It's the middle of final exam week, so naturally I have nothing better to do than start TASing again. The unreleased Star Fox 2 seemed interesting, so I played around a bit and made a test run on Normal difficulty. (I wish I had a decent gamepad so I can try real-time Expert.) It only took a couple of days to make and could certainly be much more optimized, but I was learning as I went.
Star Fox 2 Normal test run
Length: 36046 frames, 10:01 real-time, 039 in-game time
ROM: Star Fox 2 (Beta TD).smc with translation patch sf2-e-final.ips from
here.
A few notes:
- Peppy was the default choice for a partner, but I picked Miyu because her name is cooler.
- I only destroy the first missile because the satellite can't get to it before it hits Corneria.
- There is a short delay (<1 sec) between when you gain control of the cursor and when the ship actually starts moving on the map.
- Most of the game runs at 20fps, however there is a lot of lag, much more than the original Star Fox.
- Titania was just sloppy. The turns outside the base were unnecessary, and I probably should have kept the bombs instead of picking up the shield.
- I'm not sure what the purpose of the Pepper coins is. I pick them up but they seem to do nothing. Could someone enlighten me?
- Notice the wonderful depth buffering at the end of the Wolf fight, as his ship flies through the camera.
- It's weird being in all-range mode and yet still having to fly straight down the corridors in Andross's base.
- I had to redo the entire Andross fight because of a desync, but that's okay because I found a way to save an entire second of game-time.
- For Andross's mask, it only matters how many times you hit the eyes, not how much damage you do to them. The cube, however, does take damage.
So, would a TAS of this game be publishable? (Not this run obviously, but a better one on Expert difficulty or something). The game was never released by Nintendo but it was finished, and the patch just does some translation and bug fixes. I will do a run regardless, I just wanted to know if it is submittable. Also, can anyone tell me what the Pepper coins do?
So, final time is 22 minutes real time, 082 game time. No damage to Corneria, 340470 score, Mario rank (?).
Some notes:
- The two bosses were pushovers. Wolf was more difficult, mainly because he does more barrel rolls than the other members of his team. There were a few charged shots that he deflected so that I could hit him with others immediately afterward. It may look awkward, but it works.
- I picked up some nova bombs in Astropolis, which came in handy when fighting Andross.
- Speaking of Andross, the beginning of the fight in the subspace area (when he is a mask) is ridiculous when it comes to desyncs. Loading a savestate there would sometimes (but not always) cause a desync. This made it very difficult to get past the "shoot the eyes" part. I was glad when it finally worked and the rest of the fight went quickly.
Anyone watching this, let me know if the movie desyncs anywhere, especially during the Andross fight.
So, should I submit? If nobody says no, I'll assume that means yes.
