Tool-assisted movies (10)

Doom II: Hell on Earth is the hit sequel to Doom, one of the most influential first person shooters of all time. The Doomguy has returned from his mission on Mars and his banishment to Hell, only to find that Earth has been invaded by demons. He must now kill all the demons on Earth and go back to Hell so he can kill everything there.

almostmatt1 and Zero Master utilize a variety of glitches and tricks that exploit the Doom engine's quirks to complete the game on the "Ultra-Violence" difficulty as fast as possible. The RNG was also manipulated to ensure the enemy AI acts as the runners intended. You can read the authors' notes for more details on how each level was achieved and a list of all the glitches used.

Jetpack is a platformer game (now freeware), featuring a man equipped with a jetpack which he uses for flying (if it has fuel, otherwise he can jump) and a phase shifter for temporarily getting rid of troublesome bricks. His goal is to collect all the green gems in 100 devilish stages and avoid hordes of enemies.

In this extremely carefully planned run, slamo completes the game in 32 minutes and 22 seconds with large heaps of luck manipulation and glitch abuse. A normal player would barely get through the first 10 levels in that amount of time.

Prepare to be blown away watching large complex levels completed in under 20 seconds on average. Enjoy seeing extremely tight movement with enemies all around without getting hit, or getting hit yet somehow managing to complete the level anyway. Be dazzled as a dozen teleporters are all simultaneously manipulated to keep enemies away from our hero. Be sure not to fall off your seat when you see Jetman passing through spikes unharmed or completing levels with just the right amount of fuel, and narrowly avoiding certain doom from becoming trapped in reappearing walls.

Practically every aspect of the game was carefully analyzed and thoroughly documented by our users, slamo, Svimmer, Ilari, Nach, creaothceann, and hegyak for the creation of this run. This includes full level maps, with secrets in plain view.

Since the action is so fast paced, there's an alternate YouTube encode at 43% speed, and alternate download encodes at 50% and 75% speeds. It is recommended to watch this run at a slower speed to fully appreciate the timing and many of the tricks performed.

Axiom Verge, released in 2015, is a 2D Metroidvania centered around the protagonist Trace, a scientist who finds himself on the world of Sudra after an experiment gone wrong, separated from Earth by a deadly void called the Breach. When Trace arrives on Sudra he finds its civilization collapsed due to the release of a deadly pathogen in the act of biological warfare. With the help of the Rusalki — giant war machines that guard this world — Trace has to uncover the truth behind the fall of Sudra, confront the perpetrator behind it, and return back to his home world across the Breach.

Axiom Verge takes heavy inspiration from early Metroid games and some other platformers of the era and employs a number of unconventional storytelling and gameplay design decisions, and is all-around well-polished. If you enjoy action platformers or exploration-driven games with a solid sci-fi plot, playing through the game before watching the TAS is highly recommended so that the latter 1/4 of it (and especially the 4th boss, Vision) become easier to comprehend.

keylie improves the previous TAS by almost 3 minutes thanks to getting the grappling hook, better optimisation, and skipping one of the bosses. He completes the game's speedrun mode (which shows an in-game timer and disables all cutscenes) in 25:09.24 by the in-game timer, picking up 15% of items.
Boss times: 02:26.52 (Xedur), 05:39.08 (Telal), 11:02.19 (Uruku), 18:20.54 (Vision), 20:23.42 (Ukhu).

Braid is a famous indie platform game with some unique puzzlework. It was originally released on Xbox Live Arcade before being ported to other platforms. A major feature of the game is the player's unlimited ability to reverse time and "rewind" actions, even after dying. The game itself was intended to be an artful deconstruction of traditional video game concepts.

keylie improves his previous TAS by 1 minute 11.52 seconds in in-game time, thanks to better optimisation. Please read the author's comments for more details.

A warning for our headphone users and those who are sensitive to loud noises: There are two instances of a very loud noise playing at 6:55 and at 7:15 in the encodes. Please lower your volume beforehand.

This is it, Madeline. Just breathe. You can do this.

Celeste is a platform game released in 2018 and developed by independent game studio Extremely OK Games, who also developed TowerFall Ascension. It features Madeline, a young girl who sets on a journey to reach the summit of the titular mountain. Can she survive the many dangers that await her on her ascent?

This time, EuniverseCat, fishmcmuffins, keylie, dahlukeh and Lanvilla collect all 175 red strawberries, the moon berry, all 24 crystal hearts, all B-Side cassette tapes as well as completing every chapter (which also includes the B- and C-Sides as well as the recently released Farewell chapter) in a record in-game time of 1:16:51.335.

There is also an alternate YouTube stream featuring audio commentary by EuniverseCat, fishmcmuffins and Chaikitty, a speedrunner of the game.

SteamWorld Dig 2 is a Metroidvania-styled game released in 2017 by Image & Form, where an underground mine is explored by digging and collecting resources. As opposed to its predecessor SteamWorld Dig, the levels are not procedurally generated, except for the location of resources.

This TAS by keylie finishes the game as fast as possible by skipping upgrades and manipulating the level layout.

The encodes feature commentary by the author as soft subtitles.

Cave Story (2004) is a famous freeware indie game notable for being made entirely by one person, Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya.

Watch as nitsuja completely destroys this difficult game with amazingly precise movement. This playthrough saves Curly and finishes with the best ending after beating Ballos.

The program used to make this run, Hourglass, was also developed by nitsuja—with the creation of this run in mind. As such, it is our first published run of a Windows game.

Downloadable encodes and the YouTube encodes include commentary as soft subtitles.

The good Mecha Santa plans to spread happiness and cheer all over the world. Princess Pitch, previously a sidekick in the game Garden Gnome Carnage, sets out to put an end to those silly plans.

This time around, Princess Pitch decides to take on Mecha Santa and his army of robot elves on a difficulty harder than the hardest (Reallyjoel's Mom), since it's too easy otherwise. Reallyjoel's Mom is a secret joke difficulty meant to be impossible: it multiplies the spawn and attack rate of all enemies several times over and removes all powerups and ammo refills. Consequently, a player without tool assistance will maybe beat one room - if they're lucky.

This TAS gets through with liberal use of the piledriver move, as well as precise movement and shooting.

Rosenkreuzstilette (ローゼンクロイツスティレッテ) is a platform game published by independent Japanese studio [erka:es]. Gameplay resembles a Mega Man clone, with Spiritia collecting various weapons from each boss defeated, and alternate protagonist Grolla playing more like Zero from the Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero series.

See how many things from different Mega Man games you can spot while watching this! Stage by stage notes are in the author's comments.

This run is a 22 second improvement over the previous movie by Bernka thanks to better optimization.

This movie uses Grolla. For more action, we also have a Spiritia movie by the same author.

In VVVVVV, the player controls Captain Viridian, who is lost in an alternate dimension, in search of the missing members of the spaceship's crew. Instead of jumping, the player is able to control the direction of gravity, allowing Captain Viridian to flip between the floors and ceilings of the environment. The graphical style of the game is heavily influenced by the Commodore 64.

In the spirit of the retro games' secret hunt, 20 aptly named Shiny Trinkets are hidden throughout the game. The author makes sure to collect all of them in his movie.

Additionally, this TAS is completed on the game's no-death mode, which removes all the cutscenes and dialogues, as well as allows collecting a specific Trinket without having to die. Dying once on this mode prompts an instant game over, making it an especially brutal challenge in unassisted conditions. As this naturally prohibits the skips and glitches that abuse forcible deaths, it allows the audience to see the game in its entirety and, indeed, enjoy its level design and excellent chiptune-style soundtrack.

If you would like to see the game completed with no holds barred, make sure to check out the glitched any% and the game end glitch TASes that complete the game a lot quicker than one would have imagined!