WHAT IS A MAN???? A MISERABLE PILE OF SECRETS!!
That's why we're letting the ladies destroy the castle now.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.4.2
  • Takes damage to save time
  • heavy luck manipulation
  • Uses Japan Bios 1.00

Comments

Castlevania Symphony of the Night is arguably one of the best 2D platformers ever made. While most know of it from the PSX release, it also received a port on the Sega Saturn in Japan, and is considered to be one of the worst ports for the game due to its poor performance in lag. However it has an exclusive maria mode, which allows you to play as Maria Renard.
Maria mode plays simmilar to Richter where you can freely explore the castle. so much so that you can get to the final boss right away after you turn the castle around.
This is a 214 frame improvement over the previous publication: [3982] Saturn Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Maria Mode" by EZGames69 in 06:53.03 The majority of the improvements come from new OoB tech done in the anti-chapel. Big thanks to 3snow_p7im for finding these (he also found some useful OoB things that will also be used in the upcoming All Bosses run when I eventually get back to that).
The majority of these submission texts are copy and pasted from the last submission, Changes start in the Inverted Chapel section.

Stage by stage comments

Opening

So right off the bat, you'll notice some different movement compared to the previous TAS. You can cancel out your forward kick by holding the opposite direction during the kick, this allows me to continuously dive kick and forward kick in quick succession. It is faster than just down dashing. some areas I still do down dashing because I either cant do a forward kick there or it puts me into position to start a high jump.

Alchemy Laboratory

probably the only time save worth mentioning is the 3rd to last room, instead of downward kicking to a lower level then super jumping to the exit, instead I go to a higher platform, slide on that, then use a super jump to hit the exit to halt my jump speed then mozy around to enter in, this saves a little bit more than a half a second.

Royal Chapel

since you have a bit more speed doing the downward kicks than doing diagonal super jumps, I alternate using both methods to get up the giant stairs. for the Griffin fight, I can get a bit more damage on him by shooting a hadauken before doing the KameHameHa.

Castle Keep

I manipulate RNG to get an axe drop from one of the knights, it will be important for use in the Inverted Chapel. This area just has some better movement overall and doesn't try to bonk into ceilings as much.

Inverted Chapel

Screen Transitions in the Chapel in general are pretty broken. if you back dash into the middle of a transition you can confuse the game into placing you somewhere else on the screen. The first room had it in the save room originally, but it turns out doing the out of bounds on the opposite side is faster by about 15 frames or more (I didnt keep count :P). For the Medusa fight, I dont use the KameHameHa as it would waste valuable energy that I need for the next room (plus her shield will block most of it), so instead I stomp on her until she's dead. This was improved by doing a faster pattern of inputs for each stomp.
once again, by using the broken screen transitions, I can get out of bounds and avoid any other obstacles that would normally slow me down. Axes are important here because your downward kick will lose speed after awhile, but if you throw an axe, you can preserve your current speed, this allows me to quickly get under some steeples. Since then though, I found that you can preserve speed for longer by kicking in the air after doing a downward kick, this preserves all speed for about 3-4 seconds, which saves the amount of axes I need to throw at at time, as you can only throw a certain amount at a time.
Doing the Out of Bounds trick at the top left tunnel rather than the tunnle I exit out of is 151 frames faster than the previous movie, as you don't need to regain the lost height from going below the castle.

Reverse Colosseum

not much to explain in this room, other than the axe movement at the end lets me avoid taking damage from a werewolf

Shaft

Blue Dragon helps to end input extremely early. Due to some RNG, ending input is slightly longer.

feos: The ending starts 223 frames sooner, so it's even faster than what the framecount says. The potential improvement idea mentioned in the thread is vague, because it requires reverse engineering, changing the strategies, and still doesn't guarantee an improvement. Accepting over [3982] Saturn Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Maria Mode" by EZGames69 in 06:53.03.
fsvgm777: Processing.


TASVideoAgent
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Mitjitsu
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Didn't expect an improvement would come so fast. Any luck trying to get a grey flame on the Hippogryph? As mentioned at the end of your submission. Four Beast is faster on Shaft, but the input time would likely be longer.
EZGames69
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The problem with getting grey flame is it would possibly screw up the rng manipulation for the axe drop later, and it’s really important to get that for the OoB in the anti-chapel. I also still have no idea how to manipulate the grey flame consistently, I have never gotten it in my testing.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Mitjitsu
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I do have a movie file that gets the grey flame. You just need to RAM search it to find out all the factors behind it, then hopefully you can manipulate the conditions to get it. Possibly changing the Saturn's internal clock if need be.
CoolHandMike
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Nice improvement to an excellent tas. Yes!
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4201] Saturn Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Maria Mode" by EZGames69 in 06:49.47