A Nightmare on Elm Street TAS by Randil
This is a 7143 frames (119.05 seconds) improvement over
Ziplock's run of this fun and original platformer.
- Emulator used: FCE Ultra 0.98.16.
- Aims for fastest time.
- Manipulates luck.
- Abuses programming errors in the game.
- Takes damage to save time.
- Genre: Platform.
Game description:
A Nightmare On Elm Street is a somewhat original platformer. There are 7 levels in this game, 5 houses, 1 cemetary and one conjunkyard. After each level there is a boss that you have to beat. Each house also consists of a few rooms. In order to complete a room, you need to collect all the bones in it. You can see how many bones I have left to collect in that room on the interface at the top of the screen. If you get to the end of the level without having collected all the bones, you can't proceed. This makes this game less straightforward, and not as trivial to TAS, since you have to plan how you should pick up all the bones.
You can also transform into a "Dream Warrior" on bosses, that you meet at the end of each level. There are three Dream Warriors in the game: The acrobat, the Ninja and the Magician. Only the Acrobat was used in this rn. Transforming into a Dream Warrioron bosses makes the fight a whole lot faster. In order to be able to transform to one of these "Dream Warriors", you first need to have picked up an "upgrade stone." These are gray and can be found here and there on the levels. For example, the grey stone with a wizard hat on allows you to transform into the magician.
Once you have killed the boss, you get a key that unlocks the next level.
Tricks, glitches and playing strategy:
Common tricks:
- I jump down ledges instead of walking down them whenever I can. This is a common trick and will not be explained further.
- If you've hit an enemy it will become ether for a few frames. During this time I can pass through them if I want. This doesn't save any time anywhere in the run, it's just a neat trick.
- If you get hit, you will become invulnerable for a few frames, allowing you to pass through enemies. This was used a few times in the run.
- As in so many other games, you can't atack and move forward at the same time on the ground. But if you're in mid-air, you keep your horizontal movement when you attack. That's why I avoid attacking enemies while on the ground.
- It's faster to jump up or down a stair than walking on them. Your movementspeed is 1.5 pixels per frames normally, on stairs it's 1.2857... pixels per frame.
Glitches:
- This is the only real glitch that I've found in this game: If you enter a new area through a hole in the ground, the game thinks you're still on ground during the first frames on this level. This allows me to jump while in air, and passing through the roof. This is used in the third room in house 3, for example. It will become obvious when you see it. This saves around 10 frames or so each time, so it's not a huge timesaver, but it's a nice trick none the less.
Boss strategies:
Beating bosses as fast as possible is really hard in this game. I used the acrobat on all bosses because he has the fastest firing rate. In mid-air, he can shoot spears every 3 frames or so. He attacks much, much slower on ground.
So, the general strategy is to be in air, as close to the boss as possible, and just throw spears as fast as you can on him.
Right after the boss has been hit, he becomes etheral and you can pass through him. This is done a lot in this run.
- Time saved on the outside parts (mostly by manipulating the placement of the first three houses): 2793 frames (46.55 seconds).
- Time saved on the levels themselves, excluding the bosses: 2703 frames (45.05 seconds)
- Time saved on boss fights: 1647 frames (27.45 seconds).
The making of this run:
Most of this run was done in frame advance. When on the outside, I played some parts on 100% speed, with right on autohold.
I also used the memory viewer a lot on this run. I used the memory viewer to watch bosses HP, which was very useful. I also used it to see my position on the screen sometimes, which was useful when finding a good spot to stand on before a boss spawns.
Suggested screenshot: Frame 5059:
Suggested description:
Everyone knows Freddy Krueger, who turns the peaceful dreams of people living on Elm street into lethal nightmares. This his time we'll see him get beaten in a new record time, much faster than in the movies. This run is 1:59 faster than Ziplock's precedent version.
Merry christmas everyone! Enjoy the run!
Truncated: Accepted as an improvement to the current run.
