The Sega Genesis Demons of Asteborg is an indie action platformer released for multiple systems in 2021.
While this game has multiple versions, we, CoolHandMike and RiYAN, chose to use version 1.11. Version 1.11 was better than the previous versions since the older versions handled collision in most slopes very differently. Older versions like 1.0 when going through slopes at high speed would essentially put you in a near endless falling state (you fall for something like over five minutes in the older version) where you cannot interact with level in any way for cutscenes or forced battle sequences. While it would not always put you in that state it would block useful shortcuts. Also the down thrust had less height and less invulnerability which is very important in many instances and would render some strategies and skips unusable. The Mantis boss takes no damage from the down thrust move at all in V1.0. For the curious there is a post on steam regarding V1.11 release notes. There was an additional unannounced release of 1.14 which you can realize by looking at a rom dump using a hex editor program. We know of no real differences between 1.11 and 1.14 so suspecting it was a very minor update. The bin file should contain the string “DEMONS OF ASTEBORG v1.11 - 30th Sep 2021JUE”. We use the name DemonsOfAsterborg_v1.11.zip with the file inside named the same.
Setting Note: In Bizhawk 2.8 we are using GEN → Sync Settings → Use Six Button Controller → False. The movie will not sync properly without that setting. Syncs with Bizhawk 2.9 as well.
Tasing the game on Hardcore difficulty.
Level IGT Completion Times
- Level 1 - 1:15
- Level 2 – 2:31
- Level 3 – 3:39
- Level 4 – 1:03
- Level 5 – 3:27
- Level 6 – 2:57
- Level 7 - 3:35
- Level 8 – 5:58
- Level 9 – 3:26
- Level 10 – 2:02
Important Glitches
Assume using the main character unless otherwise specified.
- Dash Slash – Dashing off a ledge and slashing with the sword will keep a constant x speed while using the sword.. Using the sword immediately afterward will result in a small decrease in speed but has a high rate of speed overall.
- Super Jump – By performing a jump at the ledge at the start of the Dash Slash you can perform great leaps over normally uncross-able chasms. Jump height is controlled through holding B for more frames. Jump can also be delayed for several frames when going over a ledge. Unfortunately this does NOT work on movable platforms. Any kind of platform that moves does that all the Super jump. The Dash Slash works fine however on those types of objects.
- Super Bounce – Upon landing on a platform by pressing the buttons of slash and jump at the right time you can continue keeping your speed. Modifying height using Down+Jump while slashing in order to hit the ground to chain Super Bounces is useful to try to keep your speed for as long as possible. Ideally this is used when going up a positive slope with enough graduation so that you would bounce before your slash terminates which causes speed loss. So on such a positive slope you would be able to Super Bounce off the ground without ever losing speed.
- Backwards Super Jump – This is an extension of the Super Jump but where instead of jumping over to ledges in the direction you are facing you can now perform the Super Jump in the opposite direction. This is done by essentially tricking the game into thinking you are going one way then switching the directional to go the other way.
- Extra Jump Height - The inputs for this are strange, but it adds something like 20 pixels to your height and is critical at several points particularly on stage 3 to skip a key.
- Super Jump + Extra Jump Height – Sometimes super jump range and speed is just not enough and we need that little extra height. Works with the backwards variation as well.
- Slope OOB – Slopes are like little presents that keep on giving. Every slope can be broken into as long as you can get enough speed to do it.
- Screen Transition OOB – There are not many, but some screens are slightly off alignment. We ruthlessly abuse this whenever we can. The ones abused in this are TAS are all ones where jumping from one screen to another results in getting into ceilings, there is a potential to get under the floor on a screen transition.
- Thin Strip OOB – Certain areas in the game have a very short distance between the top and bottom. By jumping near the edge of the strip you can get inside it to OOB. Example in the Cemetery stage.
- Lag Extra Damage – By deliberately causing lag, certain magics and environments can be used to cause massive damage.
- Crouch Space Invasion – There are several spaces designed to crawl into, but there is a way to get into them with careful input. Need to get into the wall at least a pixel on the same frame that you would normally land on the ground of the crawl space. On the landing frame have to turn around and on the next frame to the roll input into the wall. Then you are in the crouch position and can roll in.
- Escape Wall OOB - Strange series of inputs that essentially puts you under the floor so you can perform a wall jump against the ground while OOB. Frame Perfect and some require a certain falling speed. One stage 8 wall escape requires one bounce, then immediately followed by another since just once does not push you enough and the game is pushing your character back into the wall.
- Dialog Escape – Pausing and unpausing can delay dialog from happening. This is useful in stage 1 to skip a pretty long cutscene.
- Half Dash Cancel Attack– attack, dash, attack in a certain way will cause the Gareth to dash a little bit forward. Using this while crouching will attack rapidly several times which is used in the run in the Fields level.
- Wrong Way Wall Jump – In the castle stage after bypassing the gondola you can wall jump towards the right off of the right wall.
- Last Level Infinite Jump – While hovering in demon form, the magic constantly decreases and if the magic runs out there is a single frame that allows you jump again. This can be chained since after jumping you can hover again and decrease your magic to 0 then jump again, etc.
- Last Boss Lag Jump – While hovering in demon form if there is a large enough lag spike on the last boss it is possible to jump in mid air. This is separate from the infinite mid air jump.
Useful Mechanics
- Most animations can be canceled after a certain point by using B (jump).
- The dashing(aka rolling) can be canceled near the end by using attack, then the next frame pressing B to dash again.
- While attacking holding B for additional frames can lengthen the animation and/or slightly modify current subpixel movement for the most part. This is used to extend the mid air attacks to get closer to ground or to extend the attack when transitioning between screens. Also used when using D, then B while in the middle of a mid air attack will more rapidly decrease your height potentially allowing for less speed reductions if you use momentum preserving bounces.
- While in mid air momentum can be canceled more quickly by pressing the horizontal direction of the current momentum and then pressing the opposite direction. Ex: If moving right, press R, then L to move left more quickly.
- Screen transitions have unusual speed and state keeping when transitioning. Depending on what state you go in, you could potentially keep speed a good amount of time or potentially lose almost all of it. Generally trying to perform a Super Bounce or Super Dash and Slashing right before the screen transition is the best way of doing going fast. Although it all depends on the next screen's layout.
- Pressing an action right before screen transition, excepting some cutscenes or forced action points, you will start the action then do them on the next screen. The B, jump button, however is locked for a period unfortunately.
- If you act quickly enough on a screen transition you can wall jump off of some screen edges. This is useful for getting into places. Example of this is in a OOB skip in the cave. On the previous screen you need to have an frame without a B jump input while pressing in the direction you intend to jump in. This seems to move your character slightly into the wall on the next screen. Rarely useful since the jump off the screen edge needs to wait around 20 frames during which you are falling.
- While using Down Slashes Gareth is invulnerable. Down Slash is unlocked from a secret pickup in the Cemetery Stage instead of buying from the store.
- Lightning Magic. Down+C. This attack will strike all enemies on screen for 20 damage. Note that if there is a ceiling or overhang within the screen area it will protect them from Lightning Magic.
- Most magics can be used in mid-air. This is useful in several spots. Some magic can be used then held while sliding and falling off a ledge.
- Crouching while using Magic. While the graphics do not show it, it is possible to hold down while using magic to decrease your hitbox height.
- The Shop sells abilities, extra lives, and an accessory for extra health. We buy one life from the shop to perform a sequence break in the final level.
- Nearing the end of the game we found that Player 2's input can be used during the shop, which allows A inputs on consecutive frames to leave faster. This saves 2 frames every end of level.
- Enemies will randomly drop health pickups. These can be very important since moving fast is nearly synonymous with taking lots of damage. Money is dropped very regularly but in small amounts.
- Using extra inputs can change randomness. Pausing and unpausing is useful at several points as well.
- Boss and some normal enemy attacks can be manipulated by extra input or by character positioning.
- Sometimes it is faster to jump forward instead of rolling or walking forward for short distances. Although it needs a Down then B alternating input which decreases your height.
- Dashing(AKA Rolling) has lots of invincibility.
- When jumping up towards a platform the game will give you a slight upward height adjustment if you are close enough. This is useful.
- Jumping normally and slashing keeps your speed and this is valid even after wall jumping. Several jumps are only possible due to this.
- Facing left has your character sticking out more to the right. Same goes for the other way around. So if you need to land right on the edge but just miss it facing the other way may allow you to land.
- There are five character variations in the game and the last three are found in the last areas in the game. The standard Gareth. The Gareth with Bohort's sword, Bohort, Gareth as a demon, and finally the Father. Bohort has a fairly short appearance. He has lots of long slow slashes but has some unusual movement and can perform super jumps after several slashes. The father will not be seen in the TAS due to us performing a sequence break.
- Gareth with Fire Sword is able to dash off the ledge while using a down thrust which lasts for a longer period of time than the typical air slash. This allows a full speed bounce to be done off of the ground on the next bounce if the ground is not drastically lower than the initial bounce. This can only be done while moving off an edge in the same direction. Additionally the down slash can be interrupted with a LAB or RAB a couple frames after using the down thrust to get much more distance than normal.
Unused Glitches
- There is a “Nightmare level” in the game which you can access by deliberately corrupting your save file by resetting shortly after saving. After loading and attempting to start the first stage you will instead go to that “Nightmare Stage”.
- Land on Top of Slope Glitch – This is a minor glitch where you can land right near the top of the slope using a super jump, but where you can stop moving, then move right right off the edge into OOB territory. Right at the top of the stairs before the great 2.5 staircase section is such a part.
- If you enter a screen with a checkpoint but are near the bottom of the screen and are falling off the screen by glitching through the floor from the previous screen there are two possibilities. The first is that you are just high enough so that when you fall you take damage and this will repeat with the screen resetting you falling and taking damage until you die. The second case is where you fall off but are too far down so the game won't damage you. This second case repeats forever so it is a soft lock.
- The screen right before the forced fight in the first stage has a section with a spike trap. There is a potential glitch death point here but not from damage, but from accidentally falling through near the edge of the spike pit and falling through the bottom of the level. Or you could get caught in a strange glitch of falling on screen for nearly a minute. The falling is not helpful here since you cannot activate any triggers like cutscenes for forced fights or bosses.
- Inside the Fields level there are these rollers that you slowly fall down from. If you edge it with the right pixel and sub pixels you can the dash through the wall on right. In the TAS this section is skipped.
- Within the Fields level in the final windmill there is three tiered section where bomb enemies are falling from the ceiling. In that area you could jump up into the ceiling with good positioning.
- In the Fields stage The bull enemy type cannot be manipulated to kill itself off a ledge since it does not fall and instead just hovers as though on flat ground.
- In the Cemetery stage in the first section consists of traversing through graveyard. There is a underground transport in the first section. While there is no benefit, you can use the extra height jump glitch while being transported to break out near the end of the transport and be able to move around in the ground.
- In the Cemetery stage. If you wall jump off the sloped ceiling and activate the trigger to get the scroll but do not get the scroll you are taken back to near the ghost. But you can move all the way back to the scroll again and actually get it that time. However you are stuck since you cannot work your way back as that area is just a dead end.
- In the Cemetery stage on the boss where if a hand grabs you and you get stuck in the ground you will never die, but continuously take damage. You are still considered dead even if your health loops back to the alive health range.
- In Forest Stage there is a tree you have to normally cut down, if you use a super jump left quickly you can land on where the stump will be even though it is invisible until the tree comes down.
- In Forest Stage there is an elevator inside the giant tree where you can jump left and up into the ceiling. Then move left through it and pop out again.
- In Forest stage with the hover boots right before you run out of magic you can then do a dash slash to get lots of downward diagonal speed, no super jumping while using those hover boots.
- In the Forest Stage within a 8 frame window after rolling onto a spider web then press up to climb you get stuck permanently. You can see this easily on the forced fight section with a web that goes down to a platform.
- In Marsh if you end up crossing a screen transition too low and on the next screen having your Gareth's sprite overlapping with the raft you can cause a hard crash where all the graphics become messed up and the game freezes.
- In Marsh the second on rails screen there is an OOB trick on this one part in a crawl space. If you can roll such that you are near the middle of the crouch space you can just jump right up into the wall.
- In Cave the crushing wall allows you to continually jump up higher and higher by alternating B and no B, and at this point you could potentially wait to gain lots of height to reach the top of the next section. You can cross the next screen, but the following screen has a forced checkpoint which forces your character nearer the floor instead of remaining in the ceiling removing any time save.
- In Mountain at the end of the first section it is possible to use a extra height jump glitch to jump off the birds to get up higher to a cloud on the following screen, but it is slower.
- In Mountain near where an extended bridge that leads to the falling ice platforms would be there is a hidden platform you can land on near the middle of the area.
- On elevators that need keys you can press U to activate the elevator and roll out of the elevator. This locks left and right input until the elevator leaves the screen although you can roll left or right.
- On the last stage there are floating platforms that you can clip up to the top if you jump into them at the right angle. The infinite jump glitch is used to bypass these.
- On the last stage the imps can jump and then land on top of each other, but their hitboxes are large so it looks like the other is hovering.
TAS Revision History
While playing several important glitches were found at various stages that caused revisions to expected route. In no particular order:
- Super jump bounce
- Hover Boots skip
- D+B to decrease height while jumping
- Faster opposite super jump
- Getting into a ceiling between screen transitions due to ceiling height mismatch
- Several quick down attacks with dash glitch
- Knight character fast super jump with no ledge after fourth attack
- Input actions last through screen transitions
- Father character skip in final level
- Crawl space invasion from wrong side glitch
- Marsh level glitch through swamp in one spot
- Stage 8 Miniboss down thrust attack and attacking his invisible hitbox
- Stage 10 Infinite jump glitch found to skip minotaur and used to avoid getting extra life to death skip the locked door.
Levels
1. Town
After the short tutorial section you access the main part of the level. There an amusing cutscene mismatch since the knight that comes on screen is supposed to attack a goblin but instead he strikes nothing. This level consists of two main areas, the upper part of the town and the lower well section accessed from the well. The lower well section is completely skipped here. This also skips the magic of this level which is normally required to destroy ropes holding up boxes you can use to progress. Note that it is possible RTA to perform a dash then a jump slightly afterward to just barely make the jumps that normally require magic.
After performing the bridge skip we get the key by getting extra jump height.
Near the boss there is a forced encounter where all the enemies must be defeated. Almost every level has one of these forced encounters. A trick here is to use the goblin's fire against the ground enemies whenever possible. By delaying the dialog using pause and unpausing we can advance to the boss skipping a cutscene.
The boss in a typical fight has a sequence where he knocks some boxes down that allows you to hit a switch. After hitting the switch there is a rope holding a guillotine that you are intended to strike causing the falling guillotine to do high damage to the boss. Or using the Super Dash from the previous screen you can reach that second story right from the boss start as is done here. The extra jump height glitch is used here to get back up to the second floor to hit the rope.
RTA Note: In the boss fight with proper timing it is possible to outright hit the switch at the high point of a jump from the ground.
After dying before the screen transition if you press B on the right frame you can jump right as you respawn. If you die sometimes offscreen your position on the screen may not be on the ground as well.
2. Fields (Windmills)
Fields has the outside field part and inside the windmills. The fields have barrels which you can run on top of too much in the opposite direction at high speed which normally allow you make jumps you cannot otherwise. However the super jumps have enough speed so that we do not need the barrels. As far as unique glitches there is one near the start of the level. You are forced into a cutscene where you slide down a roof. If you hold down then roll once you regain control you can roll once with double the distance. Mechanically it is unknown why this occurs.
There are some very long gaps which forces us to use the vines. Rather than continuously use the vines it is faster to grab them then jump off then next frame. After bypassing the first vine section there is a chest that contains a Lightning Magic spell. There is an odd way of dashing, and canceling it mid dash and attack rapidly while crouching that is used here. This will be used later in a forced fight section. Moving forward there are these hostile scarecrows. Interestingly you can jump on them and the game will push you forward without damaging you. The same with the bull type enemy immediately afterward.
Inside the first Windmill we talk to an NPC who in most levels allows you to progress. In this stage he needs a scroll to give you the magic. The Reflect magic is extremely useful for later sections and especially the boss. To get the scroll we abuse the Dash Slash and use a delayed jump input to get into a wall. Then we have to wait a second or two for the key to bob slightly down so we can grab it while staying in the wall. Then after jumping out of the wall we make our way back and trade it for the Reflect magic.
Going outside we use our first, think so, use of the Super Dash + Extra Jump height glitch to make it over the high wall. You are supposed to reflect the cannon ball into the wall to destroy it. A couple screens later in a forced fight is our use of the Lightning Magic. A little further on is another forced fight where you can see the Reflect magic..”reflecting our own attack”. The enemy dies immediately.
Right before getting into the next screen edge we take a jump at a specific point. If you do it right your position on the next screen will be very high. Also due to the next area have a slight misalignment with the ceiling we can get into the ceiling. By switching back and forth between screens and wall jumping off nearby walls we can keep getting more height here and skip this entire windmill by going up and over it. This part was particularly difficult to get fast since most of the work is done above or to the side of what is view-able. There are also these “death zones” in the ceiling where if you transition a little too high you just get stuck and die. Weirdly enough there are sometimes invisible edges and platforms which needed to be explored. After making it out of the windmill we make use of that trick to get out of wall without jumping straight out. This trick puts your height lower than the floor near the edge, so when you do a wall jump off the floor you can pop out of the wall.
There is an odd transition here on the next screen. I believe there is a hidden object in the screen edge, since if you try and super dash at a high height you lose nearly all speed on the next screen transition.
The boss get annihilated with the Reflect magic glitch. Right after using the final attack on the ground combo that does 4 damage using reflect will continually counter with 4 damage to the boss while the magic is being used. After a couple uses the boss dies. There was manipulation so that he moves as far right as possible. The stage fully ends once he finishes running off the right edge of the screen.
RTA note: It is possible to stand very close to the boss such that his throw attack will completely miss you.
3 Cemetery
There is an outer graveyard area and an underground crypt. Both areas feature aggressive enemies in large numbers. The first section consists of traversing through graveyard. There is a underground transport in the first section. While there is no benefit, you can use the extra height jump glitch while being transported to break out near the end of the transport and be able to move around in the ground.
There is a graveyard filled with gravestones you can examine. Dashing and examination both use the same button so dashing cannot be started while in front of a gravestone. While it possible to skip the cutscene with the dialog delay glitch, the cutscene is short so it is faster to just watch it.
The Down Thrust is a “hidden” powerup in this level that is the best unlockable. In normal play it is unfortunate that if you fall from these pillars you cannot climb back up to try again to get it. If you do miss it you can get it from the shop. You can repeatedly use the down thrust in midair and it has a large vertical and good horizontal range that will increase your height each time it is used. While using the down thrust you are also invincible which decreases overall damage you take.
The crypt area has the fire magic used to damage the boss and get past vines. It is possible to kill yourself with your magic if you have low health and jump into the magic fire using the super jump glitch. In normal play it is not possible to kill yourself in this way since it moves faster than you can.
There is a OOB skip here that uses the slight slope on the ground to go into the next room that skips a minor section here you need to have an crypt keeper enemy throw a lantern that will burn a zombie. The zombie would then run and alight the green vines blocking the path. Moving quickly past the stupidly aggressive green ghosts we come to the room holding the fire magic. After getting the magic we need to use it to get past the green barriers. It is also used to light candles to unlock certain doors. In one room there is a dart you have to set on fire to light one of the candles.
In a large room there is a door that requires a slight detour to open the door. After getting the key and working through the door we go up using the extra jump height glitch. Normally the enemy up top throws a lantern and you need to wait until it burns away the vines. Then after going up and over we use the magic right on the edge but hold it as we slip off the edge. This causes you to use magic as though you are still standing. This is the fastest way to start burning the vines.
Coming up to vertical section there are spinning coffins that you need to jump between to get to the top. The game will pop you up to the top of the coffin if you are close enough to the top. The forced fight requires a lot of different movement as well as using the fire magic to do optimally. After the forced fight there is a short cutscene where you walk forward to get the script which takes you back to the ghost NPC. Now we can burn the vines blocking the way and continue forward.
A couple screens later there is a skip using the down thrust we use on a zombie that propels upward to the next level. Entering the next area is the boss.
The boss is invulnerable to all non magic attacks. You need to make him vulnerable by setting a boomerang type projectile he uses on fire. When it comes back it will stun him for the first phase. Second phase requires two burning projectiles to stun him. Once he is stunned it is necessary to use magic to grab him. Optimal use of magic here requires short Magic attacks that need to be reused once you would otherwise let go. There is quite a bit of randomness here and a start and unpause was used to manipulate the boss to do the highest damage possible. Down is used at points while the magic is hitting the projectile to avoid getting hit. The sprite does not show it but he is indeed ducking the projectile each time. The boss will fire these spinning skulls into the air and it is best to kill those as they come out since they will cause lag and attack you. The boomerang projectile seems to be related to those attacks as well where killing them seems to hasten the boomerang attack.
Funny glitch on the boss where if a hand grabs you and you get stuck in the ground you will never die, but continuously take damage. You are still considered dead even if your health loops back to the
alive health range.
4 Forest
We ended up doing this stage multiple times due to new skips. The end result has it as one of the shortest levels.
After a short time we find a large chasm that normally needs the hover boots to cross, but with super jump we can cross it. We also skip the section to get a script which trade or a key since we can use the Extra jump height glitch to get just high enough to wall jump up into the next section. There is a way to get up this section by baiting spider enemies down then down thrusting on them to ascend. No hover boots needed.
The boss has two main phases. Phase one has you bouncing up over him too attack his back. Phase 2 normally has you fall down and go up underneath him to attack and damage him. In phase 2 we use the crawl space invasion glitch here. Phase 2 needs the boss to attempt to attack you so his blade gets stuck underground otherwise you do no damage. The crawl space invasion works here instead of the usual hover boots to get into that crawl space. With careful positioning we hover over a spot and for some reason the mantis will strike downward into the ground as though you were under it. Then it is a matter of striking it more and it dies.
So to sum up the hover boot skip lots of things needed to work. The super jump glitch to skip the valley, extra jump height glitch to get to higher areas, the game revision dependent extra range for the down thrust attack, luring enemies off screen, and the crawl space invasion technique. Without any of those it would not be possible.
There is a glitch is if you fall down past the bottom of the screen and use the Down Thrust move. You will be teleported straight up but take no damage due to the invulnerability during the move.
There are two good to know glitches for normal play. The first is that if you get the hover boots right before you run out of magic you can then do a dash slash to get lots of speed. Also there are parts with spider webs that you are meant to climb up. Within a 8 frame window after rolling onto a web then press up you get stuck permanently. You can see this easily on the forced fight section with a web that goes down to a platform.
5 Marsh
The marsh swamp has some of the best and worst mechanics of the game. Lots of speed tech, but also parts that slow down.
The swampy green sludge ground cannot be touched, if it is then you have to re-enter the screen and you take damage. The trees have these small branches that you can rest on and use super jumps. Some tree branches have vines that hang down. These vines can be used to grab onto and they will launch you upwards. The other type of vine is a swinging vine with strange collision, but it can help crossing horizontal distances. There is an “opposite door” that is a gimmick that is designed so that it is only up when you face away from it so you must use the magic to pass through it backwards. A great ground type is this yellow slime slide that makes you reach the fastest speeds in the game.
After a little while we have to get the Air Blast magic that gives you instantaneous speed that can be abused at any point. The magic is also necessary for the boss. To get the magic we loop up and around. There is an pretty precise jump here onto the toxic river right at the edge of a little waterfall where you can do a super jump. Shortly after OOB through a slope into a screen transition then into another screen transition while OOB. Then loop around until we get to a flat wall where we can perform a trick to get out of the wall. This skips two whole raft portions. In that raft portion if you return there with the magic there is a fourth attack unlockable, but it wastes time to get it. Getting the magic while facing left will have the game perform two little demonstrations of the magic that push you right, in the direction we want to go next. The air blast also is needed to destroy blocks.
Moving forward we have a raft part which could be hard. Good thing we know that using the air blast gives us instant speed and sword strikes will retain that speed. The raft moves far faster than was intended with that trick I am sure. If you end up crossing a screen transition too low and on the next screen having your Gareth's sprite overlapping with the raft you can cause a hard crash where all the graphics become messed up and the game freezes.
After a couple screens there is an autoscroller. This part has lag at regular intervals and it makes certain jumps tricky to do. To minimize lag it is best to try and minimize the number of sprites of on screen by killing things as soon as possible or leaving them alone in some cases. The second on rails screen there is an OOB trick on this one part in a crawl space. If you can roll such that you are near the middle of the crouch space you can just jump right into the wall. It is not used since it ends up being slower since you have to wait for the auto stroller to finish anyway and then after you have to bust out of the OOB area which takes a little time.
There is also a little graph relationship puzzle in a town where you get a script to later trade for a key to the boss room. As near as I can tell the idea is to isolate the outsider, and the way to do that is to find who is not in the circle of friends. I am not a huge fan of the way it is done exactly since the they keep mentioning blue eyes but I only see green, and some of them explicitly say they have X number of friends but another one mentions them as a friend. It may be a translation issue. Anyway, the odd man out is One Red Eye and Blue and Red Feathers, because while he professes to be friends with One Eye Blue Feathers, no one else ever mentions knowing him or being friends with him.
One more trick before the boss. You can skip almost an entire screen by waiting for a frog to jump towards you and the wall. By jumping and down thrusting you can then jump off the wall with that extra height and grab a vine, then jump across to the screen end.
The boss has these tentacles that randomly come up and over across the screen. Sometimes you can destroy them others other times you must jump over. He has this ink attack that falls randomly as well. The way to damage him is to use the air blast against this red balloon type object the spits out. This is quickly achieved by rolling off the raft, using the magic, and then down thrusting right before hitting the swamp. The down thrust's invincibility works great here. Lots of lag on this fight so we use the air blast to re-position the raft as little as possible.
6 Cave
Cave is a level with an unusual amount of OOB potential. There is a skip where you go OOB using another slope and super jump that saves some time. Water starts rising once you get out of the OOB area, but we move so fast it starts graphically glitching. Up above we glitch into and through the crawl space and continue on. The next screen has this crushing wall that will slowly move downwards. Good news though is that there is a glitch that allows you to jump up and through the falling wall and then just keep rising through the rock. Alternating B with no Frame while moving forward lets you bypass having to wait a cycle.
The next screen has a lot of movable platforms where super jump cannot be used on. Any platform that moves you could at best with the dash slash which moves you quickly diagonally downwards.
Coming up on a checkpoint of the level we need to get the Possession magic. The non TAS player would have to loop around 3 large screens then get the magic. However by using the extra jump height glitch we can get to the area near the magic. There is an elevated crawl space that we can glitch into and then go out of bounds. Moving right we get out of OOB, get the magic and then do the reverse.
Before transitioning out of the screen we do a extra height jump up at the right spot. This sets us up to abuse a normally unseen screen offset error. After the screen transition we perform a wall jump off the right side and go OOB yet again. Instead of having to loop down, possessing a bat to make the journey upwards we go up and over in OOB land. There are hidden platforms above this area that makes the next transition possible. Jumping up there is a hidden platform we get up on, then jump up left into the screen transition. By doing it so high up we get extremely close to the progression of the following area. After getting back in bounds we proceed to the next area.
Possession in the this level allow you possess four different monsters, bats, spiders, and a digger monster, and a giant rolling thing. Certain areas have them as the fastest or only method of travel. Glitching into the crawl space does not work for crawl spaces with overhangs on top since you cannot jump into position right. The bat is used for one to go vertically through a spike area. The digger is used for an area where there are large areas blocked off and no known OOB tricks to get past. The digger has a minor glitch where if you press the down forward at the right time over a digging area, instead of digging forward they will bounce forward a little. The spider...walks and jumps. There is a glitch with the spider too, where if you walk off a ledge you can jump once at any time while falling. The bat form does have a strange thing related to where if you go up there seems to be a screen transition but it acts as if you fell into a pit and it moves you back to the start of the area.
The giant rolling monster you just roll forward and jump, but it too has a glitch. If you fall off into a pit you revert back to the human form and then if press jump you can then jump while in mid air.
The boss of the Cave area is a bit unusual. There are two hands that each have 36 health and have various attacks. They have a long punch that stays on one side of the screen as you move then moves quickly across it. Another is a repeated ground pound move that is not ideal since its hitbox is hard to hit and is also the rarest attack. The third attack is one where the hand stays over your character and then will grab after a period of time. That grab is the best move to get since the hitbox is directly over you and allows you to attack another hand at the same time easily. The fourth attack type is a single ground pound where a hand hovers high then comes down on the ground. This single strong pound attack is good to manipulate to occur when possessing a hand. Once the hand's health is reduced to 0 you can then stun and possess them. Once possessed you need to punch the boss in the face. The maximum amount of times you can punch per possession is twice. Unusually the hands may be the only enemy in the game where the down thrust does not actually push you up vertically. The face of the boss can be used to bounce upward with the down thrust but that is not used here since direct sword attack do not damage it, only punching after possession does.
7 Mountain
The Mountain stage in normal play can be challenging if you let enemies swarm and fail the platforming too much. The two main hazards are these odd clouds and platforms that disappear or fall after jumping on them, and then these lightning obstacles. Certain enemies throw rocks can be attacked and they turn to stone for a time allowing you to use them as platforms, which of course we completely bypass. The stones they throw can be frozen in time with a Stop magic you get about halfway through.
The first two screens go by quite quickly due to the super jump and being able to keep bouncing off of the ground. The first skip in mountain is done with a super jump over a gap. There is a bear like enemy you usually have to fight to get up the gap, but we skip all that. Super jumping through more areas we come to a spot similar to that falling rocks spot from Shinobi III. Not as fleshed as out as that but the similarity is unmistakable. Once that is complete we fall down and get the Stop magic.
Next up is an area with falling ice platforms. Normally you go up the right side and hit a switch then use the stop magic to make your way up. With tas reflexes we swiftly jump and wall jump our way up to the top. Also near where an extended bridge that leads to the falling ice platforms would be there is a hidden platform you can land on near the middle of the area. We do not need to use that since super jump will take us all the way up.
That whole area loops around to the screen before the falling rocks, but this time we have the Stop magic so we go ahead. We need that magic to get past these doors that require it's use. Jumping up using the extra height glitch we can work our way up the area from the wrong side, jumping up and through the floor. Using the Stop magic and super jumping through the next sections we finally come up to about the half way point.
After the forced walking we can work our way up and perform the next skip. We climb up left and then perform a jump for another screen transition glitch that gets up into the ceiling. We jump up to an invisible platform then jump up and transition back to the previous screen. Then get some more height by jumping off yet another invisible platform offscreen and transition back left. Now we move right as soon as possible and wall jump off the screen edge, use a down thrust on a flea like enemy just in range, and then we pop up out of the floor of the next area. While you can perform the down thrust a couple frames after you are visible on it is not possible to actually damage or bounce off the flea, that is why the wall jump is necessary to give the game more time so we can attack the enemy.
Some platforming and two forced fights later we finally get the script which we can trade for a key. The forced fights are the least complicated in the game. By moving quickly and using the extra height jump we get behind the enemy and strike them before they can do anything. Ironically the script is not far from an area you can get to OOB. In the previous skip if you make your way right you are maybe a couple character lengths away from the script, but the trick to get out of the wall leaves us a couple pixels short of the platform it is on. I am not sure if the developer thought of this, but if you jump over the script when you finally reach it you can fall back towards the halfway point of the level, forcing you to travel something like 5 screens to get back to the script again. A cutscene happens after you get the script where some stuff happens and you get the key. Take the key to the elevator and the boss will appear a screen later.
The Dragon boss has a massive amount of health, 400 health, with several different attacks. He has several attacks that are completely unsuitable for speed. One he goes to the background and fires shots at you that are invisible or something and very hard to dodge normally although it is possible to damage him even though he is in the background which is a glitch. Another attack is this long screen spanning swooping attack, another poor attack for doing damage to him. Yet another bad choice is one where he will start flipping his chain and ball across the full length of the screen. The attack where he mostly stays in place and flips the ball and chain around is the one we want. While it does damage the damage is small and his downtime is significant afterwards. After about half his health is gone he gains another attack which is the best one to randomly cause. This new attack has some sort of freezing wind, but if you avoid the head and use down thrust it will miss. That attack also drops a health potion. The only downside is that it seems you cannot manipulate that attack to come out every time, a different attack has to be between that attack.
8 Castle
The game starts off using a new Knight character. He has a slightly different move set than our main character which allows for some differing glitch abuse. The main reason for his differences is because of the animations lengths, recovery delays, his fourth attack includes a speed boost forward, and his down air attack is like a ground pound move. As you may expect his fourth move that includes the speed boost is susceptible to being abused. The way to do this is to jump right after it begins, use D then B to decrease your height a couple times, then press RAB or LAB upon landing which will make you bounce at high speed. Then you can repeat the steps starting from the jump after the attack. The knight has a high speed opposite super jump near ledges, but his normal forward super jump off ledges is slower due to needing to jump later. He has the same restrictions where on certain platforms you cannot use the super jump, instead it will be high speed angle downward diagonally. While on the ground he has an interesting fast roll where you can roll, then on the next roll have it be an attack, roll, attack and he will dash forward while attack, then another roll can be performed at the end, and that can be repeated.
The sections with the Knight are almost all straightaways with a couple platforms. Then there is the fake 3d Tower of Lag. You navigate around the Tower by moving left or right and jumping. This is the only playable section of the game where you are unable to roll. Good thing too since you would roll off a platform and have to restart the Tower from the beginning. The bottom screen is fixed, if you fall off you do not fall to platforms below but the game restarts you at the start. The Knight character plays almost the same as your other character. The Tower has a couple tricks that work to make things a little faster. You can preempt the platforms spawning above and land just as they spawn. The spikes can be jumped on or through in some cases.
After the Tower there is the miniboss/boss Zadimus. He turns out to be the boss, but without the second phase. He has a lot of varying attacks, but the main thing to understand is when he is vulnerable. While flying around he is technically able to be hit but the window and positioning to do it is harsh. Using the super jump from the Knight some additional hits can be gained while the miniboss plays keep away. He has an energy ball attack where he plays keep away from you and throws them out. Another is full screen lunge where he flies you into the wall. The Lightning attacks render him invulnerable and stationary afterwards on the ground and would be a good choice. However there is also an unlikely action and that is for him to just teleport to the ground. While on the ground for the start you can also manipulate him to laugh. The Laugh action gives you about double the time to beat him up. The positioning of where he lands needs to be near the center of the stage. This is necessary since he will teleport to the side and start charging up. Letting him fully charge would give him an additional attack with a ring of lightning balls. After a couple hits however the charging breaks and he is vulnerable for a while. It is a tight window but with the Knight the down attack can be used to do some good instantaneous damage. There is a glitch used right at the end where there is a one frame invisible hitbox from the disappeared enemy. When he teleports from standing it remains in place, but right at the end is the only spot to use it without timeloss. For the final hit we place the character right near the wall so the forced end of the fight finished as fast as possible.
After the Knight section we have to go through the same initial screens with out main hero as well as the tower. Then we get the fire sword from the fallen Knight.
The Fire Sword is great, but it modifies the existing moveset and various timings. The first and most noticeable is that the Fire Sword almost doubles your attack range which is great. The next big change is that rolling becomes a bit faster since you can cancel them a little sooner. The best change though is that super jumps on ledges with annoyingly tight positioning, allow you to do a super jump with a down thrust. The down thrust is a longer animation than the normal jump attack, and using D then B, you can modify the jump height such that the next bounce off the ground will not lose any speed at all.
The next section is the hardest Fight so far. What makes this challenging is that the enemies are on global timers and some of the enemies like the flying Medusa heads sometimes appear in places that force pretty big time losses since you have to clear the section of enemies. The bottom two skeleton knights have high health, have a lunging move and a dodge both of which render them invulnerable. The fire sword's large reach, and manipulating them to fight you while you can attack them both near each other is key to beating this quickly.
After two other screens there is a spinning cylinder with platforms. Hidden on a platform on the very top right is the Lightning Magic. While there is a time loss, it ends up saving time by reducing a cycle needed for the boss since it allows you to damage him while he is flying and vulnerable when you otherwise could not even get to him to damage him.
Coming up there is another miniboss, an Armored Warrior. He wields a great shield that blocks all attacks when he is guarding. When he attacks is when he is vulnerable. He has a fireball attack and a long animation where he shoots out Medusa heads. The sword swing is the one we want however. There are these chandeliers in the room that fall if he attacks near them, doing damage to whatever is under them. By getting the chandelier to fall on the miniboss it can do damage. The main trick here though is to deliberately cause lag using the Fire Sword's attacks so that the chandelier continually does damage almost completely killing the miniboss. At the end a magic is used on the far side to avoid his lag after death.
The next sections deal with this sewer type area with rafts. The idea is to land on the rafts to get them moving asap. After those raft sections is a contraption with buckets that is a minor puzzle that requires a switch to be hit on the upper right, however with double jump we bypass that and just continue. Moving on the next screens have some tricky crusher type obstacles that have some strange mechanics near ledges. The crusher platform that comes up from the bottom if you are close enough to the ledge can actually suck you down through the bottom of the platform, but this is not useful at all. The reason for that is that you cannot escape because of the spikes. The following room as a switch that delays spikes on the ground. That room has one oddity near the middle where a section of the wall has no bottom and you can jump through it.
After using the elevator there are lots of spike traps in the next couple rooms, but moving fast and double jumps get us safely through. Here there was some trouble with health management due to how the spinning spike traps have a variable hitbox and can also cause lag, making one or two sections sort of random, and needing careful attention.
A pretty big skip was found in the room with a large moving gondola. By rolling off the gondola through the bottom of a ledge, then jumping up into the wall, and falling through to the other side skips a good portion. An interesting mechanic was seen here at the very end after getting through the right side of the wall and off of the ledge. Here a wrong way wall jump occurs with good positioning and you can safely skip the gondola here to continue. The next mirror room has a good skip about halfway through. While it is hidden, there are actually various ledges and stairs in this section. By using a ledge we can super jump to the right, and then by getting the right height we can clip through the top of the stairs into the wall. Then jumping right we can escape the wall and continue. There is one more Lag Tower then the boss.
The Boss Zadimus is very similar to the first encounter but we can use Lightning magic to do some good damage while he is airborne. The second phase adds an additional element. In the second phase the gimmick is that you cannot kill him normally. Once he gets past a certain point his defense must be broken by playing ping pong back and forth with this laggy lightning ball with a weird hitbox. The ping pong game has a minimum of 3, and an unknown upper limit, but average bounces until he gets hit is about 5. Lightning magic is very useful to start the ping pong game since it is a fast homing spell. The downthrust ironically has the highest height attack and works well for the remaining hits.
Zadimus has three glitches. A bad bug is that sometimes when you hit him with the ball he becomes invulnerable to magic. A rare bug is that sometimes he has an animation change(?), and while laughing the first initial hit with the Bohort knight can hit twice for double damage. The third glitch was the one previously stated about him leaving a one frame hitbox after teleporting while on the ground in some cases.
9 Gate Portal
This is an autoscroller with fight sections. There is only one glitch that can occur where was able to do double damage on an attack. The main time save here is to kill the boss as fast as possible. The boss is this multi-parted dragon and on Hard it has an absurd amount of health which leads me to believe the maker intended for turbo to be used. However optimal takedown speed requires careful shooting since there is some lag. The main spot to do lots of damage is during its headbutt attack where each shot will do many times more damage than normal.
10 Hell
As a demon the main character's moveset is again similar to the other move sets but with its own variations and quirks. The main changes are that he can shoot fireballs, wall cling then jump up again, as well as hover and fly horizontally by pressing the jump button again. These change allow him to also attack, roll, then be able to jump immediately afterwards. This means he can super jump on any small platform. Additionally his mid air attack has lengthy animation so he can roll then super jump on any flat ground then use the D, then B trick to reduce height and keep the momentum going after a bounce. The only real downside to the demon character is that he lacks a sword so his attack range is the shortest of all the characters and their move sets.
With this character, higher than usual high glitched “double” jumps are possible which is used in a couple places.
While hovering and attacking you can preserve almost all momentum while holding B, and then attacking on a specific frame again.
There is an infinite jump glitch that is only possible with this demon form. While hovering in demon form, the magic constantly decreases and if the magic runs out there is a single frame that allows you jump again. This can be chained since after jumping you can hover again and decrease your magic to 0 then jump again, etc. About halfway through the stage there is a minotaur that the game intends for you to defeat which spawns a platform to advance. However we use this infinite jump glitch to not only go right past the minotaur but jump into the next screen's wall, looping up and left skipping 90% of that other screen which has a lot of platform waiting.
Most of the screens have a lot of spikes that require hovering and moving. Several parts require waiting for the walls to be destroyed by fireballs.
A major skip in the last stage can be gotten by clipping through the floor and bypassing a gate. After hovering and flying to the next screen to the left you get a checkpoint. Since there is no way to recover from this position you have to die. If you advance the screen while too low and do not die on the first fall you can will be soft locked in an endless loop. Normally this gate requires a lengthy detour to first unlock his father which is this slow powerful character who will then break the gate and then you have to play with him for a couple more screens. Then normally you have to replay those sections with the first character. This skip avoids all that.
The next screens are mostly just bouncing along trying to preserve as much momentum as possible. After more screens there are these stairs, then a cutscene with the father which we never freed from prison. This screen has a lot of spikes and the intended route is kind of S shaped. However with the double jump and then the infinite jump we get into the portal from an unintended side. Normally it is not possible to go up the right side past all the spikes for the final platform.
The boss of the stage is very similar to the giant skeleton boss in a lot of ways. He is a large background boss that uses two hands to do various attacks for the first phase. RNG is manipulated to get certain attacks. Some attacks are absolutely terrible to get and waste massive amounts of time. They make the hands invincible or out of reach below the screen. The best one is the dual swipe on the first phase since you have a chance to attack them both at once.
The way to advance through the first phase is by rapidly hitting the hands the best you can. Unlike literally everything else in the game the hands require a set number of hits. On this Hard difficulty the first hand requires 40 hits, the second hand 23. The remaining 12 health is for the third phase. With the rapid attack and cancel the first phase goes by very quickly. The random lag is a minor problem though. The second phase starts when the first hand dies, and it really has the same attacks only with the single hand. Here there is a glitch that is used to great effect. On the last boss there are these lag spikes in between forms that seems to reset your current move. So while hovering in demon form if there is a large enough lag spike on the last boss it is possible to jump in mid air. This is separate from the infinite mid air jump. The boss is manipulated to use an attack that puts the hand up near the top of the screen, but with that lag spike we can jump yet again and continue attacking finishing the third phase.
The third phase is usually something of a waiting game where you have to use magic fireballs on these spiked balls that spawn then get him to hit himself with them. However here there is a way to skip the last phase of the boss since there is a developer oversight you can hit the last boss during its last phase with the down thrust equivalent. The down attack does 10 damage but he has a little bit left. The first downthrust is actually canceled due to a lag spike on the transitioning to the third phase. Then lets us do the second one immediately and finish him. This saves a large amount of time, after it dies there is a single dialog box then the game is over.
Glitches
On the last stage there is a way to climb walls until you can loop over the top of them, but it requires careful horizontal movement since excessive movement will reset the y height. It is not used since the height needed is extreme. Some areas are 32K pixels high and others you have to loop under them to get under a platform on the current viewable screen which is near 64K pixels. Takes a long time so not used.
Potential Time Saves and Wish List
There are a couple tricks that would be great if someone figured out.
- Bounce on swamp floor. This would allow very fast movement through that level.
- How to bypass a blocked off door with no obvious OOB bypass like in the swamp level before the boss.
- Stage 7 Mountain - While it is possible to OOB into a wall and get right across from a key getting out of the wall and reaching the key is not possible at the moment. Find way to bridge the gap and get the key quickly in Mountain.
- Skip Portal level or make it vastly shorter.
- Nearing the end of the game we found that Player 2's input can be used during the shop, which allows A inputs on consecutive frames to leave faster. This saves 2 frames every end of level. Would save an additional 10 frames overall if we had used it from the start. Due to randomness not worth the time save for months of work to resync.
Samsara: Dropping due to personal life events preventing me from being able to judge anything with a clear mind.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Ok...what a trip this has been. I've had a number of conversations on this submission and I've come up with some good news for the two of you!
First, let me make a quick note about your run. I usually am not drawn to games like this, but for some reason..this caught my attention in a big way. I can't say that I understand everything that is being done here, but I can say that it runs circles around the RTA WR. All these techniques and glitches really surprised me and was unexpected.
Second, this was a great game choice. The game play, scenery, music, bosses....well you get it. It was just a great game, all around. I like the fact that games are still being made for older consoles, as it continues to fulfill the memories that we had when they first came out.
Last, I'm accepting this submission...but that is not the best news. I've talked with
feos and asked a question. I had an initial thought that this submission should be given the highest classification...and guess what? It was granted. :) Congratulations...you got a "Star"!!
nymx: Received an updated file to get past the last input needed to get to the credits.
