An unlicensed pirate game, which rips gameplay off both Rockman and Rockman X.
Of course, being an unlicensed pirate game, it is buggy as hell. So I kick its ass in less than 30 seconds.
Game objectives
Emulator used: BizHawk 1.4.0
Uses illusive hax to skip to the final stage
Aims for fastest time
Stage by stage comments
Menu screens
The slow fade-in before every menu screen is annoying as hell. It takes like half of the total run time.
I just immediately select the final stage at the stage select screen. Here's an explanation about how/why this works.
Final corridor
The final corridor to the final boss is all of two screens long, and doesn't have anything harmful in the way. I charge my weapon while moving through the corridor and select the fire weapon right before entering the boss room.
Final boss - phase 1
The final boss fight. It's a giant floating Sigma head that moves around, tries to hit you, and occasionally shoots a barrage of projectiles, although it doesn't get around to doing that here.
For the first part, I use the charged fire weapon against him, which spreads out five projectiles in a fan pattern. I manage to hit the boss twice with each charged attack. (A charged weapon hit does 3 damage, and the final boss' first phase has 30 HP total). This way, I deplete his health quite quickly. When the boss is down to 3 health, I switch to the ice weapon in order to set up a trick for the final boss' second phase. I fire a charged ice weapon at him, defeating the first form.
Final boss - phase 2
Right after the first form is defeated, I release a charged ice weapon (which is basically charged Frost Shield from Mega Man X3) and end input. I abuse a glitch here, where on the first frame of the final boss' second form, he can be hit, although his hitpoints and hitbox position aren't reinitialized yet. So on this first frame, the ice weapon hits him at his hitbox (which is exactly where the first phase died) and instantly kills him. Then Mega Man X Zook teleports out and the credits appear. Victory!
Other comments
Enjoy...sort of?
Nach: Judging I see this uses Bizhawk, someone else can handle it.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4091
Location: The Netherlands
CoolKirby wrote:
This was pretty good. How did you skip to the final stage like that? If this is legitimate, I think this could be published.
I'll do some explaining here.
The gameplay itself in this run is perfectly legit. No passwords, no SRAM, no save corruption, no cheat codes or anything were used - just boot up the game, press A/Start a couple times to get to the stage select screen, select the final stage like there's nothing unusual going on, end up on the final checkpoint right before the final boss battle, beat the final boss and go to the credits.
The fact is that there are multiple revisions released of this unlicensed/pirate game. There are at least four versions of this game:
Zook Hero 2 - the original game.
Rockman 3 - Same game with a different title screen, and a bug where the collision detection during bossfights is messed up. Packaged as "Rockman DX3".
Rockman X3 - Same game with another different title screen, using music from its predecessor Zook Z. Collision detection is fixed. Save function does not work, and all weapons and armor is obtained and all bosses are defeated from the start. Packaged as "Rockman DX3".
Rockman DX3 - Same game, with the music restored and the save and collision detection fixed.
I made this run on #3, which allows me to just get to the final boss instantly, and is also by far the most common version of the game. It seems that #1 and #4 have not been dumped, but there are some rare dumps of #2. (Most ROMsites will offer #3). Ideally, a legitimate full run of the game would use either #1 or #4, but #2 works.
That said, I've started a TAS on #2, but it doesn't have much progress yet. Movement is quite hard to optimize in this game. I estimate a full run would also probably be about 25 minutes+ long - the stages are quite long, and you have to get all upgrades in order to go to the final stages, and getting a upgrade makes you exit the level, which means that four of the stages have to be done twice. (Though it would also automatically categorize itself as "100%".)
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11535
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
A/Start is not a cheat code, right? Right?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11535
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
It's kinda odd that you can internally select the final checkpoint right away.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
----
[2364] GBC Rockman DX3 by Noxxa in 00:25.40
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4091
Location: The Netherlands
There's an error in the publication description. It says there are eight stages with a boss that gives their weapon like Rockman X - there actually are only six bosses with weapons, and two fortress stages.
Not sure how to properly word it into the description, so just putting this here.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I did some digging into this, and ended finding out the "glitch" used is not so much a save glitch (nor really a glitch at all).
The first thing to know is this game does NOT attempt to read out SRAM at all. So this itself shows this is not a "save glitch" as the publication has it, nor is "bugged SRAM" the cause of this "glitch". The game also does not ever read out uninitialized RAM, so that possible cause is out of the picture.
Some further reverse engineering can also clearly show that the all items being unlocked is the game explicitly setting all the flags on start up (in fact, the versions that don't do this have nearly the same code, except it 0s out all the flags instead of setting all of them, a simple 1 byte difference in that function). I couldn't figure out how all the stages were unlocked, although I presume it's in a similar fashion to items, given there aren't exactly that many other possible causes (besides maybe some weird mapper issue, but this is very unlikely considering the above). The stages being unlocked are indeed just similar code intentionally setting all the flags for them.
Considering the above, I don't believe this is even a "glitch," as it purely seems like a version difference in how the game sets the "no save data" state. It could even be perhaps argued this was some debug build released, which would be disallowed by the rules.
To note, the "does not attempt to read out a save file" is not only present in this version, but it's also present in the version used by the other published movie, and in the original Zook Hero 2 (which fun fact was dumped a few years after this submission). Presumably this saving mechanism only ever worked on the final undumped "Rockman DX3", although I would have no idea if this is really the case.
In any case, the "save glitch" label is inappropriate, and should be cleared out. This movie should also probably be obsoleted by the other movie, given its content overlaps and this movie doesn't even abuse any sort of "bug" but just abusing a version of the game having intentional code which sets all the flags.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4091
Location: The Netherlands
Thanks for investigating.
I wouldn't mind if this movie got (retroactively) obsoleted. It doesn't add anything new compared to the other publication which came later. Regardless of whether or not it's actually a saving glitch, an unlicensed mapper issue, or just an extra dodgy bootleg release of a bootleg game, it doesn't do anything special either way.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11535
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I know why I named it "save glitch".
[quote="
MovieMaintenanceLog for [2572] GBC Rockman DX3 by Noxxa in 23:33.92"]CoolKirby 2014-04-09 03:01:40 Changed branch to "no save glitch" from ""
feos 2014-04-30 16:34:52 Changed branch to "" from "no save glitch"[/quote]
But I don't know why I didn't obsolete the other version.
Let's see...
EDIT: Yeah it's just the last boss and the fight looks almost identical. Obsoleted.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
