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Venus Power! Make-up! I am the sailor of justice! The sailor-suited beautiful soldier, Sailor Venus!
And don't forget Artemis!

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Gens 11b
  • Best ending
  • Uses an optimal character
  • Playaround
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Plays on Hardest Difficulty

Tricks & Glitches

Earth Direct Throw (EDT):

-The Earth Direct Throw (EDT) is Sailor Venus's special move which grabs a nearby enemy, spins them around, and throws them back down to the ground. Any other enemy that is next to Venus and the enemy being thrown will be hit as well. The EDT is the strongest move that Sailor Venus has, dealing a bar of damage to the thrown enemy. There are only two enemies that are unaffected by the EDT; the first being Zoisite and the second one being Queen Metalia.

Damage Abuse with fan:

-This only applies to a Stage that contains a fan weapon (Stage 2). When you attack with the fan within the same frame as an enemy preparing to attack you, the fan's attack animation is canceled by the enemy hit and still hits the enemy(ies) for half the normal damage without knockback. Normally, you can take up to 2 hits before you are knocked down, but more can be added by waiting a second before repeating the attack again. This allows for damage to be abused for damaging while not losing time.

"Neutral Chain Lock" trick:

-Not exactly huge, but the Neutral Chain Lock (NCL) trick works only when Sailor Venus is within a specific position and uses her Neautral Chain attack (ground A button). If done correctly, the enemy will not be knocked back and the attack can be repeated again. Although you don't have a light frame window to do this so it is used best 1 frame before the last attack's animation.

Cutscene Break Glitch:

-This glitch currently only works when the player is about to face Prince Endymion in Stage 5 during the transitioning. By doing the Jump Dash Kick (JDK) during when the player is first appearing on screen, the kick will connect with Prince Endymion thus causing the boss fight to activate and he will attack you while you are locked due to the cutscene auto moving you to the proper spot. Once hit by Prince Endymion, you can freely move and fight him during the cutscene without waiting for it to end first. This saves about a second overall in comparison to waiting for the scene to end first. Doing this also keeps the music on the boss encounter theme until the next fight.

Comments

This submission aims to complete the Sega Mega Drive version of Sailor Moon in a timely manner while making a bit of room for a little entertainment. The game has 5 different playable characters. This submission choose to use Sailor Venus due to her long range from her whip and the EDT which does the most damage overall.

Stage by stage comments

Stage 1:

Area 1 - The EDT takes out most of the enemies here. When it doesn't, a normal throw or standard jump kick would be used to finish them.
Area 2 - Early on, the focus was to just knock the enemies out of the elevator but was changed midway to do a bit more for the sake of entertainment.
[Z]]: To sum up what GM said, at first, I was just going to use the normal trick of staying in the corner and jump kicking to know the enemies out of the elevator. Then I decided to switch it up at the second wave and try more entertaining things. I just had to make sure all the enemies were dead and off the screen before the first frame the next wave could appear to avoid losing time.
Area 3 (Boss) - Couldn't exploit the cutscene glitch as Venus is coming from the closed elevator doors and cannot move at all until the start of the fight. EDT and Chain Whip spin to finish this one.

Stage 2:

Area 1 - I made use of the oncoming trains to further damage enemies while using the EDT to finish them. When I get the folding fan, I start using the fan for alternate means of damaging enemies. I also use damage abuse on an enemy by taking damage from the enemy while attacking them with the fan at the same time. Took out some clowns and moving on to Area 2.
Area 2 - At the start, I immediately pick up the fan and and alternate between the EDT and damage abuse with fan. The JDK is used for the walls as we approach them. For the boss, Jaedite, I continue to utilize the alternation between damage abuse and the EDT, finishing him with the spin on the first frame that he becomes vulnerable.

Stage 3:

Area 1 - [Z]: Unlike the elevator level, there's no set first frame an enemy wave could appear in this level, so the goal was to kill the enemies as fast as I could (while still being fancy and entertaining), and use the time in between waves for some entertainment. Can't stand around in a section like that in a TAS, no-no!
Area 2 - Before the fight against Nephrite, I use the Jump Dash on a particular frame to cause the Area music to overwrite the Boss Confrontation theme and took on Nephrite using EDTs and a Spin Attack finish.
[Z]: Talking about the main area, the main trick here was the EDT combined with the down air. Sometimes I even locked enemies into down air combos before hitting them with something else. Not much to say here, other than the fact that you have to go backwards for the health upgrade, which is obviously not optimal. :P
[Z]: Because GM changed the AI of the boss with that glitch, my fight with Nephrite isn't shown. So here it is! (Beautiful boss AI. I hold it in high regard.)

Stage 4:

Area 1 - For the most part, the EDT is the most primary attack here for majority of this area. Once I make it to Zoisite (Fake Sailor Moon), things become very tough as he isn't affected by grabs and throws, including the EDT. That being said, I had to make use of every other moves that Venus has in her moveset while mixing a little bit for entertainment. Finished him with the NCL and moving on to Area 2.
Area 2 - Now that I can start using grabs and throws again, I make use of them and Spin attacks to change things up a little from the EDTs. Once the goons are disposed of, I had to break the wall to escape the breaking floor behind Venus and face Kunzite. This moves used are a bit varied to avoid repetition and still be effective. Fight over, now onto the final stage!

Stage 5:

Area 1: [Z]: An ice level with no ice physics!? O.O ... *ahem* Anyways, this was the point of the game where enemies were getting harder to predict and not often cooperative. I don't know how to do the "Neutral Chain Lock", which probably would have made the stage go faster in terms of how long it took to make that part of the run. In terms of actual runtime, I don't think it'd be much faster, though.
Area 2: During this one, I use a few different means of damaging some enemies while waiting for the second enemy of that wave to come close and use the EDT the rest of the way.
Area 3: Here is where the Cutscene Glitch is used. At the very start of the screen load, I utilize the JDK to hit Prince Endymion to trigger the glitch and proceed to fight him with a little variety. After the last move, I quickly position Venus where the cutscene with Queen Beryl would start so that it takes less time to start it. Same deal with the Prince Endymion fight, I vary the moves a little during the fight until she is done.
[Z]: HEY! I was supposed to do the Queen Beryl fight! Oh well, GM said she felt a flow after finding the glitch in the Endymion fight, and you can't go against the flow.
Area 4: This cutscene cannot be sped up nor can it be glitched so I had to wait for it to end. JDKs and spin attacks are the only effective moves that work on Queen Metalia. JDKs do 2 hits of damage to her while the spin attack does only 1 damage so I had to use the spin attack to avoid the dark sphere attacks while using JDKs when possible afterwards until defeated.
~The End~

GoddessMaria's comments:

After finishing the Pokémon Emerald TAS, I was going to resume/restart some old projects that I had left behind. It was soon that I saw a topic of the Mega Drive version of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon started by zwataketa and he wanted to do his first serious TAS with that game. Having played through the SFC game that came out sooner and this one, I felt that it wouldn't have been too great for TASing due to CherryMay's rejected "Sailor Mars" run due to repetition and the way that Beat 'em up style games tend to be. Plus the lack of 2-Players made me even less convinced. After he posted his first WIP, I became a little intrigued so I spoke to him on Skype about the run and the game itself. Once he showed me the finished Stage 1, I then decided to "try" the game out myself from there and we could work together on this. By joining the project, I began to learn and understand the enemy behaviors more as well as other things. I then looked back at CherryMay's submission and noticed how very poorly optimized it was in comparison then shared it with zwataketa so he can see as well. From there, we took turns on Stages until I found the aforementioned glitch with Prince Endymion and felt a bit of momentum from that so I finished the rest of it myself despite zwataketa was supposed to fight Queen Beryl and I finish the run against Queen Metalia. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with this and hopefully this doesn't bore you (My comments are likely already more than boring enough... zzz).

Zwataketa's comments:

[Z]: I first found out about this game while at my Aunt's house, and actually found it fun. So fun, and simple, I thought I could be patient enough to TAS it (at least, more than what I've attempted in the past). I was going to use Mercury, until I saw CherryMay's TAS, and ... well, that should be pretty self explanatory. Then I found out Venus (aka EARTH DIRECT THROW LADY) had the strongest move in the game, and her abilities would limit her to being forced to cause entertainment instead of locking enemies into infinite combos each time (GM found out that you COULD do that, but it's very situational, so it's not preferred.) So yeah, this whole thing was my idea. ^v^
When GM said she would help me, that really helped a lot, given my schedule ... doesn't give me much freetime. ^^' And her contributions made me find things in the game I never expected to see, like the Endymion glitch. So, really glad for the help. Even if it did end up making it so my only contributions shown were in stage 1 and 3 areas. ^^' Oh well, it's better.
I believe considering we broke CherryMay's rerecord count by stage 2 that it's safe to call this "optimized." ^^'
Now, with that out of the way, I think I'll have to actually watch Sailor Moon sometime, so I can understand what the heck is going on!

Suggested Screenshot

Frame 95559

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: This is an odd run to judge. It suffers from an identity crisis, to start - it was submitted as a speedrun, but was intended to be more of a playaround in the hope of getting a worthy and entertaining run of this game on the site. That's a noble goal in itself, but in the end, the game just doesn't hold up well enough. The "speed-entertainment tradeoffs" are severe enough that it basically disqualifies this run from being a speedrun, as they make clear that the run does not even attempt to go for speed at all. On the other hand, as a playaround this run has too little to offer and fails to impress the audience, which is largely due to the limitations of the game. Audience response was not good enough for the site's standards of a publishable playaround.
As this run fails to hold up as either a speedrun or playaround, I'm rejecting this movie.


TASVideoAgent
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change branch to any%,the fastest character is yours and there is no reason to add venus as a special branch... Edit: waaaaait,why do you use a suboptimal character?
TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Spikestuff
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Mars Power! Make-up! Everyone knows the most suboptimal charcter is Sailor Moon (Usagi/Serena). Also as long as there is an optimal character version in the future then it should be all good (See Mario 2).
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
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For the overall TAS, if a different character was used, how different would it be in time and content-wise?
Post subject: Poor attempt at an explanation...
GoddessMaria
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I had labeled them this way because each of the Sailor Senshi are different, akin to Sonic Advance. Venus stands out as the only character with a weapon for attacks (Whip) much like Amy does with the Piko Piko Hammer. The 5 Senshi can't be compared to each other because of their different play styles. If an optimized Mars TAS were to be made, I'd guess that it'd be around 30 minutes. Entertainment wise, it'd fail there due to not having much to show off and use. Moon, Mercury, and Jupiter are yet to be tested under speedrun conditions but it is as Spikestuff had said, Moon is the least likely optimal due to her horrible special attacks and poor statistics overall while Venus is most likely optimal. I'm probably not making much sense but basically, Venus has more to offer and is probably the most optimal of the 5 characters. ...don't know what happened when I tried to post this last night, but yeah.
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zwataketa
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How do I edit the submission text? Also, due to your improvements, that ended up making it so my battle against Nephrite wasn't shown. T-T Oh well. I'll make more comments whence I can edit the submission text, but I don't really think any% works as a category for this game. There's no percentage or collectibles, unless of course you mean what CherryMay did by DESTROYING EVERY BREAKABLE OBJECT (in the first stage) AND COLLECTING EVERY ITEM! :P
I quit TASing.
AntyMew
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zwataketa wrote:
How do I edit the submission text?
You should be able to edit it; you're in the extra edit privileges list for the submission
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zwataketa wrote:
How do I edit the submission text?
Go to the submission page, and on the right side of the page, you'll see the "Edit" link (the third one down). Good job on the run! There were a couple of times it started to get repetitive, but then Venus did a different attack or jumped to the other side of the screen and it became entertaining again. Overall...I think I'll go with Yes.
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GoddessMaria: If Venus is optimal, then I see no reason for the caveat. It's not up to you to prove that the others can be TASed faster, it's up to whomever can demonstrate it to actually be the case. Doesn't seem to me from what you said that it's a trivial calculation.
zwataketa
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I haven't added all my comments yet, but you should see some changes. And yes, I will be showing my battle against Nephrite, I hold it in that high regard. BEST BOSS AI! :D Ok, minus my Nephrite fight video, I've added all of my comments, and GM should explain the damage glitch with the fan. Now, I'll handle the snapshot, since GM has done more than half the project at this point. XP
I quit TASing.
GoddessMaria
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electricslide wrote:
GoddessMaria: If Venus is optimal, then I see no reason for the caveat. It's not up to you to prove that the others can be TASed faster, it's up to whomever can demonstrate it to actually be the case. Doesn't seem to me from what you said that it's a trivial calculation.
It is simply my perspective on the matter and even then, it wasn't with full certainty. More testing with the other characters will have to be done to see where it leads, but the question was asked how different each would be, time & content wise. It's not exactly a matter of strictly saying one is faster than others. I shall again use Sonic Advance as an example. The main Sonic Advance run published on the site is the fastest using Sonic & Tails, however it doesn't disqualify Knuckles, Amy, nor Tails (alone) from being there too. Same thing here. It mainly depends on the quality of the runs with the other characters (from both speed and entertainment perspectives). I do apologize if I didn't make that clear.
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zwataketa
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Got the snapshot. Also, for some reason, even though I'm logged in on both my iPad and laptop, I can only see the edit button on the submission page on my laptop iPad. Odd.[/s] Edit: ok, just realized, having the framecount is not a good idea. I'll just use it as reference as I try to get one without it. hold on ...
I quit TASing.
Noxxa
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This run was initially pitched as a speedrun with some speed-entertainment trade-offs, but upon watching it it looks like it has gone quite deep in the way of trade-offs. This is more of a playaround than a speedrun, and it should be judged as such. (A clear example is the Fake Sailor Moon bossfight - half the boss battle consists of infinite loops, the other half of repeatedly and slowly knocking him down with a variety of other moves; with clearly little semblance of aiming for speed). I talked to GoddessMaria about this, and the fact that the run is a playaround has now been properly made clear in the submission branch and description. For the sake of judging this run as the playaround it is, I'd like to know if any viewer has any comments about this run's playaround value.
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.
Noxxa
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Mothrayas wrote:
For the sake of judging this run as the playaround it is, I'd like to know if any viewer has any comments about this run's playaround value.
Anyone?
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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what do you want us to say?i imagined it was a pure speedrun right from the start,the thread for the game said the original run was unoptimized andboring(but that was at a vaultless time ),i'm not really sure if i support this run.It may be published as a speedrun itself and we may let it be obsoleted later,i mean,why not? i'm not suggesting to lower standards,i'm just saying it's good enough even if we categorically know it's not be the best.
TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
GoddessMaria
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If a pure speed TAS were to be made, it'll like undergo more scrutiny than this one. The plan was to initially make it about speed, but considering the way fighting genre games tend to be scrutinized for picking speed over entertainment, the decision for mixed entertainment was settled with.
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i see,but this is not really a fighting game,it falls more to the beat'em up genre,which does have a very clear set of goals for completion
TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Noxxa
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grassini wrote:
what do you want us to say?i imagined it was a pure speedrun right from the start,the thread for the game said the original run was unoptimized andboring(but that was at a vaultless time ),i'm not really sure if i support this run.It may be published as a speedrun itself and we may let it be obsoleted later,i mean,why not? i'm not suggesting to lower standards,i'm just saying it's good enough even if we categorically know it's not be the best.
I won't accept it as a speedrun, because upon watching, the run doesn't even aim for speed. It's just not a speedrun, and if we were to judge it a speedrun it would be way below optimization standards. Hence I'm saying the run could only be accepted as a playaround, but for that I need audience feedback on whether it is a worthy playaround. @GoddessMaria: grassini is right in that this game is a beat 'em up, not a straight fighting game. Beat 'em ups are not scrutinized nearly as much, because they're generally more diverse and have more speed-related goals (movement, optimally clearing out waves) than just reducing the lifebar of the one person in front of you. This game is possibly still Vault material, but there's not much more the game can do about that.
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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Nah. I can understand random people wanting it to be published and voting Yes on that ground, but was it entertaining? Was it even an actual playaround? Not anything that's not speed-oriented is necessarily a playaround. You know, playaround is in fact one of the hardest branches ever to do right. Because it involves deep knowledge and great execution, but also it needs a game that is complex enough. Bonus points for using 2 players. Here... we have some obscure (due to being Japanese-only and anime-based, even though this anime was popular) game, with 1 character beating enemies with a narrow moveset for half an hour. Probably I am missing something, but I see zero room for a playaround that this game could offer. Even with 2 characters (dunno if it's possible) it won't attract me at all. I watched 5 minutes of it, FF'd for quite a bit, looked at it, and saw nothing worth keeping watching. It's a great game for Vault, but speed/entertainment trade-offs (let alone playarounds) simply don't belong here. Voted No.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I played this game a long time ago, and if I remember well there is a two player mode. Sailor Venus is probably the best character for a TAS because she is taller than the rest and reaches further. I think this game is not a good choice for a playaround. I remember finding it repetitive and boring back when I played it. Then again, a pure speed TAS would be even more repetitive and boring than this movie.
No.
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This site needs more cute girls. Voting yes.
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Warp wrote:
This site needs more cute girls. Voting yes.
I love that you brought that back, lol.
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i say this is a optimized speedrun,even if it has tradeoffs,and should be obsoleted by another speedrun.This is not entertaining.
TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
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I don't know enough about the game to be able to fairly say "yes it's good at what it's doing" or "no it can be done better but it's more entertaining than a faster one" or "no and the improvements aren't much better". Which is inherently the problem with Beat-Em-Ups. Either everyone knows if it's a good run, or nobody knows if it's a good run - moreso than other runs because Beat-Em-Ups have to strike the balance between peak efficiency and actual entertainment or else you'll have nothing but the fastest strong attack.
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As a fan of the series, I enjoyed this TAS. It may be a genre that can easily become repetitive, but this game TAS shows a nice variety of moves. For me, it was entertaining enough for a yes.
Warp wrote:
This site needs more cute girls. Voting yes.
Also, this.
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