The Scorpion King: Sword of Osiris is an action platformer released in 2002, developed by WayForward. In it, you follow Mathayus (The Rock), in his quest to obtain the sword of osiris and save Cassandra. This game also acts as a direct sequel to the The Scorpion King movie.
This TAS achieves the True Ending, for which you need to enter the Scorpion Shrine in each level to collect all six runes. This ending unlocks the actual final boss Isis.

Game Objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Achieves the True Ending
  • Takes intentional damage

Tech

Attack cancel

When attacking, its possible to cancel the attack by ducking, if on the ground, or by doing the pogo attack, this also lets you attack multiple times in the air.
The double swords don't have the pogo attack, so their attack can't be cancelled in midair.

Corner boost

When jumping into corners, Mathayus is pushed forward slightly, saves about 5 frames each time.

Fast climb

You can normally only grab ropes when falling, but if you attack you can do it when not falling, doing this is faster becase you don't need to fall slightly to continue jumping up the rope.

Comments

At the end of every bossfight, Mathayus will move to a specific spot to do its victory animation. Also, the victory animation only happens after the health reffil is done. At the end of every shrine the victory animation and health refill also happens, but in that case they happen at the same time, so the refill doesn't lose time.
I don't really know how the RNG works in this game, from what I've seen, at least, it depends on how you deal with enemies, which you kill, how exactly, sometimes when, and sometimes wether you get a fire orb or not depends on where you are while waiting for the drop. So really, to get the fire orbs drop where needed, which is really the most important part of the TAS, what you have to do is to just deal with enemies in slightly different ways until you happen to get the right RNG.
On the 1st bossfight, there's some attacks that seem to not land, this is because you can attack that boss 1 frame before you'd think, but it messes with the stun animation, so damage is dealt and the boss gets i-frames, but its not stunned, so it can still move around and attack. And, because it can attack between attacks if doing that, its not done in every atack to prevent atacks that give the boss invulnerability.
On the 4th bossfight, there's some RNG manipulation that was done to prevent the same totem face from turning around consecutively, because if a different face turns around, the turning back animation of the last face happens while the new face is turning. A repeat loses 15 frames.
I wasn't able to find a pattern with no repeats, just one is the best I found.
On the 3rd screen on the 4th level, the mountain, there's some spots I turn around and wait, for seemingly no reason, this is done because thats a big lag spot, with all those falling rocks, and just continuing right would create way too much lag, so much its faster to just wait it out.

CoolHandMike: Claiming for judging.
CoolHandMike: Entertaining action platformer for the gba that the author blasts through with high speed and technique. Optimization is very good throughout. My favorite part of the tas was the part with lots of ropes where the author jumps up all the ladders at lightning speed.
Accepting to Standard.
Congrats!
Spikestuff: what can I say except "you're welcome"
Hi, yes-- oh it's a Universal film not a Disney one... oh.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15346
Location: 127.0.0.1
CoolHandMike
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Experienced player (728)
Joined: 3/9/2019
Posts: 681
Could you explain a little more about what is going on in the stages? Like in the sand stage, because I do not understand why a lot of actions are being taken. A good example of this is around 7:00 when the character just stands there twirling the sword, at another part shortly later kind of sinks in the sand then jumps out again, and another just kind of hangs around a block for a couple seconds then moves on. Not sure what to make of all these odd movements. Also in the water level what happens if you jump into the water?
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
Induviel
He/Him
Active player (282)
Joined: 12/1/2023
Posts: 23
CoolHandMike wrote:
Could you explain a little more about what is going on in the stages? Like in the sand stage, because I do not understand why a lot of actions are being taken. A good example of this is around 7:00 when the character just stands there twirling the sword, at another part shortly later kind of sinks in the sand then jumps out again, and another just kind of hangs around a block for a couple seconds then moves on. Not sure what to make of all these odd movements. Also in the water level what happens if you jump into the water?
In the sand stage, there's a sandtorm that appears periodically, at that point, if you are not close to a wall to cover form the wind you'll be swept backwards, that's slow, so at 7:00 I'm just waiting it out, doing some twirls to pass the time. You can see at 7:56 how The Rock is being swept backwards since there were no convenient spot to prevent it. On the water level, if The Rock is fully submerged he'll instantly drown, and die, there's no swimming in this game, so you have to wait out the cycles to continue unfortunately.
CoolHandMike
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Experienced player (728)
Joined: 3/9/2019
Posts: 681
Induviel wrote:
In the sand stage, there's a sandtorm that appears periodically, at that point, if you are not close to a wall to cover form the wind you'll be swept backwards, that's slow, so at 7:00 I'm just waiting it out, doing some twirls to pass the time. You can see at 7:56 how The Rock is being swept backwards since there were no convenient spot to prevent it. On the water level, if The Rock is fully submerged he'll instantly drown, and die, there's no swimming in this game, so you have to wait out the cycles to continue unfortunately.
Ok thanks for the explanation.
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15346
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6108] GBA The Scorpion King: Sword of Osiris "true ending" by Induviel in 37:13.16