Jawohl! (or so AngerFist said)
Megaman X Zero 5 8-Boss TAS by Angerfist & Atma.

Goals:

  • Make things explode
  • Never wound something with a gunshot
  • Prevent a Colony Drop
  • Beat all stages
  • Plays hardest difficulty

Plugins used:

  • TAS Soft Graphics Plugin 0.2
  • TAS Sound Plugin 0.2/Pete's MIDAS Audio Driver 1.7
  • N-Rage Plugin 0.95 (seriously, why isn't this bundled with pcsx? the default one bundled now is shit!)
  • TAS ISO Plugin 0.2/TAS CD-ROM Plugin 0.2
This is a TAS of Megaman X Zero 5 on XTREME difficulty, that defeats all 8 mavericks at some point in the game. Now, with that out of the way, let's get down to some stage by stage commentary!

Intro Stage

This is pretty much identical to the version used in the low% run, since it came from this to begin with. The only real difference is that the boss fight is faster, as is the followup text as the cannon isn't fired immediately afterwards.

Mattrex

There are quite a few waiting points in the first half of this stage, which all have to do with the lava flows that destroy the walls. In the second half of this stage, the lower route through the lava is faster than the upper route above it, partially because there are a few waiting portions, a boss type door, and a miniboss to kill that way. The ride armor attacks cause the same type of delay as zero's jump slashes/3rd hit combo slashes, so damage is taken where the knockback and followup invulnerability is faster than the alternative of killing everything in the way.

Grizzly Slash

A fairly straight forward stage. The newly gained move of Quake Blazer from defeating Mattrex makes ridiculously short work of the trucks. At the ladder after the last truck destroyed, doing the down stab is just as fast in terms of downward movement as regularly dropping, so it was done instead. Not much else to say

Dynamo

Time for the comic relief boss. He goes down horribly fast. After this battle, but before Zero teleports out, the final text advance is delayed by a short amount of time (something like 15 frames, it's been a while since I checked) in order to manipulate the following event.

Cannon Firing Time!

Yeah, this was fun. We were lucky enough to have such a minor delay as mentioned above in order to make it successfully destroy the colony on the first attempt. This opens up access to the virus stages, and also removes any further cutscenes from the stage menu (there's at least one cutscene skipped, which details Zero being declared a danger as the virus doesn't affect him).

Duff McWhalen Duffman

Hooray for the longest stage in the game being an autoscroller!. We tried to make this entertaining, but you're kinda limited when you've only got so much available and such a long stage. The second miniboss has 3 parts which actually take damage, and 2 of which can be hit with a SDC, which is why it went down so fast. The section that follows up on this has a single frame after the text disappears in which gravity/whatever is still set to being underwater, which allows zero to jump all the way across and up the wall in a single leap. Not much else to say about this one, apart from "Duffman can't breathe! OH NO!"

Axel the Red

Prior to this stage, we equip the hyper dash part, which speeds up movement considerably, and also forms the basis of the new form of movement used regularly from this point onwards. A fair portion of the run was redone when it was found out that this form of movement was actually faster than a hyperdash or a hyperdashjump, and conveniently provides invulnerability to most things aswell. Gripping on each vine is faster than jumping past multiple vines at once, as you get the maximum jump velocity from each one. At the longer vines, the airdash is used a couple of times to avoid damage, and reduce the amount of time required to proceed along them. That's about it really for this one.

Squid Adler

This was probably the (second?) most annoying stage in the game to do. I'd estimate that it was almost completely redone about 7 times (the bike part only twice). By using the newly acquired move from Axel, Twin Dream, most instances of killing things and causing damage are now hitlag free, since Twin Dream doesn't cause it. The switches are almost exclusively hit with Twin Dream to stop hit lag (with the exception of one that's in a bad position), and as a result, there's a lot less lag than there initially was. Squid goes down relatively fast, but he has a phase where you stays in the air until a certain amount of damage has been dealt.

Dark Dizzy

This stage was weird. There's apparantely a black hole in the background or something that makes everything move slower and just makes it seem laggier than it actually is. The autoscoller-ish section of this level kinda sucks, so we tried to at least make it more entertaining than just standing still waiting for the platform to catch up. The second half of this level hsa Twin Dream make its first real battle appearance, as it decimates essentially everything that gets in the path of Zero. When it comes to dizzy himself, he just kinda sits there until he dies.

Dynamo

Time for another round of golf with Dynamo, but before this, two new parts were equipped. The W-Energy Saver, which doubles weapon capacity, and the Z-Saber Plus, which causes additional saber damage. The additional saber part allowed Dynamo to be dealt with in a timely manner, and had his final appearance for the game be a quick one.

Virus Blue

There isn't really much to say about this stage, it's pretty short, has laser beams of death, and a familiar blob at the end. At the request of Nach from way back, the pre-fight waiting period was made more entertaining to watch. The timestopper did nothing, it was just added to waste some time before.

Virus Purple

This stage was painful to do, but with the added arsenal of weapons and abilities, it was made short work of. It was interesting to find out that using the E-Blade to reach the vertical wire was faster than any of the alternatives, and also looked cooler too. The boss was a pain, and a slower kill than I had hoped, since it turned out that the C-Sword was the green eye weakness. Damage was avoided being taken here to lower rank, simply because it would've looked silly.

Izzy Glow

This stage was a pain in the ass. Combined with tight spaces, and oddly timed path blocking spike things, it took a few tries to get something that worked. In this stage, we encountered the first instance of a "slow down man, you're moving too fast for me!" situation. Delaying for a few frames allowed us to proceed in a timely manner. Izzy himself was a bit of a pain, as he warps all over the place. The MMH rank given by the previous stage also raises his HP a bit more than a PA rank, but instances of this happening were ignored, since it didn't really matter to us.
This stage could've been done sooner, but the attempts that were made to do it after Dark Dizzy were failed, as the timing for the path blocking spike things was considerably different and unworkable, so it was left where it is.

Virus Red

This was a fairly quick stage, and there isn't really much to say other than "damn spike pit, why must you cockblock us?" since we were a matter of pixels too short to make it over the pit successfully from a walljump without an airdash. Another MMH from the stage, since it's so short.

Skiver

Ah, Skiver. Why is your stage is 2/3rds autoscroller? Not much to say about the intro, or the end. In the bossfight, the giga attack is used instead of killing Skiver which costs 22 extra frames, simply to maintain a MMH for the final level (to give the best endgame rank). This was actually doable by killing significantly less during the autoscroller section, but given that explosions make for good entertainment in an autoscrolling segment, the proposal of reducing the amount of things killed and explosions that occur was rejected.

Final Stage

This stage was fairly straight forward. The boss refights were, however, not quite so much. Due to Skiver's newly obtained weapon, a new form of SDC had to be devised. A few iterations were tried, until a solution was reached. As it turned out, this solution was very slightly suboptimal, but still managed to beat 3 of the first 4 bosses faster than the optimal solution (Dark Dizzy was able to be beaten 4 frames faster, but that completely screwed up the Izzy Glow refight, and would have cost nearly 30 frames). Duffman, Grizzly, Axel, and Skiver all went down satisfyingly fast, which left only Sigma to go.
Unlike the low%, the energy refill wasn't required to be picked up prior to fighting Sigma, as he did as he was told on the first try. His second form took a satisfying beat down thanks to Twin Dream, which while being his weakness, only gave him the normal 30 frame invulnerability period. Needless to say he got a solid beatdown. Just like the low% run, this has a ridiculously skewed ingame timer result of 18:01, and ends with a B rank for X, and a MEH rank for Zero.

With that, we'd like to thank FractalFusion, for pointing out that a stupidly long alia message can be skipped if no orbs are collected on the bike portion of Squid's stage, and ShinyDoofy for providing an encode and uploading it for us.

Nach: Although a faster run for this game already exists, this one doesn't skip any stages. Highly entertaining. Accepting.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2448: AngerFist & Atma's PSX Mega Man X5 "All Stages" in 44:04.43
Sir_VG
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This is a TAS of Zero 5
Technically, since this is a prequel to the Mega Man Zero series, I think this game should be called Zero Point 5. Good work. My only disappointment is on Ranga Badanga, but if you couldn't beat him faster, well, you can't beat him faster.
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Great job! It seems like a huge project, glad you've made it!
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
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Sir VG wrote:
Technically, since this is a sequel to the Mega Man Zero series, I think this game should be called Zero Point 5.
Um, aren't these X games prequels to the Zero series?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Sir VG wrote:
Technically, since this is a sequel to the Mega Man Zero series, I think this game should be called Zero Point 5.
Um, aren't these X games prequels to the Zero series?
Yes. I also think it was one of the endings of X6 that launched the Zero series.
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.
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Yeah, I read that the Zero series had been planned since X5 was made, but then they decided to keep making X games, so they had to keep setting aside the bridge to Zero for later.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Sir_VG
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Sir VG wrote:
Technically, since this is a sequel to the Mega Man Zero series, I think this game should be called Zero Point 5.
Um, aren't these X games prequels to the Zero series?
Yeah, that's what I meant. I'm WWT. (Working While Tired)
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
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ShinyDoofy, thanks for the encode. However we'll need to re-encode this before we publish it. The subtitle text we put in the movie is too early, it can be completely cut out before any action starts. Sound is messed up in several places, notably the start of Slash Grizzly, and during the Dynamo fight. There's some artifacts on the screen at the beginning of Squid Adler. Possibly other issues too.
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.
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Nach wrote:
The subtitle text we put in the movie is too early, it can be completely cut out before any action starts.
Isn't that a good thing? I don't like covering up the action.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Nach wrote:
The subtitle text we put in the movie is too early, it can be completely cut out before any action starts.
Isn't that a good thing? I don't like covering up the action.
No, it means people can redistribute our videos without saying where they're from and who made it. The subtitles don't have to cover the action, but they have to be embedded amidst the action.
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.
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I officially declare the best part about this movie Quick Man's stage, it's amazing. I give it 7 bionic thumbs up.
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.
Sir_VG
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That was a fast acceptance. Only 3 votes?
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Wait, I only just got on here, and there's a second run on Megaman X5?...AND it's already accepted? Man, I haven't even watched it yet, I'll get right to it!
mklip2001
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Thanks for the encode! I watched it, but I have to say the game doesn't seem so interesting that it deserves an immediate acceptance. Although all the stages are played, there's really low variety in the amount of weapons shown off. Also, Alia's messages got really annoying. It's clear that some really good work went into this, and I think this should be published after all, but it's definitely not the best MegaMan X game to watch.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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Impressive you guys, It's really what I expected of a Megaman X TAS well, but without X it's not the same thing, hmm... if you guys do another X5 TAS, I suggest a run for Hunter Class Rank MEH for X and Zero, that's really a challenge, you likely have to collect the armor parts for X to go through in time in some stagies or equip parts to go faster, X deserves some credits this time.
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I'd have to say the decision to accept this based on only 3 votes was a very rash choice. Especially since this is not the most orgasmic spasmic best TAS of all time. (Yoshi island 100%, I am looking at you.) That said, I watched through it all, and while it has a lot of flaws, I would give it a yes, with a weak hint of meh. Highlights: -Things do go explody. -Fast pace action. -Great music. -Great graphics. I actually let out a "wow" when Izzy appeared. What I don't like: -Very little variety. All of the bosses essentially have the exact same fight pattern. SDC is awesome in concept, but it gets boring after a while. -A very, very, very lack of variety during waiting periods. Maybe it's because I constantly do TASes where I try to make every moment of every waiting period as interesting and fast paced as possible, but I did not find the waiting antics during autoscrollers or waiting for some trigger to be that stimulating. Probably a difference in playing style, but I was bored during those sections. -The Alia messages. God, the action does NOT have to be broken up that often. Stupid game designers. -The action to movie length ratio was bad. You said the in-game timer reflected 18 minutes and that's inaccurate, but still, the action was broken up so many times from short levels, the alia messages, cutscenes, picking the next stage, and many other things that very often a high action segment would last maybe 3 seconds and then be interrupted.
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I watched this today and enjoyed doing so. I'll give this a yes-vote. I think the game is great, and the TAS looked well done. However, I agree with what Comicalflop said about the slightly low action to movie ratio. I would love to see an encode where all these Alia messages and cutscenes are cut out, and only the action remains!
Rolanmen1
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Puttins aside how much everyone hates Alia. This movie is great, this is a yes-vote for sure.
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Randil wrote:
However, I agree with what Comicalflop said about the slightly low action to movie ratio. I would love to see an encode where all these Alia messages and cutscenes are cut out, and only the action remains!
While it's not entirely what you desire, how about this? It cuts out about 17 minutes of alia/other messages and cutscenes between stages. I chose not to cut the teleport/fade in/fade out of stages for the most part (the exception being in the final stage between the boss refights) just so that it signified beating a stage/starting a new stage.
Noxxa
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Looks like today is 'awesome (and coincidentally non-fastest) Mega Man X run' day. There should be more days like this.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Nach wrote:
I officially declare the best part about this movie Quick Man's stage, it's amazing. I give it 7 bionic thumbs up.
Man, I don't even remember that part. I remember the rip-off bosses like Ramda Bangda and the Dark Chocolate Fudge Monster, and I remember the really slow autoscrollers or waiting for a slow platform...
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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This movie is a lot more entertaining than the other X5 run, even though Zero still destroys bosses quickly with SDC. X must feel like he's being ignored now.
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FractalFusion wrote:
This movie is a lot more entertaining than the other X5 run, even though Zero still destroys bosses quickly with SDC. X must feel like he's being ignored now.
Agree with you, yes vote, and i want to see the MMX4 TAS run more a little xD.
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Amazing TAS all around. There was lots of stuff I didn't know about and I liked it a lot. But say... did killing Dizzy when you did instead of later net you anything? Was that time stopper of any actual use before Glow and Skiver, or was it just for the show? I was thinking if changing order was possible.
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Cremator wrote:
Amazing TAS all around. There was lots of stuff I didn't know about and I liked it a lot. But say... did killing Dizzy when you did instead of later net you anything? Was that time stopper of any actual use before Glow and Skiver, or was it just for the show? I was thinking if changing order was possible.
Obviously it's needed for Skiver, because it keeps him in place for a quick kill. Otherwise he pulls a Storm Eagle and flies all over the place.
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