Submission #4696: jlun2's GB After Burst "1P VS mode" in 05:42.74

An obscure single screened action game where the main objective is to attack the enemy orb. However, a little known fact is that the VS Mode also reaches the ending, so that is used instead.

What was supposed to be a short TAS to take a break at Jurassic Park (NES) ended up taking a lot longer than I thought. I was going to do the normal mode, but then 30 stages of unskippable transitions, score tallies and clunky controls drove me away. The VS mode only had 15 stages, so I thought it was going to be a breeze. >.<

Stage 1

Pretty straight forward stage. This enemy can only shoot one at a time like yourself, so the only difference is that it has more health than you.

Stage 2

Same as above, but with an additional health along with the ability to jump at the same time as you. Note that it only jumps with you if it was already on the ground, so it can be manipulated to jump to a bullet.

Stage 3

This NPC can in 4 directions. It chose to go down for some reason, and gets stuck.

Stage 4

This enemy can shot 2 bullets at once in a straight line. It bounces around the screen, but isn't much of a problem.

Stage 5

This UFO-esque object can only move horizontally, but can shoot 3 bullets at once. The bullets are lag inducing, and it's increased health doesn't help.

Stage 6

This is an upgrade from the above. It initially shoots 2 bullets at once diagonally, but if hit at certain frames, it can shoot over 9 bullets at once: [dead link removed]

I had to pause a bit so it goes up before shooting. I can technically shoot earlier using a lower charge, but it would hit later.

Stage 7

This...tank thing shoots 3 bullets at once, has 8 health and only jumps to get over terrian. I know the movement looked clunky, but once again, if I shot earlier, the bullet would land later, so I had to wait. This may be improveable with better placed shots.

Stage 8

2 soilders appear this time. I waited a bit to use one bullet to hit them both, saving ~29 frames compared to shooting 5 times.

Stage 9

I couldn't get the 2 bots to overlap, so I had to shoot 4 times.

Stage 10

I really tried my hardest trying to shoot both at once, but this stage refused to break. This is one possible improvement that I'm unable to implement.

Stage 11

I simultaneously shot both enemies 3 times. I had to manipulate the soldier to jump at specific times along with some tricky positioning in order to pull this off. Despite all the lag from the triple bullets, this still managed to be ~115 frames faster than focusing on one npc first.

Stage 12

Despite the fact it looks rather bad waiting at the beginning, it turned out 100 frames faster to land 3 simultaneous hits than to shoot 8 times. If I moved closer at first, it would've made it impossible to hit both the soldier and UFO at the same time.

Stage 13

This was the stage I discovered the ability to hit 2 targets in one shot, so thankfully the game is quite splice-friendly.

Stage 14

I sadly only managed to make a pair overlap once. If anyone wonders why the front soldier wasn't hit first, it was because for some odd reason it would've messed with it's movement, disallowing me from jumping over. I'm not quite happy with how it turned out, but I'm quite stumped on how to make it better.

Stage 15

Only the egg can be hit. The arms have 50 HP and are also invincible. This was a lot easier despite the larger health and small weak point because it never shoots.

Ram Addresses

Lag

This game lags 3-8 times per input. It's absolutely dreadful and makes 4/5 of the movie loading and lag.

Shooting

Hold "B" to charge up. The higher the charge, the straighter the projectile moves. You and the enemies can only have a set amount of ammo on the screen at one time. For you, its annoyingly only 1; there's also a cooldown immediately after a shot lands on some target. This makes it useful to make sure the bullet lands on the NPC ASAP. At the later stages, it's also faster at times to wait a while to shoot multiple things in 1 shot. This can save over 100 frames due to how slow the shooting is.

Stage layout

The stage layout only changes either after advancing a stage, or dying and restarting. The quickest way to die is to press A+B+Start at the same time, but since the loading is slow, it's not used at all.

Possible improvements

You can't aim down. You can however, aim up. Even though this was never utilized in the TAS, I can't say if its completely useless since its's potentially possible to manipulate NPC's better to shoot down 2+ bots at once.

Nach: Man this game is bad. It's hard to believe someone made such a slow game. It's amazing how fast you completed it compared to some real time records. Unfortunately when played so quickly, there ends up being way more fluff than actual gameplay. This appears to be the fastest way to complete the game, but not very entertaining. Accepting to vault.

RGamma: Publishing...