This is a Tool Assisted Speedrun of Ys III - Wanderers from Ys on the Sega Genesis. This run completes the game as fast as possible, abuses glitches and takes damage to save time. There are no speed/entertainment trade-offs made in this run.
Ys III is a fast paced side-scrolling Action RPG in which the player, Adol, must collect 4 statues to stop King Macquire from reviving Demanicus. A traditional leveling system is in place where defeating enemies grants experience and gold to level up and buy items.
This run abuses an amulet glitch to reach maximum level before the first boss. The amulet is an item that will kill all weak enemies in a room. Once the amulet is used 3 times it will disintegrate and leave the player's inventory. If the player levels up by using the amulet for the third time their exp, gold, health and ring power will be set to their maximum values. This glitch does not work with a shield equipped.
One of the first rooms in the game has over 100 exp worth of enemies and is visited twice during the first section of the story. Since 300 exp is required for the first level up, if all starting gold is spent on the amulet the glitch can be performed at the start of the game with minimal extra movement. The glitch is left as late as possible without losing time as surviving at a lower level is more entertaining. Since all starting money is spent on the amulet, the first area of the game is done with no equipment.
By performing this glitch, the early bosses in the game can be beaten almost instantly. Since damaging the bosses is sometimes impossible if Adol is at a low level, abusing the amulet glitch skips long and repetitive experience grinding.
The power ring is an item that doubles attack power for a limited amount of time. In some boss fights the ring wasn't used since pausing to equip it was slower than time saved by dealing extra damage. This trade-off was tested for every boss, and it is usually better to beat the earlier bosses without the power ring equipped. As a result I delay obtaining the power ring until the second trip to the mine, saving a few seconds of travel time.
Adol's health is replenished after boss fights but unfortunately the animation for this takes longer with less health. It's possible to defeat some bosses quicker by taking damage during the fight, but the extra time added to the health recharge made this strategy slower overall. There is no animation to replenish health after the last boss so a lot of damage is taken in that fight to save time. I was able to pull off the last few hits quickly by putting Adol in a technically fatal situation but landing the last hit right before he would have died.
Many bosses in the game move to a random point on the screen after a certain amount of time. The bosses are manipulated to stay close to their previous position, often with no loss of time.
One thing that makes the game hard to TAS is that enemies can desync if earlier input is changed. If a frame is saved in an early room and the input is perfectly re-synced, later enemies can have completely different patterns.
This was made on BizHawk 1.10.0 primarily using TAStudio, with help of a RAM watch with some values such as player position and boss health that I found.
I would like to thank Isotarge who provided a lot of technical help with BizHawk and gave advice for the TAS.
ars4326: Claimed for judging!
ars4326: Hello, The8bitbeast. Good work, all around, on this one. The Amulet Glitch was an initial surprise at the begininng; and while it did end up making things a tad predictable, it nonetheless allowed the run to maintain a quick and enjoyable pace, throughout. The tactical & technical details were nice to see, as well. Congrats on your first published run!
Accepting for publication to Moons!
Spikestuff: Publishing.