Finally, a TAS of the original Mega Man Zero!
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Cancels missions (dies?) to save time
- "Warp" run (cancels missions)
- Glitch Abuse
Note on the ROM: GoodGBA says I have a bad dump, but this has apparently not been a problem in the past and hopefully it won't be a problem here.
To explain the "warp" concept (which might be new for a Mega Man game), Mega Man Zero (MMZ) is mission-based. If you fail one specific mission (where the army is building up in the desert) you will trigger the base invasion that marks the start of the final four stages. Cancelling a mission counts as failing, thus by cancelling only two missions (the Shuttle mission to unluck the other desert missions, the Army Massing mission) you can go straight to the final stages and skip all the other stages.
The warp run does provide some challenges a non-warp run wouldn't face, namely in weapon leveling. Because the run is so short, it is borderline impractical to even try leveling the Z-Sabre to acquire the "charge" skill since each Z-Sabre strike causes four frames of lag (translating into possibly half a minute of extra lag.) Instead, the buster is primarily focused on with the intention of making up for the lack of a charging Z-Sabre by simply using the Z-Buster.
Notes on glitches abused in this run:
- The famously broken standing-slash glitch
- Like most of the later Mega Man games, bosses have an invincibility period where they're flashing white. If standing still and slashing with the Z-Sabre, the attack will cause the boss to have an incredibly short invincibility period. This is caused by the "triple slash" ; basically, the first hit only causes a short flashing period so that you can hit him with the second slash, even if you don't have it yet. Naturally, this means the second slash also has the same effect
- Exit room on the same frame a scripted sequence starts (during base invasion)
- This gives me a small boost in time, although the sequence still happens.
Some non-glitch tricks:
- L+R+A+B+Select+Start
- Completely resets the game, instantly bringing you to the starting screen. Nitsuja pointed this out to us because it shortens the start time.
- Standing on dangerous platforms
- Just a little fun, standing on Anubis Necromancess's pillars or on Final X's spears.
- Rain boost
- Since the second "rain maker" in Aztec Falcon's stage pushes you in the direction you want to go, not destroying it allows you to get to him really fast.
Some notes on boss luck manipulation:
Manipulating luck for boss fights is really hard. The only way I've found to really change what the boss is going to do next is to manipulate how far from them you are and possibly also what direction you're facing.
Other notes:
Golem Battle
The Golem battle has a total of four ways to trigger the Z-Sabre sequence:
- Enough time passes
- Enough damage is dealt to the golem
- Enough damage is dealt to Zero
- Zero gets hit and wouldn't be able to survive another hit
naturally, this run uses the fourth one.
Leviathan text
The Leviathan rematch arena contains a problematic setup. Basically, if you skip the text as usual, Leviathan launches her first attack higher than you can standing-slash her, but only by a little bit. So, by delaying the text, I purposely set her up in order to slash away. The only options were:
- Wait approximately 400-500 frames for her to come down low enough
- Wait approximately... how many frames I did for her to be high enough so I could get off of the platform and force her lower that way.
First X Battle
There is one pause during the "juggling" in the corner ; this is because X doesn't like being juggled and he does an air attack... unless he can land on the ground (although he can immediately be juggled back into the air.) He only has enough health for two of these opportunities, apparently. The second one I used to get Zero into the center of the room (which is good because dashing is much faster than walking.)
Going past credits
If you don't save after the credits you can't start a hard mode game. I kind of wanted to leave that option open in this run, although if that is really problematic I can just end it at 66630 instead which would drop the time from 22:16.5 to 18:30.5
Anyways, enjoy!