Master is the only difficulty that is limited to 5 floors. The others have 30 each.
This game is insane to control because of the lack of an analog control method (sure, you can use A and B to alter how much you are tilting the course by, but it doesn't replace analog control by any means).
No
The Palace of Four Sword glitched or a NG+ style 100% run where the Hurricane Spin riddle quest & Palace of Four Sword are unlocked naturally (by playing through Four Swords and obtaining a certain amount of Medals of Courage) are better choices to do a run on the GBA version.
Is it possible to TAS multiplayer (or record a verification movie that one would need to start with save data of the sort)? Because the GBA Four Swords requires it, you cannot play alone (unlike it's buddy, the recent DSiWare re-release).
Having Aero enabled won't prevent something that doesn't like it from running (like Gens). However, when said application starts, Windows disables Aero while said application is running. This results in an annoying black screen and wait for everything to refresh, and prevents useful features of Aero from being used (personally, I'm partial to being able to see a mini-screen of any of the programs running on the taskbar, but if Aero is disabled, I can't do that).
And sometimes Windows is slow to re-enable Aero when the Hatey McHaterson application is shut off.
Having an alternative that doesn't do all that is vastly preferable, IMO.
I've always thought Google Chrome likes to overreact with stuff like this. I've seen it pull this garbage on other boards for the same reason it's being mentioned here.
I just saw the note about the Game Genie code, but I already encoded the movie without it...is it really necessary to include? I also don't think there's any precedent in doing this; otherwise, we would probably have encodes of translated ROMs, and I'm pretty sure we don't.
The FF2/FFIV run was encoded with a Game Genie code active to not reduce music volume while the author paused during the battles. But that's the only instance I can think of.
I think this run is fine for the current category. What this game needs is a 100% run; it'd be very pointless to have a "glitched" branch, a standard branch and a 100% branch considering how similar the standard and 100% branches would end up being in comparison to this run.
Also, yes vote!
As I recall, the standard run gets none of the item switches, so a 100% would still stand out in comparison to the standard run.
As for the NESBot thing, I can't remember if this game has a soft reset or not (or if any NES games do, for that matter). If it does, one can simply swap out both reset frames (not sure why there's two) with the soft reset button combination. I think, I'm not a TASer myself :P.
I had to read the description to figure out that the character jumped a wall, it looked like he was jumping over lava or something in the video itself. It was just confusing, and not the good kind either :P.
With Mega Man, taking damage results in getting knocked back, which would slow things down. However, as the submission explains, there's a way to avoid the knock back with Bass, which would probably make taking damage be faster than avoiding it.
Couple notes on the publication entry...
Shouldn't the 2 Players tag be added to the list on the right? Also, should the level 11 bug that kills player 2 be mentioned in the description?
It's faster to choose French because it's the first option on the select language screen. Choosing English would be slower because he would have to move the cursor to it.
Are we that desperate for frame optimizations in a 21 minute movie? Stuff like this really annoys me.
On the run itself, I had to reboot my computer before I was able to finish watching the run, but I felt like I had to force myself to watch it. Since I didn't see the whole movie, I'm not putting a vote in the poll, but it felt really boring to me (and the decision to leave the game text in French didn't really help, although I didn't see a whole lot of text in the first place).
I see I'm definitely in the minority here, but I'd prefer something done on a platform with a (U) version. The presence of Japanese is a bit of a downer to me, given the whole not understanding the language bit.
I know there's at least one other movie on the site (but I cannot remember which) that does antics of some sort (a minigame?) on the credits.
On the issue of the memory card debate, personally, I don't see an issue with not having a verification movie, considering what all has to be done to unlock All Star mode. At least, assuming any 100% save works.
Would take awhile to do a full playthrough of the game. The fact that the TAS was almost 4 hours should speak volumes about how long an unassisted run would take. Even if you used invulnerability cheat codes the whole way through.
And if by status messages, you mean when status afflictions occur, I believe this only occurs once or twice (with Full Metal Hugger's poison attack...most of the bosses didn't get an opportunity to attack at all).