Submission #6567: TwistedTammer's GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX "warp glitch" in 05:13.06

Link set sail to distant lands to train and found himself shipwrecked on Koholint Island, and soon finds out he was trapped in a bizarre dream world, created by the Wind Fish. However, Link was in no mood to complete the game in the proper order, and uses a magic doghouse to warp into the final boss and use his magical bombs to end the tyranny of the Nightmares, just in time for breakfast. Link's Awakening DX for the Gameboy color is an enhancement of Link's Awakening, which was only black and white. This version introduced color, an extra dungeon, and numerous bug fixes.

This is an any% warp glitch TAS of Link's Awakening DX. The only rules I set are; no ACE or save file corruption. The major difference between this run and the previous TAS(bobmario511's 5:39.06, a 26.005s improvement) is a new glitch I discovered using bombs to beat the final boss more quickly.

This is necessary. Our hero, Link, sets off to get his sword back. I manipulate NPCs to shield boost and damage boost to the sword faster. I use combinations of left + right and shield to glitch its hitbox to pick up the sword from way above. I then save and quit to warp back to Mabe Village.

Here I manipulate some very rare rupee drops(probably 1/1000) and duplicate each of them into 2 using a glitch. I then enter the shop, that collision with the corner of the doorway was actually a frame faster. The shovel must be stolen to spawn the bombs, the death is unavoidable. Paying for the bombs was faster because I don't get the scolding textbox that freezes Link.

Entering a warp from unintended directions affects how the game determines where you go, and the doghouse is one such example. The game uses values such as your kill count instead of the correct values to decide your destination, therefore 2 kills are necessary to warp to the correct glitched map. Manipulating optimal shield boosts and sword clinks, I kill 2 Oktoroks to the south and proceed to the glitch world. Taking the optimal route, I get to the boss fight 13 seconds faster than Bobmario511 due to routing differences, where he has to enter a separate glitch world to obtain the ocarina.

A lot of time is saved in this fight thanks to a new glitch I found making my previous TAS. Combinations of left + right allow you to place bombs from far away, known to previous TASers for years. The game gets confused if you place 2 bombs very rapidly offscreen with left + right, therefore cutscenes are broken and will instantly skip to the end of their sequence, labeled 'bomb triggers' by the community, I just found a new way to do them without screen transitions. The "Blob" is killed without powder thanks to previous discoveries by Pirohiko I believe. Bomb triggers are abused to make Agahnim(ball casting guy) instantly start casting again instead of morph and move around. The first trigger is sacrificed in order to save more time with Moldorm's phase. After that, Moldorm is dispatched. Unfortunately, that damage during the Ganon phase is unavoidable, because the Keese perfectly homes in on Link and he's frozen for too long to get out of the way. This is the biggest time saver in the run, Dethyl's phase is skipped and he instantly dies, thanks to bomb triggers, I also did this in my other TAS. The boss is now dead and we can proceed to the credits. Final RTA time was 3:50.08 and TAS time ends at 5:13.055.

This run wasn't that long, but completely destroys the game sequence in an interesting way. There is an ACE method to get to the credits, but this was much more interesting to me to do.

The biggest potential time save I can think of would be an alternate method of obtaining bombs, most likely with a separate wrong warp, getting Roc's Feather, and obtaining a bomb fairy, though this procedure may be too lengthy. There may be more optimal movement strategies to get an earlier doghouse framerule(4 frames per rule), or a faster bossfight.

Thanks to LADX speedrun community and prior TASers for contributing knowledge and strats to this run. Thanks to Tompa for being supportive of my prior work.

ThunderAxe31: Judging.

ThunderAxe31: This movie is well optimized and the reaction from the audience was very warm.

While the movie itself is good and the goal is clear, I have to make a remark about the current branching situation for this game, for the purpose of giving reference for future judgments. As of today, there is a known way to beat the game faster than in this submitted movie, that is by using a memory corrupting glitch. So while the current "warp glitch" publication is flagged as the fastest-completion movie, this submitted movie should not get flagged as such, despite the fact that it beats it under the same rules.

Accepting as Moons for obsoleting the current "warp glitch" publication.

Whatever or not a movie using the memory corrupting glitch should obsolete this, it will be duly discussed after that such hypothetical movie gets submitted, as we can't judge a submission that doesn't (yet) exist.

feos: Pub.