Rolan's Curse is like NES Legend of Zelda reduced to a linear and slow-paced action adventure. I originally intended to just play the game through normally, but recorded this TAS movie for your viewing pleasure instead. It was fun.
Movie attributes
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Abuses a programming error in the game
- Manipulates luck
- Imaginary movie genre: Adventure / Comedy / Fantasy / Short
- Game genre: Action / Adventure
- Body count: 14
I get two "armor" item drops from the enemies to boost maximum HP temporarily. "Healing" drops are also manipulated many times. All the item drops are fairly common and easily manipulated, but the health management needs to be planned carefully anyway.
The pick axe (which can be used to destroy certain obstacles) is not a necessary item, but it saves time in the room before the boss.
Boss Fight
The boss has 255 hit points (RAM address: C23E).
The player's standard attack power is worth 2 points of damage.
Luckily, there is a power-up just outside the boss room, which increases attack power to 4.
Some time is wasted to save health for the boss room. This allows the player to suicide inside the boss instead of waiting for his fixed movement pattern.
Death Glitch
The rest of the game is skipped by dying simultaneously with the first boss: The player respawns in the previous room while the boss dies. The level end is then triggered, but due to the focus being in a wrong room, the "final boss is dead" state is summoned instead of the "level 1 boss is dead". I don't know exactly why the game works like that.
Possible improvements
- Better luck manipulation is almost certainly possible.
- Some clever health management could be possible.
- Faster boss fight might be achieved somehow...
- I didn't monitor lag
About Rolan's Curse II
The sequel is much longer and has multiple characters to play with. The death glitch does not work. Most of the levels are optional sidequests, though, so the fast completion would involve only 3 necessary boss fights. The final boss has more than 49 000 hit points.
Zold (who has about 140 points of attack power) should be taken to the party to fight the last two boss fights. Jude should be taken for the first boss fight before Zold is available. Also, a person named Pit should be taken to the party near the beginning, because his bombs can destroy obstacles and it saves time near the end of the game. Health potions should be manipulated from enemies as much as possible during the whole trip to make the final boss fight faster.
adelikat: Replaced the submission file with a version by the author that is 321 frames faster.
mmbossman: And the laughter of the people could be heard throughout the land. Accepting for publication.
ShinyDoofy: Processing...
