King's Quest for the Sega Master System is supposed be a lengthy adventure / collectathon style game. However, by knowing what you need to do ahead of time and glitching around the map a bit, it can be beaten in only a couple of minutes.
Game objectives
Emulator used: BizHawk 2.2.1
Heavy glitch abuse
This run is an improvement of 63 frames over the Alyosha's improvement and 127 frames (not counting BIOS load time) over the original run by BZero from various minor optimizations. Although this run is a bit longer than both runs, the reason is because after the last necessary gameplay input, you need to wait approximately 143 frames in order to can acess the extra screen (also present on the first published run of this game, although another button was pressed to finish this screen), unlike the both runs, which stops on congratulations screen.
Special thanks
BZero, for the published run.
Alyosha, for the previous submission. Although some of his improvements were used on this run, he should technically have recieved authorship for this, but declined it.
Aqfaq, for the route explanation on the topic of this game.
Final comments
10 Dega runs left.
Since I'm not familiar with this game (I only played a bit, sometime ago), I don't know if there are more paths to improve (or probably lose frames later).
Nice! I would never have guessed from looking at the original that ~2 seconds would end up being saved here.
Voting yes, nice research on the ending screen too.
I watched this yesterday, but I don't had playing this game and I don't found entertaining due to this unknowledge...
I played it since yesterday, and it's very addictive game, you must found numerous object in a big adventure!
It's clearly entertaining when you know how it's more difficult and long in casual gaming.
Yes vote
Yes vote, but mostly on account of being familiar with the PC version of the game; never played this version before.
Anyway, couple questions. From what I can tell from previous submissions, the reason you don't go down the hole by the mushroom is to avoid the rat. Aside from cheese, you can also give him a minor treasure (diamonds, golden walnut, golden egg, ring) to get by. Would this be faster than coming back to the cave at a later time? You'd still need the fiddle or clover when doing this, of course.
Why get the bucket to deal with the dragon when you can simply throw the dagger (or even use the invisibility ring, if picking that up would be faster)?
Could the fairy's protection spell be used to deal with the leprechauns? A guide for one of the PC versions says it's programmed to de-activate near the rat, but what happens if you go through the cave backwards as you currently do? If it works, it'd eliminate the need for the bowl / fiddle. As a bonus, it should also work for the dragon, if you can manage to make it last long enough for both encounters.
Yes vote, but mostly on account of being familiar with the PC version of the game; never played this version before.
Anyway, couple questions. From what I can tell from previous submissions, the reason you don't go down the hole by the mushroom is to avoid the rat. Aside from cheese, you can also give him a minor treasure (diamonds, golden walnut, golden egg, ring) to get by. Would this be faster than coming back to the cave at a later time? You'd still need the fiddle or clover when doing this, of course.
Why get the bucket to deal with the dragon when you can simply throw the dagger (or even use the invisibility ring, if picking that up would be faster)?
To tell the truth, I'm not familiar with this game. But the route is like this (Retired from Aqfaq's post on the topic):
1. Get bowl
2. Get pebbles
3. Get mushroom
4. Get key (from the gnome)
5. Unlock door - Open door
6. Look at hole - Get slingshot
7. Use slingshot (to kill the giant)
8. Get chest
9. Push rock - Look at hole - Get dagger
10. Cut rope - Get bucket - Lower rope - Climb
11. Swim - Fill bucket
12. Throw water (to bypass the dragon)
13. Get mirror
14. Give bowl - Fill bowl - Get fiddle
15. Eat mushroom (to enter the cave)
16. Use fiddle (to bypass the leprachauns)
17. Get shield
18. Open castle door.
19. Talk to the king
Also, I tested the dagger and doesn't kill the dragon. Now the cave route, probably needs a test route.
My homepage
--Currently not much motived for TASing as before...--
But I'm still working.
Hmm, I played around with the game, and it looks like it differs a bit from the PC version I played. Seems like there's very little in the way of alternate solutions for this version. So most of my suggestions don't work, the only one that does would be giving a treasure to the rat, which I don't know is worth it.
Anyway, reviewing the route, I noted that perhaps there's 1 transition to be saved by collecting the dagger and bucket first, killing the dragon, then using the condor to drop you near the mushroom. From there, you'd get the other items much the same as you did here (though you could get the chest after the shield, if that'd be faster). The only drawback is the scene where you're carried off by the bird, so if it saves any time at all, it won't be very much.
I'll test this route. Hope if saves time.
EDIT: Tested this. After the mirror, I followed approximately the same route of this TAS. But resulted on a longer giant enemy position, and a slower time (roughly 400 frames, even with a trick to skip the bird scene on the sky - discovered today).
During the way to the gnome, I found a way to skip the deadly water message (saves a few frames), but unfortunately results on a later desync (this game isn't friendly to edit).
My homepage
--Currently not much motived for TASing as before...--
But I'm still working.
