Hiryuu no Ken: Ougi no Sho is the Japanese release of Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll, which is also used by Speedrun.net since the unskippable training section is faster in the Japanese version.

SHA1 sum of rom: 2a79f7fe9313dd04e22b29de8bfed1589b153e1e

The game starts by choosing professional mode (beginner doubles damage in the martial arts sections) and being sent to the first journey section.

Enemies spawn every 64 frames in most sections of the stage but can also spawn at specific stage coordinates regardless of the timer. If five enemies have been defeated, the upcoming spawn will be a "Tusk Beast", which drop the necessary power ups to complete the journey (all must be collected):

I start by taking as much damage as possible (getting hit gives 116 iframes) because health is counted down at the end of the journey; each hit saves 6 frames. The stage has sections where enemies don't spawn that need to be traversed quickly and the x-coordinate is routed to try to get the final boss to be in a good spot for collecting the key and touching the door. Because of that, the movie starts with waiting at the rightmost position that doesn't scroll the stage. I move right as little as possible to be able to kill the fifth enemy in time to spawn the first tusk beast then do some jumps to get into a pixel perfect location where hitting her doesn't cause knock back. Only the first two tusk beasts in the game can be fought with the small jumps because I'll have the higher jump for the rest of the game, which is often too slow to use. Grabbing a power up adds 80 iframes to the player and 60 to the next tusk beast, so they need to be collected ahead of the tusk beast spawns but generally after taking more damage.

Grabbing the powerup from the statue happens to put us over the x-coordinate that prevents and further enemy spawns until later in the stage, so I have to hang out in the air until the tusk beast spawns to get it. The power up is a "Dragon's Scale" and makes a damaging field until the player takes damage. I'll use that in this stage to avoid the 10 frames of punching and kicking. I also defeat an enemy after the purple tusk beast spawns because they enemy count is reset when they spawn but can be carried over for the next boss spawn if they're killed after the reset.

In the platforming section after the purple tusk beast enemies are spawned when the player crosses x-coordinates, which is why I carry the purple tusk beast but stop advancing. After defeating the fixed position enemies and the tusk beast, I am carrying 1 kill into spawning the final tusk beast, but the weird head enemy doesn't count. I need to collect the K.O. Gauge power up to make our super moves faster to charge in the martial arts sections, then I jump to move to the end of the stage and defeat four more enemies to get the final tusk beast to spawn near the exit.

There is an unskippable training section prior to the first martial arts section; I wiggle the controller in time with the sfx to convey a sense of frustration with waiting. This section demonstrates the basics of the fighting controls to the viewer, at least.

In the martial arts fights every third hit will knock down the opponent, as will any hit from a special technique (A+B instead of one of them). As special techniques deal more damage, I usually use them on the third attack, as indicated by the "5000" appearing. I need to fill the KO gauge to be able to use the Hiryuu no Ken, which deals 16 of 64 damage to the enemies. The actions you can take are heavily constrained by the position of the target; you generally can't even throw a punch if the target is on you, for example.

Not much to say here except the final tusk beast is a new type that floats around relative to the camera instead of the ground. I'll take advantage of that in a later stage when I have more movement options.

After Shorinji, the opponents have the possibility of a ⭐️ target appearing, which allows them to be defeated in one hit. The mechanisms of triggering these varies but in the case of Gou Hayato I'm trying to move through the targets as fast as possible so that he kicks at our head three times in a row. This fight also demonstrates the more typical gameplay of your opponent blocking your attacks. I collect a holy water (heal potion) because it doesn't cost any time.

Min Min's star technique was discovered by reading the code in the debugger: jump away three times, take one hit, then block four attacks. It's plausible that no player ever stumbled onto this weird sequence; at this time none of the speed runners use this method.

Jungle Tagan is a tusk soldier who goes into his second form after being defeated conventionally (he does not have a ⭐️ trigger). Against tusk soldiers, you can throw a cosmic saucer when the KO gauge is full and I use one here. The first section of "The Secret Scroll" is collected by defeating him.

This journey unlocks our most useful ability: you can now throw your cosmic saucers while jumping with no cost of frames for punching on the ground. This stage also has large sections where enemies and tusk beasts do not spawn on the timer, so the routing was tricky. I don't really need the dragon scale power up anymore, but I have to wait for enemies to spawn so I collect it for an easier final tusk beast.

Zhonglian has a weird ⭐️ trigger not used in the speed runs too: jump away twice then land a hit.

Soldier-X has to be hit multiple times consecutively in the feet, which only becomes possible late in his move set and only when he's on the left side of the screen; he dodges one of the kicks if he's on the right side. There is some kind martial arts battle RNG that I do not fully understand. It's almost certainly possible to successfully kick him when he's on the right, but the RNG carries over between martial arts battles. This means optimizing early battles generally breaks the sync on later ones and also means that going into this fight it seems predetermined that he would always evade when on the right.

Koku Un Sai's quick kill is known by the speed running community but by pushing into him I save 141 frames. There are actually three targets on his head in a row that must be ignored and I skip the first two by making him step back twice. This gives us the second of the secret scrolls, but we'll be avoiding the rest of them.

Nothing we haven't seen already, but I skip the dragon's scale and KO gauge powerups; the former is redundant and the latter can't improve our KO gauge past 6.

Fighter-? has a simple strategy, but Mongol Khan's star takes longer than fighting him normally. Lion Kid is a tusk soldier but I trigger the ⭐️ with a hiryuu no ken and then defeat him in the incorrect way to prevent his transformation and I fail to collect the third secret scroll.

I collect a 1up while waiting; this stage has little room to spare to get the cosmic saucer before making a run for it. Since the final boss is tied to camera position, I can continue jumping to the exit as I fight it.

Sonram has a simple strategy. Mugen Shirou gets a blue target (the hit does 2 extra damage) after being kicked in the face and it's possible to special kick while he's standing up to deal a knock down blow to him before the game can determine how to change the target, so I stun lock him and miss collecting the fourth secret scroll. Wolf Morgan is defeated with a ⭐️ but I have to wait out his special move where he goes up on the ropes. Having almost no options, I decide to do some crunches while I wait. Demon Kabuki has a simple strategy for a ⭐️. Geiger Blazer's ⭐️ involves doing dozens of correct moves against him so I defeat him normally.

Who's Who is the first form of the final boss and has no ⭐️ available. When he transforms into Dagon I abuse his AI trying to approach me for an endless loop of cyclone kicks and cosmic saucers. Final input is on frame 44,643. You win the world tournament then your mentor Juan explains that it was a fake Dagon and the real Dagon tells you he has stolen the secret scroll while you were fighting the fake and now you have to play the game a second time for the true ending.

https://github.com/AlexMooney/Flying_Dragon_TAS has my lua script, translation notes, memory location notes, and debugger files.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.

Darkman425: Input file replaced with one that removes blank inputs after the last input of the TAS to better represent the TAS time.

The side scrolling sections are a bit funky looking but seeing how progression there is based on enemies defeated and not screen progression it makes sense, and the optimization looks well done there. The one-on-one fights also look well optimized with the instant KO strats when possible and simply solidly executed fights for the other opponents. I also made a quick check with RTA times and saving minutes over them is quite impressive. Nice work!

Accepting to Standard. I'm not sure if the branch for this one should say 1 loop or not considering that the NES Ghosts 'n Goblins publication doesn't say it in the branch name either.

despoa: Processing...