Submission #6667: Fog's N64 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater "replay glitch" in 02:11.92

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is the first game in a now extensive series of 10+ games that are still being created and released to this day. It was first released for the Playstation on September 30, 1999, and later ported to the Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast. "Primitive" by today's Tony Hawk control standards, this game utilizes flip tricks, grab tricks, grinds, and special tricks, which can be done on street ramps, vert ramps, rails, and all sorts of other objects.

Last week, I found out about the "0%" category of the game, and found it short and interesting enough to throw together a quick TAS to see if I can make it slightly faster. A couple of days later, I completed it.

The run abuses a few intended mechanics of the game, in-game soft reset, and the in-game replay system. Found by BSGRIND, doing a soft-reset (pressing Z + Start for 2 seconds) on a menu keeps the current menu's information in memory while bringing you back to the main menu. When going into the stage select, the currently highlighted level gets stored in memory (even when backing out into the main menu). Combined with loading a saved replay, this will have the stored menu accessible while playing the replay, allowing the player to restart their run and play from the replay. When restarting the run, it uses the menu information from the stored level select menu to load the "goals" of that level. This allows goals from one level to be completed in a completely different level.

We load into Warehouse as per usual, but immediately end the run, save the replay and soft reset back into the main menu. We then go into the single session menu (faster because one less screen to go through) to highlight the first competition (Skate Park) and then back out to the main menu and play the replay. Immediately after the replay loads in, we press start to "restart" the competition and get back into a playable mode.

We can complete the objective of both Skate Park and Burnside (get a medal) at the same time. We obtain the minimum amount of points required to get a medal in the first competition, then restart the competition to get the rankings for the second competition. After we finish two runs of the second competition, we do a soft reset at the result screen and re-activate the glitch. This time, we highlight Burnside before going back and perform the glitch. Once loaded into the replay, we quickly press A and end the competition to get the second medal.

Because we're now loaded into Burnside's objectives, the score requirement is now higher compared to Skate Park's requirements. A different combo is performed in order to obtain the points required to get the third and final medal. Once the second run is finished, we soft reset on the result screen again, and perform the glitch again with Roswell highlighted in the level select menu. We load into the replay one final time and navigate the menu to end the competition and go to the credits.

In Game Time Difference: 6 seconds

The RTA time of the current world record is faster than the TAS RTA time when considering starting points, but this TAS saves 6 seconds of in game time in comparison. This is likely due to emulation differences compared to the console. I'm highly against having this category replace the existing publication of this game, and would rather see it considered a separate branch of the game. This particular category removes almost all gameplay that makes the game so interesting.

Memory: Claiming for judging

Memory: From a little bit of examination, it appears, this submission isn't pulling our leg and this is an actual glitch that allows for the completion of this game in such a short time.

The optimization appears on point.

While never leaving the first level is kinda funny, it really isn't that fun to watch and the audience had similarly mixed opinions. As this doesn't actually play a single level, I think this best fits as a new Vault "replay glitch" branch.

Accepting to Vault as a new branch.

feos: Pub.