Submission #1719: Cardboard's NES Rygar in 07:08.20

Prologue:

It was a rainy night when Rygar, one of the many forgotten heroes of the NES-era, suddenly received a call from the Hero Council. Ligar had returned to Argool, closed the door of Peace and created your average video game plot chaos.

Rygar got on his feet and prepared for the great journey, but just as he was about to leave he got another call. It was the head of the Heroes Fundings, Mr. Mo Ney.

Ney: "Rygar... it seems that we have a slight problem. Due to missions where the heroes get all their expensive gear from the start and missions which demanded many heroes the Heroes Fundings are a bit... short of... cash."

Rygar: "SAY WHAT?"

Ney: "Now don't take this personally! It has been a rough year for all of us and you are not the first hero who have to complete his quest with insufficient gear. Remember that Mario did it."

Rygar: "But... This is LIGAR we're talking about dammit. An overgrown turtle is my FIRST boss, not last! You can't expect me to pull this off with no items at all!"

Ney: "I can, I will and I do! You are a hero, you brought this on yourself. Fix this mess!"

These horrible news brought Rygar down so much that he decided to spend the last of his money on booze rather than gear such as the Grappling Weapon or Wind Pulley.

This resulted in Rygar waking up with a hangover from Hell itself the next morning, but as he looked at his beaten face in the mirror, he realized that he's not exactly getting any younger, so he decided that he had to give this a try. After all, he hadn't been invited to the latest Hero Party and missed his chance of getting some with Samus, so this was probably his last chance to return to the hall of heroes.

The run itself

Choice of ROM and Category

"U-ROM? Seriously? But what about the river?"

Yes. U-ROM. It is faster when slaying Bargans (The robots in Lapis) and Ligar due to "shorter amount of seconds in the air" (Rygar jumps for 60 frames in both versions, and of course, on the U-ROM this is a second, on the E-ROM, more than a second). The lost time while passing the river is more than re-gained during the slaying.

"Allright so what about the category? Why do we need a new one?"

I feel that it's justified to add another category for this run, since it shows a completely new side of Rygar, not needing any items at all. This minimalist-run is also not at all long, and the leveling is pretty short. The Ligar-battle is a bit long yes, but yeah. Completing Rygar in 7:08 (25692) minutes without getting any items is pretty cool, and shows even more of the game's broken side.

The shortcut to Lapis through Eruga's Chamber was something I stumbled upon when goofing around with the pass-through-screen-glitching used by Walker Boh in the Gran Mountains. This allows the player to warp to Lapis, and by using the death-by-door-glitch, eventually all the way to Ligar himself since I don't have equipment enough to get out through that hidden door, and even if I did, I'd be stuck since Ligar is below the platform.

Much like Walker Boh's warp run, this one contains a lot of Bargan-slaying, which is a must. If I had warped directly to Ligar when reaching Belzar in Lapis, Ligar would have taken 10 - 20 or so minutes to kill. The Bargan-slaying is pretty fast paced most of the time anyways.

Also, powering up the Disc Armor by using star-points does NOT increase Rygar's strength so that is not something I have to worry about. Besides picking up and using stars would kinda go against my goals. That being said, I also lose all stars when dying.

Special thanks to

Suggested screenshot, frame 6879:

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. I'm not sure I got the right ROM though. (I tried Rygar (U).nes, which was the closest match to what you wrote.) Well, here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.