This game has 2 sections before looping repeatedly. This TAS completes one loop of the game.
Section 1
In this section you move to the right, passing enemies on the way. If you can hold right the entire time, this section will play out optimally. Holding right is difficult due to the enemies, but is achieved in this TAS. Apart from that, the only time save in this section comes from a fast acceleration by pressing left for a frame before going right. This fast acceleration saves 16 frames compared to just holding right from the start.
There is also the potential option to go left instead of right in this section, but that loses 3 frames.
He-man has 2 attacks: ION CANNON (shooting sideways) and MURTON BOMBS (dropping a bomb). The enemies fire ENERGY BOLTS (straight up) and WARP TRAKKERS (spinny thing). If there is a warp trakker on screen, you will fire the ion cannon with the button, but if there is not a warp trakker on screen, you will fire a murton bomb. A warp trakker will not appear if there is a murton bomb on screen. Destroying a warp trakker will destroy all projectiles on screen.
The warp trakker is usually fired so far to the right that you can’t hit it for a long time. This means that you will usually have to press left to avoid an energy bolt in this time. The trick to travelling right at all times is delaying the warp trakker spawning by firing a murton bomb. This causes the warp trakker to spawn more to the left, allowing you to hit it sooner and not having to slow down to dodge an energy bolt. In theory you could keep firing murton bombs to stop a warp trakker from spawning, but I avoided this as it would make for a less entertaining TAS and it would not save any time. I try to pass each enemy in a different way to show off the range of possible techniques.
There is also some minor tech in that the bullets copy your y-position, meaning you can move them up and down after firing them, by moving yourself up and down.
Section 2
In this section you pass the rolling walls to get to skeletor. In all my testing, the pattern for the walls is always the same. So I have to wait back until there is an opening and squeeze through. There is some precise up and down movement to squeeze through as early as possible without being hit. There is also a defense move by using the button, but that was not useful. Upon touching skeletor, the TAS finishes.
slamo: Claiming for judging.
slamo: This looks about as optimized as it can be. I could find no evidence that the game's difficulty or any content changes after the first loop (aside from random color changes) so this counts as beating the game, as far as I can tell. Accepting.
