(Link to video)
This TAS improves the current any% warpless Zelda II run by 407 frames. Although 7 seconds may not seem large for a 45-minute run, every frame saved was hard-earned. The previous movie was well-optimized and well-planned, and this run visits all of the same screens. (Although I certainly spent a long time researching potential route ideas.) Improvements required unforgiving precision, extremely long-term planning, and investigation of the game mechanics. The project took me about 250 hours over the course of 3.5 months. This chart shows the frames saved over the course of the run:
Before I get into it, let me take a paragraph to praise Inzult. First, while comparing my version with his while creating the movie, I appreciated the high level of technical skill that he demonstrated. Second, whenever I posted in the Zelda II thread, Inzult was always around to post some useful feedback. He provided notes, tips, tools, and whatever else he could. Inzult is a real man and worthy of much respect. Also, although Rising Tempest did not directly participate in this TAS, I give him a legacy credit.
I put in extra effort to make the run look more aesthetically pleasing, and so here are some entertainment notes before I get into the improvements. When Link has some free time, he enjoys dancing to the music. When Link walks through towns, he avoids running into anybody, if possible. Most importantly, Link visits Zelda 9 times during the run, and he does a different form of "training" each time to prepare himself for the upcoming section:
  1. Whirlwind: To train for Death Mountain enemies.
  2. Jump: To train for jumping over enemies in the cave.
  3. High Jump: Because he's supposed to have the Jump spell to get downstab in Mido.
  4. Downstab: To train for downstabbing Horsehead.
  5. Low Attack: To train for breaking blocks.
  6. Walk: To train for moving in a straight line to the magic container.
  7. High Attack: To train for Rebonack.
  8. Spin: To train for Carock.
  9. Spin Whirlwind: To train for Thunderbird.
Here are the frame differences throughout the run. If you studied the chart above, you can see that there are 6 major improvement leaps. You can also see my complete notes in spreadsheet form.
ScreenFrames savedTotal frames savedComments
Saria 211I saved 1 frame healing at The Red Woman's house because of subpixel position. In the current run, Link is at X-position 129.128. I used X-position 129.000.
Death Mountain 1067I saved time fighting the first orange daira. After the first whirlwind attack, I walked through it and did the second whirlwind from the right side. Doing so killed it 6 frames faster.
Death Mountain 133037Major improvement: I changed the experience route. I got a small p-bag drop way back at the Jump Cave. Doing so allowed me to skip the second orange daira rather than kill it. I also improved the death at the hammer.
Death Mountain 13643I discovered the existence of the death cycle. When Link dies, the death screen has a 21-frame rule. I was able to save enough frames to get on the good side of the death cycle.
Water 2245I maintained maximum speed despite the annoying enemies. I also did Up+A 1 frame earlier.
Parapa The Rapper 5146I maintained maximum speed against the stalfos.
Parapa The Rapper 8248I stayed lower against Horsehead.
Midoro Overworld149Walking in the swamp.
Midoro 6352I grabbed the magic jar quicker. At the top, I did a max jump instead of a min jump for greater gravity acceleration. Then I optimized subpixel position. At the bottom, I did a max jump instead of a min jump to grab the jar earlier.
Midoro 973125Major improvement: I manipulated the ironknuckle to deliver a deathblow at the perfect time so that I could die at the Power Glove. See the .gif at http://i.imgur.com/741QE9p.gif
Midoro 98133I was also on the good side of the death cycle again, and so I saved 8 additional frames.
Midoro 101134I saved a frame at the moa elevator because the screen exit shifted a pixel to the right in the previous movie. Why the exit shifts by a pixel in certain rooms is the biggest unsolved mystery in Zelda II.
Midoro 1410144I used the long downstab (dongstab) technique to improve the p-bag pickup.
Midoro 1617161I optimized the Helmethead fight. He's very similar to Horsehead.
Midoro 161162The game let me Up+A 1 frame earlier.
Island Overworld5167Real interesting one here. You can manipulate the enemies that appear on the island overworld by delaying Link's exit from the 'fairy required' room. But, at first, it all seems to balance out. Delaying 1 frame in the fairy room means waiting 11 frames on the overworld for the enemies to get out of the way, for 12 frames total. Likewise, delaying 6 frames in the fairy room means waiting 6 frames on the overworld, for 12 frames total again. Every delay between 1-6 frames ends up being 12 frames total. But, when you delay 7 frames, you get fairies on the overworld instead of enemies. And you don't have to wait at all for them. So the net result is 12-7= 5 frames faster.
Island 29176I improved the fights against the helgooma and paltamu.
Island 511187I grabbed the key quicker and moved through the helgooma smoothly.
Island 69196In addition to dealing with the elevator paltamu better, I came up with the novel idea to stab the floor to slow my rightward momentum.
Island 98204All of my previous savings allowed me to just barely get on the good side of the death cycle. Not only was it by a single frame, but it was by a single subpixel. This run was 1 subpixel away from being 21 frames slower.
Island 8 (2)2206I was 2 frames faster in the key room.
Island 134210I intentionally went into the Rebonack fight 301 XP away from a magic level up. Rebonack gives only 300 experience. But, there's a glitch that causes all enemies that should give 300 experience to actually give 301. I had trouble finding any radical ways to improve the Rebonack fight. It's a 3-part fight. Phase 1 is getting him off the hoverhorse. I didn't see any alternative to the 'ride the dragon' method of maintaining the downstab until he starts to turn around. Then jackhammer him. Any change in movement ruined the jackhammer. Phase 2 is the race to the bottom right corner. I stayed a pixel lower, but any change to the fighting style failed in the long run. Phase 3 is getting him to move left for the finishing blows. The slight improvement came here.
Reflect Trek54264Major improvement: I consider this part to be one long interconnected sequence. Changing the timing at one point changes the overworld enemies that appear later. The only way to perfect this part would be to completely solve the overworld enemy patterns, which is about as difficult as completely solving chess. The main improvement here came because I achieved the mythical fairy trap. See the .gif at http://i.imgur.com/1eUhoUB.gif I also avoided the obvious 32-frame loss from the step up and back down to escape a random battle in the published movie.
Maze 310274On the screen before this one, I didn't improve the frame count, but it does look much more aesthetically pleasing. On this screen, I improved the jar pickup from the ironknuckle.
Maze 83277I improved Carock by 3 frames, even though I needed to delay entry to the room by 1 frame to get a usable spawn pattern.
Maze (2)2279I don't understand this one, but I'll take it.
Sea Overworld6285I took a path that had less lag.
Sea 16-1284There are some timing differences earlier in the Sea Palace, but they're negated in the end by the death cycle. I lost 1 frame here delaying entry to the room because a mago blocked the elevator.
Sea 14 (2)1285I improved the movement on the elevator.
Sea 17-1284Since I have swordbeam, there's a lag frame.
Sea 18-16268Getting a magic jar drop from the orange ironknuckle here is a part of my larger plan to save much more time.
Sea 193271I slightly improved the Gooma fight.
Sea 1979350Major improvement: I changed the experience route in the Sea and Rock Palaces. I realized that the previous movie lost a lot of time waiting for magic to refill at the Sea crystal. I was able to finish the Sea with full magic and still make the drop count in the Rock Palace work.
River Devil-14336I knew that the river devil trap manipulation would be a pain. I spent a long time on it. In the end, my options were to take the high route and lose 18 frames or take the low route and lose 14 frames. The published movie got basically a perfect enemy spawn. Like the Darunia overworld sequence, it's beyond the limits of human patience to test every possible combination.
Southeast Trap 2-1335There is nothing you can do about the randomness of the rock gerus.
Southeast Trap 31336I lost 1 frame at the first rock gerus, and then I gained 1 frame back at the other rock gerus to balance it out.
Kasuto Overworld6342I got a perfect overworld walk (no frame delays) to Kasuto.
Kasuto Cave 2 (2)-6336Killing this geru was essential to making the new experience route work. It took only 5 frames. I delayed another frame to manipulate later screens.
Rock Overworld16352I also got a perfect overworld walk (no frame delays) to the Rock Palace.
Rock 49361I know how to get in a hole.
Rock 51362I'll take it.
Rock 61363Again I'll just take it and not ask why.
Rock 7-2361Well, there they go. I had to delay 2 frames to get a usable wizzrobe spawn.
Rock 102363And they're back.
Rock 1125388Major improvement: I found a new method that annihilates Rebonack II. I did have Attack 6 instead of Attack 5 at this point because of the experience changes. But, the new method was crazy quick. I don't think it would work on Rebonack I, though. Link has to attack Reb I 12 times after Reb I dismounts, whereas it takes only 4 attacks after dismount for Reb II. Reb I would survive the attack and fall backward.
Rock 121389I don't know.
Rock 131390I don't know.
Rock 145395I saved 5 frames against Volvagia, but Inzult was aware of his mistake. The movie before the published one was also 5 frames faster.
Old Kasuto 31396I optimized the subpixels while talking to Old Man Thunder.
Valley of Death Entry-29367The first trap of the Valley of Death (Trap 18) is the most dreaded part of the game, because it depends on luck that is mostly unmanipulable. See the map for trap references at http://i.imgur.com/Q2G8xHr.png Like any trap square, you need overworld enemies to run into Link as he is walking onto the trap square in order to overwrite the forced encounter with a shorter random encounter. You need the same thing at Trap 17, but that one is easier to manipulate. You can keep creating extra delay frames during the walk from Trap 16 to Trap 15 in order to change the random enemies that appear in the graveyard between Trap 15 and Trap 17. Eventually, you get a result that works. The result that I got lost 2 frames compared to the current movie. However, here's why the Valley of Death between Trap 17 and Trap 18 is so notorious. You have to deal with 3 sets in a row of 3 enemies that you cannot change with overworld movement delays. And you get only one step down to avoid an enemy that appears in front of Link. But I found that you don't have to completely accept the 3 sets of 3 enemies that you're handed. You can create delays at Trap 15 and Trap 17 to change the timing. But, it's limited. In my case, I was limited to only 6 possible combinations. Any additional delay at Trap 15 changed the enemies in the graveyard to an unusable grouping. If you get a set of enemies that surround Link, you can pretty much forget about using that option at all. So I narrowed it down to 2 options that actually had a chance of working. The first option decided to throw in yet another degree of difficulty by not letting enemies rise up from below Link. And nothing is coming from the left, leaving the top as the only possibility. Nothing worked. Fortunately, after many hours, I found that there was one way to make the second option work without an ugly winding path. It still lost 27 frames. But, if that last option hadn't worked, I would have been faced with much greater losses, probably in the 60-90 frame range. So, despite losing 29 frames total here, it's the best possibility of a bad situation.
Valley of Death Cave 22369I had better luck with the enemies in the cave.
Valley of Death Overworld 7-4365But then the overworld enemies screwed me one last time.
Great Palace 61366It's the first block screen. I just kept chugging forward.
Great Palace 71367I don't know.
Great Palace 1322389Major improvement: It's the second block screen, which I like to call the MothaFokka screen. I am very pleased with this room. It's beautiful. I couldn't do it on the first block screen because Link's shield doesn't deflect the arnels' fire.
Great Palace 156395The wall. Inzult did an excellent job formulating the concept. I squeezed in a low attack instead of a slower high attack.
Great Palace 2011406My goal was to improve the movie by 400 frames. I had thought that I had fallen just short of the goal. But then Inzult found a way to get better X-axis positioning from the fall. It goes in increments of 16. In this case, we needed to get it from 80 to 96. I gave up when I was getting only 91 or so, but Inzult demonstrated a precise combination that boosts it all the way beyond the required 96 threshold.
Dark Link1407On the screen before this one, I'm pretty confident that Thunderbird was and is optimal. Dark Link has 56 frames of invulnerability, so it's impossible to improve against him. However, I improved the fight anyway by saving 1 frame on the last attack.

Noxxa: Judging!
Noxxa: Submission file replaced with an 11-frame improvement.
Noxxa: This is a nice, well-executed and thoroughly planned run. Good improvement. Accepting as an improvement to the current warpless movie.
fsvgm777: Processing. Removed the branch as well (after consultation with Noxxa and feos on the matter).

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
Active player (421)
Joined: 9/27/2004
Posts: 650
Location: Canada
Yes vote. e: arc do this let's get to 400 frames.
Kung_Knut
He/Him
Joined: 8/10/2016
Posts: 85
Location: Sweden
Yes vote. Congratulations on making the best TAS thus far this year, and a huge thank you for your huge effort. It shows. It'd be nice to see a screen-by-screen comparison video, if someone who reads this knows how to make those.
Active player, Editor (465)
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
The amount of thought and effort that went into this improvement is impressive. I enjoyed the entertainment bits too (however infrequent they may have been, gotta keep moving after all!). Lots of stuff to like, but if I had to pick a favorite it'd be whenever you killed a strong enemy without slowing down. This happened a lot during the run but I never got tired of it! Voting yes!
Arc
Editor, Experienced player (766)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 534
Location: Arizona
Inzult wrote:
Yes vote. e: arc do this let's get to 400 frames.
Awesome. I couldn't find a combination that worked there. It saves 11 frames. 407 frames saved now. I'll edit the submission text to reflect the changes. Judge, please replace the submission file with this update: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/33722164845442931 (It took almost 3 hours to redo the Dark Link fight until I came up with that downstab move to avoid losing a frame.) Glad y'all enjoyed it.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Expert player (3514)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2713
Location: US
Antoher great TAS Arc! You sure are on a roll breathing new life into some of these popular NES games.
Active player (372)
Joined: 9/25/2011
Posts: 652
Excellent run! Well done! I do have one question: Why do you keep skipping the 50 experience upgrade? It seems it takes a few frames each time to show the upgrade menu and for you to select to skip it.
Arc
Editor, Experienced player (766)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 534
Location: Arizona
Alyosha wrote:
Another great TAS Arc! You sure are on a roll breathing new life into some of these popular NES games.
Thank you. I'll keep rollin'.
c-square wrote:
Excellent run! Well done! I do have one question: Why do you keep skipping the 50 experience upgrade? It seems it takes a few frames each time to show the upgrade menu and for you to select to skip it.
There are 11 Life-2 Cancels in the run, and it takes 29 frames each time, for a total of 319 frames. I assume that you are asking why not accept it the first time, since accepting a level-up takes only 184 frames. The answer is that thereafter you would still have to do Life-3 Cancels every time you got to 150 experience.
Experienced player (850)
Joined: 11/15/2010
Posts: 267
Well done!
Active player (372)
Joined: 9/25/2011
Posts: 652
Arc wrote:
There are 11 Life-2 Cancels in the run, and it takes 29 frames each time, for a total of 319 frames. I assume that you are asking why not accept it the first time, since accepting a level-up takes only 184 frames. The answer is that thereafter you would still have to do Life-3 Cancels every time you got to 150 experience.
That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!
dan
He/Him
Joined: 9/23/2016
Posts: 25
At 36:18, you enter the red palace and immediately go down two floors on the elevator. Is there a reason why you cannot crouch stab on the first screen like you do almost every other time you are going down an elevator?
Noxxa
They/Them
Expert player, Moderator (4131)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
dan wrote:
At 36:18, you enter the red palace and immediately go down two floors on the elevator. Is there a reason why you cannot crouch stab on the first screen like you do almost every other time you are going down an elevator?
The point of crouch-stabbing in elevators is to change your horizontal position (to get you a little bit closer to the desired exit). If the goal is just to go further down, there is no need to crouch-stab.
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
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3225] NES Zelda II: The Adventure of Link "warpless" by Arc, Inzult & Rising Tempest in 45:35.36
Lord_Tom
He/Him
Expert player (3271)
Joined: 5/25/2007
Posts: 399
Location: New England
This movie is such a great watch, awesome job! Stylistically, I like how you handle the big-enemy fights, you barely ever even see Link's sword. Also, the death abuses grabbing items look really slick.
Samsara
She/They
Expert player, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
This movie was flagged as console verified, but there doesn't seem to be a video attached, so I'm removing the flag. If a video exists or a new one is made, please post it in this thread and the flag will be re-added.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.