Vectorman is considered to be one of the last great games for the Genesis platform. The hero is a robot with rocket-boosters in his shoes and a photon gun strapped to his hand, set to stop another, somewhat crazy, robot from destroying Earth. Oh, and the crazy robot has a nuclear warhead bolted to him.
This is my second version of this game, and although I believed my first version was of publishable quality, I can see now exactly how wrong I was. My first run was by no means bad, but I utilized a ton of new information provided to me by nitsuja, upthorn, and IdeaMagnate, which helped me improve it by over 54 seconds. Each level was improved, some of them very substantially thanks to RAM viewing for velocity. Some time was saved by utilizing different routes (most notably Day 6), and there was a bit more advantageous luck manipulation, most obvious in Day 7. Improved boss fights also probably account for a little less than half of the overall time saved.
This game has been known to suffer some desynching issues, so make sure you use the right ROM (World version, denoted by a (W) after the ROM name) and correct version of Gens just to make sure. I had a few problems with desynchs so I hope things work for everyone. Here’s the important info.Gens9Z_20070209 was used, and I didn’t change any settings except remapping the keys. No warps or passwords were used. Played on the hardest level.
My goal was to complete the game as fast as possible, and I take damage where it saves me time.
In my work to complete these two runs, I have compiled a fairly extensive list of data about this game, its physics, its bosses, and general tips to use. If I get around to asking Bisqwit for wiki editor privileges (or if he's reading this), I'll start up a Vectorman wiki page with all my fun stuff for anyone interested.
With all that said, I do believe this run can be improved a bit more by:
- Subpixel optimization using the RAM values listed in the discussion thread by Upthorn. I only learned what they were for after I was about half way done with this run, so I didn't utilize them, but I'm sure they could come in handy.
- Not taking damage in Day 3, and using the extra life to damage Borealis better at first. I'm not sure if this would work (either the avoiding damage, or causing more to the boss), but it's worth looking into.
- BETTER MANIPULATION OF THE DAMN LADDERS IN DAY 15. Seriously, those things piss me off and could be the source for at least a few more seconds.
With that said I think this run can hit sub 11:30 status, but much more than that would take some new technique that I don't know about at this point. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the movie! Now it's time to put my knowledge to more use with a Vectorman 2 improvement.
adelikat: Nice improvements. It is obvious the author did his homework this time, and it shows in this quality TAS. Accepting for publication.
adelikat: Vectorman games seem to be a pain for encoding but I will give this one a shot.