User Files from MamaLuigiMomsLotsaSpaghetti

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.