NES Rockin' Kats "Channel X" by AnS in 01:03.43 has reigned for 10 years, probably because of AnS's comments in his submission:
- "I tried everything I know, even disassembled several parts of code but got nothing."
- "If it isn't the game's limit of improvement then it is my limit of patience."
- "Now to improve 1 frame you must spend insanely great amount of time, and it's not guaranteed that this won't make you lose several frames later (lag can accumulate by little portions)."
- "So, I think this kind of situation can be called frame-perfectness."
I took those comments as a challenge. I think that the best way to describe it is that I performed an audit. I was not aware of any possible improvements before I started playing.
This movie improves the previous version by 27 frames.
X-0: Password Pain. 0 frames improved.
This password screen has to rank as one of the most difficult in all of gaming. I had thought that I might find a time-saver, but AnS knew all the tricks.
X-1: Vertical Verde. 11 frames improved.
I made minor changes to the movements in the lower part of the stage that led to a different route at the upper part. My route ended up being faster. I went back and tweaked a few more movements to save a few more frames.
X-2: Spike Scroller. 7 frames improved.
I spent a long time on this stage. Probably 75% of the time that I worked on this run was on this stage. My initial ideas all lost frames. Then I discovered a very interesting glitch that allows walking on the spikes, but it was still slower and thus isn't seen in the run:
Finally, I made a breakthrough by changing some things at the last part of the swinging section.
X-3: Yanking Yellow. 3 frames improved.
This stage is the least painful. Some very subtle movement changes near the top saved 3 frames.
X-4: Sewer Side. 0 frames improved.
The horizontal stages are more difficult than the vertical ones, in my view. I can tell that AnS spent a lot of time working on this one. Anything that I tried to change resulted in lost time. I was satisfied just to get the same result that AnS did.
X-5: Card Climber. 3 frames improved.
I shaved off 1 frame in the first shaft. I saved another 2 frames near the end. I had thought that I would be able to improve the route on this stage. But the technique that AnS used is the best. This image illustrates why:
X-6: Broadside Boss. 3 frames improved.
I saved 2 lag frames before anything happened. I also noticed an extra lag frame after hit #28 on the boss that I successfully removed. I mostly did what AnS did. I was unable to improve the attack technique at the end. Give AnS a lot of credit for coming up with it. Really brilliant stuff when you see frame-by-frame why he did it.
Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
fsvgm777: Processing.