• Made with VBA v1.7.2 re-recording v17.1
  • Uses SRAM to enable a new game on Hard Node
  • Uses glitches to warp to distant areas
  • Hardest difficulty
  • Takes damage. Once to reach an inaccessible platform and in other places just to save some time.
  • Never uses recovery items
  • Never uses save rooms to restore health
  • Never uses teleport rooms
Hmm... what to say about the game...? Aria of Sorrow is (in my opinion) the best of the 3 Castlevania episodes released for the GBA. It seems to be the real successor of Symphony of The Night. The character design is excellent and the animation is very smooth. You have tons of different weapons, such as knifes, swords, axes, spears, fist attachments and even some guns! And besides that, there are more than 100 enemy souls to collect, and each one has it's unique effect. To finish this game description, the game has (like SoTN) some glitches that allow the player to warp to faraway places and surpass the normal map completion limit.
About the making of the movie... It's really hard to make the enemies drop the items and souls you need sometimes, because the random number generator works only when the game thinks it's needed, so, in certain places, no matter how many times you use frame search you'll always have the same result. In these occasions, you must force the number generation. There are many ways to do that, like backdashing, attacking, hitting something, using morph souls, destroying something, leveling up and others... But I repeat: it's HARD! You can see that when you look at my re-record count... I have tried to make an entertaining run, that's why it's in Hard mode. It's fast, of course, but my main goal was diversion, not speed. A keen viewer might notice some minor mistakes in the first minutes of the run, but they'd not significantly reduce the total time, so I thought it was better just let them be...
  • edit
I forgot the most important part! Duh! My thank yous goes to Atma, for the great hints about TAS and always blunt critics, and to Bag of Magic Food, for his endless nonsense.

Truncated: After having discussed what to do with this submission in the #nesvideos channel, I decided on the following:
  1. To accept this submission, and have it obsolete Atma's any% run
  2. To allow a Normal difficulty run to obsolete this movie
  3. To NOT obsolete this movie if a 100% movie is made, but instead make a new category for that
The most important point is however that this submission is accepted.

Truncated: Four months later... the #1 point in the judgement wasn't like very well, so this is now it's own category. Instead any new submission WILL obsolete one of the existing movies, there will NOT be 4 categories.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Wow, that looked pretty fast! And you even did it on Hard Mode! Hooray!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 3/30/2006
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AMAZING. I literally almost shouted "WHAT THE HELL!?" when you glitched to the Chaotic Realm. I wish I could vote, I'd give this a serious yes.
Currently working on: (All Consoles) Improving my TAS abilities (GBA) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Future runs: (SNES) Ys III: Wanderers From Ys
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We currently have: * GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (USA) in 27:46 by Atma (?). ** from a new game without taking damage from anything * GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (USA) in 05:53 by Atma (?). ** plays as Julius who is only playable after beating the game. So new we would have also: * GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (USA) in 12:18 by Rodrigo F. (aka. pirate_sephiroth). ** plays using Hard Mode which is only possible after beating the game. Three movies for this game... And then there's also these: * GBA Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (USA) in 23:43 by Mike Lastovica (aka. OgreSlayeR). ** Yeah. * GBA Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (USA) in 05:34 by Mike Lastovica (aka. OgreSlayeR). ** Huh? Do we really need this many GBA Castlevania movies? I can't really even tell the difference… It would put this game on a higher pedestal than Super Mario Bros. 3…
Joined: 3/30/2006
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Bisqwit wrote:
Do we really need this many GBA Castlevania movies? I can't really even tell the difference…
Saying that's like saying "Do we really need this many NES Mario movies?" [Edited by Bisqwit: No full-quotes please. Shortened to the relevant length.] [Edited by Inert: Sorry sir, didn't read the rules, I'll be more careful]
Currently working on: (All Consoles) Improving my TAS abilities (GBA) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Future runs: (SNES) Ys III: Wanderers From Ys
Post subject: About the SRAM
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If you have doubts about the SRAM, do the following: *play Atma's video *when the staff roll ends, press A to reset the game *delete the saved game Now go to your SRAM folder ("Battery" folder) and move that file to a test folder. *start my run go to the SRAM folder, rename the file and move it to the test folder. *now compare the files using Hexworkshop or something like that You'll see they are the same
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself. It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success." - Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Drama, too long, didn't read, lol.
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Bisqwit wrote:
Do we really need this many GBA Castlevania movies? I can't really even tell the difference…
Yeah right, all these Castlevania movies are the same! All of them have some good guy that must defeat a dracula of some sort. How utterly pathetic and uninventive! Wait, they even share the same musical themes, that's a plagiarism! Did I mention they have the same word, "Castlevania", in their name? That's a plagiarism, too! :B But if you look at them without fastforwarding, you'll see they have more variety than a whole bunch of Donkey Kong Country runs which are all published whatsoever. ;)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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And the next Glitchvania is done. Great one. Vote yes. So many different glitches are great to see in one movie. I have know some glitches from these, but not all. Awesome what is possible in these games. Never know, that you will guard sometimes, when you use the Final Sword (or how it called).
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run) WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB) Matty
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Bisqwit wrote:
It would put this game on a higher pedestal than Super Mario Bros. 3…
Clearly, this means we need more SMB3 movies.
Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
creative uses of glitches, I liked it. voting yes.
Do we really need this many GBA Castlevania movies? I can't really even tell the difference… It would put this game on a higher pedestal than Super Mario Bros. 3…
5 GBA Castlevania movies vs. 11 NES Mario movies.. It's ok if you don't like the GBA Castleroids, there are enough games here for everyone's taste. ;) I can tell the differences, and enjoyed each of the movies you listed. Last time I checked, there weren't any pedestrals for games with lots of different game modes either.
m00
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O_o lots of glitches used here, and I see a lot of things I knew Atma wanted to use, interesting run :)
JXQ
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Posts: 3132
Bisqwit wrote:
I can't really even tell the difference…
Are you even watching these movies? The differences in the CotM runs is the use of the warp glitch (comparable to the SNES Zelda runs), and I thought that was the difference in this run to the original AoS (and also with hard mode). If a game has the possibility of different types of runs, then why deny a run's publication possibility based on that? Being worried about putting the entire collection of Castlevania games on a "higher pedestal" than SMB3 (only one game, not a collection) is comparing apples to oranges. Compare it to the Mario (or Mega Man) collection of movies instead. I'm going to watch the run now. Edit: The run was packed full of awesome, and also showed off some new techniques not found in the current Soma AoS run. I enjoyed how there was so much soul and weapon drop manipulation, and even though some have complained hard mode adds nothing to this game, I was impressed that hard mode was made to look so...not. Very big yes vote!
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Never mind that the only thing SMB 3 really has over Castlevania AoS is the publicity :p.
Joined: 7/28/2004
Posts: 57
I voted 'no'. There is some excellent use of glitches not found in the existing castlevania movie, but the performance during the movie is haphazard. There is obviously a great amount of care taken during some sections, but other sections look like you're barely even trying (relatively speaking). There were a couple times where you attacked an enemy once, tried to attack a second time and missed, and then ignore the enemy. Was this done for luck manipulation? Stylistically, it looks pretty bad - it looks like a real-time goof. During the manticore fight you back off to avoid the tail strike but he's only one hit away from being killed - why do you not attack the tail to finish him off? More luck manipulation? I was scratching my head when I saw that. The arena section had me wondering as well. You break a couple torches that frankly appear out of your way to do so. I understand why you went after the Lubicants and the Erinyes (sp?), but it looks messy due to the nature of these enemies' movement patterns. Nothing you can do about that. Warping straight to the chaotic realm after running around various parts of the castle, to be honest, was really disappointing. It seemed a non sequiter. I do approve of the manipulation of the guarding through enemies - that does look really nice. I didn't see anything in the movie that required it to be played on hard mode - I know some of the equipment simply doesn't appear during normal difficulty but to my knowledge you didn't pick any of it up - therefore, hard mode adds nothing to the movie but time. A harder difficulty adds to the enjoyment of a movie primarily when it (such as in the case of Contra III) allows the complete game to be run, when it increases the threat of enemies (rather than just their HP), or when there is some other fundamental change that doesn't simply take more time. A movie that is similar in all respects, done on normal difficulty, and with optimizations made wherever relevant, would be over a minute faster, would have a significantly 'speedier' feel to anything involving combat, and would be more entertaining to watch.
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Sabikage wrote:
There were a couple times where you attacked an enemy once, tried to attack a second time and missed, and then ignore the enemy. […] The arena section had me wondering as well. You break a couple torches that frankly appear out of your way to do so.
Like where?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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The torches on his way up the elevator, specifically. He has to move, attack, collect, and move back. As for the enemies bit, I'd have to have someone instruct me on how to identify the current frame and watch it so I could identify the specific occurances. Based on the discussions in the thread about what causes the random number generator to shift, I assume the purpose of this is for luck manipulation, but I still dislike the way it looks.
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Sabikage wrote:
The torches on his way up the elevator, specifically. He has to move, attack, collect, and move back. As for the enemies bit, I'd have to have someone instruct me on how to identify the current frame and watch it so I could identify the specific occurances.
While I dont particularly care to watch it again right now, I'm fairly certain that was to regain enough mp to use manticore+giant bat, as manticore takes 1mp/2 frames, and giant bat takes 1 every 5 or so frames iirc. Also, those attacks, or lack thereof are for manipulative purposes. This game is rather picky on what forces the item/soul drop to change. I voted yes on this one, because despite the fact I still think normal mode would've been a better choice, this was definitely still impressive. Thinking about it though, I'd almost say the text tradeoff in terms of hard vs normal would almost make them a similar length (he encountered 5 conversations during the run), so the tradeoff for normal+no sram vs hard+sram would roughly equal out. normal+sram would of course be faster though.
JXQ
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Atma wrote:
Thinking about it though, I'd almost say the text tradeoff in terms of hard vs normal would almost make them a similar length (he encountered 5 conversations during the run), so the tradeoff for normal+no sram vs hard+sram would roughly equal out.
Ooh! That's a spicy meatball!
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JXQ wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
I can't really even tell the difference…
Are you even watching these movies?
I guess I should apologize. But my point was not "many castlevania games" but "many AoS movies". But, perhaps it really has Metroidish potential.
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Sabikage wrote:
The torches on his way up the elevator, specifically. He has to move, attack, collect, and move back.
The elevator has a period of latency of about the same length as PS's whole maneuver. I doubt he lost any frames at all, given the fact he actually regained some spell points for soul use.
Sabikage wrote:
As for the enemies bit, I'd have to have someone instruct me on how to identify the current frame and watch it so I could identify the specific occurances.
Open up the Tools menu in VBA, and you'll see a frame counter there.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
JXQ
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Bisqwit wrote:
perhaps it really has Metroidish potential.
The GBA Castlevanias (Aria of Sorrow especially) are very similar to Metroid on the basic level. By that I mean, the whole "wander freely while gaining new abilities that allow access to new areas" thing. Symphony of the Night for PS is another Castlevania with this property. I haven't played the one for DS, but that's because I haven't learned how to use the stylus with my third hand to draw the spells.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
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Yeah, I've never even seen Symphony of the Night, but supposedly that's the game that changed everything.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Yeah, I've never even seen Symphony of the Night, but supposedly that's the game that changed everything.
I've seen it, but not played it yet. I guess I should beat it before a TAS comes out, heh. Much people say that's the greatest game in the series.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Just because I understand it doesn't mean I'm obligated to like it. My vote stands.
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Sabikage wrote:
During the manticore fight you back off to avoid the tail strike but he's only one hit away from being killed - why do you not attack the tail to finish him off? More luck manipulation? I was scratching my head when I saw that.
Not 100% sure about this part, but I think the Manticore is one from the Bosses, which not always drop his soul, because you can find him later in the game again. So I am sure, that this was for luck manipulation, because he get the soul from the Boss.
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run) WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB) Matty