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This is my first submission, the little quip about it being the 90th time refers to my struggle with the gens emulator. Speaking of the emulator, gens v2.11 with the movie patch version 9f was used. Available here. No emulation specific options were changed from the defaults. As far as tricks used in the video I only used slow down (25% normal speed most times) and abused the small size of my ship's hit box to evade terrain features. Everything else was by game design. The goals of the run were to complete one pass through all 8 levels without dying, and to pull off stunts that you couldn't normally do. No hits are taken, and no lives are lost.
The game is played on hard skill one time through. This grants the "worst" ending you can get short of a game over. I opt to use the blue laser weapon the entire time I can as the red one is too uncontrollable and the green one is a tracking weapon which would be boring and lame for this.
Basic premise is that all of your forces have been taken over by CATS and you're next. You and your Zig fighter take off just as your ship is blown to scrap, and now it's up to you to battle through 8 levels to defeat CATS.
I did this movie for two reasons. One it hadn't been done yet which strikes me as odd given the scale of the “all your base” craze. Two because I've watched so many tool assisted runs that I just had to do one of my own. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it. Making it wasn't all that hard, just time consuming. If you're interested in seeing someone taking out swarms of enemies in a non-standard way, you'll probably like this.
Level notes
  • Level 1
Like you'll see a lot in this movie I abuse the prisoner beam a lot as well as kill lots of enemies by crashing my option pods into them. I don't think this is how you're supposed to kill people, but it's more fun!
  • Level 2
More abuse of the prisoner beam, but now my ship is fast enough to do something curious, crash an enemy into the very shot they fired. Bet they didn't see that coming. There are also these three medium ships that if you fly very close over or under then you can block all their purple bullets as soon as they're fired. Who knew that the pods would be so useful! The walls... At first I just decided to blow them all away, but then went back and redid the section opting to fly around them like they were just an obstacle course for me. I also learn that the hit box for terrain is very different from the one for bullets. You'll see me fly through some very tight spaces. I do it later too.
  • Level 3
I swear, the music reminds me of Lava Reef Zone from Sonic 3. Nothing really interesting here. Though I will say that the boss moves way faster than he should be able to at that size.
  • Level 4
This level is oddly boring, and short. Well, except for that flying turret. Though I'm pretty sure that was a glitch. Nice music though.
  • Level 5
I don't know what's up with that grill they put on the screen, but I will say this. Those giant blue insect walkers, pain in my rear! I also get the coveted 4th stage weapon power-up. I wasn't going to get it before because it was too much of a hassle. Then it just sort of appeared, so I took it. Not that it really does much if you ask me. I so wanted to get out of the mid-boss' ring of death, but stood my ground and pulled off a death defying victory!
  • Level 6
Narrow flight paths and more physics defying squeezes. Also a few spots where you get bonus points for fancy flying. You'll see a couple points where I fly into an enemy backwards and kill him. This is because now that I have the level 4 option pods they're actually longer than my ship. Therefore in a tight space I am neigh invincible because the pods stick out about a pixel on each end. The boss for this stage is really lame. It's a wall. Doesn't have any of those fancy guns that shoot at you no matter where you are.
  • Level 7
INSECTS! Hundreds of them! Also taking out those rear facing heads, not fun at all. Part way through the mid-boss he opens up and releases a swarm of mini enemies. I just get between him because even tool assisted they were becoming a real trouble as they constantly home in on you. The boss of this stage seemed to glitch. You'll see two gray things fall down. The one on the left kept killing me even though it didn't hit me. Strange.
  • Level 8
Final level! Woo! Those stupid things on the ceiling home in on you. While they're slow, they're big and that's a problem. Especially considering the large ships that follow. I call those little red guys on the floor wizards. Why? No reason. The final boss confused me terribly because for the longest time, nothing happens! You just keep shooting him. The last two death heads you can't kill. I tried.
Custom subtitle to be placed after last boss is defeated: All your base are scrap, CATS.

Truncated: For reasons layed out in my post in the corresponding topic, this submission is rejected.
Better luck next time.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1094: Lollybomb's Genesis Zero Wing in 33:33.43
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It desynched for me in the seveth level, you got hit by the boss (or if it was the subboss of that level, I was fast-forwarding at the time). Anyway: >One it hadn't been done yet which strikes me as odd given the scale of the “all your base” craze. If you had seen the fate of most of the movies for auto-scroller games you wouldn't be so surprised. They are usually deemed too uninteresting and eventless to be considered for publication. In the case of this game, even more so, because the only interesting part is the intro, which of course is skipped in a speedrun. If you do want to make a movie of an autoscroller, some pointers: - show off everything you can in the game, for example all the weapons - play with death - you did this sometimes - keep some homing enemies alive (unless it causes slowdown) and just avoid them - kill the bosses as fast as possibe (i.e. save the bomb for them) A suggestion for a game: Bio-hazard, 2 player. It has a lot of weapons (8 if you play 2 players), and interesting shield-swinging acrobatics. This is no guarantee that people will like it of course, but I think it has better chances than this. For the record I voted no.
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Hmm, how are you fast forwarding? I'd like to see if I can reproduce the desync myself because I've watched it about 3 times at normal speed for various reasons and nothing goes bad. Also it would help next time I mess up my quick save. I get what you're saying though about it it being boring to do auto scrollers like this though, and actually boredom was the primary reason I didn't submit another run that I had actually gone to the trouble of making. But hey, rejection is useful experience too.
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You can fast forward by holding Tab. F4 and F2 also work. See the FAQ, it's linked from everywhere.
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Fast forwarding can cause desyncs, it's not your fault that your video doesn't stay in sync. It's the emulator's fault.
Joined: 10/21/2005
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I started to make a video for this once; but gave up on it. Either way it is a hell of a lot better than what mine was.
Joined: 5/14/2006
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Ok, I've been looking at it and found I have a slightly older version of the emulator without the fastforward function. However even so I can't get it to desync even on a different computer even with the absolute latest 2.11 9f modified version. Sounds like it may be an isolated case. Thanks echo314, it's always nice to hear that I impressed someone along the line.
Joined: 1/21/2006
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This is a terrible game and could never be very entertaining. Autoscrollers are hard to be interesting. I was working on a run of Biohazard Battle where I never once fired my weapon. But computer crash resulted in its loss at about 90% completion, and I never restarted it cause I knew an autoscroller would never make it. Thought of doing one for this game too, but Zero Wing sucks too much for me to ever touch again, and that nobody should have to suffer through watching.
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I haven't watched the entire video yet - only the first two levels - and I haven't put in a vote yet (I want to put in more time with the forums before I do any voting on any movie, and it seems I have to anyway) but I will say that I have to agree with Truncated here that this video isn't quite as interesting as it could be. I would like to make an extension of the 'play with death' point and note that I saw you being a bit skittish in your attempts to cut it close in the second level. In the future, is there any chance you can be less skittish about that?
Joined: 6/5/2005
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Ok, understand that I enjoy watching all kinds of movies. I especially like watching movies that make a tough game look easy, or quickly obliterate a game. This is my opinion that I am about to post. Good news: You have a very solid run here, you do an excellent job in showing the bad guys who's boss. Bad news: This run is extremely boring, mostly due to the amount of time in between encounters. You could of probably picked up the other power-ups during the running through the stage where time was not a factor, then when you reached the boss of the level, have your blue power-up. The point: The game is at fault for the 'no' vote I have placed, not your playing skill. Like said above, auto-scrollers tend to be extremely boring, and it was a good thing I had an ice cold beverage while watching this. Do not give up, you will find a game that is worth doing that will be more worthy of submission. Side note: I know this game is old, but this always bothered me. Those side-arm ships, or options as some games call them. They seem to be invincible, as shown in this movie (catching bullets, killing bad guys when they touch them). So how come they didn't make your ship out of the same material that those options are made from? Or all of their ships for that matter...
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FrostyTheDragon wrote:
I would like to make an extension of the 'play with death' point and note that I saw you being a bit skittish in your attempts to cut it close in the second level. In the future, is there any chance you can be less skittish about that?
This is just from my being new at things. Once I really get a grip on what I'm actually doing I'm sure I'll push things a lot closer to the edge. Hey, I do it in real life already. >:D
DefEdge wrote:
The point: The game is at fault for the 'no' vote I have placed, not your playing skill. Like said above, auto-scrollers tend to be extremely boring, and it was a good thing I had an ice cold beverage while watching this. Do not give up, you will find a game that is worth doing that will be more worthy of submission. Side note: I know this game is old, but this always bothered me. Those side-arm ships, or options as some games call them. They seem to be invincible, as shown in this movie (catching bullets, killing bad guys when they touch them). So how come they didn't make your ship out of the same material that those options are made from? Or all of their ships for that matter...
I've far from given up. I'd be insulting myself if I did that. Even now I've already started trying to do a hit-free Vectorman run. As for the option pods. We may never know. But then, I can go for pages on the subject and related oddities.
Joined: 6/5/2005
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Vectorman no-hit run... That sounds interesting. The game is pretty fast paced. I look forward to it.
Phear my uber gimpyness!
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I request an encode for great justice.
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