Overview: This is a TAS of the English version of Pokémon Red, finishing with a in-game clock of 1:45. The emulator used for recording was VBA 1.7.2 (Nitsuja rev. 10), and the run itself was completeld over the course of approximately two months (not including test runs).
Features:
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes no damage
  • Manipulates luck
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Ignores semi-important goals in the game
  • Genre: RPG
Description: As the game begins, Prof. Oak (the hero's mentor) sends the hero and his rival, Prof. Oak's grandson, on a quest to make a complete guide of all the pokémon in the world (to "catch 'em all" so to speak). In the original Japanese versions of the game, upon completing this quest, if the hero returned to the Celedon office building, he would be rewarded with a Mew, pokémon number 151. Thus, obtaining a Mew was meant to be the crowning achievement of the game. But in a publicity stunt, Mew was removed completely from subsequent versions, and the only way to receive one was to attend an officially sponsored Nintendo event (I'm pretty sure there was never one in my area). Mew is coveted not only for it's rarity, but also because it is a very strong pokémon, and can taught be any move, allowing for nice battle situations.
There are actually two quests going on, though. First, to fill the PokéDex, and second, to become the Pokémon League champion, which is the quest this run focuses on. As you may have already guessed, this run features Mew. By abusing a glitch, I am able to obtain one very early on in the game. Within 10 minutes of obtaining it, Mew is one-hit-KO-ing everything it encounters, which speeds the game along nicely (although some sections, particularly those which include a lot of dialog, tend to be more interesting at 5x speed).
Luck Manipulation: The pseudo-random number generator in this game is highly dependent on user input. Thus, nearly everything factor in the game can manipulated by either delaying actions, prolonging button presses, or a combination of both. Things that were manipulated include: starting pokémon stats, critical hits, attack damage, opponent misses, avoiding random encounters, causing encounters, causing people in my direct path to move, the location of the switches in vermillion gym, and the list goes on, and on. Adjusting the duration of a button press was particularly useful for battles, and I found it increased the number of possible attacks by about a factor of 20, and doesn't take any additional time.
Glitch Abuse: The glitch used to spawn a Mew is most often referred to as the "Trainer/Fly" glitch. Less well known, is that this glitch can also be performed by using Teleport, Dig, or an Escape Rope. The Abra I catch serves this purpose nicely, and also saves time backtracking from Vermillion. The other glitch I manipulate isn't really a glitch per se; the item is functioning correctly. Using a Poké Doll ends a wild battle instantly. I use this to end the Marowak battle, without having to actually obtaion a Silph Scope (which would take several minutes).
Possible questions and answers: Pewter Gym takes a really long time. Why Charmander? Since I'm ditching my starter as soon as I have Mew, the difference boils down to a foot race from Pallet Town across Nugget Bridge. It turns out that Charmander wins by a good margin. Almost a minute in fact. One of the reasons for this is that there are simply so many bug pokémon in this section, which Charmander kills effortlessly. Other factors that help are that he's faster and stronger than Squirtle, and learns more powerful attacks at lower levels.
You heal twice in Cerulean. Couldn't that be avoided somehow? The short answer is, yes it could, but the alternative is quite a bit slower. On the pokémon scale of time, using a poké center really doesn't take all that much time, only around ~850 frames or so (compare to one round of attacks, which takes around 300). I could avoid healing by picking up the hidden Ether near Bill's (which takes around 250) and using when I have 10 or less Mega Punches remaining (which takes about 400). Sounds like an improvement, but the ether alone still doesn't give me enough attacks, I'd be about six short in all. This would mean I would end up sacrificing OKHOs for two hits, in about six places, adding up to around 1800 frames. Healing was a faster option.
You use a Rare Candy in Safron. What's that all about? First off, accessing menus in this game is really, really slow. The more it can be avoided the better. After battling Giovanni and before Sabrina, I have four things I need to do: use escape rope, use fly, get on the bicycle, teach both Surf and Strength. The last of these needs to be done before Sabrina, because if it's not, when I need to use an escape rope in Cinnibar, I'll have to scroll back up a few hundred frames to get to it. Teaching these before I get on the bike, and by using a Rare Candy in between, I can seemlessly go from one to the other, whithout having to access the menu twice. Basically, I am able to use a Rare Candy at the cost of ~100 frames, but it saves me an additional round of attacks in Safron Gym, due to having learned Psychic beforehand.
Why do you take the time to deposit your pokémon before the Elite Four? Well, I wouldn't, except that there happens to be two button presses after showing the Hall of Fame credits. Depositing them takes a lot less time then allowing them to appear in the credits. I'm not sure how this affects the in-game clock (whether it is calculated before the credits, or after), but it makes the movie file shorter.
Possible Improvements: This run is not optimal; there's always somewhere where one or two frames can be saved. However, I have done my best to ensure that whenever time could be saved, it was never more than one or two frames. There are a few possible exceptions to this however.
Lorelei of the Elite Four gave me a hard time. Her Slowbro was one hitpoint outside of the manipulatable OHKO range, and her Jynx was two hitpoints outside. The Mew I rolled had an attack DV of 14/15 and a special DV of 13/15. If these had both been max, these attacks might have been doable in one hit (but only if the Mew's acutal stats happen to be higher at that specific level, which often is not the case for a slightly higher DV). The Blastoise in the last Rival fight was also two hp away from a OHKO. These were the only close instances throughout the entire game. Unfortunately, rerolling a Mew would mean redoing 80% of the run.
Moving the boulders around in Victory Road takes a really long time. If a way could be found to glitch around the the fake barriers, this could cut around 2 minutes off the run, not only from not having to shove the rocks around, but from not having to get and learn Strength. I was unable to find such a way. If I ever do, you can be sure to see an improved run ;)
Recognition: First and foremost, I would like to thank Tilus, who gave me a lot of great suggestions for optimizing this run. He also pointed me in the direction of a great web resource, namely Azure Heights Pokémon Laboratory. I also used a few other sources quite extensively: The Ultimate Pokémon Center and necrosaro's Pokémon Page. I would also like to thank OmnipotentEntity for introducing me to this awesome site, Bisqwit for hosting it, and all other users who gave feedback and suggestions on the discussion forum.
Bisqwit: Processing this movie. Mew really belongs into this Pokémon timeattack :)


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Editor, Active player (297)
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To the author: Your nickname contains a special character, #, which has a special meaning in HTTP URLs. I will recommend that you choose another nickname, at least substituting the special character with a text representation, because your nickname causes problems in URLs should this movie be published. (We include the nickname in the filenames.)
Player (88)
Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Ahh, thanks for the heads up, I hadn't thought of that. Should I cancel this submission, or can you make the necessary modifications?
print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))
Post subject: Re: #1014: primorial#soup's SGB Pokémon Red in 1:46:19
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
primorial#soup wrote:
In the original Japanese versions of the game, upon completing this quest, if the hero returned to the Celedon office building, he would be rewarded with a Mew, pokémon number 151. Thus, obtaining a Mew was meant to be the crowning achievement of the game.
I demand proof of this assertion
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
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primo wrote:
Should I cancel this submission, or can you make the necessary modifications?
You can edit the submission and change the relevant texts.
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
Is the time the text takes for appearing constant or could shorter names reduce text times? Especially pokemon names, which would be printed a few thousand times over the course of a run would save a few frames that way, provided the text entry dialog doesn't eat too much time.
Editor, Expert player (2073)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
primo's profile wrote:
Posts: 1
I think I saw somewhere that Bisqwit doesn't want anyone to register multiple accounts. If you like, you can ask Bisqwit to change your username, like I did before. :) Edit:
KDR_11k wrote:
Is the time the text takes for appearing constant or could shorter names reduce text times? Especially pokemon names, which would be printed a few thousand times over the course of a run would save a few frames that way, provided the text entry dialog doesn't eat too much time.
I think we debated over this before. Some say yes, some say no. I think that shortening a name could save one or two minutes. Mew definitely has an advantage over Squirtle in terms of name length.
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
FractalFusion wrote:
I think I saw somewhere that Bisqwit doesn't want anyone to register multiple accounts. If you like, you can ask Bisqwit to change your username, like I did before. :)
Exactly. I deleted the newly created account and reassociated the post Primo just posted to his previous account. (Thanks for the tip FractalFusion.) Edit: Btw, the "somewhere" is here: http://tasvideos.org/ForumRules.html
Post subject: Re: #1014: primorial#soup's SGB Pokémon Red in 1:46:19
Player (88)
Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant. I think I've got it now.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I demand proof of this assertion
Wikipedia wrote:
There are even rumors that Mew is available in the Japanese Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow versions. One such rumor claims that Mew was originally given from the Game Freak Pokédex designer in Celadon City once the player caught the other 150 Pokémon; another claims that the trick to find Mew by surfing to an immovable pickup truck east of the S.S. Anne actually worked in the Japanese games. Both of these rumors have been proven false.
I must have read some bad information somewhere >_>;; EDIT:
KDR_11k wrote:
Is the time the text takes for appearing constant or could shorter names reduce text times? Especially pokemon names, which would be printed a few thousand times over the course of a run would save a few frames that way, provided the text entry dialog doesn't eat too much time.
Glancing over my spreadsheets, Chamander's name comes up about 73 times. Changing his name to a single character would save 9x73 frames, or 657 frames. Entering a new name would most likely take less than this. Mew's name comes up around 170 times, and a single character name would save 340 frames, which is probably pretty close to the amount of time it would take to enter a new name. At any rate, it couldn't possibly save more than a few hundred frames, and certainly not 2 minutes. EDIT2: Those numbers aren't quite right. There are other places where the pokémon's name appears other than attacks, such as leveling, evolving and the dialog "Mew is unaffected!". Pokémon R/B is short enough that it doesn't make too much of a difference, especially if using Mew. In a G/S/C run, it might just save a minute or two.
print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))
Post subject: Re: #1014: primorial#soup's SGB Pokémon Red in 1:46:19
Editor, Active player (297)
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As far as I know, glitch-use aside, Mew could only be acquired by downloading it from a machine that was occassionally set up at Pokémon events organized by Nintendo offices in different countries. But Mewtwo is another story.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Well what makes you so sure that Wikipedia is correct? AH! It's a wild goose chase for the truth!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 1/18/2006
Posts: 78
Location: Norway
I think this movie should be published because it has more glitch usage. thinking of course about mew being used instead of squirtle. And I do have a question to author: why not learn bubblebeam when you get it from misty? It's more powerful... Oh and really good job on this run, I don't see any major improvement of this run unless the tactic is changed or some new glitch is found. gratz
Player (88)
Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
sargon wrote:
And I do have a question to author: why not learn bubblebeam when you get it from misty? It's more powerful...
Well, the simple answer is that whenever I need to use Water Gun, it's a one hit KO anyway. Learning Bubblebeam is completely unnecessary, although it is more powerful.
sargon wrote:
Oh and really good job on this run, I don't see any major improvement of this run unless the tactic is changed or some new glitch is found. gratz
Thanks :)
print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))
Post subject: Re: #1014: primorial#soup's SGB Pokémon Red in 1:46:19
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Bisqwit wrote:
As far as I know, glitch-use aside, Mew could only be acquired by downloading it from a machine that was occassionally set up at Pokémon events organized by Nintendo offices in different countries. But Mewtwo is another story.
In the US, Nintendo originally had a contest where you mailed in a letter, and 151 letters were selected randomly, the winners each being able to mail in their packs and getting them back with Mew on it. You could also get it using a Game Genie or Game Shark.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
Oh my, you have already finished your run. I must watch it immediately. I'm quite sure I can start encoding this after I finished watching it (meaning that I presume this to be outsandingly good) ;)
Which run should I encode next? :)
Player (25)
Joined: 4/23/2005
Posts: 435
Location: Germany
Voted yes. Great run, great luck manipulation. And the best, you used Mew as early as possible. Its my favourite Pokémon and its great to see this Glitch in a TAS. I never see it before, just read about it. Thank you very much that you used Mew.
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run) WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB) Matty
Editor, Expert player (2073)
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Good job, primo. I never thought Pokemon Red could be done so fast. Voted Yes.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [504] SGB Pokémon: Red Version "trainer escape glitch" by primorial_soup in 1:46:19.05
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 50
The video lags most of the time, any suggestions?
I'm the hero of yay.
Player (88)
Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
marioguy wrote:
The video lags most of the time, any suggestions?
You might try using a different media player. It seems to run fine on my (very old) computer with Windows Media Player 6.
print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 79
About the screenshot... Why not with Mew? I think it would look much more impressive. I might be wrong though.
Former player
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1286
Location: Finland
I was under the impression that Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red are two different games. Am I mistaken or is there another reason for this run obsoleting the Pokemon Blue run?
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
You're mistaken! Um... Different versions of the same game? Sure.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Player (88)
Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Kyrsimys wrote:
I was under the impression that Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red are two different games. Am I mistaken or is there another reason for this run obsoleting the Pokemon Blue run?
I hadn't actually meant for this run to obsolete the old one. There are a few differences in the games (mainly dealing with pokémon availability), but neither run does anything version specific; I suppose that may be why. As for the screenshot, I probably would have chosen something along these lines:
print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
Cmuxmt wrote:
About the screenshot... Why not with Mew? I think it would look much more impressive. I might be wrong though.
I also think that there should be Mew in the screenshot. Maybe from the battle where primo is fighting/catching Mew since it looks much better from the front. And about the obsoleting thing: It's kind of hard to choose if the old one should be obsoleted because of the Red/Blue thing. I'm now willing to go this way as Bisqwit has chosen (obsoletion), but if you used some pokemon that can be caught only in the other version, it would be a different matter. And it looks like I forgot to complement Primo on how good this run really is. All the critical hitsa, non-critical hits, item usages etc. were done very nicely. I didn't notice any spot that could be done better.
Which run should I encode next? :)