Uggh... Sorry, guys... for canceling and resubmitting AGAIN, but it turns out I made an annoying mistake in my movie when moving from the Emerald Passage to the Ruby Passage. It's a piddly flaw, but it stood out like a sore thumb. =( Thus, it was necessary to hex it out and resubmit it.
It's a two-second improvement, though. Yay?
Here is my actual Wario Land 4 Hard Mode submission.
It's 35 seconds longer than JuanValdez's run, but played in Hard Mode, which gives Wario a significant amount of extra work to do. If I had played this in Hard Mode AND beaten Juan's time, that would have been really something, but alas, I'm almost completely sure that's not possible. I came pretty close, though! My goodness...
My original submission (#1347: josh_l.'s GBA Wario Land 4 in 1:05:41.82) was pretty optimized, and I planned to just hexedit it to add in a few techniques, but I started redoing the run, and it became more and more apparent to me that there was a lot more to fix than just a few things. This, I redid everything. For those who saw the original submission, just about every level has some new technique in it. Nearly three minutes have been cut off, which is more than I imagined possible.
Again, some information about the game:
Plot: Wario's out looking for treasure, as usual. This time, there's a princess that needs rescuing, but Wario doesn't know about her, nor does he care!
Why the game is great: The level design in this game is impeccable. Every stage has its own unique design and its own unique set of strategies. It's a long game, but the variety keep things interesting all the way through. Wario has a lot of moves, and he'll need them all to get through the game.
The game's worst feature: About 20 minutes of non-skippable between-level sequences. Yes, twenty. I'm so sorry. When you watch this video, you'll need to make heavy use of the space bar!
Also, the ROM of the game is a bit hard to come by. You'll need the clean version of the ROM to watch the movie. You'll know if you have the wrong one if you have to click through some lame "hacker" intro screen before the game begins.
Because of this, I'll see if I can make a temporary movie of the file and upload it somewhere. I'll edit this space accordingly once I find out if I can or can't do it. (edit: that would be no. I try everything and I always wind up with a movie over a gig in size. =|)
This is my most ambitious TAS yet. I hope you like it!