Hello, all! This Run uses a few major glitches in Pokemon Red/Blue, and although both versions have access to these glitches Pkm Red is faster in a few ways which I will detail down below. It uses multiple tactics of RNG manipulation and big glitches such as the Cooltrainer Glitch, and Brock Through Walls to complete the game as fast as possible without save corruption.
This Tas is done on a very specific branch - The psr branch - of a BizHawk 1.11.7 build provided to me by Gifvex on the PkmSR Discord
[dead link removed]
It uses the Bios "gbc_bios.bin". For settings make sure the only core running is the "GBA with mGBA" core, and that in the GB settings "CGB in GBA" is true, as this will determine specific RNG necessary for the run to work properly.
The objective of this TAS is to complete the game as fast as possible using the newly discovered PkmRed NSC route. Originally this run was done on Pkm Blue but the last piece needed, the pidgey manipulation, was discovered in mid-February, 2017. I had been running NSC for about 3 weeks (I currently hold 5th place on the ladder), and had decided to have some fun and create my first TAS.
Aims
(from highest to lowest priority)
Aims for fastest time (Hall Of Fame Fadeout Into Credits)
Uses game hard and soft resets to manipulate RNG
Manipulates luck using frame perfect inputs
Pokémon Red NSC is a turn-based move run where stats (Level, HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Special), are important but the only necessary stat to keep track of is Special. In this Red run the starter, Bulbasaur, is necessary to completing a glitch which has been dubbed "Brock Through Walls".
These are the main differences of Red to Blue:
The title screen takes 7 frames longer to clear in Blue than it does in Red, and (2) the preset rival name is 1 character longer in Red than it is in Blue. There are soft version differences in the time costs of the version-unique manips.
The title screen is cleared 3 times: for the Pidgey manip, Brock Skip, and the Ditto manip. This results in 21 frames in favor of Red or 14 frames in favor in Red should the Pidgey manip be skipped. See Pidgey manip for details.
The rival name appears 17 times: 1 time in the intro, 7 times before the rival fight, 4 times in the rival fight, 1 time after the rival fight, and 4 times in the second lab visit. At one frame per character, this results in 17 frames in favor of Blue.
This results in a frame favor to Red in the opening sequence.
The Pidgey and Ditto manipulations are much quicker in Red. And, during the Cooltrainer Glitch, in Blue, you have to walk up and talk to Oak before moving to the hall of fame, but in Red, you get transported right into the Hall of Fame text.
Luck manipulation is a huge factor in this game. It affects damage variation, critical hits, first-turn attack, hit accuracy, opponents' attacks (to some degree), out-of-battle encounters, random walking people's movement, wild Pokémon's stats, catching wild Pokémon, and others. Some opposing strategies can be luck-manipulated but opponents will play weaknesses when they can.
Pokémon caught and used:
Bulbasaur is the starter Pokémon of choice for this run. Its special stat being 16 at Lvl 7-8 is required of the Brock Through Walls Glitch. It's Poison/Grass type makes it unable to be poisoned by the Weedle we have to fight in this run. I manipulate the Bulbasaur's special stat to be 13 at Lvl 5, then after the Rival fight (Lvl 6) it will be 14, then after the Weedle fight (Lvl 7), it will be 16.
Pidgey is needed for its health stat during the Brock Through Walls Glitch, which is 17.
As it shouldn't be possible to talk to the Youngster from the right, the developers never programmed a path for the Youngster to follow when the player is right of the Youngster. When talking to him, the game looks for the player's coordinates but often never finds them, resulting in a soft lock.
However, the player is able to write some pseudo-data in RAM representing the player's coordinates (which in this case should be $10 $24), which leads the game into using the next two bytes as a path pointer provided that the coordinates appear at an address at xxx2, xxx6, xxxA, or xxxE.
Particular paths may overwrite the 'disallowed buttons' variable, allowing the player to walk through walls
Ditto is needed to perform the Cooltrainer Glitch. This glitch is very complicated, it is caused by using a Pokemon with Transform to transform into a Pokemon with 2 moves then swapping those moves. Here is an in-depth guide into the glitch. [dead link removed]
Run Info
-Pre-game
I manip my TID using specific inputs and resets to the bits 64 C2 which comes into play during the cool trainer glitch.
-Intro
I choose ,,,,, as my name, for the Cooltrainer Glitch. And Blue for the rivals name.
-In-Game
I proceed through the game normally, choosing Bulbasaur and using luck manip to get the proper stats. during the rival fight I manip all of his Growls to fail my tackles to crit 3 times, and one normal tackle. Then we get the parcel and come back to deliver it, then proceed back up to viridian city. In the shop, I buy 4 balls. Then proceed into viridian forest. We fight with Weedle and manip crits and string shot fails, then beat him and Lvl up to Lvl 7 with 16 special. We hard reset to manip a pidgey to spawn with 17 health and use YoloBall frames, a type of luck manip which can be performed in RTA runs, to catch it first try. In Pewter's shop, we buy an escape rope then set or cursor in the menu to "SAVE". We then perform the Brock Through Walls Glitch and head up and to the left. Once you've gone left enough you head to the right a little then up into Cerulean Cave. We hard reset on the first tile to perform the ditto manip which also has yoloball frames. After catching the Ditto we escape rope out and walk up back into route 1. We manip a Rattata to spawn, as pidgey only has one move in route 1, then perform the CoolTrainer Glitch. after that, we catch 2 glitched Pokemon which gives us access to the glitched Pokemon menu which, basically, allows us to rewrite game memory within the game itself. After looking at the 2nd glitched Pokemon's stats we are able to move through the 6 main spots in the Pokemon menu to below the screen and perform these swaps
4 <> 1
1 <> 12
19 <> 17
11 <> 1
1 <> 6
6 <> 17
Then exit out of both menus. We are now in the Hall of Fame text!
Possible improvements
Manipulate better attack stats on the Bulbasaur.
Spend more time looking for manips that don't require hard resets, which could save lots of time.
The end needs a lot of work in regards to Encounter manips.
Thanks go to the following people who helped me:
Gifvex
Entrpntr
Stringflow
Peterpartner
and a bunch of other people from the Pokemon SR discord.
Noxxa: Cancelling
by author's decision. As noted in the discussion topic, this submission has a few issues including emulator usage (using an unofficial build which improperly emulates the game to match console) and general improvements of the TAS. Graystripe, good luck with your next attempt!
