Batman is my favorite game on the NES so I wanted to have a submission for this game, this is 2 frames faster than current TAS and is made on a different emulator (BizHawk 2.9.1), I just prefer BizHawk. I did BizHawk resync of current TAS and the timing of that TAS in BizHawk was found to be 9:11.94 so my TAS is 5 frames faster than this BizHawk resync (5 less lag frames).
This TAS also shows faster gameplay in 2-1 (1 frame saved due to reducing jump height when wall bouncing, thanks to getting better Y-SubPixel value when grabbing the wall) I will provide a detailed explanation for this later in submission comments.
Explaination about improvments: Improvement in this movie comes from lag reduction, several days ago I observed a very new method to reduce lag here's the story about it... So I was TASing the game and at some point I was comparing my run to current TAS (9:12.49 at that time) to see if I am faster or slower, so the first 17854 frames were lagless in my as well as current TAS both TASes were same speed also but I was getting more lag I thought its probably because of using different emulator I tried for days but couldn't reduce down the lag frames and at some point I thought its impossible to match or beat the known records in this emulator but I still wanted to TAS this game so for refreshing my mind I went back on previous levels and started Sub-Pixel perfecting them and added a lot entertainment tradeoffs too and when I returned to 4-1 again I saw that one of the lag frame disappered and I was like "the hell ??...is happening and eventually I got idea I went back and intentionally changed something that doesn't loose time and replayed the TAS and saw that the lag pattern is different again, most of the time I got worst lag but after 3 days of reTASing previous levels I finally managed the least possible lag in 4-1 which one less lag than BizHawk resync of current TAS so using this trick I optimiesed lag and improved and saved a frame in 5-1.
Another improvement is the faster wall bounce off in 2-1 (sadly its not possible to keep this frame saved for much longer I had to loose it after playing few levels, I had shown faster gameplay wherever possible). So this wall bounce off trick is discovered by RTA community of this game, as I mentioned above I found this faster wall bounce technique when I was trying toSub-Pixel perfect this game so now there are 3 possible working varients of this wall bounce trick (all are very precise and not used in RTA runs):
1. This is the one I just found out... So in this you jump from 00D4 = X-Pixel = 93 and 00D5 = X-SubPixel = 128 (see at frame 6084 ) and hold A for 14 frames and with this you will grab the next platform at Y-Pixel = 71 and Y-SubPixel = 0 now this slightly high than current TAS (Y-Pixel = 71 and Y-SubPixel = 48 ) so I was able to reduce jump height and landed on the platform quicker 2 frames quicker but my Sub-Pixel position was now on the very possible edge so I couldn't turn back in mid-air and hence I had to turn back after landing therefore even after landing 2 frames quicker it s ed only one frame.
2. Other two varients grab the wall at Y-Pixel = 71, Y-Subpixel = 48 and Y-Pixel = 71, Y-SubPixel = 144 both are 1 frame slower.
There are some theoretical improvements I observed for example:
In 1-2 if you climb optimally during walljumping part you can actually do a slightly big jump at the top left corner with 4 spikecars and there Batman is literally one Sub-Pixel away from jumping on the next platform 1 frame sooner (1 Sub-Pixel = 1/256 Pixels for comparision), but then again even if you managed to save this frame by magic you can't hold it for long time so I stopped trying to find a way to save this frame.
I used to play this game on the NES in my childhood (now I play it in PC), I still remember that the 2nd Boss was too hard for my youngerself and I could never beat that boss in my childhood and I still remember my trembling hands when I used to die in this boos fight haha but in this TAS we absolutely destroyed this boss!
also the first ever TAS I watched was NES Batman by Aglar in 9:21.93 back in 2019 and I myself started TASing this game one year ago that was my starting of TASing hobby.
Note that 4-3 can be done 3 frames faster than this but there's no point in it because of 4-4 Boss framerules and also I was getting lag in 5-1 so it was a part of manipulation luck, also these days I'm busy in creating a RomHack for this game so I decided to finish my work on this TAS.
ThunderAxe31: NESHawk movies are always 1 frame shorter than FCEUX due to emulation differences, which isn't taken in account when comparing two movie files. Apart from that, this submission also saves another frame, due to actual improvements.
Big thank you to Bigbass for providing a
console verification. While this usually should be enough evidence for confirming the validity of an improvement, despite that Bigbass also warned about a possible emulation inconsistence, mentioning a precedent with
Final Fantasy. For that reason, I decided to convert this submission file to .fm2 format by using Regex, and play it back in FCEUX 2.6.5. It synced just fine.
