In this Jaws TAS, we complete the game ASAP without using the death exploit. This is the same general strategy used by TASes in the past, but this TAS is faster than those older submissions.
TAS Objectives
- Emulator Used: FCEUX v2.4.0
- Goal: Kill Jaws
- Restrictions: No Death Exploit
How Not Dying Changes The Run
- BONUS SCENE: Without death, two full encounters are required to get up to 13 shells, which will trigger a bonus scene.
- MINI-SUB: Since 10 shells are gotten from a perfect bonus scene, only 3 will be needed from the encounters. This allows us to route the RNG to get more points from stars. 30000 points are needed to unlock the Mini-Sub, which will double damage against Jaws.
Why It's Faster Than Older Deathless TASes
- DIRECT OVERWORLD: The boats path between the ports travels through as few tiles as possible without waiting. There are some "shimmies" which cost 2 frames each, but they are to manipulate how Jaws moves.
- CLEAN ENCOUNTERS: No frames wasted and they are done on shallow encounter screens which are faster.
- FASTER BONUS: Faster bonus scene strategy pioneered by Slackanater.
- MORE EFFICIENT MINI-SUB PICKUP: There are four possible locations for the mini-sub. If you grab it during the port-to-port power up, the best spot is in the South-West as it uses the fewest tiles to reach and then return to your port-to port path. But I figured out a way to manipulate Jaws so that he follows you to the South-East spot after getting Power 3. This ends up being faster since you don't have to double back to the path.
ThunderAxe31: When considering a new branch for the Alternative class, the most important thing is having something different than the existing branches, and I think that this is the case. Basically what lacks in the fastest-completion branch is the bonus scene and the mini-sub, whose are apparently unavoidable in a deathless run. This also ends up bringing a different routing and optimization challenge for a TASer. Additionally, this is also
a popular speedrunning category, which is nice.
Apart from this branch, I think it would also be nice to have something more extensive, like maxing out the power level, like in
another speedrunning category.
Anyway, accepting this movie as a new Alternative branch.
Note for the publisher: you may want to improve the label, maybe something like just "no damage". Consult feos if in doubt.
