Emulator:
Bizhawk 2.8.0 + TAStudio, using mGBA v0.9.1.
Emulator Setting:
- Skip BIOS: FALSE
- RTC Use Real Time: TRUE
- RTC Initial Time: 1/1/2010 12:00:00 AM
- Save Type: AUTO-DETECT
- RTC: AUTO-DETECT
- All other settings: DEFAULT
ROM CRC32:
117FDCDE
BIOS:
BIOS SHA1:
BIOS Region:
BIOS Revision:
Brief Game Introduction:
The game revolves around Kunio and Ryan (the 2 main protagonists) who, after knowing about Ryan's girlfriend being kidnapped, goes to River City High School to rescue her. Along the way, Kunio and Ryan encounters many gangs in their turfs, and fights them to seek out the bosses behind the nefarious plot.
Aims for:
- Faster time
- No Damages
- RNG Manipulation
- Speed Trade-offs
- Abuses glitches
No Damages:
Kunio-kun (protagonist) does not take any damages, especially in this Crazy difficulty run. One single hit will take off nearly 1/3 of HP (stamina + willpower) if not careful, and can waste extra unnecessary frames.
RNG Manipulation:
There is a somewhat larger portion of the run where I had to use Lotto Tix (in-game lottery tickets) to obtain consecutive 4th prizes in order to have enough money to buy stats-boosting items and special technique books. This time, shop item inventory refreshes are a bit acceptable.
Speed Trade-offs:
Sacrificing reputation, I aim to defeat the enemies as fast as I can. In order to save time in the later parts of the run, I had to do some traversing to reach a certain shop to gain better stats-boosting items. I also gotten some special technique books, so it makes the run a bit faster by using heavier damage-dealing moves on the enemies. NOTE, even if I defeat the bosses quickly, I still have to wait until the dialogues end in order for the game to count it as "progress", to unlock the next boss(es).
Abuses Glitches:
There are some areas in the game where it's possible to finish off the bosses pretty quickly by aligning their positions beyond the wall boundaries. This will cause them to overflow their X positions, making them out of bounds, and will fail to land on the ground, falling to their deaths. I had to use this in some boss fights, such as the Warehouse Battle.
- Aims for fastest time
- Destroys reputation in the process.
- No secret events.
- I do not use any warps nor passwords in this run.
- There are 2 places where the game has glitched physics I use in the game, to speed up the boss battles.
- I do not use any deaths to save time. Dying will waste time and lose my precious money.
- I did not save and restart the movie in the middle. The game doesn't have a save data system. Instead, the game saves player profiles, which is useless in this TAS run.
- I had the help from Seirea from Speedrun.com for giving inspiration to do this TAS run.
The main goal of this run is to defeat bosses in a strict order: MOOSE -> ROCKO -> BLADE -> TURK -> MOJO -> THOR -> IVAN -> DRAGON TWIN -> SLICK
When starting the game, the game menu first shows up. This is where I need to quickly configure the difficulty, as well as the text speed to VERY FAST. This helps with unskippable cutscenes with a lot of dialogues.
I skipped most of the early areas, entered an unskippable cutscene, and jump straight to the Armstrong Thruway, to enter the Merlin's Secret. This shop contains a rare item, called the Lotto Tix, which allows the player to get a lottery to see what prize they would get. The easiest prizes to get while being worth its value is the 4th prize, which nets you $100.00, and you can obtain this prize relatively common, compared to other prizes. I had to buy multiple Lotto Tix in order to get enough money to buy a lot of important stats-boosting items and special techniques.
The items I focused on buying are:
- Swim Mag - Each book gives you +4 in STRENGTH. The higher the STRENGTH, the more damage multiplier you can deal with.
- Army Boots - A total of 12 pairs of boots. Each pair gives you +10 in PUNCH and KICK attributes. The highest it can go is 128, and that's what I did to max them out.
- Special Techniques - Any book that will assist me in dealing some extra damage compared to a normal punch and normal kick. I chose the cheapest ones because it allows me to get more special techniques for this run.
In order to bring out the bosses, I have to defeat all of the gang members in that area. I make quick short work with the gang before MOOSE shows up. To defeat MOOSE, the easiest way is to throw him down the construction zone pit.
The next boss is ROCKO. Entering the factory is where I begin fighting the gang in that area. Luckily, it's the Frat Boys, so their HP is pretty low and they are all easy to deal with. When ROCKO enters, I had to guide the enemy towards the left-most side of the factory, and then initiate the glitch to make ROCKO fall through the ground by re-aligning his position. If I don't do this, the battle will take even longer to finish.
The third boss is BLADE, one of the 4 Zombies. He is located in Sherman Park, which again, requires backtracking. But now that I have special techniques, I can make quick work with the Zombies in general.
When it comes to shop inventory, so I had to quickly enter the settings menu, toggle the inventory refresh frequency to "Every", which means, it will refresh the shop inventory every time I enter the shop. Rare items tend to appear after multiple inventory refreshes, so it's expected for me to enter/re-enter the shop multiple times.
As I begin battling BLADE, another unskippable cutscene is encountered, where my first ally joins me. GARY can deal some extra damage, I supposed.
After BLADE is dealt with, the next boss is TURK. But I know this boss is harder than BLADE. What I did here is I skip ahead to Flatiron Mall and go buy 12 Army Boots and some special techniques, to get max PUNCH and KICK stats. Then I go back to where TURK is and defeat the gang, which by the way, made a HUGE difference in terms of quickly overpowering them. Once all the gang members are defeated, and TURK arrives, I make another quick work and moved on to MOJO, which like TURK, makes for a quick and easy fight.
After defeating MOJO, I run straight to the Vacant Factory for THOR. Defeating the gang members with my maxed out stats made my previous run feels faster now.
After defeating THOR, I ran straight towards River City High, and aimed for IVAN. This time, IVAN has much higher stats than the Zombies, so he is able to recover and tank my hits pretty well. I just have to time my kicks so that each time he is airborne, I can easily get a double-digits damage on him. After defeating IVAN, I go ahead and enter River City High School.
Heading upstairs towards the roof of River City High, the next battle is the DRAGON TWIN, ANDY and RANDY. This time, I opt to try juggling them with my kicks, so I can concentrate on my attacks on both of them at the same time. Grouping them together helps to save time fighting them.
After defeating the DRAGON TWIN, I entered the roof and quickly dealt with SLICK by using the glitch to offset his position out of bounds.
The moment I stopped my input, is the moment my run ends, but for style, I decided to end the movie at the end of the credits BGM. Same with the previous run.
Memory: Cancelling due to using a bad dump and author plans on redoing
