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1st post prior:
Too much needed nagging I went back and re-did the two fights people thought were long and sped them up. Act 7 boss and Act 8 Mid-boss are now ALOT faster (Cut 2 minutes off game time) but thats as good as its going to get for act 7 (Try the boss yourself to see) as I pushed my luck attacking too fast and got him into beserker mode TWICE but lived through it, then it was a "punching air" game untill he FINNALY went into block mode, where I kept him untill I blew his arms off then beat.
The act 8 mid-boss (Genorator) is faster, but it took a buttload of re-records to get it to work right (Dash in between circle minion cycles)
As before some of the same things are implied from my earlier post (Takes damage to save time/get on a boss's good side etc) such.
This is a VERY hard game. If you think you can do the boxing robot better/faster then by all means go ahead and try, I myself would be impressed
Again with the boxing robots you HAVE to punch/shoot at air enough times to get him into blocking mode, and then keep doing it time to time to KEEP him in blocking mode. He only goes into it after going into beserker mode at LEAST once.
Enjoy!
When voteing I would like to know your complaints with the movie if you vote no, it only helps me improve my time if you can tell me what I have done wrong. Thanks!

2nd post prior:
The shooting stage (Stage 7) in my re-record I don't use the secondary fire at all (Bullets) to kill things or play along with the games music, I just "move to the beat" at times if that helps, so maybe your talking about a earlier movie?
The thing with the dash attack you have to remember is that when you hit something you have to give enough time for you to flip away from the enemy before it does damage to you. The arch nemesis knight was perfect, I took him down with all 3 types of attacks as quickly as possible.
As for the boxer AI, seriously, you have to try and beat him yourself before you judge how "quickly" it is to beat him. The guys cheap, having WAY more life then you and he knows it too. You saw in the video how when I was double as agressive with the re-record it caused him to go into beserker mode TWICE even before he went into block mode. When you GET him into block mode you have to jab at air often to keep him that way, otherwise he spreads his arms and starts trying to rocket jab at you.
As for the rocket boosting ALOT of the time I am giving my guy time to fall/time to rest, because if you flip (which you see after most boosts) too many times after you rocket, your guy gets dizzy and stumbles for three seconds and eats up time. This was the problem I had with the Egypt level, and it took me about 100+ re-records just to get that FIRST part down. A few boosts I can see that could be instant is rocket attacks on the 2nd boss and Egypt mid boss. The dragon you have to cut down to size because as he takes damage he gets faster and faster, and you can only rocket jab him once at a time before he goes into his flame thrower (You saw how fast his body was when I hit him enough times to cut it off completely from the grey skull, it was moving at breakneck speed)
Final boss, yeah I do swipe at air, but the game has bad hit detection here. Those flameing skulls often are nowhere near you and still hit you (Why I rocket boost through them once because my sword woulden't hit them that one time) and you have to rapid slice to keep them away. But if you want I can do it again for a cleaner version if you want.
Also yeah, I love the music and sound effects for this game, they are so awsome ;D
(EDIT) As for the low amount of re-records, I am a professional videogame tournament player (I have the highest score in the world for the blockbuster TMNT:Tournament Fighter game (GO DONATELLO!) and second highest for clayfighter. NBA Jam was my big fault, having practiced for weeks on end to get it right ONLY to be told I coulden't change my controller button posistions when I walked through the door for the tournament. This is what cost me to go national) amoung lots of other smaller tournaments in the city (Have TONS of free games and prizes) so I know what I am doing with most games.
Did you know my first run through Sparkster for its quick run was only 627 re-records? ;D
Also forgot something, with the rocket boost the meter being "full" isn't really in sync with the ACTUAL charge meter. If you boost the SECOND your boost bar starts flashing it will de-charge, you have to give the boost at least 2-3 flashs before you can rocket with it. Yes I know its anoying.
This Post and version:
I went back and re-did the last boss from some much needed critisimm, and squeezed a extra 22 seconds off him (Its not going to win any "No hit" rewards but it gets the job done fast, even before he starts dropping the multi-bombs! ;D) so this is version 4 of my run.
I just noticed something. If you watch the first intro movie of the game, the king gives the princess a red amulet, the same amulet general lionoss uses to start the missle launch. Why would the king have the key to his enemies weapon? ;D
Remember when voteing if you vote NO PLEASE tell me why you voted in such a way so I can improve my time attack. Thanks!

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Posted: 8/13/2004 6:23 PM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #272: Valagard's SNES Sparkster in 25:22.87
Posted: 8/13/2004 7:43 PM
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Blechy
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Joined: 6/27/2004
Posts: 550
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On stage 7, I wasn't counting the secondary fire in missing targets- it's the primary fire that I meant. Perhaps some of the most obvious moments come when you are actually on top of a turret and hitting it, and you make one hit more than is necessary. I know it's not necessary, because for other turrets this extra hit does not appear. At one point you definitely go to the efforto to use your primary attack in sync with the music though. Another note about it is that the majority of explosions that come after an enemy is killed cause lag. This adds to the total time of the game, and so I wonder if an alternate and perhaps even more exciting way to do this level would be to very closely dodge every single enemy or bullet. See morimoto's gradius run for things which look incredible on such a level. Because this level is so full of enemies and bullets, you will often have the opportunity to pull off similar stunts. The basic summary is to never just stay away from bullets, you almost want to tease them. I rewatched your arch-nemesis battle and I don't know why I jotted it down as an example of not so good AI manipulation. You hit him as soon as possible, although at one point rather than charging right after one boost, you attack him with your sword and then start charging from that. I wonder if doing this more often would save time? I'm not sure on the exact amount of damage every attack does. For the boxing. http://www.thezorz.com/agile/sparksterboxing.smv It takes me about 1900 frames, where it took you 7000, timing both from first movement to last hit. That was done with about 50-60 rerecords, there appear to be a lot more because at one point I accidently held down the quickload button, heh. You cannot expect to do segments with as few rerecords as possible, and you cannot and SHOULD not HOPE to do segments with as few rerecords as possible. You can get him stuck in the corner for awhile(use your lasers more than I did) until he decides to fight back. Or maybe it's even possible to get him stuck in the corner for the entire battle. Something to note is that the turbo toggles only use their specific button once every 2 frames. When he finally gets himself unstuck, after quickloading a couple times I discovered that he would get out either by blocking or by immediately punching, which was decided by which frames the turboed punch decided to pay attention to. If him getting unstuck is unavoidable, be sure to only target one arm, as destroying one arm is all that is necessary to end his obsessive block sequence. The boxing segment of the run alone may take many hundreds of rerecords alone. Do not aim for less. edit: not to mention that my boxing run was hardly optimized at all. It should be able to be done much quicker regardless of if the enemy can become unstunned. For the boosts. http://www.thezorz.com/agile/sparksterboost.smv (edit: link fixed) It is indeed possible to boost one one of the first frames the boost is available. If your original run for sparkster was 627 rerecords, and the second version was 685, that means a total of 58 rerecords were used in the entire shooting stage onward. This is far fewer than there should be for such a long timeframe. To be honest, whether a person is awesome at speedruns, or at direct competitive play(as you are judging from the games you listed), it does not have any influence on seeking perfection in doing a tool assisted run. As I said, it is clear that your video game experience helped you to progress through the game very quickly with a small amount of rerecords. But the other thing I said was that the purpose of tool-assisted runs is not to progress through the game "very quickly", but "perfectly", which not only refers to time, but to stylistic components(the three main stylistic components I always have in mind are shot accuracy, taking damage, and boss recovery optimization: if a boss stops flashing with invincibility even for a few frames, it only cost those few frames but it is very obvious to the eye. This is not a concern in sparkster due to the fact that the time it takes to charge is longer than the time it takes for a boss to recover.) In my mind the only difference between an expert game player doing a time attack and an average game player doing a time attack should be that the expert player may have extensive knowledge of the game beforehand. It should have no influence on either the quality of the movie or the amount of rerecords. I hope this helps, and again I am eager to see any future versions. edit: where does he get a gigantic boxing machine in outerspace, anyway? edit: or even... http://www.thezorz.com/agile/sparksterboxing2.smv That was less than 10 rerecords, I didn't expect the fight to go like that. At the beginning, I think I hit him barely less frequently and so I guess the game didn't think he was as stuck as he was. That could be improved as well though, as he caught me by surprise by fighting back. But you get the gist.