Mighty Gunvolt is a mini 8-bit spin off featuring characters from Inti Creates's Gunvolt and Gal*Gun series along with Beck from Mighty No. 9. Going through 4 Mega Man lite stages along with a boss only final stage. It's also known as Gal Gunvolt on Playstation platforms.

I think this is the first TASable platform besides PC to feature online updates. The 3DS era was still releasing download-only games to Nintendo systems at different days of the week for different territories infact Mighty Gunvolt was out as early as August 2014 in Japan/USA and as late as April 2015 in Europe.

In November 2014, Mighty Gunvolt recieved a quality of life update featuring polished mechanics and as a paid extra, 4 more playable levels.

This is dubbed as version 2.0 and there are some pros and cons depending on the character of choice. In version 2.0, Gunvolt can charge up his Lightning Sphere quicker which is very important for how destructive the move is against bosses. The only disadvantage version 2.0 has is that it features stage intro and exit animations but they're minor time losses, I think Beck and Ekoro have faster runs on V1.0 but I haven't tested them yet as they're not as busted as Gunvolt.

The run is done on the 3DS version because believe it or not, the game loads up levels faster than your super expensive $3000+ PC.

A X buster like weapon from the Mega Man X PS1 trilogy where it's limited to 3 pellets on the screen at once and it's unable to phase through walls. The ideal weapon of choice to kill regular enemies with.

A powerful charge attack, it has limited range and angles but deals 3 points of damage against a boss but with creative use it can go as high as 9-15 per hit.

As the lead character he has a busted double jump which can be used for vertical ladder climb zips.

Most bosses have 30 frames of invincibility after taking damage, but...... both the 2nd boss's weakspot and female Zonda's protective dome have 0 i frames on pellets and "hitbox in/out" quirk for GV's Lightning Sphere attack where after hitting the target, it's ideal for the charged weapon to leave the enemy's weak spot and then re-enter ASAP for another quick hit.

All bosses have 32 HP which is usually a 11 hit KO if Lightning Sphere dealt 3 damage all of the time.

What advances the RNG:

1) Killing enemies

2) Breaking blocks

3) Lightning Sphere duration.

4) Initial save message

1) Boss A.I such as the attack they're about to use.

2) Explosive seeds in the lab stage, the first encounter is most notable.

1) Collecting point items

2) Destroying the explosive seeds from the plant.

006FA91F0 = X co-ordinate position on the map

006FA91F4 = Y co-ordinate position on the map

0070DF9D4 = Lives counter

006FABB1C and 006FABB2C = Boss's HP

006FAA820 and 006FAA830 = Player's HP

006FA70B0 and 0070E0354 = Player's score

When Gunvolt is using Lightning Sphere, if you release the attack button 5 or 6 frames before the next hit, it will deal damage equal to the number of exploded spheres inside the enemy's hitbox. From a distance, 2 spheres for 6 damage points is usually doable but going up close and aiming the attack at an upright angle, you can get 3 spheres inside the enemy for 9 damage!

When pulling off a near point blank mega damage, you can fire a pellet and make it hit at the same time as the Lightning Spheres for 1 more point of damage. The only disadvantage is that firing a pellet does delay the next charge attack by 11 frames. Fortunately, I used this tactic at places where there are no benefits at using frame perfect recharging.

When releasing Y, if you press Y on the next frame without hitting left, right and/or jump, GV will not fire a pellet which allows him to unleash his next charge attack sooner, this is used against Jota to reposition himself and dish out more mega 9 damage hits.

You'll notice that during parts where GV is falling down, trying to cut a corner or not doesn't impact the time.

Gunvolt is the only character who can perform a mid-air jump which gives him some unique tricks, the ladders have a pretty big next screen trigger that makes it (most of the time) impossible for GV to zip up without having to screen transition up and then a screen transition down beforehand. When GV is near the very top of the screen due to either:

A) Him climbing/falling down a screen,

B) Double jumping from high ground or

C) Using a catapult (Tower stage)

GV can use his 2nd jump and press up at the right time to either:

1) Zip upwards, this is a 1-2 frame window depending on his position on the map.

2) Delay the up input a few frames more and the game will reveal the next screen instantly to skip a transistion effect, this is used if the vertical ladder zip is either slower or even useless due to GV going out of bounds.

Based on the intro train stage from Gunvolt 1, I did a run where I killed everything in sight and found out that the boss Viper didn't co-ordinate. So I redid the 2nd section and found out his actions were different. I originally thought points items influenced the RNG but it didn't. Viper is a wild boss, he has a variety of actions from firing a projectile to jumping and even performing a slide. The first action being a forward jump is logical as it allows me to get closer to him at half the full screen distance, then the next action is forcing him to fire some fireballs which makes him a sitting duck for the rest of the fight. The jump away after unleashing a mega 10 damage was done to prevent him from performing a lethal slide which usually happens if GV is too close to him.

This is the only platforming stage to not feature ladders.

This is the only base level that isn't from Gunvolt's universe but Galgun instead, it's also the first level to feature ladders so yay, time to break the game. Lightning Sphere at the start of the boss fight seems random but it was done to get the best attack pattern from the boss which is 2 grounded tentacles and it's partly responsible for the first plant enemy manipulation in the next stage.

The boss itself called Mr. Demon Plant Jr. is vulnerable to the tickle strat which is done by placing GV's Lightning Sphere just underneath the weakspot and then by pressing Up > Down > Up > Down in quick succession, it will deal 3 damage every other frame.

This is the only base game level where the platforming segment has a bit of RNG from the plant enemies. The first encounter is very troublesome thanks to its placement and where the explosive seeds end up going, heck even if you tried to destroy the seeds, they have a harmful explosive hitbox. The RNG outcome I got was very good, I won't be too surprised if there is a better outcome through manipulation although between the 2nd boss and that first plant enemy, there are limited opportunities as you only have a few killable enemies and 1 breakable block to tweak the RNG without losing time.

The vine blocks as seen in the later half can heal themselves, so there is a part where GV is standing there for half a second just because going for your typical "jump early for faster falling speed sooner" doesn't work here.

The third boss Stratos is the only boss who can technically die in 4 hits. His first attack seems to be either jump to the middle and drop two eggs or warp to perform a chomp attack. The latter is used because I can trick his i-frames by firing a pellet from the distance and then getting at least 4 spheres inside its hitbox along with an extra pellet before the next hit confirm for a massive 13 points of damage. After the chomp attack, Stratos has already lost 14 out of 32 HP so he only has 18 HP left, fortunately when he appears, he has a wide hitbox that an initial 3 damage hit can be followed up with a massive 15 damage hit as it's possible to get 5 Lightning Spheres inside the hitbox. In a earlier version of this TAS before knowing the early mega 12 damage hit, whenever he is standing next to the edge of the screen, if you go too far away from him, he'll teleport and use his chomp attack, this is important to know for Ekoro/Beck runners.

Just like the original game, this level is very vertical focused but due to the laws of 8-bit Mega Man-ism, the game is allergic to traditional vertical scrolling so there are a good amount of ladders here which means most of them will be exploited to either zipping or screen transition skipping. Not every ladder you see in this level gets a vertical zip due to either going out of bounds which isn't useful or triggering a softlock.

This is the only level where GV takes intentional damage to save time in two places, one by a flamethrower guard after climbing a ladder and another is taking a hit from a diamond bot at the very top of the room right after using a catapult.

My favourite part is the small time save which is done by grabbing a ladder that's above the spikes for a pixel boost to save some frames, the horizontal catapult that send players to the left wasn't useful as using it ASAP would send GV towards a wall and not through the tight gap where the two sweets are.

The boss for this level became a massive roadblock in my submitted TAS, the old TAS made a week earlier had very little problems but since I found new time savers in the boss fights, trying to get the vital RNG was a nightmare as I am a noob at trying to use memory viewer finding the value. Eventually, after finding out that there were 2 breakable blocks in the level that didn't cost any time, I was finally able to get the ideal RNG. What made Jota notorious in TASing is that while he did have 2 attacks (when healthy), he was capable to change the order of his turret placement attack part-way through your attack aggression, you want Jota to go from bottom right to top right because he moves very slowly, if he wants to go from bottom right to top left, he'll move superfast and won't get caught in your last two hit combo.

So the breakdown for the actual fight:

1) Use Lightning Sphere at the start to manipulate his best turret placement spawn.

2) Release a short Lightning Sphere for the first hit, this is mainly to manipulate both Jota's 3rd turret location to make him go top right and the upcoming fight's first attack. If I started this Lightning Sphere a bit earlier or later but still get the first mega 9 damage hit, it would have affected the RNG.

3) After releasing the spheres, move slightly to the right and along the way, perform two more perfect recharges to deal another set of 3 dmg + 9 dmg combo twice.

The difference between this strat and the 1 cycle RTA optimal strat done TAS'd is 98 frames. In fact, the actual RTA runs wants Jota to perform the side drill attack which makes him a sitting duck but the problem is that he's so high up that getting a mega 6 damage hit isn't possible until he starts to descend. Then, he leaves just before the side drills start to function and he'll eventually re-appear after the attack has ended.

The final boss Zonda is an unique boss where the previous Gunvolt bosses were using attacks from Gunvolt 1, Zonda's attack at the time of release were original and were eventually reused in Gunvolt 2.

The diehard Gunvolt fans know this is actually the fake male/female forms, the true form is a 11 year old girl rated as an S+ rank Adept which is tied along with 2 other characters: Gunvolt (protagonist) and Nova (main villian from Gunvolt 1).

So the best A.I outcome is to make fake male gender change into a fake female as this is the only way to keep them on the screen at all times, to manipulate that, you remember that my first mega 9 damage hit against the previous boss Jota was a short lightning sphere? Well, if I kept that running much earlier for longer, it would have messed up the manipulation against Zonda.

The strategy is to do enough damage before gender change so that Zonda can be 3 hit KO'd afterwards. After the mega 10 damage, I went to the left side of the area and aimed the Lightning Sphere upwards to not only hit her early on the way down but to follow up with another 3 and finally mega 9 damage hit as soon as possible, I went to the very far left and held right on the latest possible frame that made GV face right upon landing.

The challenge is that I had to do use at least 2 pellet shots, one a the start and another around the same time GV dishes his first mega 9 which can only be done at close range. Not using these 2 pellet shots would leave Zonda at 2 HP remaining if I did a 3 + 3 + 9 damage combo right after Zonda's gender change.

May 12th update:

A new strategy was discovered, KOing Zonda in 5 hits, the first four hits were 3 plus 9 and then another 3 plus 9. This dealt 24 damage before the gender change which meant they only had 8 HP left, this is enough for a mega 9 hit which can be done as a first hit if the exploded spheres hit a moving target, in this case Zonda descending to the ground. What made the fight faster is that GV no longer needed to fire pellets which meant he can use his Lightning Sphere attack sooner after each mega hit. For the final hit, I tried adjusting the angle upright but can only get a mega 6 damage hit, aiming straight ahead was the only way to dish out a mega 9 damage hit as the final blow.

The epilogue after clearing the last stage required input presses to advance further before playing the credits.

Possibly better movement from ordinary ladder climbing that didn't involve vertical zipping/screen transition skipping.

Maybe better RNG from the first plant enemy inside the lab.

Maybe better RNG manipulation from an entertainment standpoint where I don't end up standing around like a plonker using Lighting Sphere at nothing as seen at the start of both bosses 2 and 4.

Playing through the DLC levels, which is interesting from a TASing viewpoint as they can be played before the base game levels, maybe do DLC levels only or do an all 9 stage run even though the base game levels will require different RNG manipulation strategies thanks to all of the action that occurs during the previous 4 DLC stages beforehand.

The many RTA runners who played Mighty Gunvolt, your PBs have been valuable resources for me to witness boss RNG in action.

18815, 22255, 24330, 25902

CoolHandMike: Claiming for judging.

CoolHandMike: Replacing file with improvement movie from author.

CoolHandMike: Accepting to Standard for character Gunvolt. This submission only completes the base game levels and no DLC. This European version of the game includes a 2.0 update and is just a single rom file. This submission beats the RTA record handily as well as using some zips and manipulates RNG. There are multiple characters to choose from and they play differently so having the character branch is appropriate.

Accepting to Standard with goal "Gunvolt".

Good job!

fsvgm777: Waiting on the author to provide commentary subtitles before processing.

Also replacing the movie file with one that has a fixed re-record count. The total run time remains untouched.

fsvgm777: Replacing movie file with one that has commentary subtitles attached to it, and processing for real. The total run time remains untouched.