http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1663470082/Monster%20Party%20%28U%29-0.fm2
Monster Party 2nd Attempt: 51,399 Frames at last attack, 55,154 total.
Same ROM and emulator info as before.
7,532 Rerecords
This is an improvement of 1,421 frames over my test run. I made this run with my test run playing side-by-side in another emulator window and I went through, frame by frame, improving everything I could.
WORLD 1: I took a few extra damage boosts here, ending the stage with one life remaining. There are still a few more boosts I could have taken - I plan on doing this stage again, picking up the health after the Eggplant boss (-2 frames), getting four more damage boosts (8-16 frames), and still ending with just one life.
EGGPLANT: I shaved a few frames by getting in an early hit with one of his bubbles. I could have saved 1 frame by turning left on the frame before my last hit registers, but I figured this out after finishing this stage and I couldn't hex it in without desyncs. Go figure...
DECEASED CRAB: Huzzah!
PUMPKIN HEAD: I saved about a hundred frames here thanks to better positioning, timing my hits, and killing him closer to the door.
WORLD 2: The biggest change here is that I take health from two of the three bosses and take several more boosts. Because I have more health, I'm able to damage boost in a few places that I avoided last run (like a drip from the ceiling and a crocodile's tail) and through some enemies that I had to kill last time. I also found a faster way to get up ladders which involves not grabbing them at all.
MEDUSA: I saved a frame by turning away right before my last hit registered. Besides that and taking the health, not much was changed here.
TEMPURA: This battle always makes me hungry. Each of the three fights was improved by positioning myself better.
HAUNTED WELL: When you're hitting an enemy's projectiles back at it while hitting it with your bat, occasionally you'll deal extra damage. I'm not sure how this works, but it happened here, and saved several frames. I think it has to do with the projectile hitting on the same frame as the bat, but I can't prove it...
WORLD 3: I hate having to end a stage with excess health, but it was necessary here in order to survive the next area. I still took a few damage boosts, though.
MINOTAUR: This fight was sped up a ton thanks to better manipulation of his movements. I used the hover glitch a few times against this guy, too.
MUMMY: This was one of the most frustrating battles to manipulate, but after many attempts I managed to save about a second here.
SPIDER: Watching this battle again, I see a place where I could have saved time by manipulating him into not jumping. Even with that, it was much faster than the original test run.
WORLD 4: This is where I changed my route slightly and saved about a half second - I got pills from the cat boss instead of from killing the crocodile. This saves the time spent waiting for the enemy to explode. Lots of damage boosts here - most of them are tough to get because of the game's collision detection and total lack of momentum when moving. Several times I had to hit an enemy, go inside it while it's flashing, and then take the hit. Right before the first boss battle, I hit a snake with my bat for no obvious reason. This is because I was able to pass through it during its brief after-damage invincibility (which apparently works both ways in this game). I wasn't able to get a decent boost, so this was the next best solution. The biggest problem with this stage is a random shot that can't be hexed out without desyncing the following boss fight. I'm not sure how it got in there - I don't remember doing it - but it's there, and I can't get rid of it.
SLOWPOKE SAMURAI: I got a pattern down that let me deal damage as quickly as possible against this guy.
CAT IN A BOX: I hit one of the dead mice back at it for some early damage - otherwise, it's a straightforward fight against a stationary boss. This is where I get my pills in this run.
PUNK ROCKER: Fighting as Bert before he gets his twin lasers is a total nightmare. I morph back into Mark at the end, but not soon enough to do any damage as him, unfortunately.
WORLD 5: This world is really relaxing after the previous hellish area - there's only one real boss battle, after all. I could have taken a few more damage boosts here, but I was being overly cautious and saving some health for the labyrinth.
DANCING ZOMBIES: I made the floor humping more accurate... that's an improvement, right?
HANIWA: This is another example of somehow dealing extra damage with enemy projectiles. I wish I knew how to do this at will, since it would save a lot of time against most of the bosses.
WORLD 6: It turns out that it's much faster to kill the Chameleon boss as Bert, so I followed the same route as last time. There isn't too much here that's improved from the test run. I found out that you lose a frame of movement every time lightning strikes, but there doesn't seem to be any way to control it.
CHAMELEON: I was able to manipulate his position to be more favorable than in the last run.
WORLD 7: I made lots of little improvements here that saved hundreds of frames in total. I discovered that, when flying next to a ladder, you can press down and then up on the next frame to grab it immediately if your position is right. I grabbed every ladder at the closest pixel, and optimized my flying to waste as little time as possible.
ROYCE: This is actually a very strange fight for one reason - there's something wrong with the "?" item that appears after the fight that makes it impossible to grab for a number of frames. I found a way to take damage to beat the boss really quickly, but that must have messed with the "?" item or something. It turns out that defeating Royce the fast way and getting the pills from the ghost outside the door is about a second faster than waiting for the "?" icon to activate or beating Royce the old way.
SPIDER MK.II: Nothing too special about this fight... pretty standard if you ask me. I made sure to end in the best possible position to grab the "?" icon to recharge my pill power.
WORLD 8: I had to pass up a few opportunities to damage boost because of differences in health management from the test run, but I still came out far ahead by optimizing my flight patterns. When Bert's sprite changes mid-flight, sometimes you'll freeze in place for a frame. If you flap your wings on the frame before that, though, you'll avoid losing it, but you'll fly up. I found a good pattern of rising up and gliding down which minimizes lost frames. I also spent more time walking, since you don't lose frames on the ground.
DRAGON: I was able to take one less hit against him and still save a bunch of time from improved manipulation of his movements.
ZOMBIE: I improved my duck-and-shoot strategy and saved some time here by being closer to the "?" item at the end of the fight.
MUMMY MASK: It turns out that you can duck under him as he dashes around and take no damage. Thanks to the rapid-fire ducking shot, I saved a ton of time on this fight.
FINAL BOSS: I'm still not sure how to manipulate his weak point to appear, but somehow I sped it up considerably. I just redid the fight dozens of times until it was faster than the test run.
IMPROVEMENTS: There are a number of little things that I want to improve before submitting this run. I want to grab health after the eggplant boss in stage 1 and take four additional damage boosts there. I also want to change my flight patterns in stages 4, 6, and 7 to account for my discovery of the dropped frames while in flight.
All in all, I don't suspect that I'll save much more than another 100 frames without the discovery of any major glitches. Then again, I thought my test run was pretty good, but then I took off almost 24 seconds from it...
The problem with optimizing this run is that this game desyncs really easily - I tried editing out the stray shot in world 4 and it ruined the next boss fight. Likewise, changing one frame against the eggplant boss made the following boss's shot patterns change.
EDIT: I'm only halfway through stage 2 and I've already saved exactly 200 frames through better boss fights and by gaining pixels through falling properly. So much for my estimates...
