly.
Possible Improvements
It's hard to say what motivates a TASer, what makes him stay awake at night to work on a game like this. So, if for some odd reason you want to improve this run a little further, you can try to improve the stages that are now slower than the published run.
Suggested Screenshot
[dead link removed]
Special Thanks
Cooljay and Samsara for making the previous runs.
feos: Accepting to Vault as an improvement.
