Goals
- Emulator used: VBA-rr v24
- Starts from SRAM
- Aims for beating all bosses at fastest real-time
- Uses hard mode
- Abuses glitches
For the new tricks, please see #8039: hellagels's GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "Julius mode, beat Chaos" in 05:38.02.
Definition of All Bosses
We beat the same set of bosses as the previous run. Although it is able to beat Chaos now, but doing so makes the defining all bosses very difficult:
- If bosses can be beaten either in main map and boss rush map, many bosses should be beaten in boss rush map, making the run looks like a boss rush run.
- If bosses in main map should be beaten, there would be some bosses we need to fight again in boss rush map, making the run repetitive.
- Collecting Great Armor's orb in boss rush map sets Death's death flag, does it count as beating Death?
We count setting boss death flag as beat a boss, not just taking boss' HP down to 0. Boss' death flags get set when collect their orb. The boss Julius is an exception, his death flag gets set automatically some time after his HP taken down to 0.
Boss death flags locate at 0x0200037E, take 2 bytes. Following is a table showing how flags correspond to bosses.
| bit 0 | Graham |
| bit 1 | Death |
| bit 2 | Julius |
| bit 3 | (Unused) |
| bit 4 | Headhunter |
| bit 5 | Legion |
| bit 6 | Balore |
| bit 7 | Chaos |
| bit 8 | (Unused) |
| bit 9 | (Unused) |
| bit 10 | Manticore |
| bit 11 | Creaking Skull |
| bit 12 | Big Golem |
| bit 13 | Man-Eater |
| bit 14 | (Unused) |
| bit 15 | Great Armor |
Route
Manticore - Great Armor - Creaking Skull - Big Golem - Headhunter - Death - Balore - Legion - Julius - Graham
Encode
Nicovideo: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm41810114
Acknowledgement
Thanks to klmz, KSeptuple, Pike, and Darkman for their contribution to this run.
Samsara: That's... That's a lot of time saved... Judging, yes, definitely, absolutely,
Samsara: My apologies for the delay on judging this! I've been a bit busy as of late.
One of my favorite games, both to play and to see TASed, gets even more destroyed by yet another way to zip. Aria of Sorrow is slowly becoming the game that most embodies the phrase "Walls are just a suggestion". It's actually amazing how much potential the new zip has even just from seeing this run: It almost looks like a boss rush now, with bosses being reached so quickly and directly at times that their rooms may as well just be connected.
Fantastic run, and I'm excited to see the future of this game. If we're still finding new tech like this 20 years after the game's release, then it makes sense that there could be so much more out there. Accepting as an improvement to [2876] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "Julius mode, all bosses" by hellagels, KSeptuple & Pike in 11:52.03!
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