1-Up!
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/Battletoads.html
Warps run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to Stephen 'Icthus' Smith!
Warps run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Video quality was a bit grainy at times, but of course it being an NES game, that is understandable...
Interesting how the runner says that, "after noticing that amongst all the runs on SDA, I actually thought I could stand to improve this one and perhaps by a lot at that."
...
yea... Battletoads is one of those games I admit I didn't think I would see an improvement any time soon, considering its difficulty and how each game listed did have one thing in common:
DEATH
So imagine my surprise when I read this is a Warps run, which means that the runner makes good use of skipping a good handful of levels. Sadly though I don't know if it was because the runner forgot to mention it or not, but... HERE ARE DEATHS IN THIS RUN TOO!
Granted I don't know if "with Death" is if you get a game over or if you just die, but he does die once in level 8, and twice in level 9, although I beleve that one in 9 was more intentional then the one in level 8 and the 2nd death was just as he beat the level.
In spite of the runner saying that this run can be improved, I could have been fooled by the runner's performance to think that this was as good as it was going to get, and I didn't see many mistakes, so I would say accept...
Interesting how the runner says that, "after noticing that amongst all the runs on SDA, I actually thought I could stand to improve this one and perhaps by a lot at that."
...
yea... Battletoads is one of those games I admit I didn't think I would see an improvement any time soon, considering its difficulty and how each game listed did have one thing in common:
DEATH
So imagine my surprise when I read this is a Warps run, which means that the runner makes good use of skipping a good handful of levels. Sadly though I don't know if it was because the runner forgot to mention it or not, but... HERE ARE DEATHS IN THIS RUN TOO!
Granted I don't know if "with Death" is if you get a game over or if you just die, but he does die once in level 8, and twice in level 9, although I beleve that one in 9 was more intentional then the one in level 8 and the 2nd death was just as he beat the level.
In spite of the runner saying that this run can be improved, I could have been fooled by the runner's performance to think that this was as good as it was going to get, and I didn't see many mistakes, so I would say accept...
Quote from PJ:
I reject because the runner didn't use the yellow toad. Not at all true, actually.
This is PJ speaking. First, I want to thank Icthus for the shout-out in the comments. I truly appreciate it. I honestly did not help as much as he claims; he actually shared more tips with me than I offered him! He was actually well on his way to getting an amazing run by the time he contacted me. I was more than happy to exchange what little unique information I had with him to see this game crushed. ^_^
I have been capable of beating the run of this on SDA since the summer of 2008, and I have been trying since then. Unfortunately, none of my recording gear wanted this to happen so I was never able to do it. I had this project looming over me for the past several years. In the meantime, I kept playing and finding new little timesavers, tricks, and glitches. I was never able to record a run, though. Seeing this completed run is an immense catharsis for me; I no longer have to worry about getting a run of this! I can finally play for fun again. Hahaha. So, thank you for that!
I'll make some notes about the levels here. Note that whenever I say "dash jump" I mean the really awesome dash jump that you do by pressing jump on the same frame as the second "toward" input for your dash.
Level 1- As the runner mentioned, this is a perfect stage. Nothing to say here.
Level 3- I literally could not possibly agree more with the runner when he says the following:
This stage is a disaster. It is really fun, yes, but it is SO ANNOYING. I hated beginning every single attempt with this lengthy autoscroller because it was just a colossal waste of time. It presented no challenge at all after awhile, and I was forced to play around to try to make it entertaining which often lead to losing even MORE attempts and spending more time on this stage. Argh. So bad.
Some subtle notes about his rat booting: he makes sure to boot the rats a little bit away from the far edge of the screen because his boot animation will move him forward and advance the screen slightly. If you are hugging the right wall, it will not do this. It works for the first two rats in this stage. It saves frames, but it is a really good optimization. He boots all other rats to the right so he doesn't have to backtrack. He misses the superjump as he mentioned, which is very regrettable. It is a great thing to show off.
In the race itself, he sometimes hits the checkpoints on the far left, in the middle, or on the far right. I argued that the far right is fastest during my verification of the PAL Battletoads run by Baraka (who is a BEAST at this game, too!), and he argued that the far left is actually faster. I think he timed it, so I'd trust that more. I never did get around to timing the differences between the two because I'm a crotchety old man who is too set in his ways to change habits anyways. Therefore, there might be room for improvement in this stage. However, if there is it is only by frames and I could not care less about it because I'm tired of this level. Haha.
Level 4- This is where Baraka and I disagreed again. I claimed level 4 route is faster than level 5, but he claimed otherwise. When I timed it, I was able to finish the level 4 route 1 second faster than the level 5 route. Therefore, in my mind they are the same time. I am far worse at level 5 and enjoy playing level 4 much more, so I always chose this route. The time difference is negligible if both stages are played perfectly.
Punching the second snowman is slower than dashing through him I am pretty sure (not by much), but punching him is also a very very wise choice. I have crashed the games in a wide variety of entertaining ways by dashing through that snowman because he creates some unique lag when the ice cube slides through him. I lost close to 70% of my runs that made it here due to ridiculous game bugs that resulted from this route. Therefore, I agree that punching is an excellent idea.
In the third checkpoint, he picked up the ice cube at the top of the descent with only kicking once. It is possible to grab it without kicking at all, but it is also possible to get stuck kicking it 5-6 times because your stupid toad is stubborn and fears what is at the bottom of that screen. He uses that ice cube extremely well in breaking that barrier. I often get hit by it after it breaks the ice, or I headbutt it through. This checkpoint is so dumb. But whatever, he does a really good job there.
I'm SO glad he does the shortcut in the final checkpoint underneath the spike! It is my favorite trick in the level (and he even mentions it's his favorite part of the run), but it is INCREDIBLY difficult to do. I really want to emphasize that. It is a really hard jump, but he nails it. I always did that by doing a low dash jump underneath the spike, but that's even less reliable. Wow. Such a great stage.
I found a few glitches that "may" save time in this stage, but they are extremely unpredictable and not verified yet. Namely, you can jump through a lot of the checkpoint barriers and skip them entirely. In a run with warps that doesn't matter, but it a warpless run it will prevent you from progressing. Anyways, just ignore that. The level can be sped up very slightly (MAYBE 1 second total) with the addition of some dash jumps, but this is a seriously good run of this level. Very well done!
(Quick note: I just realized he and I do the same "playing around" while waiting for the final barrier to break. Hahaha.)
Level 6- He can end the first screen faster with a well-placed dash jump off the snake at the top. No big deal though. Finishes cleanly.
Level 8- This stage is both one of the most fun to speed run and one of the most annoying to speed run. There is a seriously annoying glitch in this stage that happens at the top of the level when you reach Robo-Manus (rather, right before you reach him). If you play the beginning of the stage too quickly, it begins to advance in a very irregular manner. If you mess up in the final few screens of the level, it can ruin you right before Robo-Manus by triggering the battle early and trapping you underneath him forever. It is an inescapable game over loop. This is why it is such a risky stage to run, in addition to all the death traps and ridiculous jumps.
That being said, he totally CRUSHES this stage! He gets hit by one electric shot, but it literally costs him no time at all because he would have had to wait for an electric barrier anyways. This is how the level should be run. For the benefit of those who don't know, I'll elaborate. Nearly every single jump in this stage has to be perfectly ledge canceled. By that I mean you need to jump and catch the lip of the platform above you as you are ascending. When you do this, you land immediately on the platform and can jump again. Without doing this, you will continue to rise during your jump and have to wait for the toad to fall. This saves a vast amount of time in this stage because you can quickly land and jump again over electric shots and other hazards (or just jump quickly through moving platforms that would be out of reach if you didn't ledge cancel). Although it is not hard on its own, it is extremely hard to do consistently while speed running this stage. I suggest that everybody rewatches this stage with that in mind. It is a really fantastic display.
The death on Robo-Manus is tragic. Every time I saw him use a neutral attack (not a headbutt), I was fearing for the ground pound. You can sometimes get around this if you are mashing the attack button while on the ground so the toad immediately hits him again, but if the game wants you dead, you are dead. It is very unfortunate, but it does happen.
Level 9- This is my favorite stage in the game. It is really hard to speed run, but it is SO FUN. There are so many opportunities for new timesavers in this level. I have revised my route through this stage no fewer than a dozen times, and then again after Icthus shared some tips with me. It is the best speed running stage in the game, next to level 8.
Icthus mentioned most of the critical details in his comments already, but I'll share my perspective again. Getting through the first checkpoint by going out of bounds at the beginning and surviving is ridiculously hard. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of routing to figure out when the enemies are going to shoot and how to move to avoid it, so I have to give huge props to Icthus again. Unfortunately, a side effect of this out of bounds trick is seen in the video: sometimes the gear just ceases to spawn. I encounter this glitch extremely frequently when I run through the checkpoint as Icthus did here, but if I hang back and delay my run by 2 seconds or so, the chances of this happened are drastically reduced (maybe from 40% to 5%). I can't help but think that this could have been avoided in this run if he had delayed slightly like I do, but it also might just be placebo effect. It can definitely happen regardless of what you do, and it's a risk you take. Again, it is tragic but it happens. I don't fault him.
He does the first "spike squeeze" without much hesitation, which does require a lot of confidence this late into a run. It isn't a particularly hard trick compared to the rest of what he does here, but it's a time saver of like 30 frames that I really admire. He gets fantastic luck on the first group of hammerfishes, only to get hit by the hammerfish in the pipe following them. Again, if you time a "jump" at the right moment, the hammerfish will just go right through you with his attack. I saw him try it, but the hammerfish got the better of him. The rest of the underwater section goes very well.
The final checkpoint. For those who do not know this game as intimately as Icthus, Baraka, and myself, let me shed some light here. This is a nightmare considering it is only like 25 seconds long. There are so many ridiculous tricks that are needed here for a perfect speed run. You must do the spike squeeze at the beginning, skip the gyrocopter, headbutt both ducks (!), get good hammerfish luck, skip the final gyrocopter and death boost yourself through the final checkpoint. Every single one of those tricks (besides the hammerfish luck, which is random) is harder than most of the stuff in the rest of the game. Skipping the first gyrocopter is difficult on its own, but you need to survive the fall still. Headbutting the ducks isn't hard in concept, but slipping up even a little usually means sudden and violent death against a distant wall. A good hit from the hammerfish is death as well. Skipping the final gyrocopter is usually easy, but if you have too much momentum you will walk into the death spike instead of slipping through it, so you need to space/time yourself correctly; if you manage to skip it, the final descent is very difficult to time correctly because you need to die rather far to the right. I suppose what I'm trying to saying is that Icthus knocked it out of the park. This is an amazing final checkpoint! An amazing stage overall, really.
I have spent a vast amount of time researching some glitches that can improve the speed of this stage, and although there are some timesavers that involve these glitches, this is by far the best route for the stage (for a real-time run). In one total fluke incident, I managed to get hit by the final hammerfish through the wall to the right and through the final checkpoint to end the stage. I have never reproduced this, even with the help of feos (the Battletoads TASer). I don't even know why I mentioned that. I just thought it was relevant I guess.
Level 10- Awesome rat boot! This is the fastest timing I know of for the kill, and is like 5 seconds faster than my consistent method of doing it. This is a really risky method for killing him, but it is very necessary for a great time. Much respect!
Level 11- I totally agree with Icthus when he says "Oddly enough this is the time of the run where I get to relax, even though I always used to use all my continues on this level as a kid." I haven't died on Clinger Winger since the second time I played the stage. I LOVE this level. It's one of my favorites, and I have no idea why. Anyways, this boss battle can be improved slightly, I think. I always headbutt over the boss when he reaches the bottom left corner (this is a safe move), and then I chain headbutts on him to get him to the right wall, where I stunlock him. Icthus headbutts the boss to the left and then picks him up. He loses time picking up the boss, but I lose time whiffing a headbutt to position myself. I don't know what is slower, to be honest. Regardless, the fight from there on is pretty good. Hypno Orb escapes once or twice, but it's nothing too critical. A few seconds lost at most, but nothing to seriously complain about.
Level 12- This level. Oh my god. It is SO hard. I, again, can totally relate to Icthus here. I spent so many hours practicing this stage because I needed it to be just muscle memory at this point. I can't imagine the nerves he was feeling when he got here. Every single action in this level is ridiculously precise and any mistake, no matter how small, can cost large chunks of time due to the timing of the platforms. Icthus missed only one yellow rhino boot in the first checkpoint and it was the least critical rhino of them all. Missing the first two would have been very costly, and the last rhino would have cost slightly more time for the final hit.
There is a very fast way to kill the red rhinos which relies on dash jump headbutts. That attack has more priority than the game itself, so the rhinos can't swallow you during it. It can be used extremely effectively here, but it is risky as hell. Missing it usually means death, which is not a good tradeoff for a <1-second advantage. He destroys the rest of the checkpoint. He manipulated the green cloud perfectly and landed every spring jump in the zig-zag climb perfectly. A spectacular display.
The final checkpoint is slightly more relaxed in my opinion. It's still really hard, but not quite as much as the rest of the level. He makes an amazing leap of faith after the red rhino, boots the yellow rhino, and has some more great placement of jumps to reach the gas clouds. The final climb still terrifies me, and this is a great example of why. If I didn't know that he was going to beat the game, I would have been really scared at the last three jumps. Fortunately, he made it.
Overall, this is the best run of level 12 I could ever hope for anybody to every get in a real-time run of this game.
Dark Queen- This is the best Dark Queen fight I have ever seen. Ever. She doesn't use the tornado a single time. Icthus mentioned this manipulation to me and I was never able to get it consistently without her whomping me. Needless to say, the timing and spacing is rather picky. However, this (in my honest opinion) is the biggest time saver of the entire run, especially over my routes! If I hadn't seen it myself I never would've believed it. I am speechless, really.
Conclusion: I do agree with the runner that there is room for improvement (maybe up to 20 seconds in an ideal case), but honestly this is already far beyond what I was expecting. The time savers are all just due to random luck, not significant execution errors. To recap, the errors I noticed were: punching the snowman in level 4 (a few frames), death in level 8 on Robo-Manus (a few seconds), bad gear and suicide in level 9 (Icthus says 9 seconds so I trust him there), getting hit by two hammerfishes in level 9 (maybe 3 seconds), very slightly bad luck in level 11 boss (maybe 2 seconds), missing a boot in level 12 (again, maybe 2-3 seconds). So yea, there are some very, very minor mistakes. But seriously....of all those that I listed, only 2 were actually his fault and one of those was just done to prevent some very nasty game crashes. The other mistake was on the final level. Compare that to the number of unbelievably precise tricks that he nailed and it is absolutely no debate.
This is a phenomenal run of a very difficult speed running game. I cannot give this a high enough recommendation: I absolutely 100% accept! Congratulations on a job very very well done, Icthus! More importantly, thank you for doing this run so I don't have to.
This is PJ speaking. First, I want to thank Icthus for the shout-out in the comments. I truly appreciate it. I honestly did not help as much as he claims; he actually shared more tips with me than I offered him! He was actually well on his way to getting an amazing run by the time he contacted me. I was more than happy to exchange what little unique information I had with him to see this game crushed. ^_^
I have been capable of beating the run of this on SDA since the summer of 2008, and I have been trying since then. Unfortunately, none of my recording gear wanted this to happen so I was never able to do it. I had this project looming over me for the past several years. In the meantime, I kept playing and finding new little timesavers, tricks, and glitches. I was never able to record a run, though. Seeing this completed run is an immense catharsis for me; I no longer have to worry about getting a run of this! I can finally play for fun again. Hahaha. So, thank you for that!
I'll make some notes about the levels here. Note that whenever I say "dash jump" I mean the really awesome dash jump that you do by pressing jump on the same frame as the second "toward" input for your dash.
Level 1- As the runner mentioned, this is a perfect stage. Nothing to say here.
Level 3- I literally could not possibly agree more with the runner when he says the following:
Quote:
The most truth written about anything ever"]Note about the turbo tunnel race: I hate it. A lot. I am very tired of running this stupid race. Every single run honestly doesn't start until 3 minutes in (after the race), and it isn't even 3 minutes of just sitting and watching an intro movie: No, it's 3 minutes of having to not die, with the guarantee that no matter how well you do, it's still always the same time as the last time you ran it.
This stage is a disaster. It is really fun, yes, but it is SO ANNOYING. I hated beginning every single attempt with this lengthy autoscroller because it was just a colossal waste of time. It presented no challenge at all after awhile, and I was forced to play around to try to make it entertaining which often lead to losing even MORE attempts and spending more time on this stage. Argh. So bad.
Some subtle notes about his rat booting: he makes sure to boot the rats a little bit away from the far edge of the screen because his boot animation will move him forward and advance the screen slightly. If you are hugging the right wall, it will not do this. It works for the first two rats in this stage. It saves frames, but it is a really good optimization. He boots all other rats to the right so he doesn't have to backtrack. He misses the superjump as he mentioned, which is very regrettable. It is a great thing to show off.
In the race itself, he sometimes hits the checkpoints on the far left, in the middle, or on the far right. I argued that the far right is fastest during my verification of the PAL Battletoads run by Baraka (who is a BEAST at this game, too!), and he argued that the far left is actually faster. I think he timed it, so I'd trust that more. I never did get around to timing the differences between the two because I'm a crotchety old man who is too set in his ways to change habits anyways.
Level 4- This is where Baraka and I disagreed again. I claimed level 4 route is faster than level 5, but he claimed otherwise. When I timed it, I was able to finish the level 4 route 1 second faster than the level 5 route. Therefore, in my mind they are the same time. I am far worse at level 5 and enjoy playing level 4 much more, so I always chose this route. The time difference is negligible if both stages are played perfectly.
Punching the second snowman is slower than dashing through him I am pretty sure (not by much), but punching him is also a very very wise choice. I have crashed the games in a wide variety of entertaining ways by dashing through that snowman because he creates some unique lag when the ice cube slides through him. I lost close to 70% of my runs that made it here due to ridiculous game bugs that resulted from this route. Therefore, I agree that punching is an excellent idea.
In the third checkpoint, he picked up the ice cube at the top of the descent with only kicking once. It is possible to grab it without kicking at all, but it is also possible to get stuck kicking it 5-6 times because your stupid toad is stubborn and fears what is at the bottom of that screen. He uses that ice cube extremely well in breaking that barrier. I often get hit by it after it breaks the ice, or I headbutt it through. This checkpoint is so dumb. But whatever, he does a really good job there.
I'm SO glad he does the shortcut in the final checkpoint underneath the spike! It is my favorite trick in the level (and he even mentions it's his favorite part of the run), but it is INCREDIBLY difficult to do. I really want to emphasize that. It is a really hard jump, but he nails it. I always did that by doing a low dash jump underneath the spike, but that's even less reliable. Wow. Such a great stage.
I found a few glitches that "may" save time in this stage, but they are extremely unpredictable and not verified yet. Namely, you can jump through a lot of the checkpoint barriers and skip them entirely. In a run with warps that doesn't matter, but it a warpless run it will prevent you from progressing. Anyways, just ignore that. The level can be sped up very slightly (MAYBE 1 second total) with the addition of some dash jumps, but this is a seriously good run of this level. Very well done!
(Quick note: I just realized he and I do the same "playing around" while waiting for the final barrier to break. Hahaha.)
Level 6- He can end the first screen faster with a well-placed dash jump off the snake at the top. No big deal though. Finishes cleanly.
Level 8- This stage is both one of the most fun to speed run and one of the most annoying to speed run. There is a seriously annoying glitch in this stage that happens at the top of the level when you reach Robo-Manus (rather, right before you reach him). If you play the beginning of the stage too quickly, it begins to advance in a very irregular manner. If you mess up in the final few screens of the level, it can ruin you right before Robo-Manus by triggering the battle early and trapping you underneath him forever. It is an inescapable game over loop. This is why it is such a risky stage to run, in addition to all the death traps and ridiculous jumps.
That being said, he totally CRUSHES this stage! He gets hit by one electric shot, but it literally costs him no time at all because he would have had to wait for an electric barrier anyways. This is how the level should be run. For the benefit of those who don't know, I'll elaborate. Nearly every single jump in this stage has to be perfectly ledge canceled. By that I mean you need to jump and catch the lip of the platform above you as you are ascending. When you do this, you land immediately on the platform and can jump again. Without doing this, you will continue to rise during your jump and have to wait for the toad to fall. This saves a vast amount of time in this stage because you can quickly land and jump again over electric shots and other hazards (or just jump quickly through moving platforms that would be out of reach if you didn't ledge cancel). Although it is not hard on its own, it is extremely hard to do consistently while speed running this stage. I suggest that everybody rewatches this stage with that in mind. It is a really fantastic display.
The death on Robo-Manus is tragic. Every time I saw him use a neutral attack (not a headbutt), I was fearing for the ground pound. You can sometimes get around this if you are mashing the attack button while on the ground so the toad immediately hits him again, but if the game wants you dead, you are dead. It is very unfortunate, but it does happen.
Level 9- This is my favorite stage in the game. It is really hard to speed run, but it is SO FUN. There are so many opportunities for new timesavers in this level. I have revised my route through this stage no fewer than a dozen times, and then again after Icthus shared some tips with me. It is the best speed running stage in the game, next to level 8.
Icthus mentioned most of the critical details in his comments already, but I'll share my perspective again. Getting through the first checkpoint by going out of bounds at the beginning and surviving is ridiculously hard. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of routing to figure out when the enemies are going to shoot and how to move to avoid it, so I have to give huge props to Icthus again. Unfortunately, a side effect of this out of bounds trick is seen in the video: sometimes the gear just ceases to spawn. I encounter this glitch extremely frequently when I run through the checkpoint as Icthus did here, but if I hang back and delay my run by 2 seconds or so, the chances of this happened are drastically reduced (maybe from 40% to 5%). I can't help but think that this could have been avoided in this run if he had delayed slightly like I do, but it also might just be placebo effect. It can definitely happen regardless of what you do, and it's a risk you take. Again, it is tragic but it happens. I don't fault him.
He does the first "spike squeeze" without much hesitation, which does require a lot of confidence this late into a run. It isn't a particularly hard trick compared to the rest of what he does here, but it's a time saver of like 30 frames that I really admire. He gets fantastic luck on the first group of hammerfishes, only to get hit by the hammerfish in the pipe following them. Again, if you time a "jump" at the right moment, the hammerfish will just go right through you with his attack. I saw him try it, but the hammerfish got the better of him. The rest of the underwater section goes very well.
The final checkpoint. For those who do not know this game as intimately as Icthus, Baraka, and myself, let me shed some light here. This is a nightmare considering it is only like 25 seconds long. There are so many ridiculous tricks that are needed here for a perfect speed run. You must do the spike squeeze at the beginning, skip the gyrocopter, headbutt both ducks (!), get good hammerfish luck, skip the final gyrocopter and death boost yourself through the final checkpoint. Every single one of those tricks (besides the hammerfish luck, which is random) is harder than most of the stuff in the rest of the game. Skipping the first gyrocopter is difficult on its own, but you need to survive the fall still. Headbutting the ducks isn't hard in concept, but slipping up even a little usually means sudden and violent death against a distant wall. A good hit from the hammerfish is death as well. Skipping the final gyrocopter is usually easy, but if you have too much momentum you will walk into the death spike instead of slipping through it, so you need to space/time yourself correctly; if you manage to skip it, the final descent is very difficult to time correctly because you need to die rather far to the right. I suppose what I'm trying to saying is that Icthus knocked it out of the park. This is an amazing final checkpoint! An amazing stage overall, really.
I have spent a vast amount of time researching some glitches that can improve the speed of this stage, and although there are some timesavers that involve these glitches, this is by far the best route for the stage (for a real-time run). In one total fluke incident, I managed to get hit by the final hammerfish through the wall to the right and through the final checkpoint to end the stage. I have never reproduced this, even with the help of feos (the Battletoads TASer). I don't even know why I mentioned that. I just thought it was relevant I guess.
Level 10- Awesome rat boot! This is the fastest timing I know of for the kill, and is like 5 seconds faster than my consistent method of doing it. This is a really risky method for killing him, but it is very necessary for a great time. Much respect!
Level 11- I totally agree with Icthus when he says "Oddly enough this is the time of the run where I get to relax, even though I always used to use all my continues on this level as a kid." I haven't died on Clinger Winger since the second time I played the stage. I LOVE this level. It's one of my favorites, and I have no idea why. Anyways, this boss battle can be improved slightly, I think. I always headbutt over the boss when he reaches the bottom left corner (this is a safe move), and then I chain headbutts on him to get him to the right wall, where I stunlock him. Icthus headbutts the boss to the left and then picks him up. He loses time picking up the boss, but I lose time whiffing a headbutt to position myself. I don't know what is slower, to be honest. Regardless, the fight from there on is pretty good. Hypno Orb escapes once or twice, but it's nothing too critical. A few seconds lost at most, but nothing to seriously complain about.
Level 12- This level. Oh my god. It is SO hard. I, again, can totally relate to Icthus here. I spent so many hours practicing this stage because I needed it to be just muscle memory at this point. I can't imagine the nerves he was feeling when he got here. Every single action in this level is ridiculously precise and any mistake, no matter how small, can cost large chunks of time due to the timing of the platforms. Icthus missed only one yellow rhino boot in the first checkpoint and it was the least critical rhino of them all. Missing the first two would have been very costly, and the last rhino would have cost slightly more time for the final hit.
There is a very fast way to kill the red rhinos which relies on dash jump headbutts. That attack has more priority than the game itself, so the rhinos can't swallow you during it. It can be used extremely effectively here, but it is risky as hell. Missing it usually means death, which is not a good tradeoff for a <1-second advantage. He destroys the rest of the checkpoint. He manipulated the green cloud perfectly and landed every spring jump in the zig-zag climb perfectly. A spectacular display.
The final checkpoint is slightly more relaxed in my opinion. It's still really hard, but not quite as much as the rest of the level. He makes an amazing leap of faith after the red rhino, boots the yellow rhino, and has some more great placement of jumps to reach the gas clouds. The final climb still terrifies me, and this is a great example of why. If I didn't know that he was going to beat the game, I would have been really scared at the last three jumps. Fortunately, he made it.
Overall, this is the best run of level 12 I could ever hope for anybody to every get in a real-time run of this game.
Dark Queen- This is the best Dark Queen fight I have ever seen. Ever. She doesn't use the tornado a single time. Icthus mentioned this manipulation to me and I was never able to get it consistently without her whomping me. Needless to say, the timing and spacing is rather picky. However, this (in my honest opinion) is the biggest time saver of the entire run, especially over my routes! If I hadn't seen it myself I never would've believed it. I am speechless, really.
Conclusion: I do agree with the runner that there is room for improvement (maybe up to 20 seconds in an ideal case), but honestly this is already far beyond what I was expecting. The time savers are all just due to random luck, not significant execution errors. To recap, the errors I noticed were: punching the snowman in level 4 (a few frames), death in level 8 on Robo-Manus (a few seconds), bad gear and suicide in level 9 (Icthus says 9 seconds so I trust him there), getting hit by two hammerfishes in level 9 (maybe 3 seconds), very slightly bad luck in level 11 boss (maybe 2 seconds), missing a boot in level 12 (again, maybe 2-3 seconds). So yea, there are some very, very minor mistakes. But seriously....of all those that I listed, only 2 were actually his fault and one of those was just done to prevent some very nasty game crashes. The other mistake was on the final level. Compare that to the number of unbelievably precise tricks that he nailed and it is absolutely no debate.
This is a phenomenal run of a very difficult speed running game. I cannot give this a high enough recommendation: I absolutely 100% accept! Congratulations on a job very very well done, Icthus! More importantly, thank you for doing this run so I don't have to.
Quote:
The second verifier has said it all. This game has terrified me since childhood. Deaths in a Battletoads run are a non-issue, so I'd definitely, definitely say accept.
If anyone ever gets a deathless run on the site that beats this time, then we'll know that gods have descended upon us.
If anyone ever gets a deathless run on the site that beats this time, then we'll know that gods have descended upon us.
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to Stephen 'Icthus' Smith!
Thread title: