Summary

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Manipulates luck
  • Emulator used Mupen64 0.5

About the game

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon released by Konami for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 in North America. The story follows Goemon's struggles to prevent the Peach Mountain Shoguns from turning Japan into a fine arts theater. The plot calls for three cinematic musical features and battles between giant robots, like other Goemon games, it's peppered with surrealist humor and anachronisms. This is detail.

About the run

The game walkthrough is very long, in the run I basically followed the original walkthrough. But in the process I used somes tricks which are saved some time.

Tricks:

I used a glitch to enter oedo castle, it saved a little time. However I don't know specifically how it works.
Jumping climb, this is a very useful trick, it makes the hero jump on some cliffy slopes as shortcut. The greatest time savers are that I used it to skip the first impact battle and level 2 weapon.
For some high platforms, attack while jumping will makes it much quicker for the hero to get onto the platforms.
Use Goemon's gold coin and Sasuke's cold kunai while jumping could makes they jump farther.

Questions you may ask:

Why did you collect so many ryoes in oedo castle? -Because I must buy something which is very expensive.
Is it possible to skip Sasuke's cold kunai in festival temple castle? -No, some platforms will not appear if you don't get cold kunai.

Possible improvments:

Some movements are not precise enough especially beginning part, Mitjitsu also noticed this. Honestly I found the longer jump trick when I've done half of the run, so it means I miss use it in the previous part... 10 seconds may be lost, no idea.
Anyway hope you enjoy.

adelikat: The audience likes it and the improvements seem to be minor, thus I will accept.

Joined: 2/1/2008
Posts: 347
Mupen 64 rerecording hasn't been updated in years, and I don't know if there is a previous version online anywhere... However, if I recall correctly, Mupen 64 rerecording will crash when the AVI gets to be 2 GB in size. There is a patch to fix this (called avisplit; the video is split into a separate file whenever one reaches 2 GB in size), found on the following page: http://code.google.com/p/mupen64-rr/downloads/list
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Player (208)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
RadioKJ wrote:
For some reason I can only encode the first 18 minutes before Mupen crashes with an error suggesting I'm out of memory.
This happens to me almost religiously on my Bomberman Hero video playback. After I run through what is probably exactly 18 minutes, an error message continuously pops up. I'm recalling the rest of this from memory, so it may not be entirely accurate. This also happens after 18 minutes of non-video recorded gameplay, and I'm pretty sure it happens after 18 minutes on other games as well. My guess is it is some sort of memory fill within the emulator or perhaps the graphics plugin, but this problem is very familiar to me. The only solution seems to be to reboot the emulator to get it to run flawlessly again for 18 minutes of gameplay.
Joined: 1/26/2010
Posts: 5
Location: Utah
Heh, just tried using the avisplit, it crashed just as it was splitting it into another segment. Hmm... this is becoming a major pain :[
arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
4GB actually is a lot, it's the most that a 32-bit OS can handle
i imgur com/QiCaaH8 png
Joined: 2/1/2008
Posts: 347
Make that 3 GB for 32-bit Windows. (I'm still not quite sure why it's limited to 3 instead of 4, but I'm sure there's a reason) There is also a limitation on how much memory (both RAM and page file) may be allocated to a single 32-bit process: 2 GB (it appears that a gigabyte or more may be additionally allocated, but the required flag for this appears to be set in the program's code). So if the Mupen64 process ever attempts to exceed 2 GB of virtual memory usage [both RAM and pagefile], it will crash. Running Mupen64 to watch this TAS with the specifications I listed in a previous post, without capturing video, took up about 215 MB of virtual memory by the end. That's pretty big, but, if the emulator is crashing due to using too much memory, I wonder what in the world is causing such a large inflation. If it were a memory leak, it should have been detected by now... this isn't the first long N64 TAS, after all.
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Joined: 1/2/2010
Posts: 29
Location: China
AniMeowzerz wrote:
So I'll just write down the frame that it's frozen on, replay the emu movie with the pause set at the recorded frame by -1/1/+1 (depending on where the video stops and/or on which frame the movie starts recording) , and make another video. splice them together afterwards. Think it'd work?
I thought about that. For a fraction of a second. That's a bit more effort than I care to put in.
arflech wrote:
4GB actually is a lot, it's the most that a 32-bit OS can handle
I was being sarcastic. :P Though for my amusement, I should try giving the virtual machine all eight gigs just to see what happens...
arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
blahmoomoo wrote:
Make that 3 GB for 32-bit Windows. (I'm still not quite sure why it's limited to 3 instead of 4, but I'm sure there's a reason)
It actually is 4GB, when you count the portion reserved for use by the OS and drivers; in my experience I ended up having about 3.75GB of my 4GB usable for applications.
i imgur com/QiCaaH8 png
Joined: 2/1/2008
Posts: 347
May I ask how you have the full 4 GB usable? In my 32-bit Windows, it says that only 3 GB is usable and I have 4 GB total (I have only gotten up to 2.3 GB total usage, I believe, probably due to the system stuff you mentioned or Windows just being efficient with page file usage for idle processes). If you have a 64-bit OS, then all 4 GB are definitely available to you, minus what the system requires. According to an article on Microsoft, in a 32-bit OS, a single 32-bit process can use 2 GB of RAM without a special flag and 3 GB with a special flag. In a 64-bit OS, a single 32-bit process can use 3 GB of RAM without a special flag and 4 GB with a special flag. (of course, I'm talking about Windows here) Mupen64 rerecording is exclusively a 32-bit program.
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Joined: 5/9/2008
Posts: 35
Location: USA
Pretty much every recent 32-bit x86 chip can have 64 GB of usable memory even though each 32-bit application can only address 4 GB. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
blahmoomoo wrote:
May I ask how you have the full 4 GB usable?
I don't, Task Manager says I only have 3668996KB of physical memory, so my processes have just under 3.5GB of my 4GB available (keeping in mind of course that 1GB=1024MB, 1MB=1024KB, and 1KB=1024B). Also I'm sorry for mis-remembering my own memory usage, I was confusing the sizes of the pagefiles on my desktop (which has 4GB) and my laptop (which has only 2GB of physical memory); my desktop's pagefile is 673MB and my laptop's pagefile is 2232MB, so that the sum of physical memory available to applications and pagefile will be 4GB, and for some reason I had thought my desktop's pagefile was only 232MB. The important point here is that it's not like your OS makes absolutely no use of that fourth gig; if you take your PC down to 3GB you won't still see 3GB available in your Task Manager.
i imgur com/QiCaaH8 png
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Mitjitsu wrote:
The emulation lag in the impact stages were complete overkill, I just hope these encoders know some magic formula to eliminate it.
I'm guessing impact stages are the stages with the giant robot? On a side note, I have successfully figure out a method to capture (although painful) and will have all effects in the final encode. I can't tell if the sound would be fix yet until I get the answer above.
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Oh yea, having seeing the complete run w/o sound like 6 times over while trying to figure out the best way to capture, I'd say it looks like a fun run. Yes vote. I also really like some of the soundtrack =)
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Okay folks... a long-awaited encode! http://www.archive.org/download/N64MysticalNinjaStarringGoemonIn20449.35ByZggzdydp/mysticalninja-tas-zggzdydp.mp4 The container's an MP4 partly as an experiment, and partly because it allows the result to be streamable (much easier than trying to split this into 7-8 chunks to be individually uploaded to DM). Using Aktan's player, you can view the stream here: http://www.zexsoft.com/aktan/?N64MysticalNinjaStarringGoemonIn20449.35ByZggzdydp/mysticalninja-tas-zggzdydp EDIT: By the way... I vote meh on this. It's just too long of a run with too little variation (IMO) in what's going on.
Joined: 1/26/2009
Posts: 558
Location: Canada - Québec
Thanks for the encode. I never finished this game... so confusing/weird sometime - No idea. Excellent run, yes vote.
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Aktan wrote:
I'm guessing impact stages are the stages with the giant robot?
To answer my own question, I think those are the stages and I don't have any audio lag in those stages! =D
Experienced player (954)
Joined: 12/3/2008
Posts: 936
Location: Castle Keep
I sat trought the first hour of the movie, then i forwarded to the robots fights, overall this was realy cool, ill vote yes just for how you beat the last boss, i was damn impressed (failed at it many time myself ...) Good job!
Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1248
As someone who liked to play the game when it came out, but never bothered to look into speed running tricks that are involved in this game, I think the run is really good. Definitely worth publishing imo! It involves the one or the other interesting sequence break or time saver and I don't see any major mistakes. The author's description makes the run actually sound worse than it really is, imo. The level of precision could easily be improved though (at the beginning). And one thing I really hated about the run was Goemon's muscle training. For some reason, the author made absolutely no effort at all to make that entertaining. I still think it should be published, as a 100% run will probably obsolete this one anyway once it has been made. Oh, and thanks for the encode! ^^
Active player (276)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Never actually played this game, but I did enjoy the SDA 100% run before watching this, and glad to say this TAS didn't disappoint. Lots of surprising short cuts, yes vote here
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14873
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1459] N64 Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon by zggzdydp in 2:04:49.35
Joined: 3/17/2009
Posts: 496
great run, I enjoyed it very much : ) thx 4 your effort
Joined: 4/30/2007
Posts: 151
thanks for making this i havent been to this site in a month and was surprised to see this i am already stoked by the preview pic and will be watching this soon en route to getting the speed run record of 2:36, i pretty much ruined my enjoyment of the game, but recently played through it again and rekindled its awesome in my book while i am curious how much you used my walkthrough, i bet you did a great job even if you used it little props
Joined: 4/30/2007
Posts: 151
was pretty awesome someone give this guy a medal only thing i noticed was that you opted to walk to the second battery instead of ride the dragon there, but you probably tested both possibilities and found walking faster
Joined: 2/13/2010
Posts: 33
Location: Pori,Finland
Looks nice...I have only watched a half of it in avi,so I dont know if the game can be played without a major lag..I had none in the Impact scene,medium in towns and alot outside of towns.If anyone knows how to eliminate it,I would be grateful.I have Mupen 0.5 of course with tas input pulgin and Glide64 v0.7 ME SP8 with Jabos direct sound 1.6 Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.091208-2036) Processor: AMD Processor model unknown, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.1GHz Memory: 2048MB RAM Page File: 298MB used, 3641MB available DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT Integrated RAMDAC Realtek HD Audio
Joined: 2/1/2008
Posts: 347
Did you try using the Rice video plugin? That's what I used and it ran without lagging at all. A few special effects were missing (motion blur in Impact scenes appeared to be missing and the ending credits don't quite look right since I didn't have the framebuffer on, which would add a TON of lag), but I didn't miss them until I took a look at the encode of the Impact bosses only mode demonstrated in a regular speedrun. I also ran it at 800x600 windowed because it started to lag significantly (all the time) when I increased the resolution beyond around 1280x1024. I do have a discrete ATI GPU in this laptop though, but it is mid-low end, not a super gaming card.
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.