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Alien Syndrome (SMS) Any%
I had the idea of doing a TAS of this game since I started to speedrun it. I got the WR so i wondered what could be improved with it. This is also a not very known game, so it might be a nice contribution to the community.

Set up

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.5.3

Game objectives

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Uses death to save time
  • Genre: Shooter

Comments

This is a pretty straightforward game, the objective of each stage is to collect all hostages before you run out of time, then fight the stage boss. I speedrun this game too, the strategy overall its all about doing routes and perfect cornering.

Stage comments

Erato

On this stage I have used a death strat, abusing the invencibility after the death respawn, the character can move through the holes on the ground. It saves a bunch of seconds. It takes a while to kill the boss on this stage, i've tried many times to frame-perfect kill him on the first cicle, but it's only possible to take the last hit on the beginning of the second cicle.

Euterpe

The boss on this stage is pretty difficult in a casual play and it was kinda hard on making the TAS strat too. I had to follow his movements frame by frame to make sure I won't miss a hit, also it's hitbox is difficult to reach, since you need to hit it right on the absolute middle.

Melpomene

This stage boss have less invincibility frames than the other ones, and no cicles. Also, there is a point in where you can hit him without getting hit.

Master Alien

This boss was a pain. He has few invicibility frames, but managing to dodge his projectiles while not missing damage frames was a lot of work. He takes 71 hits to die. This took a while.

Weapons

I use the Flame Thrower (FE) because it inflicts much more damage than the Laser (L) or the Normal Gun (N) on the bosses.
feos: Accepting to Vault and publishing...

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Posted: 12/18/2013 2:12 AM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4132: Mephistus's SMS Alien Syndrome in 12:58.09
Posted: 12/18/2013 1:41 PM
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henke37
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Joined: 3/10/2010
Posts: 899
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Seen one level, seen them all. It's just differently shaped blobs of slowly spawning obstacles in each level.
Posted: 12/20/2013 1:46 AM
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FractalFusion
Editor, Expert player (2073)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
Glitchy TAS of 2013 Gameboy TAS of 2013 PSX TASer of 2010
This game seems almost like those NES games where there are many levels with nearly the same type of content over and over. Unfortunately, that type of game is not entertaining to me.
Posted: 12/20/2013 6:54 AM
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CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4036
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
This looks like a pretty good run, though I didn't find it entertaining, so I'm voting No. Does the game lag differently whether you shoot the aliens or not?
Posted: 12/20/2013 2:51 PM
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Truncated
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (979)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
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Arcade TAS of 2023 Sega TASer of 2021 Sega TAS of 2021
I though it was OK, it looks good for a SMS game. But it will probably be vault material. >I got the WR so i wondered what could be improved with it. How much faster is this compared to the WR?
Posted: 12/20/2013 11:56 PM
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Mephistus
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Joined: 12/17/2013
Posts: 7
CoolKirby wrote:
Does the game lag differently whether you shoot the aliens or not?
Yes, if you clean the screen (shoot all aliens) the lag disappears. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter since its just faster to just get the hostage and leave the screen.
Truncated wrote:
How much faster is this compared to the WR?
WR is 19:10.
Posted: 12/21/2013 12:15 AM
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mklip2001
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It's a good runthrough of the game. However, the game wasn't that interesting to me. It has movement patterns like Metal Gear but without all the item usage and other things that make Metal Gear interesting. The last boss was cool, but everything else dies too fast to do anything particularly captivating. Nice job on creaming your (unassisted) WR time, but I have to suggest this as Vault material for TASing.
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.
Posted: 12/22/2013 7:25 AM
Post subject: Movie published
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TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2497] SMS Alien Syndrome by Mephistus in 12:58.09
Posted: 10/5/2014 4:10 PM
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goldenband
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
If you save all the hostages in all the levels, I think you may get a weapon upgrade (laser) against the final boss, Mr. Mimi. Or, at least, that's what happened when I just did a (victorious!) playthrough on real hardware: I unexpectedly got a laser against Mr. Mimi, and that's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why. (There's a claim here that you get the upgrade if you beat Minosaur without dying, and that you get fireballs if you used lasers and vice versa. But that's obviously not true based on the TAS -- and on my winning playthrough of the game, I lost a life or two against Minosaur and had to finish him off with my regular weapon, but still got a laser vs. Mr. Mimi.) If my theory is correct, it probably wouldn't save enough time to improve the TAS, but is it worth looking into? There are only a handful of skippable hostages early in the game -- the rest are already required, I believe.
Posted: 3/9/2024 2:37 PM
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petaQ
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Joined: 3/8/2018
Posts: 22
goldenband wrote:
If you save all the hostages in all the levels, I think you may get a weapon upgrade (laser) against the final boss, Mr. Mimi. Or, at least, that's what happened when I just did a (victorious!) playthrough on real hardware: I unexpectedly got a laser against Mr. Mimi, and that's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why. (There's a claim here that you get the upgrade if you beat Minosaur without dying, and that you get fireballs if you used lasers and vice versa. But that's obviously not true based on the TAS -- and on my winning playthrough of the game, I lost a life or two against Minosaur and had to finish him off with my regular weapon, but still got a laser vs. Mr. Mimi.) If my theory is correct, it probably wouldn't save enough time to improve the TAS, but is it worth looking into? There are only a handful of skippable hostages early in the game -- the rest are already required, I believe.
An addendum to this: I had been speedrunning the game this year, read SMSpower and during an attempt, did as instructed there, but did not get the powerup. I looked into this and my understanding is that you must collect 25-29 ? powerups, and, the last one you grab must be when the timer ones digit reads 1 or 0, and does not fall on an invincibility time. This gives you the FB weapon saving 47 hits at Mimi. Most ?s are right on the route: a new TAS would trivially breeze past the fun RTA collision and tight spaces. It'd save a hunk of time with RTA route too. To verify this, you can poke $0096 with the desired ? quantity, and $0097 with a 1/0 or non-qualifying number, before the final boss. Here's the run that I think proves this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iAeWC_aUUo