Submission #4576: Randil & Alyosha's NES Kid Icarus in 21:05.75

Kid Icarus is a classic NES platformer where the player is Pit the angel who is on a quest to defeat Medusa. There have been several past TASes of this game. The current run incorporates recently discovered glitches which allow zips and screen wraps which save over a minute over the previous run.

Game objectives

Comments

The RTA version of the current run has been around for some months. That run already incorporates all of the major glitches used here, the primary difference being TAS precision. The overall route is mostly identical to Randil's previous run aside from the new zips and screen wraps, as well as slightly better optimization.

Stage by stage comments

1-1: 6 frames saved

Nothing Special here, slightly more optimized.

1-2: 45 frames saved

Better optimization as well as jumping at the right moment to load a platform earlier saves a bit of time here.

1-3: 17 frames saved

Again slightly better platforming here saves some frames.

1-4: 267 frames saved

The first big zip of the game. I also saved 2 frames on the boss fight : )

2-1: 21 frames lost

Unfortunately RNG comes back to bite me in this level. I lose a damage boost as well as have a slightly higher score.

2-2: 86 frames saved

The first of the screen wraps that comes from the RTA run.

2-3: 240 frames saved

Another screen wrap that saves a few seconds.

2-4: 3438 frames saved

Most of the savings comes from this level. A zip skips most of it right near the beginning!

3-1: 0 frames saved

I couldn't do better then Randil here.

3-2: 11 frames saved

This time the RNG helps me as I get 2 free damage boosts.

3-3: 1 frame lost

I am quite honestly not entirely sure how.

3-4: 217 frames saved

2 zips right near the end of the game (not done in the RTA run)

4-1: 0 frames saved

I couldn't really improve Randil's autoscroller, there really isn't that much to work with.

Other comments

As is turns out, this run came down to the level 3 boss. While I don't know the specifics, his pattern seems to be decided by a rather large frame rule. When I first implemented the 2 zips in 3-4, it completely ruined the pattern. It was only by chance that when I went back to optimize it more the better pattern emerged. Then I went back to try to save a few frames in previous levels, only to have the pattern ruined again by a mere 12 frame savings elsewhere. So I'm unsure to what extent this run can be further improved, had I gotten unlucky its possible I would even have needed to ADD frames, as the bad pattern for that boss is quite significantly slower then the good one.

Thanks to Randil for pointing this game out to me

feos: Accepting this improvement.

fsvgm777: Processing.

adelikat: This run was made on a bad dump:
Kid Icarus (UE) [b1].nes,
SHA1: 11713A9514934B60724960DB9FD1F367ABCC8D07
MD5: D464E3E3877A759B8053210BAAEBC890

But this run syncs on the good dump, so I cataloged it as the good dump instead.