Submission #2925: Rolanmen1 & FractalFusion's PSX Mega Man X6 in 25:34.02

Rolanmen1's and FractalFusion's Mega Man X6 "Any%" TAS in 25:34.

This is an improvement of FractalFusion's TAS, improved by 00:19.00 seconds. In-game time is 9:39.

Recorded using: PCSX RR v0.1.3

This game is Mega Man game which was rushed, with untranslated voices and bad translation. Some bosses were poorly designed and look like a mess as well. Some stages are also poorly designed, being impossible to pass with the wrong armor or character, or structure randomization. The difficulty of the game is very hard, even on Normal.

See the all stages run for the kind of stuff the game throws at you. Things exist just to kill you, that's for sure. Not to mention that Xtreme mode turns entire stages into enemy soup.

For more information, read the previous run's submission text.

There are 3 ways to reach the fortress stages:

The second method is fastest, but requires beating a Maverick, since High Max requires a special weapon in order to be damaged. Along the way, the run obtains Zero.

This is the route used:

Yammar Option is a useful weapon, as it gives Zero a ranged attack. Furthermore, X can easily hit enemies with the charged attack, and by wobbling so that the fireflies go in and out of the target, it hits the enemy repeatedly, assuming no invincibility period.

Contact is strange in this game. Apparently an attack only makes contact if no other attacks are in it (hence the need to wobble with Yammar Option). This is also related to the main SDC method in this run, which does 2 damage every 5 frames.

As in all other PSX Mega Man games, X can use both a special weapon and X-Buster at the same time.

Duck dashing and saber climbing are tricks that saved time during the run. Saber climbing, which X can only use, eliminates X's recoil from the wall when jumping.

Most of the improvement here was from duck dashing and saber climbing.

We planned to go on this stage as X because Yammark's power was really helpful for Infinity Mijinion's stage. We lost some frames, but more time is saved afterwards. One of the big enemies which Zero can jump cannot be jumped by X and so must be destroyed.

Now, the lost time is made up. Charged Yammark Option allows X to quickly destroy Illumina's Cables. Although the previous run went to Shield Sheldon's stage to get Zero, this stage proved to be more short. Passing through this stage without Yammark Option was not an option though, since X would have to pass using his Saber.

And now we have to return to the same stage, this time, to beat High Max. High Max is a special boss, because he can ONLY be damaged using certain weapons, and the initial weapons don't affect him. He only goes berserk when he has 16 or less health.

Zero finally comes to kick some ass. As you can notice, at the beginning, X couldn't pass the spike walls unless he gets the Jumper part, so Zero has to use his double jump ability to skip through them, another new trick is the Ice Glitch, when falling in an ice floor, releasing the forward button just before touching it, allows the character to move forward alone, this combined with duck dashing proves to be really helpful. Against Nightmare Mother (the boss) it is faster to use Yammark Option to hit the boss's eye instead of the Saber.

X was used mainly because this stage changes depending on the character, after beating the first boss. The stage changes to an Acid Rain Scenario (as X) or as a Junk Compressor Scenario (as Zero), which is the main reason of using X, Zero can also skip half of the stage, but, the Junk Compressor part would take more frames than saved. There is an old trick used in the previous TAS against High Max, by destroying his shields twice, he goes to Berserk Mode, allowing X to damage him faster. As for Gate, if the character destroys his spheres as quick as possible, Gate instantly throws another right after getting hit, but to do this, X needs to get hit, this was done until X's HP was down to 1.

This is the classical "Beat the 8 bosses" stage. Zero uses a technique called SDC (Saber Dash Cancel), which allows him to use the 2 first saber attack from his triple combo to harm the enemy quickly and cancel with a dash and attack again. Repeating this process makes the boss fight realy quick, since these 2 attacks doesn't trigger invincibility barrier on bosses.

A new glitch was found against Phoenix, when he is about to use his special attack, he is SDCable (normaly he isn't). Mijinion is a unSDCable boss, is better to use the Z-Buster in this case. After a few other bosses, Scaravich comes, this fight was shorter by a good amount of frames by making him get hit by Yammark, instead of letting him go offscreen to come back. 6 frames were sacrificed to manipulate Metal Shark Player, this attack is faster than his usual dive attack. 7 frames were sacrificed to manipulate Wolfang, his ice ball attack makes him stand still, allowing Zero to SDC him.

After a short passage comes Sigma. His second battle was faster because of a new way to beat him, using the Z-Buster.

Rolanmen1 Comments: Wow, working with someone like FractalFusion saved me great problems, because of his knowledge about this game, his helpful advices saved some difficulty, but this game is hard to TAS AND to optimise, but overall, I liked the final result. My thanks goes to Atma and Mothrayas, Atma was already familiar with Megaman PSX TASing, letting me know some anomalities from this area wich is was new. And Mothrayas for helping on some bosses and letting me understand how the system works.

FractalFusion Comments: I didn't do too much of the run. I did Infinity Mijinion stage (visit 2), a little bit of Gate 1 boss, and part of Gate 2. The biggest trick I found was to spawn the vertical platform earlier than the last run did in Gate 2. You'll know where it is because it looks like it wastes time even though it doesn't.

What pleased me is that Rolanmen1 is as much a thinker as I am. Discovering tricks in TASes often comes down to "What if I did this?". In other words, thinking outside the box.

DarkKobold: I haven't judged a PSX run yet, so I'll claim this.

DarkKobold: Accepting as an improvement to the published run.

Aktan: Processing....