Pokémon Trading Card Game

(The horrendous tutorial is literally a third of the run; please skip it. Go to 7:26 in the video)
This is a 1 minute, 25 second improvement over the Pokemon TCG TAS from 2010 by p4wn3r & FractalFusion. Read the previous TAS's notes if you want to know more about the game. The basic gist is, every duel is won in as few turns as possible. You do this by finding a duel where the opponent has the right shuffle for the job and you win the coin flip (RNG advances every frame on the overworld), and then manipulating your deck's contents to get anything you need in your starting hand to take them out. RNG doesn't advance during deck editing, so you can go back and expand deck edits to do more. TAStudio helped immensely with doing all this; I don't think it'd have been possible to edit the input like I had to do here back in 2010.
This is the Lua script used (built off of p4wn3r's; R toggles the display, A toggles text autoadvance, D prints your deck's contents to console/file): https://pastebin.com/cYGsAKS7

Game objectives

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Uses death to save time (wait, death? I just lose a couple optional duels, I don't get banished to the Shadow Realm or something)
  • Get put in Vault because it's 7 minutes of the slowest text ever in a video game, followed by 14 minutes of menuing so fast no one can possibly keep track of what's going on
  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.11.4

Main improvements

1. Using Mysterious Fossil against Ronald
Mysterious Fossil is a Trainer card that acts as a Basic Pokemon, has 10 HP, and isn't worth a prize. There are two duels you want to lose as fast as possible, and Fossil is a better option than using a Pokemon. Using Fossil saves an entire turn over the old TAS's Ronald 1, and in both cases, it saves the animation of Ronald taking a prize.
2. Using Select+Up/Down in deck editing
This is a completely undocumented feature, but you can scroll an entire page at once in the deck edit screen with the Select button and up/down, which is much faster than moving one at a time. The old TAS does not use this at all.
3. Manipulating booster pack contents to not give new cards
This is an improvement that was listed in the notes of the old TAS. Basically, you want to minimize how many frames it takes to get to the cards you want to add/remove, mostly by minimizing new cards you get in boosters. What matters most is Trainer cards that come before PlusPower in the menu, as PlusPower is by far the non-Energy card most tweaked in deck edits. For the most part I didn't bother with avoiding any Pokemon cards.
The booster pack manipulation I do in this run does not actually lose any time at all, thanks to having to wait before starting duels for good RNG anyway. Like, if you found a good duel that you have to wait 10 frames for, you can wait some of those 10 frames to manipulate the last duel's boosters!
4. Naming the player "I"
For most of the game text is 'instant', but having a one-letter name saves time during the tutorial, and who wants that to be any longer than it needs to be? It's a bit funnier than "MARK" too! It might save some lag frames as well when displaying text during the rest of the game.
5. Starting deck + club route change
The old TAS gets the Bulbasaur and Friends deck, and starts with Rock Club. I get Charmander and Friends, and start with Lightning. These two changes go together, and here's the pros and cons of the changes:
  • Can use Paras against Gene instead of Nidoran, saving Horn Hazard coin flips and RNG manip time
  • Saves about a second of world map movement
  • Can beat Lightning Club trainers without a deck edit
  • Starts with Ponyta/Rattata/Machop in the deck
  • Bulbasaur starts with 2 PlusPower/1 Defender; Charmander starts with 1 PlusPower/0 Defender :(
I think this route went very well, although my PlusPower count was very bad at the start, partially because I had to get a Defender before Isaac. I was curious about Bulbasaur+Lightning first and tried it out, but since I had to edit in a Hitmonchan + Fighting Energy to take out Jennifer, I was already over 2 seconds behind the Charmander route. Charmander & Friends also saves deck edits by having valuable cards like Ponyta and Rattata deep in the deck from the start, which definitely made me confident about my decision.
6. Everything else
If you watch the old TAS, it looks incredibly fast... besides the tutorial of course! But, on a frame level, there are actually a TON of improvements to be made to the old input.
  • Old TAS only uses A when closing text boxes, wasting a frame to depress A
  • Old TAS doesn't use Right to skip pages in the hand, losing time getting to slot 5/6/7 in the hand
  • Old TAS didn't close prizes with B, sometimes wasting a frame to get an Energy prize instead of a Pokemon prize
  • Old TAS didn't combine some inputs together (for example, with cursor on slot 2 of your hand, you can select card 3 with down+A on the same frame)
This image shows an example of the menu improvement possible, taken from placing a basic Pokemon in Ronald 1. All of p4wn3r's input has time saves like this.
There's other little things like choosing the prize which results in the least lag frames; it takes longer to display a card with a ton of text (PlusPower, Double Colorless Energy) than a Basic Energy. This wasn't relevant in VBA, which had far less lag frames on displaying text.
The biggest time save is probably deck edits; the old TAS did 17 deck edits, while this TAS does 6. My edits are quicker for the most part as well.

Obligatory comparison

Unfortunately, this TAS is in that limbo of appearing slower than the old one because of emulator accuracy. VBA-rr is absolutely ridiculous for this game. It saves about a minute and a half from having less lag frames. The first thing I did before starting this TAS was to take the old input file and resync it in Bizhawk, so I'd know what I'm actually competing against. Here's that file: userfiles/info/39509855853896324
VBA-rr TAS: 21:40.67, 78041 frames (11867 lag frames, 66174 non-lag)
VBA-rr TAS synced in BizHawk: 23:14.08, 83265 frames (17310 lag frames, 65955 non-lag)
My TAS: 21:49.39, 78207 frames (15517 lag frames, 62690 non-lag)
I'd hoped to beat the VBA time, but it was a losing battle. Even on clubs where I save an edit, I'd only save less than a second. Ronald and the Dome are the only big time saves over VBA. Times where Bizhawk gets 10 lag frames, VBA would get 1. You just can't compete with that. I came out only 160 frames behind, and it's still great to save about a minute and a half! Here's a chart that may or may not be accurate (it's confusing to compare since the club routes are different)
SegmentBizhawk 2017VBA-rr 2010Bizhawk resyncMain reason
Intro275912760228133-1 edit, name change to I
Lightning610961586777-2 edits
Water682963146968+1 edit, bad Amy (still saved time on Bizhawk!)
Ronald 1133316271746Fossil
Grass 1544354666035-1 edit
Science393936374064Bad Rick
Fire411439864377No change
Rock393038224202-1 edit, but took 2 trips
Ronald 2130814191502Fossil
Psychic263226212875-1 edit
Grass 2245224542676-1 edit
Fighting276023652599Bigger edit, worse Mitch
Dome92191004510755-5 edits(!!!)

Deck edits

These notes were more for my own reference than anything, but they might help if you want to actually understand what goes on. Detailing the cards I put in helped a lot for returning to this TAS after taking breaks from it, and it doesn't hurt to put it in the info here.
Figuring out these edits is like a puzzle, trying to move everything into place as efficiently as possible. Six edits is way less than I expected, I feel like I got really good luck with some shared card IDs between battles! (I.E. if two duels both have card 55 in their starting hand, putting a card needed by both of them in that slot, like a PlusPower, can help save edits)

Deck Edit #0 - Jennifer, Nicholas

No edit needed. I managed to find a frame for both of them where I had my 1 Machop, and a Fighting Energy, and they had just one 40 HP basic, and I went first. Wasn't expecting it. Only Charmander and Friends can win a duel without edits, as the other decks have no high-damage cards in them by default.

Deck Edit #1 - Brandon, Isaac

Shift Machop (Slot 45) to Slot 40 by removing 5 Fire Pokemon
Shift Bill (was Slot 52, now 47) to Slot 46 by removing Oak
Remove/readd PlusPower into Slot 58
Add Defender into Slot 60
Both battles have Slot 40 in the opening hand, and Machop is only 5 away, so that's perfect. Brandon's got an Eevee out so I needed the PlusPower to knock that out. The Bill gets me Slot 60 from the top of my deck, which was the fastest way to get a Defender in my hand.

Deck Edit #2 - Sara, Amanda

Shift Machop (Slot 40) to Slot 23 and PlusPower (Slot 58) to Slot 41 by removing 17 Energy
Add Paras into Slot 56
Add Double Colorless Energy into Slot 57
Add PlusPower into Slot 60
FOR THE FUTURE: Fighting Energy into Slot 47, Farfetch'd into Slot 49, Rattata into Slot 50, Item Finder into Slot 53
Sara has a Goldeen, so the best way to take it out is 20 + 2 PlusPowers. My starting hand against Amanda, who has a Poliwag out, has cards 56 and 57, and it's pretty quick to add a Paras while I'm already removing/readding all that energy to shift my Machop/PlusPower down together.

Deck Edit #3 - Joshua, Amy, Ronald 1, Brittany, Michael, Heather, Kristin

Shift Machop (23) down 8 slots
Shift Defender (43->35), Fighting Energy (47->39), Farfetch'd (49->41), PlusPower (60->52), Item Finder (53->45) down 1 more slot
Add Mysterious Fossil into Slot 54
Add PlusPower into Slot 56, Slot 58
FOR THE FUTURE: Machop into Slot 53
Farfetch'd isn't the fastest way to kill Joshua; coin flip attacks are to be avoided; but my options are limited because Amy is very very tough to beat, and you can't do an edit right before her. I also need 4 PlusPowers to beat her without any coin flips, and only have 3 (bad Colosseum pack luck), but I have an Item Finder I use on turn 2 to get one of turn 1's PlusPowers back. I end up using EVERY single card I get in the Amy fight, all but two of which (Item Finder discards) had to be manipulated. This fight could definitely have been faster (her Energy Removal didn't help), but the no-edit Grass Club I got after makes up for it.
Ideally you'd want to go second against Ronald instead of first, but the battle I found here had the Fossil in a position that minimized deck edit time. I tried some other seeds, but I kept going first in them too, or Ronald would have extra actions on his turn, like placing more basics on the bench (and just one action like that takes longer than me going first and passing control).
From there, I manage to do the entire Grass Club without editing. Brittany had a seed where she just has Fat Pikachu out, and I have my Machop and Fighting Energy. Michael has just a Mankey out, which I Rattata PlusPower Bite, the PlusPower gotten off the top with a Bill. I had to wait about a second for that Michael fight, but the next fight I didn't wait at all for, so it all balances out. Heather has just a Venonat, and I've got Ponyta + DCE. Same goes for Kristin.

Deck Edit #4 - Joseph, Rick, Jessica

Shift Machop (15) down 6 slots
Shift Rattata (41->35) down 3 more slots
Shift PlusPowers (56->47, 58->49) down 1 more slot, and remove the Bill in between them
Add PlusPowers in slots 56 and 60
FOR THE FUTURE: Defender in Slot 53, Fighting Energy in Slot 54
Ideally, Rick would have 2 Porygons, which you could easily take out with Machop. But I wasn't able to find that, so instead I need to use 3 PlusPowers against his Koffing lead. This deck edit ended up being very quick though, so I'm happy with it. It all shifted into place very nicely.
The Jessica fight also uses the PlusPower in slot 56, as well as a different Rattata that's been deep in the deck from the start of the game.

Deck Edit #5 - Ken, Gene, Murray, Chris, Nikki

Shift Machop (9) down one slot and Mysterious Fossil (24), Water Energy (26), Staryu (43) down 2 slots (take out 1 Fighting, and Machoke)
Remove 1 PlusPower to shift Defender (53->51), Fighting Energy (54->52), PlusPower (56->54), PlusPower (60->58) down 1 more slot, remove 1 Bill between the PlusPowers
Add Double Colorless in slot 57
Add Double Colorless and Paras in slot 58/59
Add PlusPower in slot 60
This part went through a lot of changes and redos, and a 1+ year break. I originally went Ken, then Murray, but the Murray frame I found was abysmal (Energy Removal + Psyshock succeeds). Switching Gene and Murray, my luck was MUCH better for both of them. I couldn't find a good Chris frame after Gene, so I go back to the Rock Club a second time; it does lose about 2 or 3 seconds of overworld movement, but I believe I more than saved that with my duel luck and being able to beat these 5 duels (including 4 club leaders) with one edit. This edit only removes/adds 4 cards, yet sets up 12+ cards in positions I need. I could not be happier with that.

Deck Edit #6 - Mitch, Dome

Shift Machop (8) and Rattata (10) down 3 (remove Growlithe, Arcanine, Ponyta)
Shift Computer Search (14) and Defender (23) down 5 (remove Raticate, Switch)
Shift PlusPower (60) down 13 more to 42 (remove 3 Fire, 6 Lightning, Raticate, 3 PlusPower)
Add a whole bunch of things in slots 43-60: 46: PlusPower, 47: Water Energy, 48: Water Energy, 52: PlusPower, 53: PlusPower, 55: Machop, 56: Defender, 58: Staryu, 59: Staryu
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a fantastic Mitch frame (two Mankeys only is ideal). And I was all out of route changes, since he was the last guy! So, I needed all 4 PlusPowers to beat his Machop+Mankey. But I managed to do the entire Pokemon Dome with no edits afterwards, which is great! The old TAS did 5 edits in the Dome, one for each trainer. I got lucky, and used a Computer Search and Item Finder to help out with getting PlusPowers in a couple duels.
Every Dome fight except Rod can be beaten on turn 1 even though they have 2 Basics, because their AI doesn't play their Legendary card during setup. They save it so they can use its Pokemon Power on their turn. Too bad they don't get a turn!

Possible improvements

Any change to the duels/route done in this TAS will result in completely different RNG, so it's impossible to say how much faster this theoretically could be. Here's what I'm aware of:
  • Doing the Water Club second was a bad idea, as my deck was relatively weak for Joshua/Amy. I didn't even have 4 PlusPowers yet. Doing the Grass Club second could go better. Also, Amy drew an Energy Removal (you want Leaders to do as little on their turn as possible)
  • Some Club Master duels had subpar Pokemon out (especially Rick having Koffing, and Mitch having Machop), requiring more PlusPowers/menu time
  • Extra trip to Rock Club to fight Chris
  • Two coin flip attacks used
  • Any Item Finder/Computer Search/Bill usage is slow compared to already having the PlusPower in hand
However, an extra deck edit would lose you a lot more time than any individual improvement would save. Water Club second and the two Rock Club trips are not things I'd do again if starting over, but as it is, the luck worked out to do only 6 deck edits, and changing the order might ruin that. A deck edit is around 5 seconds; each of these is 1 or 2 or 3 seconds lost.

Thumbnail suggestions

40764. epic

Fog: Judging.
Fog: Nice improvement.
Accepting as an improvement to the previous publication.
Spikestuff: Go fish.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5530: anonymous user's GBC Pokémon: Trading Card Game in 21:49.40
Spikestuff
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Uh... non surprising Meh Vote I guess. Shotgun publishing.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Blazephlozard
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Spikestuff wrote:
Uh... non surprising Meh Vote I guess. Shotgun publishing.
thanks, I look forward to seeing the Gardevoir as always
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This game looks very hard to optimize. You did a great job! Yes vote.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
The8bitbeast
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Great job, it's really good to see how much time has come off this TAS and how well you've optimised it and the routing is really impressive. I love seeing TAS/RTA of this game because it's so different than a casual playthrough. The tutorial seems fine. You can skip past it in the video but it gives people who are less familiar a chance to remind themselves how the game works before you destroy it. There are plenty of popular TAS games that have long intros.
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i like how fast it went,most rpg or strategy games are so slow,yes vote!
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto. TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Dwedit
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Obviously you ignore the first 7:30 minutes of forced tutorial. We have perfect luck manipulation to see opponents beaten as fast as possible here, and crazy chains of events to ensure enough pluspowers drawn to finish within two turns! Yes vote here.
Editor, Expert player (2080)
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Nice improving the former TAS (can't believe it only took you 13791 rerecords). I did give this a thought that making a TAS of this game could be (mostly) automated in some way. However, no matter how easy MrWint makes it look, setting up automation for a game is not even remotely easy.
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Any desire to do the sequel (which doesn't have a forced tutorial)
Blazephlozard
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FractalFusion wrote:
Nice improving the former TAS (can't believe it only took you 13791 rerecords). I did give this a thought that making a TAS of this game could be (mostly) automated in some way. However, no matter how easy MrWint makes it look, setting up automation for a game is not even remotely easy.
I mean, it's only 15 minutes, and probably a good 5 or more of that is just animations, booster pack opening, overworld movement... I had to completely resync a lot of the run each time I modified an old deck edit, but it's fairly trivial with TAStudio to visually see that the menu input in this game is frame-perfect. Insert a frame here, delete a frame there, get everything back on the first green frame. Automation would be cool for that, but I dunno, I wouldn't trust it. I used a simple A+B alternator for mashing during the tutorial, that's the most I'd ever automate this kind of stuff. What would be fantastic is some sort of script that can preview what hand a leader will cheat to, so I don't have to manually find it, as well as saying what the next coin flip will be. Those two things would speed up finding a good frame on leaders drastically. That might be fairly trivial, as long as the criteria for what shuffles they accept is set right. I might try and get something like that going if I ever redo this.
deuxhero wrote:
Any desire to do the sequel (which doesn't have a forced tutorial)
I have desire, and have thought plenty about it, but I'm extremely on the fence about it. One big con is that it'd be in Japanese, and being much lesser-known, it would have much less viewer interest. And being in Japanese wouldn't do me any favors either. The most interesting thing is being able to get the Legendary Zapdos early from the Black Box; its Peal of Thunder Pokemon Power does 30 damage to a random Pokemon. This (and the new trainer Digger) are the only ways to do damage on your turn besides attacking, and would enable turn 1 kills in the many 2-pokemon duels. But getting that specific Zapdos in your hand every duel you need it, plus enough Scoop Ups to re-use the power, plus manipulating the RNG of which Pokemon he hits... There's also all of the special rules, especially energy restrictions, which would make it very hard to minimize deck edits. Plus there's the decks you get for free which adds so many more options, as well as the access to the Deck Machine to save/load your decks which gives you even more options... All of this makes it way, way more complicated than this TAS, which only has one deck, and has a very simple strategy: Get a 20 damage attacker, exploit weaknesses, PlusPower as need be. And without any benchmark to compare it to, I'm just not sure I'm up to doing it well enough to feel that it's optimized as much as it could be. I think I'd sooner redo this and hopefully beat VBA's frame count. Funnily enough though, thanks to changes in when RNG advances in TCG2, you can actually do a real-time manip route. It relies on frame-perfectly selecting your file (which is a 2 or 3 frame window thanks to lag frames, so it's not too hard). You don't have the 60 options a second that TAS does, so there's much less 1 or 2 turn kills, but it's pretty nice: http://www.speedrun.com/run/oy27vnwz
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Yes vote, sir. You have done a phenomenal job!
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Really the biggest problem (which could also make the run more entertaining, though most likely manipulation would make it pointless) with a TAS for 2 is the fights that require specific things from a deck (only ___ energy, must have ___ in deck).
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3442] GBC Pokémon: Trading Card Game by anonymous user in 21:49.40
Player (42)
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From Blazephlozard's comments at the publication video:
Blazephlozard wrote:
It's all good, the horrid tutorial followed by menuing too fast for anyone to understand isn't cut out for moon I'm going to be doing another one actually, I'm writing a Lua script now that simulates RNG/shuffling to automatically check what frames might work much more thoroughly than I did manually, I'm hoping to go down to 4 deck edits
I might be able to help you with that. Back in the day, I had a C program (not a Lua script) that simulated the RNG. Unfortunately, I have formatted my hard drive several times since then, and I don't have it anymore, but it's really easy to find out what the game is doing. I see you have modified my Lua script, just use an emulator with decent debugging tools like BGB and set some breakpoints at the addresses it's reading, and you should be able to read the asm instructions and deduce everything. I might be able to redo this, it's not that hard, and the code not very long. Anyway, I eventually gave up because I was busy with other stuff and I could not figure out how many calls to the RNG the AI was making in the battle, but if you just want to improve your search, doing that is not really necessary. Before I gave up, I could consistently find frames to do crazy stuff like finding 20 consecutive heads on coin flips. Also, playing a bit of devil's advocate here, the movie was originally accepted before Vault, and was demoted to it just later, and it was not clear what criteria were applied to do that. I really appreciate the work you've put to optimize this game, I thought my submission would be rejected seven years ago, please continue working and don't worry about publication standards. There's a significant speedrunning community for this game, and if the movie is relevant to this community, it's all that matters :)
Blazephlozard
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p4wn3r wrote:
From Blazephlozard's comments at the publication video:
Blazephlozard wrote:
It's all good, the horrid tutorial followed by menuing too fast for anyone to understand isn't cut out for moon I'm going to be doing another one actually, I'm writing a Lua script now that simulates RNG/shuffling to automatically check what frames might work much more thoroughly than I did manually, I'm hoping to go down to 4 deck edits
I might be able to help you with that. Back in the day, I had a C program (not a Lua script) that simulated the RNG. Unfortunately, I have formatted my hard drive several times since then, and I don't have it anymore, but it's really easy to find out what the game is doing. I see you have modified my Lua script, just use an emulator with decent debugging tools like BGB and set some breakpoints at the addresses it's reading, and you should be able to read the asm instructions and deduce everything. I might be able to redo this, it's not that hard, and the code not very long. Anyway, I eventually gave up because I was busy with other stuff and I could not figure out how many calls to the RNG the AI was making in the battle, but if you just want to improve your search, doing that is not really necessary. Before I gave up, I could consistently find frames to do crazy stuff like finding 20 consecutive heads on coin flips. Also, playing a bit of devil's advocate here, the movie was originally accepted before Vault, and was demoted to it just later, and it was not clear what criteria were applied to do that. I really appreciate the work you've put to optimize this game, I thought my submission would be rejected seven years ago, please continue working and don't worry about publication standards. There's a significant speedrunning community for this game, and if the movie is relevant to this community, it's all that matters :)
I've got the script working already, with help from Aroymart (RNG/shuffle code) and Mountebank (leader cheat criteria). It'll especially be a huge help for leaders, and makes it so I can very quickly check multiple different paths instead of going with the first one that seems good. These links should work (you have to run it when the decks are visually being shuffled; that's when the deck contents are loaded, but the order is unshuffled) https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/93936126816956416/329221900612141058/TCG1_4_Prize_Duels.lua https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/93936126816956416/329221906182045697/TCG1_6_Prize_Duels.lua I don't care about vault when it's something like this, it's just not an enjoyable TAS to the common public no doubt, you have to know the game to follow what's going on at all, plus the damn tutorial! Same goes for speedruns of this game really, if you know the game, they're great to watch, otherwise, it's just a rapid menuing mess! Right now I'm motivated by, as silly as it is, saving 10 seconds so that I beat your VBA real-time. If I have a better Water Club, better leaders, and save 1-2 deck edits, I think I can save that much.
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Blazephlozard wrote:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/93936126816956416/329221900612141058/TCG1_4_Prize_Duels.lua https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/93936126816956416/329221906182045697/TCG1_6_Prize_Duels.lua
Yes! The cheating is done by reshuffling the deck until the card masters have two basics + two energies in the hand, and four basics + four energies in the first thirteen cards. I remember reverse engineering the game to find this out. Ah, this brings back memories... I think you should also be looking at the possibility that Mark ends up with no basic pokemon in his starting hand, and has to reshuffle the deck to get another one. This is very simple to get, if you have only a couple of basic pokemon in the deck, and you don't need many different pokemon to win the match. EDIT: You actually already do that, I didn't see it when I first looked at the script.
Blazephlozard wrote:
Right now I'm motivated by, as silly as it is, saving 10 seconds so that I beat your VBA real-time. If I have a better Water Club, better leaders, and save 1-2 deck edits, I think I can save that much.
Actually, this difference is simply a matter of different implementations of frames in VBA and Gambatte, the timing difference is not that great. If you watch the encode, the run is finished at around 23:10, which is very close to the time you obtained resynching it in BizHawk. It is not 21:40 by any means. The thing is, in VBA a frame is not necessarily 1/60th of a second, because the CPU can call the "halt" instruction and not do anything until a certain time has passed. VBA does not consider a new frame when that is happening, since the game would not accept any input, while Gambatte does consider it a new frame. Of course, if you did not consider that some frames are extra large, you'd get the video all wrong when you record it, so comparing the encode length is much more accurate. So, don't bother about this. Your run really is 1:30 faster.
Blazephlozard
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I know it's 1:30 faster by all measures that matter, but hey, that's why I said my motivation is silly! I wanna beat the time it's listed as, even though it's a completely meaningless, inaccurate thing! And TASing this is gonna be way more fun without grinding checking each frame...
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Hi Blazephlozard. How's the TAS going? Are you able to save 10 seconds on this?