User Files from Clicher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M45QclpYx3U Improvement by 1.9 seconds

ROM: scontra.zip

Super Contra was a game released for arcades in 1988, a successor to the original which had a very successful port to the NES the same year. The way this game controlled was much different from the original in a few ways. The height of a player's jump could now be adjusted by either holing up (increase), or down(decrease). Additionally, there were tweaks to weapons from the original game, new weapons, and new ways to upgrade said weapons; weapons could be collected for a second time in a row to become "Super Weapons", which are just more powerful versions of the weapon that you previously had. Here is a quick rundown of all the weapons so you better understand how they all work...

I personally hate this weapon in Super Contra. Upon collecting this weapon, you only fire shots in bursts of three. Additionally, the spamming potential of this weapon is very low. When collecting this weapon for the second time in a row, you're then able to fire in bursts of five, and the shots travel faster (just like the spread shot should be at its base)

This weapon works just like the machine gun in other Contra Games. You hold the button down, ammo comes out, simple. But in this game, the spamming potential of this weapon is MUCH HIGHER, making it the best choice at your arsenal. Upon collecting it again, you are able to shoot twice as many missiles while holding the fire button down, and the missiles travel faster

This weapon is exclusive to the arcade version of Super Contra (Albeit it is somewhat similar to the fire weapon in the NES port). Fires a grenade that does high damage, and bursts in two fragments if it doesn't hit any enemies (not much else to say); spamming potential is minimal. Collecting it again makes it travel faster, and bursts into fragments of 4.

Im not even explaining this one it sucks (same one from NES Contra). Super version just makes it go twice as fast.

Throughout the entire run, I use the Missile launcher due to its massive spamming potential, killing most enemies in an instant. That being said here is how every stage went.

Our adventure begins as our player drops out of a helicopter and straight into action. This stage is similar to the NES version in a few ways, but there are also many more enemies, turrets (Which are controlled by soldiers in this version), and grenades to deal with. Nothing much different other than the layout, the slowdowns on hills that are much more crucial to avoid, turrets on a wall, and a tank miniboss. After dealing with all of those, we are introduced to the same helicopter boss from the NES port, but much harder (Probably lost me a bit of time too). What's even worse is that after dealing with said boss, there is another section where you have to destroy the core on the wall guarded by soldiers, which is dealt with very quickly.

Almost identical to the NES version, just more enemies except one thing. On vertical stages, There are these pickups called SHELLS which can be launched to deal massive damage to enemies on screen. All I do with it however is save it for the boss (Who died very quickly)

If you thought the NES version of Super C was hard, wait till you see this stage. Its full of enemies, turrets, grenade launchers, aliens, and also trees to block you from seeing enemies and incoming bullets (Thanks Konami). You have to see to believe how ridiculously hard this stage is compared to other Contra games in general. At the end of this short and treacherous stage, we see an alien wall (same one from stage 7 on the NES I believe) that blocks are path to the Aliens Lair. the boss is dealt with accordingly, however there were many, many things in our way.

A stage that is exclusive to the arcade version, the only purpose of this stage is to prolonged how long it takes to finally reach the final boss. Not much to be said here; you see the same aliens from the final stage of the NES port, a miniboss which is the same as the boss from stage 5 on the NES, and a new boss only seen on this version that just lets us shread it.

Final stage. Its the same thing as stage 6 on the NES port, but much more treacherous. All we do is deal with more enemies, hazards, and fight the same old bosses to finish the game at record time.

I hope this TAS helps with further development of Bizhawk, but other than that there is not much else to be said. Hope you enjoyed the TAS.

The following shows the differences from the NES game that considers this game its own.

This game was the first ever Contra game released in arcades. This version appears to be much shorter than its successor on the NES, making the game run at a much faster pace, especially for speedrunning. When looking into its stages, you can see that they are all much shorter than the version you see featured in home consoles; This can be seen with all the stages in the game, especially the last few stages, where Snow Field, Energy Zone, and Alien's Lair have all been combined into one (Bunker is instead a part of energy zone in this version).

The way weapons work in this game is slightly different then that of the NES version. The weapon labeled R (I couldn't find an official name for it) is in this version as its own individual weapon rather than one that speeds up the shots of others; the Laser is much more powerful in this version compared to the NES version, making its DPS superior to even the Spread Shot when close up to an enemy. This is why you see the Laser being used for the entirety of the run. It is used for a wide variety of tasks, weather its to obliterate enemies from afar, or close up. Speaking of which...

Now that you know two major differences, I want to now explain each stage and why the TAS decides to play the stages as shown...

The first stage in the game. It already appears to be much shorter than its NES counterpart, and it shows by how quickly the stage is beaten. This stage has a pretty standard goal. Get to the end and destroy the wall. That's what our old friend Bill does in a matter of seconds. He had to jerk to the left for one frame or else the enemy behind him would have assassinated him.

Pretty boring stage to be completely fair. All I did was shoot the exposed parts as soon as I could and moved on

The boss for Base 1. Garmakilma has a weird pattern to the point where the TAS may not have finished as fast as it could have. If anyone has suggestions as to how I may be able to make it faster, please let me know.

The quickest stage in the game, and the perfect time for Bill to practice his gymnastics skills. Once he reaches to top he pulls of a matrix by nearly avoiding all the projectiles presented to him.

Same as base 1, but a slightly different layout, and boxes. Moving on...

He loves being invincible. Bill destroys the Cores and gets ready to kill him in what took me 4 whole cycles. This is actually more than a RTS, but only for the reason that the game difficulty is altered compared to that of a real time run.

This stage is almost three times as short as its NES counterpart, but it makes it up by shoving multiple enemies at your face, ones that were all either shot down or avoided by our protagonist Bill. He even managed to confuse two soldiers below him who couldn't help but keep shooting ahead of them. The boss of this stage in the NES version decides to assaut bill right at the start, but as you can see that didn't work one bit. A few hitboxes abused later, we see two Dorgas, the truck minibosses from the NES version. They apparently love to be shredded to pieces for a living as you can see by Bill giving them what they want and deserve.

The enemy base; its the final stretch. We are introduced to Gordea, the boss of this stage on the NES version right at the start. Bill decides to confuse him by jumping at the right time to make him jump over, and never return; I guess bill was too much for him to handle. A couple flames later he shows up again, thinking that he had toughened up from last time, but that was not the case for him at all. A few spikes and minecarts later we are finally at the last stage...

All I can say now is that the Aliens didn't know what hit them

This is the first TAS that I have ever submitted to this site, so in case a preview of the TAS is not visible, you can find it here:

Anyway thanks for reading. If I could make improvements or broke some sort of rule, please let me know.