Super Duper Star Trek: The Enterprise Strikes Back was rel- *a fat, sweaty nerd suddenly breaks into Samsara's room* "Um, actually, this is Super Star Wa-" GET OUT OF MY ROOM, DAD
TAS Wars: A New Run
- Emulator Used: BizHawk 1.11.6
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
- Disappoints the audience with Easy difficulty
- Wars stars
- Menaces phantoms
- Attacks clones
- Revenges the Sith
- Hopes anew
- Strikes back at the Empire
- Returns the Jedi
- Awakens the Force
Star Watch: The Encode Strikes Back
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Super Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back is the second game in the Super Star Wars series. The best way to describe it is being a mix of the arcade action from the first game, and the expanded gameplay options from the third game.
Oh, and the game lags a lot. Like, a lot. Like it lags so much that 95% of rerecords are to make the game not lag. The other 5% are to make the game not lag as well. The last 50% are figuring out where in the lag you can jump. In total, 400% of the re-records are dedicated to lag.
Thread Wars: Return of the Difficulty
Since I know this will be the most controversial choice of this run, for some reason, I decided to delve deeply into this topic before doing anything else.
Easy Mode was chosen in order to do the following:
- Reduce repetition from having less enemies in the shooter sections.
- Make boss fights in general go faster thanks to them having less health.
- Use damage boosts from enemies much more often without.
- Reduce lag from forced new spawns from enemies.
Now bear in mind, even though this is played on Easy, MAKING THIS RUN WAS NOT EASY, as the rerecord count will attest to. Plus, the way I see it, putting in MORE effort for an inferior product is incredibly stupid.
Plus, two other SSW runs have been accepted on easy mode for the above reasons, and also a run was actually REJECTED for playing on Hard because of how repetitve it makes the game.
This is the last I will say of this issue. I would like to request this not be discussed in the topic whatsoever, as it's such a minor thing that it seriously doesn't matter whatsoever, and I'm frankly sick and tired of topics being derailed by this.
Style Wars: Revenge of the Tricks
Luck Manipulation
The X, Y, and B buttons are used for manipulation. The X button is used in most cases due to being a dedicated Force/Thermal Detonator button, which means it's blank input most of the time, which allows for easy manipulation without losing any time. The two most common things to manipulate throughout the run are item drops and enemy spawns. There are two types of enemies in the game. Fixed encounters, and 'random' encounters. Generally speaking, every enemy you see in the run is a fixed encounter. If you don't see an enemy in the run, congratulations!
Character Speeds
Luke, Han, and Chewy run at a speed of 2. Luke's slide peaks at 6, Han's roll at 4, and Chewy's at about 3. Riding on a Tauntaun is a constant speed of 3. Luke's high slide speed is why the Tauntaun is ditched early in the Hoth levels.
Level 1
Easiest level in the game by far. A bird is manipulated to speed the climb up a bit. The slide done at the very end is actually frame perfect, discovered by Samsara. Combination of people did this one, but mostly Exonym I believe.
Samsara Sidenote: This was primarily a frame war between the three of us, and also marks the one major time in the run where we all collaborated.
Level 2
This level is literally hell on earth to optimize due to the amount of enemy spawns, almost comparable to Dagobah. Luke gets off the Tauntaun to grab a gun upgrade, and the level is sloped enough that proceeding as Luke alone for the rest of it is faster. All input except for the very beginning was done by Exonym.
Samsara Sidenote: This is comparatively a minor time for collaboration: Exonym was the key to all of this, if we can get him going, since he's a funnier character than we've had before.
Level 3
First boss level. Samsara discovered the quick gun grab, which saves half a second. Speaking of which, I swap to the gun so I can take out enemies that won't despawn and would cause lag otherwise.
Right before the boss I manipulate a thermal detonator, which deals 5 hits to the boss in one go. Expect to see this a lot. Also, the sliding I do after the boss is killed actually reduces lag, which is nice.
Samsara Sidenote: If you were watching this run for my input, the beginning of this level is where it ends, so duck out now, then re-evaluate your life choices, then come back and watch the rest of the run, ya ding dong!
Level 4
Essentially the same as Level 2, only about half as long and with less garbage to deal with. There are no slopes to justify getting off the Tauntaun this time, though.
Level 5
Travelin' level. Hardly any enemies to manipulate away, which is nice.
Level 6
Interesting enough level with two bosses. Killing the first probe droid before he fully gets onto the screen causes some strange glitches. I won't spoil it.
Samsara Sidenote: It is possible to keep the slidey rock almost all the way to the second probe droid, which saves a second or two, but we made the conscious choice to leave it out in order to show off the graphical glitches a little more. I say "we" as if I was actually involved in the decision making.
Level 7
Hanger bay. It's worth noting that slide canceling doesn't save any time with Luke in this game, unlike the first game. Shooter section at the end is heavily manipulated to keep all enemies off-screen so they don't lag when they die.
Level 8
The Battle of Hoth. Unfortunately enemies seem to run on a timer, so not much manipulation wasn't possible.
Level 9
AT-AT part 1. Like level 7 enemies are manipulated to stay off the screen, only in this case you don't need to shoot them. Probably the least lag out of all the levels, only about 40.
Level 10
Inside the AT-AT. Pretty straightforward level, reminds me of the Attack on Sailer Bay from ROTJ.
Level 11
AT-AT part 3. I manipulate a thermal detonator off one of the randomly spawning Stormtroopers, and then wreck shop on the boss. Due to what appears to be a glitch, using a thermal detonator on a turret with low HP instantly kills the boss, saving some time from the screen scrolling.
Level 12
Heyo Han finally makes an appearance in a SSW TAS! Slide, or in this case roll, cancelling saves time at the end of rolls due to momentum, saving 2-3 frames per roll. Enemies can be despawned via shooting in a specific part of the screen just before reaching their spawn point, allowing me to disable some laggy turret enemies. For the boss I manipulated a Thermal Detonator off a crate to skip his first phase, leaving him incredibly vulnerable.
Level 13
Pretty much the same as Level 12, only replace 'off a crate' with 'off a storm trooper'.
Level 14
A very simple space shooter, not much else to say.
Level 15
Dagobah 1 >_>. Luke gains access to Force abilities, most importantly Levitation which lets him float. Sliding when you first land in water causes Luke to do a glitchy jumping slide, which is helpful.
Level 16
Dagobah 2. This level starts the use of a very good glitch, which I'm dubbing Hover-Sliding. Basically whenever Luke hovers immediately after landing on a platform, there is a 9-10 frame window where Luke can slide, but it gets cancelled quickly. Still, saves time.
Level 17
Dagobah 3, very similar to Dagobah 2. Landing into the boss in a very specific way despawns its eyes, which cuts the time fighting it by half.
Level 18
Cloud City, starring Han. A very tricky jump is required early on to skip an elevator. Elsewise, not much to say, it's very similar to the Rebel Base.
Samsara Sidenote: I wanna talk about that tricky jump a little bit, since it's the last actual thing I can do to provide my usual snarky wit in this submission text of a run that technically isn't even mine. The jump in particular skips a long wait for a platform to slowly move back and forth a couple of times before going up. It looks like a normal, easy jump, but it's anything but: For some reason, under specific and not well understood circumstances, Han actually jumps much higher than normal to make that jump. Remember in my old submissions where I had a constant theme of figuring something out and then having no idea how it worked? Well, it's like that, except this isn't my submission technically. Welp.
Level 19
Chewbacca!!! This level is very complicated. To slide in the lava without dying, you have to manipulate a shield to protect Chewie. Very tough to optimize.
Level 20
The Cryogenic Freezing Chamber. Noteworthy is some cool elevator skips. Elsewise, pretty standard.
Level 21
Cloud City, at night. A projectile from a Discus allows Chewie to fly at 4 px/s. The first phase of Boba Fett can be skipped by sliding at a specific spot, which saves a lot of time.
Level 22
Luke's approach to Cloud City, which apparently involves murdering civilians. The heck. Anyway, optimizing this level was a pain because bullets can come out of four specific points.
Level 23
First Darth Vader Level, not much to say.
Level 24
Darth Vader...approach? I don't know, this level felt like padding.
Level 25
Darth Vader is by far the most difficult fight to optimize in the entire series, and that is saying something. All that flailing about Luke is doing is to hit Vader as soon as possible.
- Potentially using lag to duplicate a gun upgrade in the second level could save time.
- A trick with elevators can be implemented in the Rebel Base areas.
- The 3D segments could probably be further improved, but they're so laggy it's hard to tell.
Star Ocean: The Screenshot Suggestion
Frame 90678:
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Fog: Not really a fan of Star Wars, so the nostalgia factor is just not there for me. The entertainment value was also not there for me, but the run is well made. A few improvement are possible, but not so much that would give me grounds for rejecting the run. Accepting to Vault.
