Submission #6376: Taechuk's DS Meteos "Multi Star Trip, best ending" in 06:50.39

Meteos is a puzzle game released in 2005 that received general praise from video game critics, and was developed by Q Entertainment and published by Bandai and Nintendo, and was designed by Masahiro Sakurai. The game has many different planets, each with different field sizes, gravity and visuals.

"It was a dark time... The existence of all planets was threatened by one: the evil planet Meteo. A stream of phantasmagoric matter flowed endlessly from the planet. This matter -called Meteos- crushed life and stole the sparkle of the universe. World after world fell... But then, by chance, three Meteos of the same type aligned. Fusing together, they ignited, firing the other Meteos in space! A defense strategy was formed: the civilizations of each planet launched counterattacks by fusing Meteos in different ways. Thus the last, desperate stand versus Meteo began. The Metamo Ark -a warship made of Meteos ore- set off as a bastion of hope, with the fate of the entire universe resting on a lone civilization's valor." -the game's intro

This TAS aims to get the True Ending of the Multi route Star Trip, which consists of reaching the top most Meteo node, called True Meteo, and beat it. The difficulty comes from the fact that in Multi, almost all fights will have missions, which you will need to complete in order to go to a higher node. Beating the mission leaves you the choice to go either up or down, while failing the mission (while still winning) forces you to go down.

This run beats the current WR for True Ending by about 3 minutes 30 seconds, and the Any Route WR by about 40 seconds, both WR being done on the easiest difficulty.

The goal of each battle is to destroy every other planet (yeah we save the world but destroy every planet on our way, I don't get it either) and be the last one standing. The main gameplay is using the touch screen, you can drag meteos up or down, and the goal is to line up 3 (or more) meteos of the same type in order to ignite them. By chaining lines, the launch power become stronger and allows to send more meteos. Annihilation (death) is caused when a column without burned meteos gets too high for too long. As the game progresses, meteos drop faster and mercy time reduces, making large stacks becoming incredibly risky, however for a TAS, it obviously is not. The "Speeder" (the thing in the bottom right, idk its name), when activated, makes meteos drop faster, and is overall very useful to rack up many meteos fast to send.

As we progress in Star Trip, meteos speed increases, making later fights harder to survive. For a TAS, this is useful, since the later fights are the shortest in the run due to the abundance of meteos.

Surprisingly the longest battle in the run. 1 frame was wasted before starting the Star Trip in order to get Geolyte instead of Oleana, the latter being more floaty and slower overall. The mission here is to win under 2:30, which is quite easy to do, even at the highest difficulty (if you can survive). There's actually nothing to note about this fight. We clear the screen twice to defeat both planets really fast. However, I think there is probably a bunch of time to save here. Getting the AI to die can be extremely annoying, since sometimes I send them garbage earlier and they don't die, even if it is only 1 meteo less.

Since I go down even after beating the mission, I lose 1 frame in the selection. However, I think it was worth.

This fight was actually incredibly surprising. Firim might be one of the best planets to play, since the launches are fairly strong and the field is small. Managing to not clear the screen, I wait a bit to have more meteos, enough to actually destroy Hotted. However, failing the mission would bring me to Stray Planet, which is a 1v1 against Jeljel. The problem here is that the AI in this game is _a lot_ stronger in 1v1 matches, and I simply couldn't destroy them (or at least fast). I had to beat the mission here, which is to send 100 meteos. With 5 seconds left and 38 meteos to send, I barely had enough time to clear the mission before Hotted gets destroyed, giving me access to the Mechatropoloids.

Grannest's gravity is a bit special. Chains do not make the launch more powerful, instead being as strong as the base launch. Megadom's gravity is a bit worse in my opinion, where chains are less and less powerful.

Anyway, after taking care of Megadom, Grannest decides it does not want to play anymore and just decides to die, leaving me with a bit of time. I decided to completely fill their board before they die. Note that if I sent meteos earlier, they would actually die later. Mission was to clear the board. Don't need to say I completed it.

This is the first 4 way fight of the run, and thankfully it was done on Gravitas. Gravitas's gravity is very special, the first chain does nothing, and the second chain blasts the whole stack off. This makes for a very fast paced battle, since I do not have to wait for the stack to touch the ground before linking more meteos. The mission here is to send 50 burned meteos into space. It's actually the easiest mission to clear, even on the lowest difficulty you might accidentaly clear it.

And I failed it. Since I go down, I do not waste one frame, the higher fight is actually really bad for TAS. The failed mission also shows the efficiency of TAS.

Mission is to sent 50 meteos at once, fairly easy. After taking care of Dawndus, I wait for Freaze to send their garbage before sending mine, otherwise they would survive. They then gave up. For entertainment, I clear my screen right at the end. Otherwise not much to say here.

Another 4 way battle. This is the only fight that leads to Hevendor's Realm, which leads to True Meteo. This fight does not have a special mission. If you look at the top screen, it seems like I am only attacking Globin, however I am actually attacking the other planets. I really only sent 3 meteos to Globin, which actually lead them to their doom, for some reason.

The next fights are... really short.

Hevendor's gravity is similar to Gravitas, but the first chain is instant instead of the second, making this planet even faster. I sent some meteos to all 3 Hevendors and destroy them in incredibly low time. I need to beat this mission in 2 minutes to reach True Meteo, but I only really needed 11 seconds.

I start by making a screen wide stack and start sending some meteos to each Meteo, destroying them in very little time. You could consider this a variation of the Hevendor strategy, only on a more regular stage. The great speed of falling meteos makes the AI much easier to kill.

Final RTA time is 4:28.43 (if i'm not wrong), timed from when the Star Trip starts to when the victory screen after beating True Meteo fades out. TAS has one more input before finishing, which is to clear the ending screen to reach the credits.

Also we are now considered gods, I wonder why.

I decided to not add superplay during the credit sequence, since I didn't really think it would add much to the run. Well here's a playaround for the TAS : userfiles/info/55483467089408472 There is probably a few places where time could be saved, maybe I didn't find the earliest you could beat everyone.

feos: Judging...

feos: Replacing with a movie that plays through the credits.

feos: This is a nice movie, and it got great feedback. This mode seems to be the best one to speedrun (even though others are also acceptable, as explained in the thread). Execution and routing make sense. The ending represents the game's plot goal, and it features the most challenging opponent, so it's indeed the best ending we can get. The credits playaround was also awesome. Accepting to Moons.

Spikestuff: ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐.