User Files from MamaLuigiMomsLotsaSpaghetti

The battle for the cyan iPads continue for an additional single level, now with a new slew of quick-kill combos thanks to a brand new, very powerful asset.

A common issue I have with this game's combat is that it's normally very hard to tell how much damage your abundance of different moves do, and how much you need to do them to an enemy to defeat them. This is because enemies do not have health bars, or even instantly keel over when they're out of HP, so usually you're left guessing, likely needing to go back and double check to make sure the enemy is actually at 0 HP. All of this is only exasperated the more hits added to your combo. (Did I mention your combo can be upgraded to TEN HITS??) Of course, that issue has become, for the most part, a thing of the past. Since the first WIP from last year, I made a very vital discovery for reaching an acceptable optimization: The RAM addresses for enemy HP values.

0x1CB1C0 , 0x1CB3C4 , 0x1CB5C8 , 0x1CB7CC , 0x1CB9D0 , and 0x217530 (more testing might need to be done, this address sometimes has an unusual value)

EDIT: Ah yeah, how could I forget the other major improvement to my development tools? Originally, on Bizhawk 2.8, DS games could not detect lag frames. This was alleviated as of version 2.9.1, allowing me to make frame-perfect inputs.

Thanks to this new revelation, I have been able to measure the stats for enemy health and the damage for the player's attacks, and as a result... discovered that I needed to completely remake the TAS from the ground up. The final input frame for clearing the first megazord fight, which was the original endpoint set, was 102710, and is now 95745, a whopping 5590 frames improvement, or a little over 1:33. Here are some of the major things I found when revising this TAS:

What inspired me to try and TAS this game in the first place was that when fooling around, I found out you can turn around to cancel a combo attack mid-animation and skip right to the next hit in line. This allowed combos to be "charged up" much faster, to get right to that golden, powerful final hit. Although I will continue to use this, it will be de-emphasized going forward, since other combos have been found that will better fit certain scenarios. Namely, this will almost never be used for putties anymore (the grey ones, at least), unless I feel the action needs more variety.

Swords are not only used to pierce the armor of krybots, but they are also in fact more powerful than unarmed attacks. The punching three hit combo deals 13 damage overall, with the final hit dealing 8, while the sword three hit combo deals 25 damage, with the final hit dealing 15. This difference will only grow wider as the combo grows longer. In terms of crouch attacks, the normal sweep kick attack is usually worthless, dealing only 2 damage and can't be cancelled out of, but it does launch up the enemies shorter than a normal finisher does. The crouching sword attack on the other hand deals 9. This one-shots putties, and also has a shorter wind-up than the standing punch combo, so it becomes the main way to deal with grey putties. The only downside is a strange quirk with the crouch slash: There is two versions of the attack. I was referring to the inward slice, which slashes from the camera to the background. The fact it does 9 damage may have been some programming oversight, since the inverse attack only deals 1. I don't know the real reason why, but that's how it works. Fortunately, the crouch slash can be turn-canceled, so it's pretty quick to "reload" the crouch slash. Another strange quirk with this attack is that it can be "combo"'d. Hitting an enemy with the crouch slash enough times will cause it to start dealing more damage and will even show the spark effects that happen when you get well into a standing combo. One last note about slashing is that the second hit's hitbox actually goes all the way from the back to the front, meaning it will hit an enemy sooner when you're facing away from it than when you're facing towards it. In fact, it will hit on frame 1, making it technically the fastest attack in the game. At 5 damage though, not much use by itself.

A problem that permeates with dealing enemies is that they have to fall to the ground and hit it before the game counts them as "defeated". Thus, most attacks waste time for spawning in a new wave, since they either launch the enemy into the air, or they send them tumbling backwards. I believe I found this technique in the first WIP, but if you punch an armored enemy while they're at 0 HP, they will instantly collapse. Another great method for getting enemies to hit the ground as fast as possible is to finish them in the air, since when you hit an enemy with an air combo, the final hit's knockback trajectory aims down at the ground. This will not only obviously work wonders on hapless enemies dropping down onto the battlefield, but also enemies on the ground, essentially vaporizing them. Another thing I discovered while making this TAS is that you can also turn-cancel air attacks as well. I kinda knew this already, but I hadn't yet figured out the pattern for it to work reliably until later; your ability to stay suspended in the air during the combo is somewhat finicky.

It's also worth noting some other quirks with these two kinds of air combos. During an air punch combo, you cannot turn around and execute the attack at the same time, since forward+Y will trigger the forward kick instead. This is not the case with the air slash combo. On the other hand, there is a weird, annoying bug where, depending on the position or timing of the attack, the air combo refuses to advance to the next hit, protracting the combo out indefinitely or whenever it feels like it. I don't know the specifics of why it happens, but it does. While this often not advantageous, one factor that is is that you're pushed up a little bit with each hit, which can allow you to reach a wall or platform that is otherwise just out of reach. You can see this in one specific part I will cover. Another quirk is that after you land the meteor smash and turn-cancel out of it, your character is floating for a bit. Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad, but if you want to cancel out of it, you can either execute a few hits to cancel the momentum, or use one of the diving attacks you can unlock. I found that if you're close enough to the ground while in this floating state, and try to jump, you'll shoot up into the air quite high. Odds are, both tricks may become obsolete further down in the run, since the game will eventually give you a high jump move. Like... really high.

When it comes to standing combos, I had assumed the impact combo upgrades would have on my speed would be more negative than positive. I assumed they'd just nerf earlier hits for extending the combo and nothing else. That's only half true. Unfortunately, for example, the third hit is in fact nerfed in favor of the later hits, going from dealing 15 on a sword slash to just 5. However, using RAM Watch revealed that hits in a longer combo can potentially deal more damage than the three-hit finisher could ever do. The six-hit finisher, for example, can deal 30 damage, one-shotting red krybots, which have 30 HP, twice of the originals. I had opted to steer around enemies in flying sections to reduce my number of crystals in the original WIP, but this time, I went for destroying every enemy in those sections.

Unfortunately, the pose power that you unlock in OO4 (the fourth level of the Operation Overdrive chapter) seems to be rather pointless at level 1 (It can be upgraded with crystals). I mainly just abused it for style points, but at level 1, it seems to add, at most, 2 damage points for each hit. Worse, experimentation seemed to point that it actually nerfs later hits, at least in the six-hit combo. It may become worth it down the line, at least for some boss battles; While in my experimentation phase, I decided to poke the RAM address for crystals ( 0x1CD414 , by the way) to give me enough to unlock every upgrade, and used it to fight Gluto with max combo and pose power, which destroyed him in a single combo, something that wasn't possible without the max pose power.

Movement is a bit different from the previous Power Rangers games from Natsume. Running has a bit of momentum, both in starting and in running. It's not much, but it means that when the camera unlocks after a fight, you should already be running full force. Additionally, you seem to move faster on the ground than in the air, so to get from A to B as fast as possible, you'd need to be on the ground as much as possible. In terms of stopping, crouching will make you stop instantly if you need it.

Let's talk levels. I only go until I reach the end of Time Force 2 in this TAS, since it was more about finding new things and seeing what kind of improvement can be found and presented. I may continue this version with a somewhat rough drafting, since for such a long game, I'd really have to lock in my strats before I start working on the real deal. It may be a while before I can make a TAS worth submitting, but I hope the journey would at least be fun enough.

TF1 (Time Force 1) - The intro stage. Very short and doesn't even have a flying section. This is also the main reason I will probably not submit this version of the TAS whenever I complete it, as it's a bit rough, since I hadn't fully grasped some of the techniques I found by this point. That said, it does lay down some of the basic foundations, and that's all I can really say about this level besides it's really short, but it does have a lot of dialogue to skip.

OO1 (Operation Overdrive 1) - The first level proper, since it unfortunately starts the whole "flying section" shtick. Almost every level in the game has one, and it's just a boring autoscrolling section that wastes 2-3 whole minutes a piece. I forecast they'll contribute almost a third to the game's total time. Not to mention, most levels from here on is considerably longer than the intro stage. As for the level itself, there's an odd quirk in some fights. Normally, you have to defeat all the enemies to advance, but there are a few cases where some enemies will show up while the screen is locked, but they can be left untouched and still progress. There's also some kind of bug or something (not calling it a quirk, I used that word way too much when writing this.) where during the second fight in the final section, a putty doesn't spawn. I actually have done some kind of test TASes, two of them, where I was working on this level, and for some reason, later attempts came up with a serious time loss of 30 frames. In TAS Standard Time, that's criminal, and I was banging my head against a wall to figure out why, until I stumbled upon this glitch. Not sure why (perhaps overloading the game with explosion effects from defeated enemies), but this does happen, and I was able to perform it for this TAS. Also worth noting is that this is one of the few levels in the game outside of boss fights to have an uncomfortably long wait before the ending cutscene, where here, the Omega Ranger pops in. I used this time to do the requisite TAS seizure, and for some reason that that triggers the cutscene a little earlier. Again, not sure why (Oh yeah, this game's a bit sloppy.), but I took the savings anyways.

OO2 - Honestly, kind of a nothing burger of a level, much like TF1. Crouch slashing putties? Check. Flying section? Meh. Will the Black OO Ranger blasting off into the sky with the exaggerated swagger of a black thief to smite two krybots? Borderline pedestrian.

OO3- This level is easily the most interesting of the 6 levels, at least in this TAS. The main thing is that the first act of this level differs from the vast majority of the levels in the game, as it requires you to collect one of three pieces of an artifact on your way out. The second piece though, hoo-boy. This area has a section where you gotta jump across platforms, or else you fall back down to the start of the room. However, the only thing stopping you from getting back up straight from the pit is an overhang just out of your reach. A little air slash jank later, and you can get just enough height to start wall jumping. As long as the final enemy explodes while on screen, the screen will unlock and you can move around freely. Backtracking the normal route from here presents the second artifact piece. You can pick it up here and advance to the next area like nothing happened, not only skipping the whole roundabout path leading to the piece, but also skipping an entire fight, making this the first (and probably last) major skip in the run. Only problem is that when picking the piece up, there is a very small margin to collect it without triggering the fight, which from this way, actually softlocks the game, making this essentially TAS only. Another strange thing about this level is that there are a lot of enemies that are optional. The first half of this level is structured more like Power Rangers SPD (GBA) or the console version of this game, with a few forced fights, but mostly enemies you can just go around. There are clearly so many enemies I just walk around in this level that, despite clearing it deathless, I only get bronze. This actually cuts down the wait on the results screen, since I get 2000 less crystals as a bonus, but trying to get a smaller bonus normally takes too much time compared to the savings.

OO4 - The level itself is, again, not super special, sans one specific part. I will want to beat this game with as little damage as possible, but I kinda decided to let two krybots hit me, because they then proceeded to just walk off a cliff, which I thought was a little amusing. In the last section, you get the pose power, which the Quantum Ranger claims to help you defeat Moltar's army (not really...), and the first taste of a """boss fight""" (not really...) The only notable thing about it is that new black-armored lizards show up, which have a record-breaking 50 HP. This is where I use the odd crouch slash combo technique to obliterate them quickly. The pose power is mostly useless at this point, but they do help defeat these guys slightly faster. Speaking of the pose power, something strange I noticed was that if you start it too early, it will actually delay the """boss""" summoning his minions, which is just a waste of time.

The other notable thing about this is that, being the final level in an "era", it has a megazord fight. They consist of shooting at parts of the enemy mech's body until they are damaged. All five must be damaged to engage the second phase, where the mech closes in for a melee brawl. The game is, annoyingly, somewhat picky with the recognition for drawing a line, and that's really all you need to do for this phase; draw a line as fast as possible, hitting as many parts as possible, and as frequently as possible. Fortunately, you can (at least in this first fight) draw a line that hits all four mech parts at once. Then it's a matter of doing it once more, with less parts, and you win. The mech won't react to damage until it's finished with its current animation. It won't move onto the melee phase until it's done with the current part of its attack pattern, and as you can see, it won't keel over until its attack is finished and played out.

Once an "era" is cleared, you're booted back to the Hall of Legends to unlock the next era. Additionally, any time you come back here, the guardian of the hall will take your crystals and grant you whatever moves you can afford at the time. From this, I have acquired the following moves:

Jump Kick - 4000 crystals: A diving kick that is so powerful, it creates a swirling vortex and makes the ranger cry out in pain... and deals 3 damage. Yep. At least it sends you falling at terminal velocity instantly.

Vortex Kick - 8000 crystals: Basically a more advance version of the normal sweep kick. It deals 3 damage, and you still can't turn-cancel. Useless.

Six Hit combo - 10000 crystals: Extends both punch and sword combos; nerfs the third hit in favor of more powerful hits down the line.

Screencracker - 10750 crystals: Stun an enemy with your blaster and instakill them. Seriously. Anything that can be stunned will die instantly when you use this move on them. Handheld Games gave you an instakill move less than a quarter into the skill tree. The only cavate is that you don't get any crystals if you do so, but most people say that if you're given an instakill move, do you really need anything else? I won't use this move very often in the full TAS, despite how OP it is, mainly because it would be boring to spam it endlessly, and plus, I completely forgot I unlocked it by this point.

TF2 - The final part of what I'd consider the first act of the game. Trip the Green Ranger has to chase down Gluto to find out if he's the true villain of the game, using a new pack of moves unlocked from crystals. This level introduces two mainstay enemies that will haunt us for the rest of the game: Red krybots, as stated earlier, have 30 HP, double of the regular ones. Flying insects ("Sting wingers", I believe?) also sometimes show up from now on to be a big nuisance to those with bad aim. They fly around, drop bombs, and, if you take too long to take them down, they'll dive right into you. Mercifully they only have 1 HP, being designed to be taken down by any single attack, including blaster fire. We shoot two of them, and one is unfortunately on the receiving end of Jump Kick. I believe blue putties are also introduced here? They have 12 HP, a little more than regular putties, but for some reason they didn't spawn at the end of the first section, and I was able to run past the red kryobts to advance to the next section. Speaking of, two very precise actions were performed here. There's a section with a few platforms; you gotta climb up and jump across them; but a pixel-perfect walljump allowed me to cut this corner a little. Very soon after, in the proceeding fight, two red krybots drop down from opposite ends. I wanted to hit the first one with hits 4 (and 4.5, the fourth sword hit is two hits in one) and 5, then go for the finisher on the other krybot as the first keels over. Turns out, this is pixel and frame perfect, and there is only a single possible set of inputs to perform this stunt successfully. Oh man was it worth it though! As for the final fight here, all I wanna say is that this room is arranged SO annoyingly... After this, we chase Gluto on a flyer (yep, another flying section), and we land immediately in our first proper bossfight:

Gluto - HP: 150

I actually had several different strategies I ended up going through before I landed on the one in this WIP. Normally, bosses only let you hit them four times. In reality, I don't think that's entirely true. What seems to happen is that something happens when the boss is hit, depending on the "strength" of the attack. By default, the boss will take hits and flinch; when they do, and you don't land another hit in time, they'll counter with a normal attack. Unfortunately, the sword combo is so slow, it seems like the boss will counter before you can even get a fourth hit in normally. If the attack causes sparks to fly, the game counts it as a "power shot" and will make the boss go invulnerable and activate a special counter, such as a ground pound in Gluto's case. This is a huge problem normally, since with one upgrade, the finisher is already too late into the combo to activate before the boss counters. That's the reason why I thought combo upgrades were counterproductive in the first place. Anyways, I was going to use the turn-cancel technique to get the whole combo in before Gluto attacks. That didn't turn out how I had hoped. My next plan was to just try and hit Gluto with the best shots. Turns out the later hits were all "power shots" and Gluto will counter after just one move. "That's fine", I thought, "just try and hit Gluto with the sixth hit over and over." He'll keep spamming his counter, and it may hurt Trip a lot, and funnily enough causes Trip to trip, but I wanna point out that while you're falling down from an enemy attack, there's a very tiny window where you can input an attack and the ranger will immediately get up and do it, cancelling the hit stun. I didn't point this out in my general tricks section, because taking damage is normally just not beneficiary. Would've liked to just kill him in a single, satisfying combo, but this pattern seemed to be the only feasible, kind of fast method.

...Until... I was playing around with various methods to defeat him in record time... and suddenly, at one point... he just... froze up. He wasn't attacking, he wasn't even flinching, but he was taking damage. I had somehow locked up his AI for a good while, and not only does this prevent him from fighting back, but most importantly, it stops him from countering, from going invulnerable. This meant I could finally just combo him into oblivion like I originally wanted, and the best part is that all you have to do is hit him while he's trying to headbutt you. His animation will be interrupted, and he will freeze up for a good while. Only problem is that this is not permeant. Of course, when trying this for this WIP, I had successfully done a very promising 75 damage to him with one combo. Unfortunately, during the second combo, he arbitrarily recovered and hit me instantly, completely ruining it. That said though, I would soon find another handy tip for fighting him. He starts the fight in the middle, one level below you. He walks to the right and leaps up to your level. While he leaps up, he's still completely vulnerable, so you can sneak in some hits before he begins his assault. In fact, I did one even better by remembering the crouch slash combo, dealing over 75 damage very quickly. I probably could've kept going, but I figured I'd finish him off in a cooler way by doing the six-hit sword combo on him to finish the fight. After some cutscene skips, TF2 ends on frame 116763, but I insisted on some performing while I waited for the level to end.

Seeing such a huge improvement from the first WIP is great to see. If I had just winged the whole game like I did the first time around, spamming the basic finishers on everything, I could only imagine how much time savings would be left on the table... The judges would've had to make a TAS for rejecting my submission for optimization.

To be honest, I could talk about a few of the tweaks and techniques I implemented since the last version, but I'm just gonna cut to the chase: this is a cry for help. For starters, it's worth mentioning that for an alarmingly long period at the start of the first proper level, tagging to your partner crashes the game. I don't know why, but that's the case. If I am not able to switch characters, this would be the case up until frame 11817.

However, the real dilemma, the one that could very much kill this project, is a series of precise skips in the third room of Act 1-1. Switching between characters at a specific point of your jump will, in theory, boost your height just enough to clip onto a higher ledge to scale the wall. The problem is... I can't do it. I have been beating my head against my keyboard for the past few days just to make one of these glitch jumps. And not only has my efforts been completely fruitless, but even though it seems some agree it's extremely difficult anyways, a few (at least one) people have done it basically first try, RTA: https://youtu.be/FnhXzzGO9e4 which means even thinking of just moving on and going the normal route will be a one-way ticket to a rejection for "optimization".

So, basically, I need either an exemption from moderators for this, to give up altogether, or most likely just assistance with these skips.

For anyone willing to help, the route used in the level speedrun listed above performs this glitch three times to reach the alien box with only one player. Indy, Mac, and Dovchenko have to all be available the whole time; Indy to whip down the box, Dovchenko to break open the warehouse crate, and Mac to pry open the inner box. Frame 16330 is around when this sequence starts.

This is an update to the first draft, which saves about 500 frames by finding an earlier skip input for the first cutscene (skipping it entirely), and having Indy stay on the ground at the second ladder to tag Marion sooner.

Yeah, this game for some reason makes it annoying to skip the one FMV most people will get to see in this game, since the input to skip it seems to have specific windows that the game will accept it. One very interesting thing I found was that trying to skip the cutscene pauses the game, and here, Indy and Marion are standing at the game's usual spawn point, which is much further ahead than in a new save file. Unpausing the game here just immediately starts the cutscene and drops you where you're supposed to spawn at, anyways. However, this could be a theoretical time save in the making if there is a way to stop the game from forcing you back into the tutorial area.

EDIT: 500. 400 was a bit of an undersell, actually. Also, I found out that tagging your partner will skip the animation of you picking up a special item (journal page, red brick, artifact, etc.), which is useful immediately after this TAS, since it allows you to enter the story a few frames earlier.

Indy and Marion just wanted a frickin' vacation trip. Was that SO hard to understand? Well in any case, now it's up to Indy to spam his new jump punch to get around this new island slightly faster than normal, manipulating Marion's AI (and even turning into her) to collect a single page torn from his journal so he can revisit his now second worst adventure. Thanks, Dial of Destiny. I kid, I did like most of them a little bit, but that's beside the point. In a nutshell, things work a little different here than in LEGO Indy 1's DS version.

In terms of this TAS, it's meant to go through the opening sections before we enter the main levels proper (hence prologue%). I wasn't very sure where to draw the line on this part being considered complete, so here's the frame number for each possible "final input" that could be considered completion: 11037 (what I went with): The frame we pick up the page and unlock the story. 11097 (not seen): This would be the first frame the game would allow us to open the book and select the story menu.

You're dumped in a tutorial section, where you can now swim. Right away, there is a technique where wiggling (choosing my terms very carefully, considering who we're talking about) from side to side pushes your character forward with every stride, making him go faster than just swimming forward. You cannot jump out of the water, which is why I'm not doing so in this TAS. Also, this technique seems to work better in specific directions than others (namely sideways rather than north or south). Of course, either way, swimming is slower than running, so you need to stay on land as long as possible.

Once you get on land, you find out you can now dive down with an attack from the air. Each weapon seems to have a different arc, with unarmed punches sending you all the way to the ground, while characters using a bottle don't quite hit the ground. If a jump attack doesn't cause you to land before its animation finishes, the game holds you in the air for a bit, stopping your forward momentum, and losing some time. However, some weapons that lunge you further forward may allow you to cross gaps that are otherwise a bit too far. Although not available during the prologue, shovels are a good example of this. It's worth noting that while punches can be used without lag, they do not appear to be much faster than just running. In fact, I actually found that when I got to the big gate, spamming jump punches all the way through caused me to reach the cutscene slightly later than in the final TAS. The jump punch tends to be more useful to cancel your upward momentum when jumping, useful since the jump height is basically all or nothing.

The lighthouse-type building in the second area was rather annoying to save time on, since it contains a lot of mechanics that require both characters to operate. As a result, you're essentially throttled by your AI partner during this section, which, by the way, happens to contain bounce pads and ladders, both of which this game's AI struggles with more than anything.

For starters, ladders. You can jump up and cling onto the ladder midway through, but you cannot jump again on the ladder; you'll just let go of it. Your AI partner will not even do this technique. It will start at the very base of the ladder and climb up its entire slow, sluggish length. Worse is that if your partner gets close and you want to tag out, your old character will just jump off the ladder, as seen in the TAS. Sometimes it may even just yeet itself off the cliff while you're trying to get your partner up there. Fortunately, I found out that the partner AI won't move if you had made it jump, so I used that in a few spots to buy me some time before the partner tries to walk off the edge.

As for bounce pads, it seems that when the AI needs to use a bounce pad to reach something, it will not try to make the gap unless it is absolutely sure it will make it, so it will waste time to build up its momentum first.

When you reach the big gates on the island and go through them, you'll enter the mainland. This mode operates in freeplay, which in LEGO speak means you form a team of characters you've unlocked throughout the game in order to use their various abilities to collect things. This is where you collect red bricks, and, for the purposes of this TAS, journal pages. Well, for any% playthroughs of any kind, it's only the first page we need to bother ourselves with. 16 of the 17 pages are minigames to be played for 100% completion, but the first page is special in that it unlocks the main story. As for the island itself, because this operates in freeplay mode, Indy and Marion can transform into each other to complete our mission here faster. One technique shown here in terms of switching characters with L and R is that when you do so, you'll drop whatever you're carrying. When you carry part boxes to their spots and put them down, that's an animation that can be skipped with this very technique. A problem, however, with LR switching is that the game freezes for a few moments to load in the character, so you have to weigh whether it's faster to switch than to do whatever you're doing normally.

So, with Natsume absent for the GBA (They were busy with one of their... uh... "masterpieces"), Vicarious Visions takes the role as developer for the Game Boy Advance game for Power Rangers Time Force. Regardless of the quality of the game (Although I'll leave you with the fact this was the only Power Rangers game they developed), it's easy to see that an American dev resulted in a completely different beast compared to one by a Japanese dev. Whereas the GBC version is about finding the most optimal way to plow through enemies, finessing around the janky terrain, managing your energy bar, and picking whether to pick the red ranger or the yellow ranger for the level, the GBA version is about the most optimal way to leap over enemies, maximizing the amount of dash momentum, and finding the route with the least ranger swapping and most energy gains.

To start, here are some basics: By pressing select, you can swap between any ranger that is currently alive. Each ranger has a set of different stats that help with defeating enemies or traversing the levels. Health, Power, and Speed (and unlike the GBC version, speed actually makes you move faster. Yeah what a concept). However, not shown on the character select screen is a fourth stat; Jump. Yes, each ranger has a different jump height, and the difference is staggering. For example, the pink ranger is the best jumper in the game, and while the blue ranger beats her in speed, he is actually one of the worst jumpers in the game, making it hard to leap over multiple enemies at once. Energy is also a crucial part of the game. While every ranger starts with none, lightning bolts are scattered EVERYWHERE within the levels. The smaller onces fill a small portion of energy, while the larger onces max out the bar. The ranger's energy reserve is stored, even when switched out, and once full, holding down B allows the rangers to charge up a screen nuke. Having several of these stocked up allows you to quite literally nuke a boss into oblivion (although in Power Ranger speak, that means pushing the button that makes them grow.)

In terms of advance techniques, one of the biggest abilities used in this TAS is dashing, a technique that is done just by double-tapping forward. Seems simple enough, right? ...Yeah it is. However, you will first need to get a running start to do so, so every dash takes several frames to start up. Thus, you'll need to maintain as much dash momentum as possible. The first, RTA-viable one is the dash punch, which is done just by pressing B as you propel forward. This is a pretty normal move, but, when used near the end of your dash, can be used to give yourself a bit more distance. The other technique is the flying kick. This game has two jump kicks, depending on when in the jump you press B. When you are going up, you'll do the flying kick. This is usually unremarkable, and jumping kills your momentum. However, pressing B the VERY FRAME AFTER pressing A will start the kick before your momentum is lost. This will let you shoot forward in the air at a greater speed. This, because of the frame perfect input, is also TAS-only. You also cant change the trajectory of your flying kick, so the only control you have is how long you hold A for. The dive kick, executed by pressing B while falling or double jumping, will send you going straight down at a diagonal. This actually doesnt make you fall any faster than just... falling... (as a matter of fact it kills your falling momentum) but it does nudge you forward a bit faster than just letting the ranger fall. More importantly, it'll stop your jump completely and let you land for another jump faster. Another, much more baffling technique is the "triple-jump". For some reason there's a weird quirk in the physics where pressing A a third time during a specific window in your jump gives you a small but potentially useful boost upward. This, in some parts of the TAS, allows me to clear certain jumps I couldnt otherwise, like over an enemy or onto a particularly high edge. Finally, in megazord battles, you have a dash attack along a regular attack, but because of some very poor design choice, the dash attack has a much shorter wind-up than the regular attack, making it much better.

This TAS is rough, and I probably could've plotted out a better route, and perhaps executed some techs better to gain time saves, but this will likely be improved upon once I write a final draft.

Speedrun of the first part of a shoddily made game for an iconic franchise's 15th anniversary. But enough about Sonic '06. The Operation Overdrive rangers (and some other ones) uppercut their way through Moltor's forces in order to get their hands on a cyan iPad, a fair bit before an uppercut is officially added to your moveset in the game.

This TAS will frequently use a speed combo technique. Normally, you'll have to play out your three-hit combo, but unlike most games, you can not only cancel your hit by turning around, but you can advance right to the next in series, allowing you to activate the hit very quickly. And for the first few enemies (the grey putties and black krybots), that final upward strike is all you'd need to take them down. Stronger enemies will obviously start barging in down the line, but this technique does in fact allow you to hit all three strikes in quick succession. Plus, another technique I found very late into this WIP is that, while the final hit launches the enemy upwards, wasting time, you can "catch" the enemy with the first-hit sword attack.

Some other things to note, the reason I sometimes slash instead of punch is that some enemies are armored, and you're supposed to use the sword on them instead. The blaster that you see me use a few times is just to stun enemies. You can actually unlock a slew of different moves after collecting the crystals enemies drop. One of these moves is an insta-kill move for stunned enemies, so when that's unlocked, expect me to use the blaster a lot more often. Even in this early section, though, stunning enemies can prevent them from entering the screen-lock areas (the areas where you have to fight enemies to progress), cutting down the number of enemies you'll have to fight. Another attack in the same vein is the jump-kick (not the one offically referred to as "The Jump Kick", that's basically a drill kick of sorts; I mean the flying kick you have by default), which regardless of the direction you're flying from, can send the enemy in question in either direction, depending on which side of the enemy you're closer to when you hit them.

Finally, wow, this is so much laggier than the GBC Time Force game. Super Legends runs anywhere from 30 to 20 FPS, which is borderline Tiertex-grade for a primarily 2D game on a system with a 66 MHz ARM9. And unfortunately, this game's lag frames aren't detected by TAStudio. I decided to have macros for once for the moves I use in the TAS, but because of the unstable framerate, a truly frame-perfect TAS is gonna be a complete nightmare for this game. The most reliable macros I settled on were ones with inputs that updated every 3 frames.

The sequel to Neversoft's 2000 Spider-Man game featured some enhanced features over the original. This includes a refined moveset for Spidey, a slew of new costumes, and, the subject for this TAS, an overhauled training mode. This new training mode is essentially an advanced tutorial set in the X-Men's Danger Room simulation. Each of Spidey's skills are put to the test in each stage of the simulation. Swinging across virtual rooftops, meticulously scaling a tower with his L1 targeting mode, frantically hitting the correct targets with his new L2 targeting mode (and his new ability to fire impact webbing in the air), breaking your controller in frustration sneaking around corners trying to avoid detection at all costs, and surviving an onslaught of lackies.

Each exercise, upon completion, can also be tried for a high-score, normally best-time, however the attack challenge tallies up Spider-Man's body count, and reaching a score of 75 enemies defeated will award ol' Web-Head with one of the new costumes featured in Enter-Electro. It's his Prodigy suit, one of the various aliases he went under that one time he was wrongfully made a fugitive. Of course he'll need it this time too because... wow man... you just killed a lot of people to get that suit... Of course, the suit, like many suits in these two games, gives the wall crawler a power-up. Prodigy gives him double damage, and the new game powers "Enhanced Web Swinging", and "Double Jump Height" (emphasis on height; this is not a proper double jump). This makes it a very good costume to have early on, especially if you were to, say, do a 100% speedrun of this game.

I don't know if I have the willpower to do a 100% TAS of this game. Unlike 2000, no one does EE 100% speedruns, let alone 100% TASes. The big reason for this probably is the fact that Vicarious Visions decided to spread all the content across all the game's difficulty settings. The first game let you unlock everything with two playthroughs and a trip to the training mode. Enter Electro is designed to make you play the game on every difficulty, even the dreaded Kid Mode with no skippable cutscenes. Counting the fact that the game still makes you do one difficulty twice, it means you'd need FIVE pretty similar playthroughs to get everything. Even if I do try a TAS, it's not gonna get published, most likely. This game already has a TAS of Easy Mode, and it's pretty hard to match.

Finally, this TAS in question. I did what I feel is pretty solid for the most part. However, the Stealth stage might have been possible to cut down on waiting around, and I really slacked on the Attack challenge. I ended up just doing what more resembled a tool-assisted playthrough, and that's really not gonna fly with TASvideos, but it's what all I could really muster for the time being. This was just done overnight.

A game that isn't based on Power Rangers? What a concept!

Jet Fusion sees Jimmy Neutron trying to restore Retroville to normal after yet another botched invention fuses it with the world of Jet Fusion, an over-the-top spy parody with ninjas, tribes, pirates, and space chimps. Anyone remember Space Chimps, no? Just me? ok In order to be fulfilled, this mission requires Jimmy to run through levels, gunning down everything in sight with a lame PG "sonic resonators", collecting objects to build inventions that'll open the path to challenge the boss of the area. After the prologue area, it's two levels -> obtain new tool that'll be used to traverse future levels -> one more level -> minigame -> boss -> repeat, until you defeat staple villain Professor Calamitous.

Each level also has extra items you can obtain to enhance Jimmy's power. These are extremely easy to find with the help of the map, accessible by pressing select. Many, however, will require you to go pretty off course to actually fetch them, sometimes FAAAAR off (*cough* the docks *cough*), so they're pretty much ignored entirely (well, they would be if I actually decided to do so during the TAS. This is a rough draft, after all.) The upgrades, for those wondering, are the sonic upgrades, which boost the power of Jimmy's main weapon, and the Purple Flurp containers, which increase the amount of health he can have. The containers, of course, are definitely skipped entirely, since, well, you get the idea of TAS. However, you will see me needing to find extra flurp whenever convenient, in cases where I am better off just tanking a hit. There's no knockback for the most part, so you can pretty much just run past anything, with the only concern being to not get hit enough times to die.

Even the sonic upgrades are dubiously useful in a TAS, since all the secondary weapons Jimmy can get are considerably stronger than his stock sonic resonator. These are (I forgot the name of it; the sonic grenades, basically, which are obtained basically from the getgo, and basically nuke every enemy in a small radius, which can be quite useful in a pinch, but I don't believe it's really more effective during bosses), the water gun, which I also forgot the name of affects magma-related things such as... well it's pretty much only used in the level you get it in, so it'd mostly be used to deal more damage to enemies wherever you actually need to defeat them, and the mostly useless bubble gum gun, which rapidly fires, well, bubble gums. You can use it to fight enemies, but mostly the final boss, really. It's mainly used to create platforms in walls to scale up the final level.

O h y e a h, you don't even need to take out enemies to get them out of the way. While an enemy is in a hurt state, it's attack will be stalled, and contact damage isn't even able to be dealt to you. Plus, enemies that get knocked back from your attacks will be stunned for even longer. This makes it a lot easier to get through this game without any upgrades, since you generally just need to make a b-line to the finish line.

Even though I'd say the execution was pretty solid, I arguably made some pretty bad judgements for routing, especially in World 2, where I must've forgot the second boss can only be damaged with grenades, and I only ended up bringing 5, wasting a LOOOOOT of time. You really need to bring 15 grenades to that fight. I also didn't quite care enough to try to optimize the third and fourth minigames as much as possible.

In terms of techniques, those arrow signs with a satellite dish on it are the access points, which not only let you respawn from it, but even load from it. This... uses passwords, which means the game will try to stop you to give you the password for you to write down, and every message slows you down, since the animation is about half a second. If you can get the access point off screen before the message triggers, the message doesn't. Usually, you won't be able to outrun it, but you can delay triggering the point with a well-timed jump. The point has a fairly large hitbox, but it doesn't reach as high as you can jump. Another note is that jumping points positioned at the start of the level are much harder, since the game gimps your inputs during your entrance to the level.

This game is one of those strange cases where you hit terminal velocity nearly instantly when you drop down, which is abused quite a bit, especially since this game likes to have you drop down a series of platforms. But this is something you can just see for yourself. How about something a bit more interesting, on the topic of momentum stuff, your vertical momentum seems to influence certain things in the game. When you fire a projectile, the speed and trajectory it travels at can vary a fair bit. If you drop down and shoot downward, GOODNESS! Your sonic booms outspeed... Sonic! The other major thing affected by momentum is Goddard's copter mode, obtained near the end of the first world. Gliding in copter mode is slower than running and jumping, so using it for as short a period as possible is crucial, and so the right time to use it is equally important. An important limitation to keep in mind is that during the period where Goddard is getting into position, you can't jump, so when activating it, you have to already be in the air if you want to use it in the air. Speaking of, the other ability Goddard gets is the ability to carry Jimmy underwater. The main tidbit is that swimming will let you rise faster than just propelling upwards on Goddard.

So Technickle suggested a small optimization I could implement to my now finished TAS of this game. I tend to wing it when it comes to TASing games (probably going to be my downfall), with only whatever street smarts I developed for a game at that point. I had never known that, apparently, you can actually skip the last part of the level title cards. So that would be about a second improvement, which, on paper, sounds great! I've heard, well, iirc anyways, that implementing stuff like this retroactively tends to be on the simple, kinda easy, somewhat easy-medium, regular mediu--

This game is not one of those times. In fact, ignoring routing, glitches, techniques, etc, if raw execution was the end-all-be-all of TASing... this would be one of the most ANNOYING GAMES I'D EVER TAS! Compared to every other Game Boy Color game made by Natsume, this practically runs like something hackneyed together by the hacks over at Tiertex. This game doesn't seem to actually run at 59.whatever Hz like your normal GBC game, or even at a consistent 29.whatever Hz. Instead, this game is infested with dropped frames, lag frames, in uncomfortably abundant amounts, and entirely spontaneous. And with lag frames comes dropped inputs. I lost count of how many times I had to work my way around that one frame that I need to do something important... that happened to be a lag frame. And that was when I was actually recording this game. It gets worse... which brings me to why I'm not actually going to impliment Technickle's suggestion.

With how abundant and random lag frames are in this game, TASes for it become extremely sensitive to timing. I'm no TAS expert, but compared to other games, you'll hit the butterfly effect much harder with this game if you try to retroactively patch your TAS with new stuff. One small tweak could easily wreck the entire thing. I tried to put in the title card skip in Level 1, and it broke the sequence of actions I had set up. One major example was the hallway before the turret room. After trying to fix up the level so far, the energy meter required to turbo boost was now not full and ready to use when I needed it too. Apparently, the rate the special meter fills up seems to also be random/time-sensitive. Which meant one thing led to another, and, well whatever I had to improvise with to fix this ended up just being slower than if I didn't even bother with this suggestion. As for my attempt with Level 2, it actually worked a lot better, with the only major hiccup being that the boss now tried to teleport, so I had to tweak it a bit. Level 3 broke as to be expected, including the part where that boss now ended up teleporting the complete wrong way from where I needed it to be. I decided to scrap it there too. Unfortunately, I couldn't just leave it there and just have Level 2 tweaked. As you can see in the user file, Level 3 ended up broken anyways after I patched Level 2. I don't really know the case with other games regarding trying to do something like this, but I'll tell you one thing, this game will likely require a full redo of the TAS to implement such a small optimization. Maybe when I find something else major to use, I'll probably keep this in mind to do some updated TAS. But for now, I'll pass.

Ransik, the final boss, is first encountered in an unwinnable encounter. Instead of learning how to use RAMSearch to track his health, I just wasted an hour recording this TAS to make absolute sure. Now I'm absolutely sure.

The third revision of my WIP TAS for Power Rangers Time Force (GBC) includes a playthrough that actually makes it to the credits! The first half is unchanged, as this revision was about dealing with the second half of the game. Throughout that portion, I found even more things about the game that will prove useful for the final TAS.

Yet another move was discovered, basically the knee of justice. Instead of pressing down and A for the slide-kick, it's executed with up and A. While it doesn't let the ranger squeeze underneath things, it instead makes her nudge forward faster than the slide. I will likely experiment with it a bit to see how well it fairs in energy efficiency as well as damage. One thing is for sure: I'll definitely make more use of it in later revisions.

Sometimes, I have no choice but to punch in order to progress, which is terrible, considering, I can't stress this enough, the universe will have gone through entropy by the time it's actually thrown and dealt a blow. However, I have discovered that, for some reason, it's faster when crouching than it is standing up, as long as you came in pre-crouched (cause actually getting on your knees has a delay all on its own.)

Something I noticed last time, but seems more relevant than ever: the game is very lenient in terms of jumping over ground attacks in megazord fights. You'll see me basically landing ontop of the attack with the megazord's toes, basically, and it'll still count as me dodging it. Subsequently, the megazord's punching hitbox lasts for an incredibly long time, for a punch, anyways.

The Armor Ghost has an introduction so long, I was able to run all the way across the map to get the Super-Energy.

Ransik is even worse than I thought... He singlehandedly makes full playthroughs very unlikely for me, for how comically cheap he is, but trying to record this TAS made it especially apparent. There were parts where I was straight-up trapped, with no way to avoid his impending slide attack, which has an annoyingly large hitbox and alarmingly fast trigger. You'll see me make a giant leap over him at one point. That was what I ended up with after a lot of fidgeting around trying to dodge the inevitable. I do wonder though, if it's even slightly possible to defeat him at the beginning of the level, or if it's basically a forced event. The final level is, if I'm correct, a huge circle, and I'm not sure if I took the most optimal route. It was this level, btw, where I discovered the knee of justice. I wonder how much more I'll learn if I read the manual... better see if someone had digitized it by now...

This is, for now, the last draft before I make the final, ready-to-publish version of the TAS. If anyone has any tips for optimizing the TAS for this game, I'm all ears. You'll have at minimum by April before I start working on it.

This is an updated version of my TAS WIP for Time Force on the GBC. I would write down a detailed list of patch notes for this revision, but Microsoft Edge tricked me into closing the page by accident, halfway through writing it, so thanks a lot, Immersive Reader... Just wanted to know whether wailing was the right word for "pummeling someone repeatedly", and... boy you sure helped with that.

Here's a general summary of what improved:

Apparently, this game has a Crash-style slide kick you can preform, and I discovered it completely by accident while recording the first level. There is a small delay when crouching, because pressing A during the short time before your ranger actually gets down to avoid, say, Nadira's fireball, will allow the ranger to slide across the ground to deal damage. However, you can't do it while crouching, which sucks for actually trying to slip past enemies in crawl spaces, but you can see me use it instead for taking out certain walls, which, in the yellow ranger's case, is actually faster than just running up to it and punching. Fun Fact, that's Kaite. I like Kaite. But I don't like her very delayed punches.

In the first draft, I defeated Gluto at the end of the third level, which put me in the past version of the fourth level where you track down Nadira. However, that version of the level has an unskippable, likely unavoidable cutscene that takes several seconds. Instead, I defeat Nadira instead to enter the future version instead, which doesn't have said cutscene.

All of the techs I discovered as I recorded the first draft are now known from the get-go, and thus used more often. Combined with many general optimizations (which lightning bolts to collect, when to use speed boosts, positioning, routing, etc.), this saved me about 2000-ish frames, roughly half a minute.

The first half of a rough draft for my TAS of Time Force, the GBC game by Natsume. This uses TAS's extreme precision to wrangle the shockingly messy controls, let alone preform a few cool tricks to shave off time (Don't you dare...). Important things of note when speedrunning this game: Managing the energy meter is important, as you need a full bar to use the "select button" turbo boost. This boost may be better used later than now, to clear major jumps that are otherwise too long to get over. Each ranger has a special attack executed with a double-tap and the B button. This also uses energy, so entering the boss with at least some may be a good plan. Depending on the ranger, it can be risky to attempt, as missing it will instead make the ranger punch. And boy do they punch... some of the most delayed punching can be found in this game, especially the yellow ranger. However, these special attacks are, most importantly, the strongest moves in the game (yeah, fun fact, the chrono-saber more-or-less only increases your range afaik) Speed only affects attack speed, not movement speed, so I considered the yellow ranger over the blue ranger due to her maxed out damage.

Having just winged it, I kinda refined my technique as I went. For example: First level - Whether used on the way down, or on the way up, jump-kicking enemies is a lot easier in TAS, cutting out the time wasted by punching. Simply walking off the ledge of platforms gives a small boost as you slip off of it, for some reason. Lightning bolts are used to particularly excessive great effect here, as I tried to collect all of them for as much speed boost as possible. I also switch to the vortex blaster to deal with one wall, since I couldn't jump-melee it. Unfortunately, I couldn't avoid having to punch a few walls, including two particularly high-quality ones. Fortunately, there is a glitch that, with frame-perfect B button presses, allows me to destroy the reinforced walls completely, with only one punch, man. The first boss is the only one fought twice, getting shredded by the yellow ranger's double punch special, but not before having to recover energy with what I call the "Super-Energy" power up. For a limited time, it gives the ranger infinite energy, meaning infinite specials and speed boosts. This can be seen in the following chase, as I engage maximum overdrive at least 3 times before the Super-Energy can deplete. I also get to damage boost off of the last enemy before the rematch.

Second level - It is a very dull level. Most of it is walking right, using speed boosts asap, and making small jumps over very repetitive obstacles. A few times, you have to jump-attack an enemy to get through untouched. And yes, it's faster to try to do so over damage-boosting. You also get to see some of those special jumps where having the boost active is helpful. I managed to get down to the last hit before the boss started teleporting. Fortunately, he didn't flee too far.

Third level - I took the bottom section at the start of the second section because I felt trying to jump up costed a bit more time. ...Than having to repeatedly make small hops and losing time to hitting your head. (By the way, hitting your head in this game normally stops you for a bit, like your helmet had glue atop it. Cool, huh?) At one point, I find out a much better form of jump-attacking for most situations: tapping A then B over the course of two frames. Not holding down instead makes the ranger do an air punch (cause that works out sooo well in most games). However, the hitbox actually triggers prematurely, allowing the ranger to hit the enemy. As a bonus, an enemy can't hurt you while they're in pain, probably for the sake of certain special attacks. This also makes having to jump right where an enemy is much easier, as you'll see at some point. Accidentally used up my speed boost too fast, so I had to hit the mid-boss with some normal punches. Thank goodness I didn't make that mistake agai-- oh. The fight against Gluto has me occasionally abuse the previously learned jump punch technique, which for some reason seems to leave him with a shorter hitstun. Or am I just imagining things? I mean, I did completely wiff a double-punch and only noticed later, so maybe I'm just stupid. But even an idiot knows this is where the game branches out. This is actually a fight against Gluto and Nadira. Nadira is situated on the top of the arena, but I just ignored her. However, the catch is once you defeat one of them, the other escapes without fail. So she escapes. The boss you choose to defeat affects which version of the fourth level you play. But that's for later; Gluto grows gigantic, and we have the first megazord fight. Red Mode is chosen for its supposed increased power, and also defeating the boss in Blue Mode extends the ending cutscene. I kinda fiddled side-to-side, intimidating Gluto with a game of footsies, but the jist for (at least for the first two) megazord fights is that you get the boss into the corner and start mercilessly wailing on them. I end up doing that, and finish off with the select button, defeating Gluto with the level 1 special attack.

Fourth level - Nadira escapes to the past version of Level 4 (although I wonder if the future version is actually faster for TAS). I take the high road at the start this time to avoid a bee swarm that iirc I couldn't avoid. Then, after some speed boosts, I let the ground collapse under me so I can drop back down to the bottom route. I had to deal with a strangly agressive spider, which involved jump-kicking it and damage boosting forward. Here, I realize that you can actually hit the ceiling juuust right to slip out the corner for a small boost. After activating the door, I had to deal with the spider again. No matter how I dropped down, the spider was in the way, and I couldn't make the game knock me to the right when I get hurt by it. So I damage boosted off the snake above to try to get past with invincibility frames. This didn't work, but it somehow made the spider tuck itself into the passage by the time I came face to face with it. Or rather, feet to FACE WITH IT! BOOM! Take that, Marvel! The enemy right after? Not so much... there was two of them, one of which being another bee swarm, halfway in the ground. Nope, I can't jump-kick it from here... Instead, I pause the game to switch to the chrono-saber to deal with them. Then I slip down to trigger an unskippable cutscene where the ground crumbles under me. (Oh god, maybe I should've gone to the future instead...) Right before I land, I switch back to punching, jump-punch the enemy, damage boost off the poison cloud, and one wall jump and expert ladder jump later, and I make it to Nadira (I think. I don't quite remember if there was any other obstacles first.) Nadira LOVES to teleport everywhere and has no hesitation to do so. Fortunately, TAS allows me to hit her as soon as possible, and in huge motherloads. Also, that one spider from before was apparently radioactive, because the yellow ranger has spider-sense to track Nadira's spawn points to reach her as soon as possible. The megazord fight went about as well as Gluto's, plus with the advantage of some optimization.

This is a short TAS of Ninja Storm to demo what the Thunder Rangers can do for a speedrun, charging their shuriken(?) to deal extra damage at a far range, to blast through the first level with speed and ease.

All rangers in the game uses a sword of some kind as their main weapon, but can also switch to their alternate weapon by picking them up as a power-up from crates. Additionally, collecting a weapon of the same kind will upgrade it up to level 3. For the Thunder Rangers, this is a shuriken(?) that, in tradition with their swords, can charge up electricity to deal double damage, at the cost of small time per shot. Unlike swords, of course, this fires shots to reach enemies across the screen (although it looks more like something they should be throwing). Of course, unlike the Wind Rangers' blasters, the need to hold the B button to charge them means that there is no auto-fire. However, like their blasters, the shuriken(?) have a longer wind-up than swords, which would mean time wasted by having to stop to fire had it not been for TAS allowing a frame-perfect B press to fire at just the right altitude to hit enemies during a jump, which is used to great effect in one particular moment near the end of the last section, before the boss.

Charging the weapon is heavily used throughout the TAS whenever there's an advantage. In addition to dealing double damage, charged shots also pierce through enemies, which is used in a few spots. In addition to basic weapons, the Thunder Rangers' special weapons can also be affected by holding a button down (the R button in this case). For the Crimson Ranger, this means charging up his beetle blaster, which at full power, will take out half of the first boss's HP. In fact, with how long it takes to charge, using it at any other point outside of bosses would be very inefficient. You can however see just how well it works against bosses in this TAS alone. The boss can be taken out in two shots by lining up the ranger right behind the SP item and starting the charge. Once you use up the entire SP bar and release the R button, you can walk over the SP item to fully restore your SP, and if you're fast enough, you'll start the fight with the shot still hurtling on screen, which will hit the boss for half his health. A second fully-charged shot is unleashed with the help of TAS, taking out the boss before the battle could ever truly begin.

Using TAS, the giant fight is just as trivial with any team of rangers, effortlessly inputting the correct combinations of direction and button as called by the game.

This is a short TAS of Ninja Storm to demo what the Green Samurai Ranger can do for a speedrun, using his flame sword and Super Samurai mode to blast through the first level at record pace.

All rangers in the game uses a sword of some kind as their main weapon, but can also switch to their alternate weapon by picking them up as a power-up from crates. Additionally, collecting a weapon of the same kind will upgrade it up to level 3. In the Samurai Ranger's case, this is the flame sword, which he whips out in front of himself to deal damage from a somewhat longer range than his sword (though never able to reach the end of the screen like the other rangers'). This is normally a clunky weapon to use, since the attack lingers a small bit, and the ranger has to keep his feet firmly planted in the ground while it's in effect; However, the attack can be used much quicker by using it in the air, as landing will cancel it out. Also worth mentioning is that the flame sword can potentially hit enemies multiple times during its duration; This attribute goes unused in the TAS though.

Super Samurai mode is the Samurai Ranger's ability, which can be toggled by pressing the select button. This will slowly drain the ranger's HP to the point where a single hit will cost a life. But this drain is ultimately not fatal, and by the power of TAS, no hits will be taken anyways. The effect of this mode are very beneficial to a speed run, as not only will it cap the ranger's weapon level to its max (allowing the flame sword to reach its max range), but it will also double his power output, allowing him to one-shot red enemies, which normally take two hits in normal mode.

Finally, of course, TAS makes the western duel-esque Megazord fights completely trivial, allowing for frame 1 inputs of the necessary combinations of button and direction.