This is my timeattack attempt at X-men, a side-scroler of the most popular mutants of the Marvel Comics for SNES, and in my humble opinion, one of the best X-men game ever made. The storyline is typical: Magneto wants to destroy humanity, and the X-men, lead by Charles Xavier, need to stop him. The game is a simple beat’em up, but most of the time you don't need to kill all the enemies to advance. Each X-man has some advantages over the others, and the choice for each stage isn't as hard as it appeared at first. Psylocke is the fastest, Beast is the strongest (highest damage rate), Gambit and Wolverine are in the middle of this. Cyclops is a good choice for a realtime game, but is much too slow for a TAS; however, you must use him at his starting stage.
- - Aims for fastest completion
- - Takes no Damage
- - Manipulates luck (to control enemies' moves)
- - Uses no Passwords
I've used snes9x improvement9 to make this movie, and a (U) Rom.
- Use WIP1 Timing: ON
- Allow Left+Right / Up+Down: OFF
- Volume Envelope Height Reading: OFF
- Fake Mute desync workaround: OFF
- Sync samples with sound CPU: OFF
Stage by Stage
The time i used for frame counting starts when the text "Mission Start" flashes for the first time, and ends when the "Mission Complete" is fully completed on the screen.
Cyclops Stage
Cyclops (and all other characters) is faster jumping than walking. The recover time from his slide is very slow, but when i did this and fall from a platform, the recover time is minimum. His slide is very short, then i used this only when jumping isn't faster than sliding. As soon as the first aircraft is destroyed, the third aircraft shows up. And as soon as the second is destroyed, the fourth aircraft shows up. Therefore, i only need to kill as soon as possible the second and the fourth aircrafts, which leaves me free to just play around with the other two.In the bridge, i killed the aircraft while jumping, which made me fall at maximum speed.
Stage Time: 5406 frames
Frames Gained: 212
Beast Stage
This level had a lot of things to be improved. The most notable points are the miniboss and boss fights. Both are much faster than the previous version and give me a lot of time. The Head Hop used to avoid the Brass Knuckle Guy also give me the correct time to avoid one of the bombs in the ceiling. Beast have the most powerfull attack from the game: The Double-hit Headbutt (DHHB). it helped a lot to the boss fights and the obrigatory beat'em up fights.
Stage Time: 4539 frames
Frames Gained: 1114
Gambit Stage
No surprises. In my last run i already did a frame-perfect double-kicks moves, then all the frames gained in this movie are from the fights. In other words, i just correct my errors from the last run.
Stage Time: 7270 frames
Frames Gained: 713
Wolverine Stage
Just in the start i have a 2 frames delay because of a brown guy who try to smash me (probly because of randomness of different stage order). The Guys Fight are optimized, and i think it cant be finished faster (probly i'm wrong, but let me stay in my fantasy world =D). This improve too my climbing time, because i never fall before grabbing the wall. Robot fights are good, but not the best. I just couldn't make the boss not jump at the start of the fight. It give me a delay of +-30 frames, but i decided to stay with it. The airdash to knock down the Brass Knuckle Guy give me 60 frames, and the sentinel fight is frame-perfect (but can be done faster if the green guys don't come so close).
Stage Time: 4323 frames
Frames Gained: 376
Psylocke Stage
This is the hardest of the 5 initial stages to optimize, because it has 3 beat'em up areas that i need to test in a lot of ways to discover which is the fastest. I abused the larger hitbox of Flying Knee to defeat the enemies before they stay on my visible reach. I didn't improve this stage as much as i wanted to, because the only improveable parts were beat'em up, and there aren't that many. All the rest of the stage is "Slide as fast as you can", and i already did this in frame perfect.
Robot fight i just waited for some moments because if i run directly to it, it lands. Then, i have much less area to hit him and avoid his attacks. The main time gained in this fight came from a better use of the Psychic Knife.
Sentinel fight is boring, but efficient. Anyway... i gained 62 frames in this fight.
Stage Time: 6123 frames
Frames Gained: 613
Brood (Alien) Stage
The most notable change of this stage is the character. Gambit still being the fastest person to kill the boss, Psylocke is the fastest to get through the stage. Even with this, it was a pain to keep her faster than Gambit (She comes to the boss like... 500 frames ealier. But Gambit almost makes it up by killing the boss much faster than her).
On this stage, Psylocke is faster than any other character because of 2 factors: She can jump over the trucks and she has the longest slide of the game. The "fight" with the eggs are perfected. Is impossible to kill then faster (believe, i tried every possibilities).
I redid the Queen Brood Fight at least 4 times from the start to the finish, trying not to waste Psylocke's time gained in the stage and stay faster than the overall Gambit. The last hit is delayed on purpose to position the boss in the edge of the screen to make the stage end earlier.
Stage Time: 3343 frames (417 frames to password screen)
Frames Gained: 543 (623 to password screen)
Tusk Stage
From this point to the end of the game, i used just the Beast, because he's the strongest of all. The Headbutts in frame-perfect made me reach the end of the stage without problems. Then i kill the 6 Tusketes. If i kill they in the mid of the stage, when i reach this point there will be more tusketes respawning.
Tusk fight isn't hard to perfect. With a good manipulation i could hit him with 2 HeadButts in sequence (To see it easily, slow down the speed between the frames 40700 to 40750), because he stay stuck under the elevator. One thing that we need to consider: The lava never kill Tusk, no matter how much Health he has.
In other words: It isn't a hard stage to optimize, so it is hard to improve. Play with the Tuskete on the screen maybe made the fight more impressive, but Beast has slow recovery from the Headbutt, which made the Tuskete catch me offguard.
Stage Time: 1455 frames
Frames Gained: 221
Apocalypse Stage
At first, i thought that only Psylocke could pass all the barriers, but Spider-Waffle told me that Beast could do it too. I tried, and it works! With Beast's Climbing abilities, the 2 climbing parts are made much faster than last time. At the only beat'em up part of the stage, it was hard to find a way to defeat the Knife Guys because in order to connect the Double-Hit Headbutt i need to stay inside the enemy. The hitbox of the knife Guys change a lot when they stay in the hit animation. With a good manipulation i made the Green Guy walk together with the last Knife Guy, and could hit both with only a single Double-Hit Headbutt.
Apocalypse fight is very hard to optimize, because he teleports after he's hit a certain amount of times. But start beating him in a specific frame made him acept all the hits until he died. It was hard to find the specific point to jump and start the combo.
Stage Time: 2883 frames
Frames Gained: 1920!!
Omega Red Fight
No secrets either. I just find a way to kill Omega Red in two combos. I couldn't find a way to kill him in only one because he start to swing his tentacles after the fifth hit, no matter what i do.
Stage Time: 906 frames
Frames Gained: 458
Juggernaut Fight
Beast again. I was afraid with this stage because Juggernaut have a lot of attacks that have auto-guard (He can be hit, but the move doesn't stop), but with manipulation i could avoid all of them. The only thing that i don't like is stay in all bosses using the jump-hit-hit-hit-jump... Is so boring for me... =/
Stage Time: 912 frames
Frames Gained: 344
Exodus Stage
Better manipulation to remove the teleporting guys from my way, Exodus destroyed with only two combos, jumps made by frame-perfect, and boss fight at frame perfect too. No more secrets.
Stage Time: 3558 frames
Frames Gained: 335
Magneto Fight
I Played agressivelly with Magneto. I Abused manipulation to always make him use the Magnet Ray. I made him to use the steel throw twice because the delay of the Magnet Ray doesn't allow me to combo him as i wish (Elevators in a bad positioning).
Movie finished in the first possible frame to reduce movie lenght.
Stage Time: 2133 frames
Frames Gained: 867
Points to optimize
- Cyclops Stage: At frame 2196 i forgot to make a jump. I just noticed this when i was already fighting Omega Red, and I didn't wanna to come back to the start of the movie because of 10 frames or less.
- Beast Stage: Better Strategy to kill the sentinels (jump-hit-hit-hit-DoubleHit Headbutt doesn't kill them)
- Gambit Stage:
- At the start, has a Brown Guy that i knock off and continue the stage. If i kill him, a Brown guy appear in the platform over the box pile. If someone want to make a Take damage to save time run, you could use this new guy to boost you up to the platform. I didn't make this because (1) i didn't test to make sure this faster than normal way, and (2) This is the only part of all game that i could use a hit to boost me in a upper platform, so i prefered to keep it clean.
- And in the last elevator fight, i can't manipulate the Green Guy to don't use the low kick. You can manipulate him to stay stopped and hit him and the gun guy without waiting time.
- Apocalypse Stage: In the second climbing part, i think that i could use the diagonals to jump faster up. As the first improvement i said, i just noted this after i'm in a longer stage in the game.
- Juggernaut Stage: I think i did a hit more than necessary. If i avoid it, then i gain 10 frames from the hitbox.
Special Thanks
- To Spider-Waffle, who helped me a lot with hints and tips.
- To FODA, who made a fast revision on my english =p
adelikat: A well planned, well executed run. The game is entertaining and has gotten good response. Accepting.
