Submission #999: Gigafrost's SNES Mega Man & Bass in 34:31.05

Rockman and Forte for the SNES is the original, japanese version of Mega Man and Bass. In this run, I play as Forte. Forte has numerous advantages over Mega Man:

Some disadvantages of Forte:

As many of you might already know, I started this run a looooooong time ago. October 29th, 2004. That's right, it's been 1.3 years since I started this run. It's not that the game is hard or particularly time consuming to run. If that were the case I'd have way more than 37000 re-records! Instead, it's more like the game feels demanding to run. That coupled with school, work, and forgetting about it for a few months really make that all add up.

Anyways, even though the run was started and completed on what is pretty much the first version of the re-recording emulator (I think) nobody has complained about being unable to play them thus far.

Now, on to level-by-level thoughts

Intro Stage

I had a very limited understanding of the game physics here despite my early experimentation. I wouldn't be surprised if a few frames can be dropped here by staying on the ground more. The boat section is quite funny since I don't use double jump before. This might surprise some people at first.

At 3622 (beginning of rain room) I'm jumping because, for whatever reason, dashes are canceled at that point.

I sped up the boss fight by hitting it with 4 shots per round instead of the usual 3.

Cold Man

Initially you can either fight Cold Man, Astro Man, or Ground Man. No matter who you choose, you have a grueling two minute fight ahead of you. Ground Man isn't a good choice because all of his attacks either make him invinsible or have him underground for a while. Cold Man was chosen over Astro Man because his weapon is, by far, more useful. (Other justifications but I'll mention those later.

A couple of frames could probably be gained by better ladder jumping, but only a couple.

For the Cold Man battle, since I was still fresh out of my Mega Man 7 run I knew to keep moving and to play around with the boss. This was especially good considering this would be the longest fight. An interesting glitch I ran into involves getting frozen on the last frame possible. This result in Forte reacting as if he were frozen, but only for that one frame. (Similar glitch in MMZ, actually.) This was only done for entertainment purposes.

Burner Man

The vertical room could probably be faster with better ladder jumping, but otherwise still looks very impressive.

This stage is where I confirmed that dashing on the ground was faster than moving in the air. I was able to confirm this thanks to the giant cyan enemies near the end; I move as fast as them in the air but slightly faster than them on the ground.

Pirate Man

Before the run, I didn't know that the Burner weapon could kill those annoying... waxers? I also discovered very quickly that a Burner shot's position is relative to you, not to the world, so as you move the shot moves too, allowing for some very fast moving shots.

Also, having the Burner weapon is very useful to Forte. While Rockman can shoot normal shots every other frame, Forte has to wait three whole frames in between shots. The Burner weapon is a nice substitute for this deficiency.

Ground Man

Megafrost's strategy to beat the middle worm is great. :) For those of y'all who don't know, Megafrost was working on a Rockman version a loooong time ago. He eventually gave up, though.

Ground Man himself is real difficult. His attacks either make him invincible or move him into the ground. The best you can do is manipulate him into doing only ground attacks because you can stun him out of those using the Pirate Mines.

Tengu Man

I don't think Forte likes balloons. :)

Magic Man

Here came the first big surprise for me. Turns out that dashing with Tengu Man's is much faster than anything else! I measured it at being roughly 10 frames faster than normal dashing per use. So, naturally, I begin by using it like crazy! This also started the luck manipulation of regular enemies to get more refills for it. In addition, I began making sure I had enough bolts for a quick stop at the shop.

Shop

I stopped by the shop to buy the item that makes weapons use half as much energy. Very useful considering the new Tengu-dash discovery. As a nice coincidence, not only is Magic Man's stage right next to the shop icon, but the item itself isn't even added to the shop until Magic Man is dead. Cost me 375 frame to buy and equip the item. This means it only takes an extra 38 Tengu-dashes to make up for it. That's easy to make up.

Astro Man

Considering how much of the level is straight, I think it's pretty obvious that this stage is much better suited to Tengu-dashing than any other level. I believe this fully justifies doing Cold Man first.

I manipulated luck as best as I could on the door locks. Also found out that purple shots seem to be the main source of randomness.

The vertical room rocked. No waiting for the annoying disappearing blocks. Yay! :)

Dynamo Man

Turns out that even with the conveyor belts pushing you back a bit it's still faster to Tengu-dash over jump-dash. Sure surprised me.

The mid boss is another good reason to do Cold Man before Astro Man.

Tengu-dashing when the conveyor belts are pushing you the way you want to go is incredible! Too bad it's also so short.

Disappointingly, I still had one Tengu charge left. I had already used Tengu-dashing freely, so going back to use that charge would only give maybe 5 frames at best. If I didn't think I'd burn out I'd have gone back and fixed that.

Dynamo Man... eh, I figured I'd keep it to one shot per Copy Vision. Seemed like it'd be a lot more entertaining. I lose one or two frames stopping Dynamo Man's recharge. Timing the jump a little differently might have saved those.

I didn't want to submit this knowing that those small errors existed, but at the same time I felt I would give up if I had to do either the stage or the boss again. This left me deliberating with myself for four months, after which I decided that we simply needed a good run. Of course, even after resuming it was slow work.

Gateway

Only a small part of the huge bolts has to appear for it to count. Getting this done right was simply a matter of finding the balance point between getting up close and going back. I had to be conservative with the Tengu-dashes because the used energy carried over...

King Stage 1

That first short cut at the beginning is one I had envisioned from very early in the run. Yay!

Discovered and used a glitch which skipped the monkey taunting scene. The disappointing thing is that while I was playing around earlier in the level, I had somehow managed to get into the boss room without the darkness appearing at all, and despite all my testing and experimenting I was unable to reproduce that improved version of this bug!

This boss reminds me of Card Captor Sakura... mostly because that's what I was watching when I was working on it.

King Stage 1 - Section 1

Surprisingly, contrary to every source I could find, the tank's weakness actually turned out to be ice! (Well, lightning too, but you can't damage as fast with that and you really need it later.)

You can use the section 2 death glitch here, but my testing showed it to be about 8 frames slower. However, I don't think I tried a delayed killing (make the ice wall bounce into the enemy or drop down onto the weak spot.) Future runs might be able to save a little time there.

King Stage 2 - Section 2

Okay, this section reminds me of Alias because that's what my family was watching while I was working on it.

Much to my surprise, there is an actual use for Drills and it's here! The boss is weak against it. He's always been an annoying bugger until now. Yay! The death glitch I used here probably saved on the order of 20 to 30 seconds.

King Stage 2 - Section 3

Getting three large energy capsules instead of two (just before King) cost me 15 frames. I made up for it by skipping another 15-frame-delay one later.

King battle 1: King has the same weaknesses he normally does, but he has 127 health. I quickly experimented with whether it'd really be possible to do that much damage to him (you could only really do it while he's shooting X's 'cause otherwise it doesn't damage him.) No luck there.

King battle 2: His weakness is Lightning. After being hit with it, he dashes towards you and is invincible till he hits a wall, hence why I end up on the side. I also discovered that using Lightning resets your ground status, making the game think that for that 1 frame you're on the ground while actually being in the air. Cool, huh?

King battle 3: I was watching Magic Knights Rayearth while making this... Anyways, like Bass from Mega Man 7, he takes his last hit even when he's flashing white, making it into a 5 hit battle (instead of a 6 hit one.) Nice. :) Although taking so many hits was ugly. :\

King Stage 3 / Wily Stage

The shutters behind the bosses won't open until the boss actually explodes. This is why I there's sometimes a delay.

There was some weird sprite glitch with Forte during the Astro Man battle. Basically, he was in a running position without animation until he landed. I have no clue what caused that.

Doing this Dynamo Man battle differently this time around easily allowed me to stop the recharge without losing any frames. Also, it's nice how they give you exactly enough Copy Vision to kill King Stage 1 Boss in 4 shots and Dynamo Man with the rest. :)

Skipped the large energy capsule before Pirate Man. Cost 15 frames to get it and I had a forced refill-to-full-from-empty later in the stage.

I think the strategy for the Lion/Bear Coin pit is great. :) I jump down into the pits because the coin doesn't spawn at the top of the room; it spawns just above the screen, actually.

This Ground Man battle didn't look as good. I can't quite place my finger on why. Maybe sticking them on the ground instead of his feet, maybe?

Getting damaged while entering the Tengu Man arena resulted in him activating 154 frames earlier. Also, the punk bastard went and landed on me during his intro. Funny stuff. The fight itself was also faster since I was right next to him (instead of a little away from him.)

Since the blocks leading up to the shutter simply appear out of nowhere, I was able to force myself into the wall! Then, I discovered that I could, indeed, zip through the ground! However, using it wrong resulted in the controls being permanently locked and Wily never spawning.

Then, it turned out that the next room's speech bubble doesn't appear until you're on the ground. At first this made simply zipping through the corridor a bit slower than zipping most of the way and finishing with a Tengu dash. Then, I experimented with using other weapons. What I settled on was zipping all the way through, but firing the Lightning Bolt at the right time so that it'd be canceled. Since it was canceled, in the next room it considered me to be on the ground for one frame, resulting in the text appearing much much earlier. Yay!

Also, I definitely want to experiment with the ice wall again just to make sure that it really isn't at all even remotely possible to get into the wall with it. Megafrost tried before. I tried a little earlier today. Simply put, a solid weapon shot is different from a solid block deciding to appear on you in that, if they wanted, they could have trivially made sure you can't enter the wall with it. I've only got small hopes that it'll even work. If it does, I might immediately start on a new Rockman and Forte run...

Because I went through that corridor so fast, the boss music loaded before the level music, causing the level music to load and be played during the final boss fight. Disappointing, but funny.

The battle with Wily went well. My mom was watching something about queen's keys and locking the door, or something. Hmmm...

Oh, for the second Wily battle, his flashing recovery is simply paused while he's phasing. I also ended the movie when no more input was needed, not when he died.

Anyways, that's more or less the comments that came to mind while re-watching this. For those who are curious, the four CDs I got were:

I hope y'all enjoy the run. :) (Submission 999... I kind of wish I had been 1000, hehehe.)