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About

This movie is a full, no-wall-sinking run of Harmony of Dissonance using Maxim. Rather than beat Dracula in under 24 seconds, instead each boss is thrashed to a pile of wailing pulp, and the game is beaten "as intended" in order to show off more of what Maxim can do. What constitutes as intended in this run is debatable, since Maxim zooms through the castle faster than Sonic on espresso, and sends shurikens ripping through boss flesh before they realize they have even spawned.

Rules:

In essence, the only rule is to not get into the walls and 'wall sink' (aka zip vertically and warp to far away places.) I found this only restriction to work very well in helping defining the run. Whip launches could still be used to gain insane speeds and pass through walls occassionally, but the way we did it was with no wall zipping, only passing through walls without warping.
Door warping was used, but it seems that with only using that glitch, you can't get straight to Dracula. It's only used a few times, and saves backtracking, so I think it's ok. If the judges have a problem with it, let me know and I'll try to find a way to phrase it better or something.

Settings

  • Recorded with VisualBoy Advance Re-recording 19
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Uses game warps to save time
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Uses SRAM
  • Defeats all bosses to achieve the ending without glitch warps

Misc

This run started out when I finished the glitched Maxim run, and kept requesting/suggestion a full run with Maxim. The truth is that no matter how beefed up Juste gets, Maxim is the superior vampire hunter with better abilities and faster speeds. Maxim has been itching to demonstrate his skills without using 1337 hax to warp straight to Dracula. ANYONE can do that, but only Maxim can defeat all the bosses with style, panache, and pure machismo.
I never quite got started due to a lack of route. I tried using a picture of the two castles to make a route, but never got started. Then, out of nowhere ljffdb2 made a test run following a route that zggzdydp made. The test run was very rough in terms of precision, but the overall speed exactly foreshadowed what a full maxim run would look like. I started over from the beginning, using the new route, and stopped at around frame 2360 (because, get this, I actually forgot how to whip launch off of enemies. I had kept forgetting to not press left or right when doing the down kick). I handed over the .vbm to zggzdydp with the general message "here, have fun." I'd completely forgotten about it, when zggzdydp handed me back the .vbm about 2/3rds done with the run, and asked if I could finish it. How could I refuse? So I picked up from frame 30867, and completed it.
Now the run is not 100% perfect (but for the most part is it quite optimal). There's a few errors here and there, and better shuriken/magic management could save some time. I got careless a few times and almost ran out of shurikens for the bosses. I was nearly out of magic after the skull knight boss, and really began panicking that I wouldn't have enough magic to use Maxim's Mirage on Dracula. It all worked out in the end, and I ended up with 0 hearts. But I'm sure more hearts could have been collected with no time lost, because as I show shurikens have their uses besides just for bosses.
But this was fun to make (especially with a fair amount of it done for me hehe), and turned out to be 1 minute and 57 seconds faster than ljffdb2's test run. If I have the time, I'd love to do a more in-depth run with zggzdydp, getting competitive to squeeze out more frames saved, rather than the movie being handed over to the other author twice.

Thanks

ljffd2b, your test run was awesome, I could not have figured out the route on my own at all.
zggzdydp, you're the bomb-diggidy at Castlevania. Draculas in all video games fear you.
Moozooh, you're the best for not slitting my throat over submitting yet another movie before Mischief Makers is done. (seriously, please don't kill me.)
Deign, I know you trumped me with the glitch run, but come back buddy.

Moral of the story

Maxim is cool.
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.
mmbossman: This run has received good viewer feedback, and the clarification of the goals seem to be appropriate. I'm accepting this as a separate "Maxim - No Warps" category.

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Posted: 6/23/2008 10:55 PM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2019: Comicalflop, zggzdydp's GBA Castlevania - Harmony of Dissonance "Maxim no warps" in 12:45.68
Posted: 6/23/2008 11:23 PM
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Cpadolf
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Well that was pretty awesome :)
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Posted: 6/23/2008 11:24 PM
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gocha
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LOFL, MAXIM IS AWESOME. The run is very speedy and entertaining, also it has proven how Maxim is abnormal again. Obvious yes!
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Posted: 6/23/2008 11:43 PM
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Mitjitsu
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The run in some ways is great with Maxim zipping round castle, but I'm not sure it provides suitable middle ground between the glitched sub 30sec run and the 14min semi-glitched Juste run. The main problem is that the game wasn't really designed to be played with Maxim. Other than a secret character who can just own the whole game at will. From reading the submission, the selling point is "each boss is thrashed to a pile of wailing pulp" which kind of reverts back to my earlier point about Maxim being too over powering. I'll vote "meh" in the mean time and let further discussion continue.
Posted: 6/24/2008 12:47 AM
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Comicalflop
Editor, Experienced player (734)
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Well, if you think the selling point is only in beating the bosses, I think you missed out. I also think you're trying to say the movie is too close to the Boss Rush TAS, which is 5 solid minutes of boss fights, but "zipping through the castle" was meant to be a major part of the run. I will agree Maxim is kinda overpowered. But think about it this way.... with TASing, which character isn't? Tool Assistance brings out the best of any video game character. It's true that Maxim starts off the bat with max stats/max speed etc. etc., but so do the majority of video games (especially the ones where the main character doesn't level up.) If you subtract the shuriken glitch, you'll get boss fights as slow as JXQ's run; I dunno about you, I happen to very much like fast boss fights, but maybe not ones that are 1 frame long. Maxim is supposed to be hard/overpowered.... have you tried playing as him normally? He's only accessible in HARD mode, dies in about 5 hits, and has no saving so if you do die, you have to start from scratch. "own the game at will" is hard as well, since the character moves so fast and normal gamers can't take advantage of that. I'd say that giving him power is a way to counteract that, and that this upgrade makes him great TAS material, which is what this run is trying to do; show the TAS potential of Maxim which is unfortunately skipped in the 24 second run. Juste's fastest completion run fully shows his potential; I fail to see why Maxim can't have a run demonstrating his kickassness. So I disagree with your judgment, but I'll just take it with a grain of salt and move along. After all, debating every vote I don't agree with isn't what the workbench is for.
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Posted: 6/24/2008 12:58 AM
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theenglishman
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The site needs more runs like this. No game-breaking glitches or hard-to-understand paths, just pure, balls-out, really REALLY fast action. This was a great category choice; Maxim's moves make for an extremely entertaining run without that stupid 30-second movie glitch. At TASvideos, we strive for entertainment through speed. This movie is entertaining, and it's also fast. I am very happy to vote yes on this. Well done!
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Posted: 6/24/2008 3:38 AM
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computerbird
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Joined: 1/5/2008
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Wow,this run is what I want to see in this game.Very entertaining and so fast. If I can do,I think I'll vote yes.Good job!!
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Posted: 6/24/2008 8:21 AM
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Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
While the game designers were on LSD, maxim clearly took an overdose of caffeine. yes vote.
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Posted: 6/24/2008 11:08 AM
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KDR_11k
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
Dunno, I found the movie got a bit boring at times as it's mostly maxim zipping along with glitched speed and rarely much interaction with the environment, the bosses were pretty samey too as they all went down with more or less the same attacks and didn't do anything themselves. Overall I was glad it wasn't any longer.
Posted: 6/24/2008 8:29 PM
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Soulrivers
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Joined: 12/27/2006
Posts: 532
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Fantastic run, that is some crazy speed right there. :) Voting yes.
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Posted: 6/24/2008 10:17 PM
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The_Great_Morphologous
Joined: 4/12/2007
Posts: 78
Location: Atlanta, GA
KDR_11k wrote:
Dunno, I found the movie got a bit boring at times as it's mostly maxim zipping along with glitched speed and rarely much interaction with the environment, the bosses were pretty samey too as they all went down with more or less the same attacks and didn't do anything themselves. Overall I was glad it wasn't any longer.
Exactly my thoughts. All enemies between bosses are killed in one hit, usually in the same way. The boss fights were interesting at first, but by when it got to the fourth one, I was very bored from the repetitiveness. This would make the eighth different Castlevania run for the GBA, outside of the obsoleted ones. Didn't like the concept before I watched it. Bored by repetitiveness while watching it. Voting no.
Posted: 6/24/2008 10:50 PM
(Edited: 6/25/2008 12:02 AM)
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
The Great Morphologous wrote:
This would make the eighth different Castlevania run for the GBA, outside of the obsoleted ones.
While I'm fine with people voting no because they didn't like the run, I don't really get this logic. There's three Castlevania games for the GBA. Eight runs isn't that excessive. It's a bit like saying "This is the sixth Mega Man run for the NES, outside of the obsoleted ones." Edit: eight is not six. We learned this in the math classes I took at college.
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Posted: 6/24/2008 11:40 PM
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DrJones
Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain
I feel this movie is 12 minutes too long, but it's because I don't like the game.
No.
Posted: 6/25/2008 12:17 AM
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mmbossman
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Joined: 11/18/2006
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This run is fast. I like fast. Fast is fun and enjoyable. But I do have some issues. First of all, (and this is my ignorance to the game talking), I'm a little fuzzy on the restriction of the wall sink glitch. Making it so that it's ok to go through a wall, but not to get stuck in the wall just seems odd to me. But if other people who are more familiar with the game think that it's a well defined rule, then I can accept that. Since the boss rush run got brought up, I figured I would address that also. This run feels like the boss rush run, but with a lot of added filler that doesn't really do much to add substance. Maxim did the same 1 move to kill the few enemies he saw outside of the bosses, and repeated pretty much the same movements in all the corridors. I may have a better appreciation for the difficulty of this if I'd played the game (and tried playing with Maxim also). But in the end, this kinda reminded me of that 12 page paper you need to write for a crappy college class you don't care about. There's about 3 pages (minutes) of good points, and the rest is repetitive filler that just kills time from one good point to the next. Overall, I think I'll give this a meh. It wouldn't be the worst decision if it were published, and I'm sure a large amount of people who know the game better may find it much more entertaining. But to me, it seems like you're going from A to B to C to D to E, when going from A to E would be much more efficient and cut out all the dead times.
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Posted: 6/25/2008 12:57 AM
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Cpadolf
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mmbossman wrote:
'm a little fuzzy on the restriction of the wall sink glitch. Making it so that it's ok to go through a wall, but not to get stuck in the wall just seems odd to me.
Well as far as I understood the restriction was not really to disallow going through walls or being in walls, the restriction was not to perform warp glitches (which involves being in walls). I think that it is not to arbitrary. Anyway, I can agree that it dragged on somewhat towards the end, it's good that it is not longer than it is, but it was really entertaining for most of the time and I was never tempted to fast forward at any point.
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Posted: 6/25/2008 1:47 AM
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Comicalflop
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The rule to not perform warp glitches is strictly to prevent the "oh, why not just warp to Dracula and be done?" pretty much the whole point of the run is NOT getting to Dracula as fast as possible, but showing the whole game, all the bosses, and the extent of maxim's capabilities. The other wall glitches that are performed are allowed because none of them allow early access to Dracula. I could door warp and whip launch through walls to my hearts content but still not get direct access to Dracula. I find the 5 minute boss rush TAS on youtube to be immensely annoying. Same music which sucks, and each of the corridors in between each boss is the same. I imagine this run as not being a boss rush; there is not a linear progression from boss to boss that are 2-3 seconds apart from each other. Yes, 18ish bosses in 12 minutes is a lot, but that shows the speed of Maxim. When you look at it mathematically, the "added filler" IS the bulk of the run; give or take 7 minutes or more (assuming that the 5 minutes from the boss rush are the same5 minutes from this run.) That's 7+ minutes of dashing, sliding, dive kicking, spiral attacking, whip launching, etc. I'll mention again, if the bosses are considered the main point of the run, the point was missed. "Maxim = fast AND Maxim beating bosses = fast" is what this run is trying to accomplish. Enemies outside the corridor have very weak HP. Maxim deals 79 damage. 1-2 hits kills most enemies anyways. Enemies slow you down, so killing them as fast as possible makes sense. (Also, anyone savvy enough will notice that the enemies are in fact dealt with in two different ways when not whip launching. But that's irrelevant.) Another thing to note is that not all enemies are beneficial to whip launch off of, so of course many have to be attacked to get past. The same thing is done in the Juste movie. I hate college papers where I put so much effort in and it receives crummy grades. That always sucks. Lastly, there already is an A to E movie, the glitched Maxim run. I wanted to show A to B and B to C and C to D and D to E. Derakon, you stole the words right out of my mouth :-)
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Posted: 6/25/2008 2:37 AM
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mmbossman
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Comicalflop wrote:
When you look at it mathematically, the "added filler" IS the bulk of the run; give or take 7 minutes or more (assuming that the 5 minutes from the boss rush are the same5 minutes from this run.) That's 7+ minutes of dashing, sliding, dive kicking, spiral attacking, whip launching, etc. I'll mention again, if the bosses are considered the main point of the run, the point was missed. "Maxim = fast AND Maxim beating bosses = fast" is what this run is trying to accomplish.
I didn't miss the point, I understand that you wanted to show more of the game. Unfortunately, what you see as variety, I see it as repetitive whip launching with a couple odd kills. Because of him being so powerful, there is a very limited repertoire of optimal movements, which limits the amount of creativity possible. When creativity is limited, repetition sets in, as seen with the same attack pattern with all the bosses except the last one, and the same movement patterns to get through all the corridors. It could be argued that many games are like this, which is probably true, but this one seemed to just be a little bit more limited due the lack of variety.
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Posted: 6/25/2008 2:51 AM
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zggzdydp
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I think some people don't familiar with the game. In an actually run with Maxim, if you want to beat Dracula and finish the game, you must kill all other bosses before it, ohterwise you can't go into Dracula's room. So the run is not boss rush run, it doesn't aim for showing all bosses, it's a "tool-assisted actually" run (sorry, I can't describe it exactly). If someone think full run is less efficient, why did we publish so many warpless runs like Mario and Zelda?
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Posted: 6/25/2008 3:04 AM
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mmbossman
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zggzdydp wrote:
I think some people don't familiar with the game. In an actually run with Maxim, if you want to beat Dracula and finish the game, you must kill all other bosses before it, ohterwise you can't go into Dracula's room. So the run is not boss rush run, it doesn't aim for showing all bosses, it's a "tool-assisted actually" run (sorry, I can't describe it exactly). If someone think full run is less efficient, why did we publish so many warpless runs like Mario and Zelda?
That explains it a little better for me. I think it has a weird feeling to me because there is usually a normal run before the game is completely broken with a warp or something similar. With this game, the order was just reversed.
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Posted: 6/25/2008 5:51 AM
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Phatlip
Joined: 9/30/2007
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Location: Alberta, Canada
Great, fast run. I admit I got a little bored toward the end, but not enough to change my vote from a yes.
Posted: 6/25/2008 6:14 AM
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SilentSlayers
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I really enjoyed this one. Yes vote.
Posted: 6/25/2008 12:14 PM
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ljffdb2
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 15
I like castlevania games,hod specially. I saw the maxim warp glitch run.I know maxim could go into Dracula's room in 24'sec.SO FAST that others who was not familiar with the game will not know what happened. I think this glitch "whip launch into wall and warp to the other space" destroy maxim in this game So i think we need a run to save him in this game >_< ·non-glitch run we use L,R button to move and we must kill most enemies. we will spend a lot of time to kill all bosses. this is not "what maxim can do as possible as he can" ·full run we use skuriken glitch to kill boss ,whip launch to move and these glitch do not destroy(warped to dracula's room in 24'sec) maxim,i think the run saved him +_< I'm not good at English,so i can't discribe exactly If i can give a yes vote i will do this!
Posted: 6/25/2008 8:11 PM
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Apo123
Joined: 5/17/2008
Posts: 212
Location: Virginia
I can't vote, but yes. Extremely fast and entertaining.
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Posted: 6/27/2008 5:42 PM
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Yrr
Joined: 8/10/2006
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Location: Germany, Bayern
Well, I enjoyed that run very much. But indeed, killing every boss in 2 secs using the same strategy over and over again gets relatively boring. Edit: I forgot to say that I am voting yes.
Posted: 6/29/2008 1:33 PM
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klmz
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Technically speaking, although you didn't get into the wall, you got through a door and a wall right before Living Armor, which could be regarded as "warping" because Maxim directly appeared past the wall in the room with "Lizzard's Tail" or something without actually having travelled in that room but by gaining enough offset before the last screen transition ie. before he appeared in the room instead. So, are you sure that this run is really well defined? I'm holding my vote for now. BTW, I've been wondering all the time why using "warping rooms" in Castlevania games has never been considered as using "warps" untill this run. EDIT: Oh I got a little confused. Now I've fixed it up. EDIT 2: Entailed. EDIT 3: Adjusted. EDIT 4: ....
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
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