The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages is a Game Boy Color game developed by Capcom. In it, Nayru, the Oracle of Ages, is possessed by the sorceress of shadows, Veran. Veran uses Nayru's powers to travel back in time and create an age of sorrow that continues to the present. Link must travel through time to collect all eight Essences of Time and defeat Veran.
Objective
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.5
- The Objective of this movie is to beat The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages as fast as possible
This movie uses multiple exploits to beat the game as fast as possible, such as an exploit called "text warping", that forces the game to move link to the next room even if the exit is designed to take him somewhere else.
The game's random number generator is also only called when specific actions happen, such as swinging the sword. Due to this, enemies can be easily avoided and rupees can be dug up in large amounts at a time very easily.
Route to Dungeon 1
Not many exciting things happening here, except for a trick called pitwalking, when Link moves between two holes in a specific pattern to avoid falling in either.
I also get and plant two gasha seeds for a trick used later in the movie.
Dungeon 1
I needed to kill 40 enemies in order to make the gasha seed grow, so a lot of this dungeon focuses on using damage boosts to kill enemies while still moving.
Route to Dungeon 2
I entered and exited the shop so I could save and quit and be returned to the shop to save time later.
After getting the harp, I use a text warp to get to rolling ridge, and use a Like Like to get Link out of the tree. This accomplishes two things, getting bombs early from a chest skips a cutscene, and getting pegasus seeds early lets Link move much faster.
Dungeon 2
Due to a skip used later, the only thing we need from this dungeon is the feather.
A pitwalk is used to get to the mini boss extremely quickly.
Route to dungeon 3
A large rupee is dug up to help buy Dimitri's flute and pay for mini games later on. A second rupee is dug up later to finish collecting them.
The text warp is used to get Link stuck in the tree again, except this time a save and quit is used to get Link into the graveyard. A bomb, pegasus seeds, and the feather are used to get to the grave early, and skips needing to finish dungeon 2.
I stop by Vasu to get the expert's ring, which lets Link get to his sword early once on tokay island.
On tokay island, an exploit is used by pulling out a bomb while talking to the tokay trader, which causes Link to not pick up a shovel. this is used multiple times to significantly speed up the process of getting all the items back.
When getting back the seed satchel, mystery seeds have been added to it, as well as pegasus seeds still being included.
Dungeon 3
Not much interesting until the second half of the dungeon, where I go back to the first room to use the portal instead of getting a small key.
Scent seeds are used to speed up dungeon 6, so I retrieve them from the regrowing bushes, even though I never obtained them from the tree.
Route to Dungeon 4
Dimitri's flute is purchased because Dimitri's area is the quickest to complete.
Dungeon 4
The only thing needed in dungeon 4 is the switch hook.
Route to dungeon 5
The fight against King Moblin takes a while, so Link slides around for fun
Dungeon 5
The only thing needed in dungeon 5 is the cane.
Route to dungeon 6
A text warp is used to get to the base of rolling ridge.
Multiple minigames are needed in order to get access to dungeon 6, link does some fun things such as spinning in a minecart or standing still on moving platforms.
Dungeon 6
A small portion of the dungeon is done in the past to set up for the section done in the present
For the spinner puzzle, a pitwalk is used to skip a rotation.
After getting the boss key, I return to the past in order to defeat the boss.
A pitwalk is used to skip getting a small key.
Route to End
A scent seed is used to distract the palace guards in order to skip a puzzle in the garden.
After defeating nayru, I visit an underwater tile in order to let a later exploit work.
A text warp is used to get into an out of bounds area.
A tile is selected that causes many odd things to happen, and it is selected in a certain way in order to make veran appear in the upper-left corner of the screen. This causes Link to be taken to the final fight of the game.
Another side effect is that the ring box gets corrupted, allowing Link to equip the red ring, which doubles the damage the sword does.
The Map Data of most houses and some caves is stored on the outside of the map, which explains why text warping takes Link to where it does.
The last glitch of the run, veran warp, can be used in many ways, including a way to complete the map in a non-linked game. The map was previously unable to be completed.
The main difficult part of making this movie was getting the RNG to work well, because I had to manually make it progress instead of just waiting on or two frames before entering the next room.
This movie is not completely optimized yet, mainly due to the item duplication method on tokay island being discovered halfway through making it, thus slightly obsoleting the expert's ring.
I want to give a huge thank you to Drenn, who helped me with information and let me copy some movement and RNG of a WIP he made up to Dungeon 2.
Suggested Screenshot frame: 108241 (Edited to screenshot suggested by comments)
Tompa: I guess I'll judge this.
Tompa: So... This run was a nice watch and it's great to finally have a finished TAS of Ages!
However, while it is optimal at times, and the game's RNG is a very painful matter, it has many flaws and at some times sloppy. Swordless Link, with the help of me, started TASing this in 2007, which finished the 4th dungeon. While that has been obsolete thanks to new findings, like the Text Warp, it's still using several strategies in certain rooms that are faster than this submission. The WIP was posted in the forums and dungeon TASes could easily be found on Youtube with a simple search. Despite this, the submitter claimed to not know of any other TAS WIPs than Drenn's, also posted in the forums, which shows a lack of general research. Some strategies are also found in the published Oracle of Seasons TAS.
The mistakes done are not too major, but could have saved many seconds in the whole run. As no public WIPs were posted, I couldn't have helped out earlier by reviewing it.
All that said: The run was very well recieved and has been long awaited, I personally enjoyed it as well. In the end, despite me sounding pretty harsh, I'll Accept this for publication to the Moon.
