Game objectives

• Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.2.1
• BIOS (U) SCPH-7001 Version 4.1 (SHA1: 14DF4F6C1E367CE097C11DEAE21566B4FE5647A9)
• Aims for fastest time
• Taking damage to save time
• Abuses death
• Abuses programming errors
• Genre: Platformer

A note about playing back this movie

• This game crashes on Bizhawk 2.3 so I advise playing it with either 2.2.1 or 2.2.2
• The movie also contains subtitles throughout.

Comparison with the currently published TAS

The bios change

The New Technology

• Animation Substitution

• Snapping

The Existing Technology

Lag Management

The game will occasionally lag when scrolling most likely due to the loading of a new section or assets. Usually, those lag frames can be mitigated or sometimes completely avoided by simply changing the position of the character in any axis. Some actions are also more likely than others to cause lag when executed like jumping on the edge of a platform, jumping on a tilted platform, taking damage and moving near a static object.

Jumping vs. Walking

When jumping, your speed is locked to the value it had in the previous frame for the whole duration of the jump. When walking, his speed will oscillate slightly resulting in an overall slower movement option by about 12% versus jumping on the first possible frame after landing.

Momentum Boost

When riding a moving platform, jumping from it will carry their speed in every axis for the duration of the jump.

Ledge Clipping

When jumping with an apex near the edge of a platform, the game will sometime clip you on top of it if your hit box is close enough to the edge.

Boost Meter Management

When you power on the console, the boost meter will be full the first time entering an auto-scroller. It will otherwise remember how much boost you had when you finished your last auto-scroller even if you replay one of those levels. Furthermore, once depleted or under 25%, the boost meter will start filling back up to 25% where you'll be able to use your boost again. This 25% threshold is also very important because at the start of each subsequent "auto-scroller", you are unable to start moving until you can boost. So ideally, you want to finish the first two "auto-scrollers" with 25% boost to be able to move immediately on the next "auto-scroller". Resetting the console will put the meter back at 100% for the next auto-scroller.

Damage Recoil & Target Locking

During combat, it's possible to lock the orientation of the character with R1 so that you're always facing a specific enemy. There is also no distance limit that would break that lock as long as you hold down R1. Since you will always move backward when taking damage, it's possible to boost yourself on each enemy that you collide with or that hit you if you lock yourself onto an enemy and start moving away from it while locked. This is used in the bridge section of 1-4 and to reach a checkpoint outside a fight in 7-2 and 7-4.

Invulnerability Frames

Some enemies will be invulnerable for a set number of frames after getting hit. The number of frames varies with the type of enemy but is also implemented inconsistently as there are two Hork-Bajir with a fast animation while the rest of them have a slower animation. Additionally, if you're standing too close to them while their invulnerability timer runs out, they'll instantly do a counter-attack move that makes them invulnerable for its duration. Doing Animation Substitution (see above) pretty much negates those invulnerability frames.

Free Double Damage Hits

When delivering the last hit on an enemy, you can sometime hold or press [] a few frame later that will make you do an attack that deals double two damage instead of one. Doing so seems to have a very long recovery before you're able to attack again. This is used only once in the second combat of 1-1 since it one-hit kills the second enemy.

Glitchy Jumps

When jumping on the very edge of a ledge or seemingly at random, you can sometime gain extra height on that jumps.

Checkpoint Abuse

There are 3 checkpoints in the game that can be abused to skip part of a combat as they will respawn you outside of the combat zone. It saves quite a few seconds in 7-3. It also saves a few seconds in the first fight of 7-4.

Stage by stage breakdown of improvements

1-1 (The Entrance)

1-2

1-3

1-4

2 (The Sea)

3-1 (The Forest)

3-2

3-3

4 (The Swamp)

5-1 (The Gardens)

5-2

5-3

5-4

6 (The Dark)

7-1 (The City)

7-2

7-3

7-4

8 (The Finale)

Special Thanks

• Skateman222: For discovering a few new tricks and the Chinese TAS.
• 張致浩: For making a TAS which contained faster strats then the current movie. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3I7gbYTEJM
• Keizaron and CavemanDCJ: For finding most of the early skips in this game. Also showing it at AGDQ 2017.