Summary

• "Pacifist" Main Objective
• Alucard Scenario Sub-Objective
• Abuses Programming Errors
• Uses Game Reset Sequence
• Emulator used: BizHawk (2.5.2)
• RealTime:28:54.650 GameTime:26:22(last input) Frames:104079 Re-records:79563

Introduction

Explanation

Character choice

SRAM Usage

Flaws, Glitches'n'Routes

• The 4 "events" unlocked in this run are "prologue" "meet death" "meet maria" "meet librarian", I believe its not possible to skip any of those, note that if you start with maria/richter they get all the 5 "exclusive" events unlocked (includes meet maria).
• Richter and maria are used to reach relics sooner and sequence break everything, despite theres no "stop screen" when you pick one, it function the same than in alucard game, because there is no "alucard game" anyway, everybody use the same everything.
• It is necessary to "meet maria", because when richter get there, its the cutscene layout, that mean top access are blocked, the room doesnt even have a Y scrolling, you cannot access olrox quarters before you trigger that event basicly.
• You could just "meet maria" after richter unlock the marble gallery/pick the cube of zoe, but then you will be blocked at outerwall with doppleganger.
• It is possible to skip richter with a wingsmash, that will trigger the sequence "saved richter", Ive decided to use instead the glitched keep because this mean im not "saving" richter (time attack event).
• It is possible to go by medusa instead of the bat boss, and it will most probably go faster, because any other sotn run use the medusa route, ive arbitrarly decided to go by clock tower (again).
• The axe armor, as well as the diamond plate/baseball hat are not required, it was to maximize my DEF and have an alternative to skip the bat, turns out they was pointless as the duplicator offset is still too high and the bat did spin attack directly.
• In the prologue im taking damage to make my HP as low as possible (75); theres no indication that its required, but for a while I wasnt sure about that, its something you would do by default so that you get lowest HP.
• Most of the wolf action is done for entertainment and would be slightly slower in most situations.
• You cannot see it but the damage (from one of the shuriken hits) on dracula is 9999 and its the maximum, to obtain this you need to have a negative luck value, in this run alucard got 11, equiping a duplicator means -10, so you need 2 duplicators to make this work, dracula got 10000hp so the second hit kills him regardless whats the dmg from it.
• The bestiary showing dracula from prologue is something that unlock in any case scenario, even if you dont do the prologue, the mention on psx run that only dracula is unlocked in bestiary is wrong, anything you "touch" will unlock it, in this run theres 24 total unlock.
• Compared to the other pacifist run, there is many "touch" and some "hits" on invulnerable monsters (dyplo, plant, golden skull), but no damage is deal to anybody aside dracula like on the other run.
• Joseph cloak / pink color cape are another "artistic" choice of mine, they arent required.
• The name input ARUKADO, PACIFIST, TASVIDEO, ZEROBEAT are not necessary of course.
• The rerecord count is inacurate, im reusing the other pacifist to make the sram, it is actually ~ 30k.

PSX vs Saturn

Alucard Scenario vs 1 Touch/2 Hits

Youtube

Screenshoots

• In the past (before my time on staff so I don't know exact details), the site had allowed runs of a game on one system to obsolete or prevent runs from another system from being accepted. Currently, we lean more toward accepting multiple systems for the same game, especially if there are differences in how the game plays across the systems. So cross-system obsoletion/comparison shouldn't be a concern for SOTN.
• The Saturn version of SOTN gives the player a starting choice from three charaters with which to play the game: Richter, Alucard, and Maria. These characters have different abilities/limitations and thus require playing through the game differently. As such, there is potential value in a publication for each character in order to both archive and showcase (from a TASing standpoint) the differences in how the characters beat the game as quickly as possible. Based on the current rules, it's likely only one of these characters would get a Standard class publication with the others going to Alternate class; but there is also some discussion on whether this policy should be changed in a way that would allow a run from each of the characters in Standard class. Regardless of class distinction, a run from each character is likely acceptable.
• Exclusively for the Saturn version of the game, there is a save-game glitch where the memory of items collected isn't reset when restarting the game with a different character. This effectively allows the game to be started with one character and get to a save point to create the "dirty" SRAM, then restart the game with a new character who will have all the items/stats collected by the previous character due the the game not resetting the RAM values upon stariting the new character. This opens the door for different approaches to gameplay among the various characters and creates some SRAM backed categories of play.
  • Richter normally starts with all the relics, but his relic stuff doesn't use much mana, so he starts with much less initial mana points than Maria. So using him as the initial character is going to be a less optimal use of the save glitch for Alucard to then start his scenario as he would be limited by a lower mana level.
  • Maria also normally starts with all the relics and high mana points, thus using her as the initial character is going to be most optimal use of the save glitch as it will allow for Alucard to then start his scenario with all relics and a good supply of mana.
    • One could do a Richter run instead of Alucard after starting with Maria, but since Richter already has all the relics and doesn't need the mana boost, it's not worthwhile over a baseline Richter run.
  • Using Alucard as the initial character before the reset will still transfer things from the first save, but the subsequent chosen character would then still have to go collect items through the game; so this would also be a sub-optimal use of a save-glitch based any% run. The technique might be potentially be usable for a faster all-relics collection run, though.

• 1) baseline "Richter scenario"
• 2) baseline "Alucard scenario"
• 3) baseline "Maria scenario"
• 4) "save-glitch, Alucard scenario"
  • This could be done either from power-on by including the first character (Maria) setup in the main movie file, or as starting directly with Alucard from an SRAM backed movie file that was created with Maria as the first character. While this would likely be slower than the baseline "Maria scenario" it would likely be faster than the baseline "Alucard scenario" and offer a good contrast to that later run. This would be an Alternative class goal.
• 5) "pacifist"
  • The most pacifist way to play this game is to use the save-glitch to provide Alucard with all the relics from Maria, which then allows for minimizing hits/damage to enemies compared to any other branch of the game. This would be a save-glitch based run and could again either contain the Maria setup in the main movie file or using an SRAM backed start. This would be an Alternative class goal.
• 6) "all relics"
  • A run that actively collects all the relics in the game as fast as possible starting with none. It's not known wheter this would be faster starting from a baseline Richter/Alucard character, or starting with a save-glitch that doesn't begin with all relics yet allows for character swapping which may potentially allow for retreiving the relics faster.
  • It should be obvious that starting a game with Maria to simply have all the relics at the onset isn't valid for this category.
• 7) "best ending"
  • To achieve the best ending in this game requires visiting a certain percentage of the map. It's expected that using a save-glitch to start Alucard with all relics would be the fastest way to do this, but not 100% sure.

• This run uses the save glitch, but doesn't use Maria as the inital base character; thus it's a sub-optimal use of the save-glitch itself.
• This run is a pacifist goal, which (as we described above) is ideally performed using the Maria based save-glitch and Alucard as the played character to minimize attacking/damaging enemies. So it's a sub-optimal pacifist approach as well.
• As mentioned above, using the save glitch to not start with all relics really only makes sense for an "all relics" collection run, and then only if it's faster than doing so with a baseline Richter/Alucard.