Behold, for this is... The Absolute Superplay: Six seconds faster than the previous T.A. Death TAS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZaq0jQcZVQ) by use of spamming wall as many wall kicks as plausible, which allow 1 frame to be shaved off of several piece placements (there is even a single piece in which 2 frames are saved!). 1 frame might not be much, but out of 999 levels with each piece counting as one level (well, line clears also count as levels...), it adds up. Greater stacking efficiency (no overhangs that require pieces to be moved backwards, and more Tetris line clears) also saves time. This TAS also makes the goal of achieving all gold medals (except for the AC medal, which would require too much RNG and would also tank the time), with an extra challenge at the end.
Comments by section:
Lv000: Believe it or not, this section actually took me the most time to complete. As I was still getting the hang of using kicks to save time, there were a lot of places that I missed kicks (leading me to redo the entire section later), and a lot of kicks that I tried to do that actually didn't save any time. Even though this is technically the slowest section, I feel the most confident about my performance in this one.
Lv100: I must say, this was by far the most frustrating section of them all. Getting the CO medal in TGM2 is actually really hard, mainly because of the lack of a hold button. It took me no less than four hours of pain and suffering to achieve the medal...
Lv200: In Lv100 and Lv200, there is no time penalty for clearing non-Tetrises. Thusly, I take advantage of this to build an optimal stack to get the silver RE medal. However, I feel like going for the RE medal actually made my time slower because I didn't get to do as many kicks due to the flatter stacking required.
Lv300: To get the gold RE medal, four recoveries need to be performed. The third one is here, but since the medal doesn't change you can't tell. I actually didn't intend to get the gold RE medal, I just ended up getting it due to how much I held back from non-Tetrises, as now that we are out of section 100-299, time will be lost for clearing anything other than a Tetris. However, I still end up clearing a double and a triple because of an I drought towards the end of the section, which prevented me from ending the section in a Tetris.
Lv400: At this point the TAS reaches nearly its max speed, and it's blazingly fast. At this point you can't see any of the kicks at all unless you watch the video in slow motion.
Lv500-899: In T.A. Death, reaching Lv500 in under 3:25 awards the grade M. Of course, this time requirement has been obliterated, as the entire run is under that time. There is a strange bug that only seems to occur when TASing and in sections 300+ in which the DAS charge, which allows the piece to instantly move from the spawn, can be completely lost. I have not figured out what exactly causes that bug, but I have spent a lot of time working around it, making sure to never let pieces get "stuck" due to no DAS charge. I think it happened around 3-5 times in the entire TAS, but I was able to circumvent it each time.
Lv900: As we are in the final section, there isn't quite a time penalty for clearing non-Tetrises. What's most important is having the least amount of uncleared lines, as that allows me to reach 999 faster. Thus, I break the no non-Tetrises promise (well, there were a few in the earlier sections due to I drought) and instead prioritize downstacking towards the end of the section, finishing with only 2 uncleared lines and a time of 2:42:63. While the main game is over and the time is set, there is still the credits. In T.A. Death, reaching level 999 awards the grade GM, with absolutely no other requirements.
Credits: Ordinarily, the credits in T.A. Death has a set length, does not increment the timer, and has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the player has won or lost. Originally, I was just going to play really silly here as a result, but then I thought that I couldn't call this "The Absolute Superplay" if I didn't go for the Secret GM durng the credits. It requires the player to build a > shape out of holes in rows 19/21 of the board, with the final hole in column 19 row 1 being covered by a block. Secret GM is very tricky to build, and is even more difficult in T.A. Death's 20G. Interestingly, when building a secret grade in the credits, the secret grade is only detected if the player doesn't top out. Therefore, the entire shape has to be finished in sync with the end of the credits. Normally, the secret grade is detected even if the player tops out (blocks that kill the player are even counted for it), so this reduces the possible piecement places by a little bit. Anyways, with the perfectly timed Secret GM, this run is a Double GM with five gold medals.
Medals:
AC Medal: One all clear is performed at the start for the Bronze AC medal. As previously mentioned, there is too much RNG involved to get a higher medal than that, so the AC medal remains bronze for the entire run.
ST Medal: In T.A. Death, Gold ST is awarded when any section time is less than 42 seconds. Because each section time is less than 42 seconds (the first section being 28 seconds, and the final 5 seconds being around 12-13 seconds), it is actually re-awarded every section.
SK Medal: In T.A. Death, only 17 Tetrises are required to get Gold SK. In any TAS, Gold ST and Gold SK are guaranteed, but not so much in RTA.
RE Medal: Four recoveries are required to get the Gold RE medal. The first three are in sections 100-300, and the final one is in 500. While I've come close, no more recoveries were performed in this run.
RO Medal: RO is the funniest medal. Every 3 sections is worth one level of the RO medal (with the Silver RO being 4 sections). It requires the rotation/piece ratio to be at least 6:5. While I do a lot of extra rotations due to all the kicks, it's not quite enough to get the RO medal. To make up for the missing rotations, silent rotations are performed every frame with the O piece. Despite everything, it's actually really realistic to get the RO medal in an RTA run.
CO Medal: To get the Gold CO medal, at least a 7 combo is required. However, singles do not increment the combo counter, nor do they reset it. To get Gold CO, an extra tall stack, one worth of the RE medal, with a funnel-like hole at the side must be built in order to get enough line clears. After filling almost every block in the board, and even placing a piece in the spawn area, I'm just barely able to get Gold CO. It's pretty satisfying, though.
- Submission note: I believe it was written somewhere that the emulator should be paused when a recording is started. However, I did not pause the emulator when recording. I found that there was no issue with the recording as a result, but it will not play if the emulator is paused when the recording is loaded (it will play if the emulator is unpaused).
FractalFusion: Fixed game name and added Youtube encode already posted by the submitter in the thread.
Masterjun: Judging.
Masterjun: This is a great fast-paced movie. The single frame improvements by using wall kicks were a great idea. It's a shame the All Clear Medal was the only one that couldn't be achieved as a gold medal. Maybe a future run could try and accomplish this. Still, this isn't a reason to reject the run, as it still accomplishes the goal of beating the game mode.
Viewer feedback was very good. Accepting to Moons.
feos: Pub.