TAS recorded on BizHawk 2.8. Sega CD BIOS version 1.10 USA.
.CUE SHA-1: 3C241CEEFC31754D411B682B7B397494FAE7F059
Track 1.bin SHA-1: EA97A8CA280540F160B0884C6A0E52EDEA3692EA
Track 2.bin SHA-1: 06486711B36741362822922073AA722FAD45E4F0
Track 3.bin SHA-1: 63A75172B7D96C24779F686287FAC7160C4E0A15
Track 4.bin SHA-1: 8C18E2DDCF046A372AC77CB2D439D10EAAEF0E80
Track 5.bin SHA-1: ECC1E2FE6DAA0855AA7E25639A12843436209909
(All found using HxD & ROM Hasher)
Please notice the first screen after the SEGA logo, this text screen is different depending on the version. The original version says "© 1992 Sierra" on it and the text is left-aligned, the second release says "© 1994 Sierra" on it and the text is center-aligned. I am playing on the original USA release of the game which was sold in a cardboard box, rather than the second release which was in a plastic case. This initial release allows you to skip the opening cutscene, which is very long.
This is the second time I have done this TAS, and is also my second ever TAS. The improvements over the original are: much faster reservoir battle, skipping equipping the bulletproof vest, and using Blade's ID card to enter his apartment. My original TAS was 34733 frames from pressing Start to start the game until the last input to beat the last boss. This run is 33417 frames within the same criteria, which is a savings of 1316 frames, or ~22 seconds. Most of this time was probably from the reservoir battle as there was a lot of downtime in the original. Link to the older original TAS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwM4Q...
The main movement is this game is the mouse cursor. If you hold a certain direction, your mouse will move faster within a second and maintain that speed, but it's a little more complicated than that. You can keep this speed as long as you change directions within 2 of the 8 cardinal directions, and as long as one of them is a diagonal (for example: N to NE, NE to N, or NE to SE all work, but NOT N to E). If I want to move W to pick up an item and move E to drop it into my inventory (assuming I'm at maximum speed), it's faster to:
Frame 1: Move W and pickup on same frame
Frame 2: Move NW for a frame
Frame 3: Move NE for a frame
Frame 4: Move E
You can also swap north in this example to south if you want. I have to do a U-Turn movement to maintain my fast acceleration. I found out it takes 52 frames to get to maximum speed (8 pixels per frame is the fastest the cursor will move). You can't keep the speed through most screen transitions or when accessing the inventory.
There are two elements of RNG in this game: the reservoir battle and the ending arcade sequence. I do not have the knowledge of any RNG manipulation for these areas yet. I do not fully understand how the enemy HP or behavior works in the reservoir yet either. The enemies in the arcade sequence might shoot at different times depending on character location and when the enemy spawns on the map. I did have to duck just once to avoid a death which caused a very small time loss. The reservoir battle could also be done better.
slamo: Claiming for judging.
slamo: Cutting off 12146 frames of blank input.
slamo: The optimization seems good. The cursor maintains its position between screens, so you did well to utilize the loading times to put it in better places. The other gameplay sections look fine as well, and you easily beat your own RTA record. Accepting!
