User File #47393292247559483

(Note: this file is for the Japanese version, Rockman 2.)

This is a popular category to run RTA (I myself run it), but I've never seen a TAS of it. I believe there are two reasons why:

The zips in Mega Man 2 are some of the coolest tricks in speedrunning. Who would want to remove them??
The ancient SDA rules make this category a bit ambiguous.

Regarding the first point: Well, I think zipless shows off a few neat things not seen in a regular TAS. For instance, WOODMAN'S ENTIRE STAGE.

Regarding the second point, the rules of this run are as follows:

No zips
No delay scrolls
No screen wraps
All other glitches are fair game

This might more acurately be called, "No Major Glitches." But whatever.

Encode

(Link to video)

(Thanks, feos!)

Blunders

The Quick Man fight

I'm pretty embarassed about this. I take damage twice... Not for no reason, mind you. I do it to manipulate Quick Man's position and take advantage of i-frames. But I still feel like this fight could be a lot tighter. I could use some advice.

Frame data:

   (1st Hit)
   40 (+20 frames)
   20
   20
   20
   20
   20
   20
   20
   58 (+38 frames)
   20
   24 (+4 frames)
   22 (+2 frames)
   39 (+19 frames)
   
   Total time loss: 83 frames

Crash Man's Stage

In the opening room, I didn't realize you could jump up the first ladder without getting hit, so I utilized a unique buster strat. But apprently we've known about this for 15 years, so...

Minor Mistakes

These don't seem worth redoing, but I'd surely fix them if I did redo the run:

Shitty RNG for Air Man's last shot
Didn't think to shoot the drills in Metal
I don't think I handle mech damage boosts quite right
Why does no one ever change weapons in the boss rooms?
Made an unecessary landing in Bubble
Didn't test many Item-1/2 routes for Crash

Good Things

Buster-only Quick Man strats

For some reason, I thought Quick Man was immune to the air shooter when I was doing this stage. But ellonija mentioned that the old TASes used to use the air shooter? It sounded pretty dope: use air to kill all the enemies, just like RTA, then defeat Quick Man with some super finicky and cool air shots.

But I've done the math, and I believe my uninformed buster-only route is faster:

Air Shooter and Buster both do the same damage to Quick Man, and a perfect fight with both weapons would take the same amount of time, so that doesn't figure into our calculations. As I defeat the mechs at the end, I spend a total of 28 frames not holding right. The menuing to switch from P to A takes 45 frames, so the question becomes: Is it 17 frames slower to do all those jumps when shooting the fire head guys?

Well, Mega Man spends 246 frames in the air during that section. If we assume the air shooter route spends all those frames on the ground (which it doesn't; there are several jumps in that section), we can do some worst case math.

   air speed = 01.50
   ground speed = 01.60
   difference = 00.10 (that's 1/16).
   00.10 * 246 = 15.375

This means the buster route ends up 15.375 pixels behind the air shooter route. On the ground, we can make those pixels up in 14.47 frames, call it 15.

So, in this situation which is worse than reality, the buster route is still 2 frames faster than the air shooter route. That is CLOSE! But in reality it's even faster-er, so I believe the buster route is optimal.

Ladder Fidgeting

Not sure if this is a known trick, but it's a technique that provides a way to ascend slightly on ladders in some circumstances. When climbing ladders, shooting any weapon locks you in a shooting animation in which you cannot gain height. Unlike Mega Man 1, letting go of the ladder and re-grabbing it does not cancel this animation. However, there is a trick to gain a pixel or two that I call the Ladder Fidget, which can be performed as follows:

Do the following 3 frames of input: A, nothing, Up. This is a frame perfect ladder fidget.
Check if your Y position is higher up.
Repeat the process until the animation ends, or you see you've stopped gaining height.

I can't figure out a pattern for when you'll rise and when you'll fall--It's all trial and error at this point. But I believe vertical velocity is being stored from before. It looks pretty silly when executed, and in fact, it started off as a "siliness tech" to pass the time in Crash Man's stage, until I realized Mega Man was actually ascending!