I actually nearly finished an initial TAS of this game but found a number of improvable things, so I'm going to start over (maybe hex-edit in some bits of the old run because I know certain parts are optimal and hard to redo.)
For those of you unfamiliar with the game (it's fairly obscure) it's awesome! It's like Spider-Man meets Megaman. Very action-oriented and challenging.
The A button fires inductance rope, which works a lot like Spider-Man's web, allowing you to climb walls, avoid falling to your death (if you're quick) and do a number of cool tricks.
Y and X are each assigned a different attack (one for each of Phantom's hands) and by defeating certain bosses, you gain new weapons and items to use, giving a wide range of equipment. You can even combine certain weapon effects. (For instance, if you assign homing missiles to Y and assign spread fire to X, then pressing X will shoot five homing missiles in a spread.) I won't be using a lot of different weapons in the TAS, as the standard "energy burst" weapon is usually sufficient to finish off any enemy quickly when you fire every alternate frame, and by unequipping one hand I can do punches, jumpkicks, and sliding kicks (jumpkicks can be a great time saver as they can actually be faster than running)
The game has a really great story and a lot of variable plot twists, depending on your routes (taking different routes also affects what equipment you gain) which can lead to more than a dozen alternate endings. Unfortunately, the story will be completely skipped in a TAS so I guess those of you who are interested will have to play the game to get it.
In my run, I take damage to save time, and I get the best "golden" ending. It takes longer to get it than other endings, but I think it's better to take extra time to get the best ending, than a shorter submission without it.
For those of you who ARE familiar with the game (if any), I'd appreciate a few suggestions for the following:
1. How many weapon upgrades should I get?
Increasing the power of my attacks means boss fights will be faster, but some of them can require a lot of running around, just to save a few frames on a few short battles. At most I can afford to get five of the eight weapon upgrades without wasting a huge deal of time, but of those some may not even be necessary.
Taking a half-minute detour to get one means I need to save at least a half-minute on future boss battles to make it worthwhile, so the later in the game, the less important it is to get one (as there aren't as many boss battles left).
I should mention that the more times my weapons are upgraded, the more energy they use, so there's a sort of equilibrium there. Even if I save time by killing bosses faster, I may end up pausing to use more energy aid kits.
At the very least I need to get one, because that would double my fire power (and will mean reducing boss battles by half.)
I definitely cannot afford to get the DAMAGE X2 upgrade. There's no way to get it until the second to last level, and even then it takes a long run around to get it, just to do double damage to the small handful of remaining bosses.
2. Should I get the spread fire weapon?
I'm pretty sure that taking the route that does not have spread fire is faster, (although I may be wrong) but I wonder if I might be able to make time-saving use of it.
The usefulness of this weapon is obvious for a normal run, but in a TAS the only reason I'd want it is to deal multiple hits to bosses at once (meaning possibly faster boss fights) but would use up more energy. I'm not sure if it would really save time to get it.
Going without it is much simpler (which is what I initially did) so I'm leaning that way.
Comments/Suggestions/Questions?
