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This is an Sram'd-run, so if you get a desync right away (which you probably will), add this to your save folder: rmz4_hard_sram.zip
Rockman Zero is a game series that had a different approach than the classical Rockman and Rockman X. This time, you played as Zero from Rockman X, but with a different look than before. The game debuted on the Game Boy Advance in the year 2002, and with it's dark atmospheric looks and rockish music, this series has stayed strong til this very day.
This is a full "non-warp" run of Rockman Zero 4, with the difficulty set to Hard Mode.
The aim of this run was to take no single damage whatsoever, and also, each mission has to be complete with 100 points average (perfect score). This run does just that and much more.
To achieve a scoring of this caliber in this type of Rockman/MegaMan game, the player has to beat the missions with as many enemies as possible killed while still getting low stage clear time at the end and also with minimal damage done to yourself to boot.
If you kill too little enemies, you will get lower scoring, and thus, you have to plan what enemies that must be killed while still trying to maintain a decent speed time. If you lose an extralife, you will get low score as well. Same goes for using the aid of cyber elves that gives you better offensive and defensive status. No cyber elves can be used on Hard Mode, so they weren't used in this run. No extralives were lost either.
The emulator that was used was "VBA-rerecording-9b".
The new weapon that has been added to this particular game, called the Z Knuckle, lets Zero swipe the weapon of another enemy in an instance (well, it's more like this... you must do a killing blow with the Z Knuckle to achieve an enemy's weapon). This opens a huge variety of strategies that can be used for faster routes or even beat a boss quicker than before as well. A good example is the Mega Axe that can be swiped from an Axeroid enemy. It's highly useful against big bosses with huge life meters and it kills most bosses in either 10-20 seconds if used right.
To end this "description", the savepoint time of completion is 0:46'20 (46minutes and 20 seconds). This can be seen at the very end of the run, when you have skipped the credits and decide to save your game). The idea of this run was also to do as few re-recordings as possible while still trying to reign surpeme! Nearly 200 re-recordings for a huge game such at this. What are the odds to that, eh?

Bisqwit: I'm rejecting this submission, because:
  • We can't allow SRAM'd movies (see Rules). (Even if it were acceptable in this case, the site doesn't technically support multipart movies.)
  • I'm fairly sure you don't need to kill everything you see. (You slowed down a lot to do so.)
    Edit: Okay, if your goal is to get a certain mission scoring, it might be different... but I recommend choosing another goal :P
  • The votes seem to be heavily focused on the "no" direction.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #652: Iriasu's GBA Rockman Zero 4 in 1:04:55.85
Joined: 6/14/2004
Posts: 646
Desynced right at the start. Hard mode needs saveram to work and it seems yours doesn't come with one.
I like my "thank you"s in monetary form.
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 104
OK, I'm sorry for that one. I really don't know how the Sram thing works really, but I do have the sram hosted just incase: -link gone- EDIT: Can I re-submit this run with the sram included or is that a no-no?
Joined: 6/14/2004
Posts: 646
As a general rule, the site hasn't accepted runs that need saveram anyway, but since the game has an internal timer, this might be able to be overlooked. Also, I still can't get it to work even with this save. It seems to be empty.
I like my "thank you"s in monetary form.
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 104
I updated the sram with the one I started with (hopefully)... if that doesn't work either, then I'm stumped. ;_;
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Didn't desync in the slightest for me, without SRAM or anything. Voting no, however. Although I agree this is a very good run for such a low rerecord number, nesvideos is not a site meant for hosting runs that are good only in light of their number of rerecords. The object of the runs here is to use rerecords, slowdown and any other tools we can get our grubby hands on to come as close to the perfect run as is possible. This run doesn't use those tools to their fullest. You miss swings, hesitate before difficult jumps, don't hit the bosses as soon as they become vulnerable, etc. There's no reason to do any of these things when you can just erase any mistakes. I want to stress that I was entertained by the run, but that's beside the point. It just doesn't attain the level of precision that's required for acceptance. P.S. For comparison, the only accepted full-game GBA runs available right now are BoltR's Metroid: Zero Mission run and OgreSlayeR's Castlevania: Circle of the Moon run. The first clocks in at 35:56 with 33 662 rerecords and the second at 23:43 and 19 296 rerecords. That these runs got published relatively fast is not coincidental.
Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I'm gonna watch it as soon as I find the ROM.
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 104
Xerophyte wrote:
I want to stress that I was entertained by the run, but that's beside the point. It just doesn't attain the level of precision that's required for acceptance.
I figured you would say that. Oh well, it wasn't meant to be posted here I guess. At least you enjoyed some fragments of it and I bow to that. ^^;
Active player (278)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
And it's kinda early to be speed-running this game, too, don'tcha think?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 104
Nah, you think so? :P I just wanted to provide the world with something VERY early (doesn't have to be a perfect acceptible run for nesvideos, but still quite a decent run). This will do for now, really. No need to post it on here anyways, because all I need was your opinions and such. I'll do better when I have more skills at the re-recordings (and more tips for time attacking has been posted). Xerophyte summerized (rated) the run pretty well, though. Props to ya, man!
Joined: 12/20/2004
Posts: 226
This was kinda entertaining, but I am voting no for a variety of reasons. I stopped about halfway through so if I missed something that's probably why. There is the usual stuff: don't miss shots, make everything perfect down to the frame, boss should be constantly blinking, etc. Your low rerecord count reflects the lack of perfection in this run. This isn't really a speedrun due to the rerecords, but it's not really a time attack or TAS due to the lack of perfection. Maybe you could attempt this sort of run without rerecords by segmenting stages? I really advise against S-ranking in a time attack because it just looks like you're taking too much time to kill enemies. S-ranking is more impressive when a human does it unassisted. If you want to attempt S-ranking again, I suggest you do a better job of planning which enemies to kill and which enemies to skip. I know those drill bots can be jumped over (Mino Magnus stage) and the biting plants in stage 2 can be dashed under (the second one can be jumped over). I suggest if you do attempt another time attack on this game you do it in normal because you won't be breaking the rules and the faster boss and enemy killing would be more entertaining to the casual viewer. I noticed that charged Z-knuckle does more damage than the saber. Why don't you alternate between charged Z-knuckle and saber hits to keep a constant rate of damage? Speaking of Z-knuckle, I'm pretty sure you could have used it to steal more weapons against the bosses. In the beginning of the Pegasus's stage there is a cannon that shoots ice shots. Since the Pegasus is weak against ice, I think Z-knuckling that cannon would make the boss fight considerably faster. The buster could have been used more. With frame perfect shooting enemies die surprisingly fast. Against the generic purple robots (don't know their name) you could shoot a buster shot then use a dash jump with the saber to kill them without losing forward momentum. Your final hits with the jumping saber could have been more optimized by holding forward while dash jumping on your last hit. It's obvious you're pretty good at this game. Maybe you should attempt a speedrun.
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Joined: 3/16/2004
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That game has just beeen released some days ago. I am 100% sure it's an imperfect run. P.S. Some days ago = 2-3 days ago
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 104
More like a "Score" run than a "Speed" run. I didn't care about time here, but more about the score on each stage. Next time, it'll be a time attack instead.
Joined: 1/9/2005
Posts: 219
Location: The Netherlands
Whatched the run as a speedrun (got the link from another website) and totally crapped my pants. I've learnt that this is a time-attack video, and i'm actually not that super impressed any more. For one, i completely agree with Mike's post. Secondly, here is my "in-depth" critique; - You can grab and pull the wires from the intro boss. Might be fun to do if there's no loss in time. - The player should try to throw away the subweapon when in mid-air as much as possible to avoid ground lag. - It's possible to walljump at upper platforms which might seem to be unreachable. (I'm mainly pointing towards the 2nd intro level's boss room right now. You can just jump up instead of zig-zagging your way up. This can obviously used at other places as well) - You can keep on using the axe against the crab boss. when you drop down with the axe, this should kill off the little ones. (so you don't need to slash them with your sword) - user should get the axe instead of the shield for the moth's stage. i'm not sure if it'll be faster for the mini boss, but it sure rapes the stage boss. - you can hit the plant boss twice when she comes out of the ground and shoots the brown bubbles. even when she's moving back into the ground, you can still hit her if in range of the saber's swing. - user should not pull out the plant boss. the damage is minimal, and it'll avoid the user from being able to hit her twice when she's in the ground. - at the wolf's miniboss, you first hit 3 parts with your sword, later only two. when the 2 are finished, you keep on jumping up the kill the upper part. you should move to the other side and start slash-jumping again so you damage the 4th, west part, as well, while finishing off the upper pard. - When kraft is in the middle and he's gonna fire the big laser, don't just stand there waiting for him to fire. jump over him and hit him in the back. - in the level where you have to clear the eastern, northern, western, and southern parts; at the south section (i believe) you have to wait for the bombs to come in so you can blow up the boxes and go down. the bomb does not have to be above the ground to be able to explode. when in range of the sword swing (jump-slash) hit the bomb and it should explode instantly. jump away to avoid damge. - you can hit Wiel (1st form) multiple times when he sends the rock debris towards you. first hit him while he's summoning the rocks, then hack away with the axe again once the other rocks are near you. you should then hit both Wiel, and destroy the rocks to avoid getting hit. - and here, the biggest mistake of all, BE SURE to get the junk chip parts! (head, body, feet) It'll double all the damage (towards you, towards the enemies) Junk chips are actually failed chips. when you equip junk chips on each body part, you get the above attribution. Anyway, this being done on full-speed and 198 rerecords, is an impressive feat indeed. There's no doubt you got the skill. But for a timeattack video there's far too much imperfection. That's about most of the more important things that caught my attention. i might've missed something because i fast-forwarded through the video 2nd time around. Still, it's great to see the first TA video for a MMZero game! Vote: no.
http://www.megazpeed.com - THE site for the ultimate MegaMan Zero superplay movies.
Joined: 6/14/2004
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I'd like to know how some people got this to work! The rom information matches from the video file, but it still seems to load up from a blank battery state. I've been unable to load the sav file even when not running the video, and I've tried both renaming the sav file or choosing import from VBA's menu. I think something relevant is that the game normally creates 8K saves and the one that was uploaded to use is 64K. So I'm at a loss, since I really want to watch this despite any quality issues.
I like my "thank you"s in monetary form.
Joined: 1/9/2005
Posts: 219
Location: The Netherlands
Well, i got the avi from this run, which can be found at http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=game_replays&collectionid=rockmanzero4_hardmode_nodamage It's funny how the creator has named the run a speedrun, since it's not. Many people are confused by this (so was i) and thought/think it was an actual speedrun. Anyway, so yeah, i didn't watch the video via VBA yet, so i can't say if it'll run fine for me or not.
http://www.megazpeed.com - THE site for the ultimate MegaMan Zero superplay movies.
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om, nom, nom... want more!
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Way to dig graves, mr. Grue.
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McBAIN wrote:
It's funny how the creator has named the run a speedrun, since it's not.
I don't think it's funny. It's misleading and deceptive. Deliberate or not, it's this type of misleading naming that gives bad publicity to TASes.