The Tower of Turmoil is a 2018 NES homebrew in which the player takes control of a swordsman called Takemaru Kurumana in a world in which hundreds of people have gone missing. He sense a large amount of dark energy within a mysterious tower that's only just risen. This TAS aims to speed its way through the tower's many levels and defeat the source of the evil in a under 5 minutes.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
- Aims for fastest completion
- Uses damage boosting
I'd like to thanks MrTASer and EZGames69 for offering improvements to what I now see was a very unoptimised TAS and Memory for finding the jump boost glitch. I've learned a lot from this submission and hopefully it means my future submission don't require nearly as much fuss.
Tricks and glitches
Jump boost
By taking damage while jumping on or around the same frame as taking damage, the vertical speed gained can be added and converted to the vertical speed of the jump resulting in a large jump boost. There aren't many spots where this is possible but is used as much as possible.
Minimal use of B
It turns out that pressing B to kill enemies halts the player's movement for a single frame. Therefore, all instances of a B press that can be removed have and are replaced with a down slash or whatever its called. Speaking of down slashes, the walls with swords can be jumped over using down slashes without taking damage.
Health glitch
This is more of a fun visual glitch that only adds to the entertainment value rather than speed (it doesn't lose any thankfully) and is done by taking damage on or around the same frame as dealing damage to an enemy. Doing this can produce some very strange results. What's shown in this TAS barely scratches the surface of what's possible. For example, while doing the boss fights, I managed to get the player's health to five, the boss' to zero but have three health icons randomly spawn to the left of 'BOSS'. Another, possibly even stranger result I came across, while working on the heart, I was able to get a health icon (not collectable) spawn inside the left side of the heart. Useless, I know, but entertaining nonetheless.
Boss Fights
Phase 1
The boss hovers across the screen and will drop three blue fireballs(?) before swooping down in an attempt to directly hit the player. The sword is swung just before they descend so it is hit on the first frame possible.
Phase 2
Very similar to the first phase but instead it drops slimes in between main attacks. We can get 3 hits in on the first cycle then 2 the rest.
Phase 3
The final stage sees the player destroy the monster's heart while lasers are being activated at regular intervals. It's possible to destroy the first half without being pushed off by the laser but the second half requires the player to dodge it. Thankfully, a hit is dealt just before it goes off so no time is lost there.
After beating this boss and skipping through the credits, a new mode becomes available: the Blackout. This is almost identical to the base mode except everything is dark and the stages are in reverse so it wouldn't have been any more entertaining, probably less so, to play through it. If it would be better to show this as well, I'd be more than happy to.
Memory: Replacing file with 310 frame improvement.
The initial run had a lot of messy points to it, but after all the improvements it's actually a fairly nice and clean run with some decent movement. Accepting.
