Submission #979: Luke's NES Deadly Towers (USA) in 15:20.27

This is an improved run of Deadly Towers. This beats the previous Famtasia run by approximately 3:26. This game is somewhat Zelda-like, but notoriously difficult and considered poorly designed. However it makes for an interesting TAS.

To obtain this improvement, I revised the route. Right away, I build up enough gold (actually called Ludder in this game) to purchase two Orange Scrolls, which teleport you back to the Holy Flame. I then do two towers, picking up the Dragon Sword (for increased damage) and the Cup (worth 250 gold). The Orange Scrolls let me skip coming back down the towers, a huge timesaver. Then, I go back to the dungeon and purchase 5 more orange scrolls. I finish the 5 remaining towers, again using the scrolls to skip the walk down the towers. The only other item I get is the Gauntlet, which increases the speed of your knives. This makes it much easier to kill enemies quickly, and is especially helpful in boss fights, where long-distance shots are necessary.

Minor improvements include better health management, frame optimizations, and cutting corners closer (especially on ladders). There is a tremendous amount of luck manipulation in this game. Enemy movement and their drops are random, and randomness is affected by what buttons you push and when you push them. If you see me hesitate or miss with a knife, it is because I am manipulating luck. I tried to avoid missing with knives since it looks bad, but sometimes this was the only reasonable way to manipulate luck as needed.

I anticipate up to 30 seconds of improvement is possible by being more aggressive about grabbing gold early in the game, and buying the hyper boots at the beginning. I might attempt to make another run at some point in the future.

Truncated: The powers that be seems to have agreed that in this case, accepting a submission which has known improvements is okay since

Therefore, accepting this submission and putting it in queue for encoding.