Fortified Zone is a 2D shooter with four stages. You can play with two different characters who are named Masato Kanzaki and Mizuki Makimura and you can use different weapons and upgrades.
Game objectives
Emulator used: VBA23.4a
Takes damage to save time
Uses glitches to save time
Comments
I played mainly with Mizuki Makimura, because she has quicker movement and can jump over obstacles. But she can't pick up some stronger weapons. Masato moves 0,75 pixel per frame, Mizuki with 0,875 pixel per frame. In battles I switched the characters to do more damage.
Stage by stage comments
Stage 1: Field
I used a glitch, which allows to go through eight pixel wide walls, to go directly to the boss. I got medicine, an upgrade for Mizukis weapon and grenades.
Stage 2: Jungle
I used the same glitch here. But I had to collect two keys in order to reach the boss.
Stage 3: Cave
Sadly there's no place where I can use this glitch, so this stage is really long. I had to collect many keys, which costs a lot of time. The boss was a big problem. At the beginning the boss has an energy of 100, according to the address 0xC14D, but the value jumps automatically to 200, no matter how much damage I did.
Stage 4: Fortress
Here's also no place to use the glitch. This stage has two bosses. The entrance to the second boss is closed until the first boss is defeated. It is also needed to collect many keys on this stage. I collected a stronger weapon.
Other comments
It is possible to avoid being hit several frames after the game was paused.
Nach: This is hardly the best TAS I've seen, but it was decent. It was nice to see you shoot at enemies before they appear on screen, which makes the TAS quality noticeable. The game is also an old classic that many people who went looking for Gameboy games when there were so few to choose from will remember. Decent audience response. Accepting as first run for this game.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Hey, I know this game!
Let's see...
Ah, the run is goood!
Wow, the glitch shortcuts and pause abuse were a nice surprise!
Easily voting yes.
Goood work.
Looking forward to your next TAS, TASeditor!
Great work... although, technically, I found that noclip glitch, the pause exploit, and the penetrating grenade exploit first. Alas, the .vbm file was lost a long time ago. Still, I would like to be credited for my work even if you couldn't see it.
In any case, Yes vote for using optimal strategies and maintaining entertainment throughout the whole 9 minutes and 38 seconds.
The Green Herring,
I have seen your post in the forum when I searched for a topic many month ago. Before I found a video of the glitch on YouTube. I found the pause and the grenade trick and the route by myself. This movie should be finished last year, but I lost motivation.
Joined: 1/8/2011
Posts: 74
Location: Saturn Valley Medical Center
rog wrote:
This game is not very interesting, but it seems well done, so i'll give it a yes.
I agree. it's not very interesting. I give it a yes for technical quality though. Good work TASeditor! I hope to see good things from you in the future.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
The game is pretty clunky, but it has some reasonable action. The boss fights are quick, but it's also annoying to see the constant character changing (it's not quite as interesting to watch as the character switching in Knightmare 2). All in all, it's well-played, but the game feels a bit like a bad blend of the overhead parts of Blaster Master and Star Tropics.
I'm feeling somewhere between strong Meh and weak Yes.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically.
Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.)
Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html)
Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature!
Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Nice run, TASeditor! I liked the glitches and the overall optimization. The game is pretty impressive for an early Game Boy title, and I was entertained throughout the run.
Yes vote.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
NitroGenesis wrote:
Glad you accepted the run, Nach.
Well, popular game at its time on its platform, decent run, decent response, who am I to argue?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
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[2019] GB Fortified Zone by TASeditor in 09:38.57
The movie length is listed as 9:38, but in the youtube encode the run ends approximately at 9:52. How come?
It is not just the YT encode that is that way, the primary and 10bit444 encodes are too.
Perhaps related to known VBA-rr problem where the emulator is confused about frame duration if the GB screen is turned off?
The movie length is listed as 9:38, but in the youtube encode the run ends approximately at 9:52. How come?
It is not just the YT encode that is that way, the primary and 10bit444 encodes are too.
Perhaps related to known VBA-rr problem where the emulator is confused about frame duration if the GB screen is turned off?
I don't think the emulator is confused at any point. It's simply that the avi files are written at exactly 60fps, but the framerate of the console is not 60fps. For both gb and gba:
1) Actual framerate (as emulated by vba) is approximately 59.7fps.
2) Individual frames can be much longer than that if the video hardware is stopped.
(Note that #2 is not often seen in gba emulation, but it can happen).
The result is that no matter what, there will be an occasional dup frame, and in the case of GB, very often many more dup frames.
Try this script to see it in action:
Language: lua
--run me while dumping an avi
gui.register (function ()
gui.text (1, 133, "fct: " .. vba.framecount (), "#FFFFFFFF", "#000000FF")
gui.text (1, 126, "avi: " .. avi.framecount (), "#FFFFFFFF", "#000000FF")
end)
See also system.cpp:
Language: cpp
--linearFrameCount;
do
{
++linearFrameCount;
/*
current frame is prepped and dumped here
*/
}
while (linearFrameCount < linearSoundFrameCount); // compensate for frames lost due to frame skip being nonzero, etc.
