My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/WizardsAndWarriors2.html
Marko 'MASTER-88' Vanhanen's glitch run (the glitch letting you keep spells from stage to stage)
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: Now we have glitch runs of the first and second games in the series? Is a run of the third game far off? I hope so!
Marko 'MASTER-88' Vanhanen's glitch run (the glitch letting you keep spells from stage to stage)
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Ironsword: Wizards and Warriors 2
It’s the verifying lawyer again! Ya know, the one who writes way too much? Yeah…me
ANYWAY, I played the heck out of this game as a kid. Never was any good at it, but I did, evidentially beat it some years later, and a once more recently. I remember the controls being rather loose, the jumping being frustrating, and the enemies being rather ruthless. Oh, and the animal kings were all bitches too. The treasure they want is normally like 40 FEET AWAY! GET IT YOURSELF!
I always liked the music of this game…
Level 1-1
…wow, that was a quick path to the golden egg. Why do I always try to figure a runner will do what’s expected? This part is over in a matter of seconds…wow…I already feel inadequate at video games again…
Level 1-2
Bouncy clouds! The place you get windbane from…I HATED those jumps. The runner even makes a mistake here, losing him about 2-3 seconds. I blame the controls, and I’d love to know how many attempts died because of jumping mechanic problems.
The W&W games seem to like their hidden areas…magic gathering time! Boss fight is about as quick as I can imagine it being. No real movement seems wasted, the runner always seems to be moving towards his goal.
Grabbing the piece of the Ironsword…I’m not sure why the runner used the Windbane to get it. Does that really save any time?
Level 2-1
This level is interesting. The game’s glitchy enough for it to completely screw you over if you mess up using the water spout spell to boost yourself high enough to get the fly. I remember there being a game breaking glitch around here…
Er, anyway, more jumping, nicely timed, moving forward and … WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? Wait a second…he just used Windbane to pick up the Golden Fly?! How do you do that?
Okay, so I had to go look this up real quick, but apparently using Windbane to pick up the piece of the Ironsword at the end of Level 1 in the manner the runner did glitches the game into letting you keep it into the next level. Holy crap…I never knew that. How do people figure this stuff out?
So, fly gotten, into the next part of the level…
Level 2-2
The sound is de-syncing here…
Oh look, you can use Windbane on the water boss…why not? The runner uses the magic gathering glitch, which I also did not know about until I looked up the Windbane glitch just a few minutes ago. I swear I played the hell out of this game, how did I never notice this one?
The runner gets hit by an enemy in the middle of being forced to walk on top of the defeated boss, causing him to pause for a few seconds. I’m sure there’s not much that could be done about this above just getting lucky.
Level’s over, using the Windbane glitch again…We’re like 3:26 in and he’s already beaten two levels.
Level 3-1
Little mistake here getting one of the gems. The runner seems to hop in place when I think he meant to pick up the gem.
The runner actually dies here. I’m surprised slightly, but then again, the enemies here hurt you a lot and the game respawns you exactly where you died, so the loss of time is minimal. If there is a place to die, this level is the place.
Runner gets a Silver Fleece which makes you invincible I believe. (Not invisible like the vaunted Cloak of Darkness from the first W&W game...).
Golden crown collected with Windbane…I’d love to see if the runner uses this spell to defeat the fire element boss…I don’t see it being possible, so it probably is…
The sound’s really de-synced here…it’s off by like a half second or more now.
Level 3-2
More jumping. I hate the jumping in this game, but the runner is doing it with rather nice precision.
Hey, the runner picked up Firesmite after all. I’m honestly surprised. Ignoring everything else in the level, the runner drops right to the boss. The magic glitch is in full effect here, and you really need to time your shots for this boss. I don’t know how random the boss fight is, but the runner states he didn’t think the fight went as well as it could. Considering the sheer amount of luck I’ve seen so far, an unlucky bit was bound to happen. It doesn’t look bad or really cost that much time…
Level 4-1
I love how the rat wants a mug…
Wow, one bat basically killed him in one shot. Another death. Again, the deaths don’t take up that much time considering the game just puts you in the same place.
Level 4-2
Earthscorch achieved quickly.
The runner dies on the boss because he was near death in the first place. This game is evil in that it doesn’t refill your health at the start of a new level, so he was either going to die here or later.
Invincibility spell activated! Boss pwned.
Ironsword achieved! Size really does matter folks…
Level 5-1
Ice mountain! …wouldn’t that have been the water element’s place? …never mind…
I love how this brave knight is forced to hop all over the place like a bunny, and does so with relative ease considering he’s wearing a FULL SUIT OF ARMOR. But since when did physics matter in an NES game?
Runner grabs the Seven League Boots which I believe you NEED to get. The game gives you at least one impossible jump without them. I remember playing this state for like ten minutes to figure that out…and if you don’t have a key, oh boy…
Speaking of ten minutes, we’re not even there yet in the length of the video…sound’s getting worse though…
I love the compete and random music change in this cave. There’s no apparent reason for it, but there you are…they didn’t have enough time to make a new song so we used the music from that game inside the shops…brilliant…
Level 5-2
Final boss time, and yes…this is one of the worst final bosses I’ve ever beaten. You have four floating heads of the different elements, but the “heads” are really just their respective icons.
Another use of the fleece and time to lay the smackdown. The runner gets bounced around like a rag doll and drops down rather far. I assume the idea is to separate one head from the others as fighting all four at once is suicide.
Or, I might be wrong as he just goes up and tries blasting all of them again…
As compared to everything else in the game, this fight takes the runner the longest. It’s probably the most random part of the game as the heads can fly “behind” the mountain and hide, just to be more annoying.
Incoming message from the big giant head: You just destroyed this game. Curses!
Horrible ending
Verification:
Video: Just fine
Audio: De-syncs rather quickly and gets progressively worse. This REALLY annoys me on any video I watch. I hope this can get fixed somehow…
Cheating: Major…well, okay, they’re all in game glitches so no, there’s no outside cheating or modification, but…I mean, the runner basically breaks the game. I know that’s the point and all, but damn…this is a glitchy, broken game…
Overall thoughts: This is not perfection, but I’m not entirely sure this game can be beaten quickly and deathless. (I’m not sure deathless is possible, but I’m sure someone can prove me wrong there…). The deaths really don’t harm the quality of the run too much. The only one I sort of take issue with is the one in the middle of the Earth stage after getting rapped by a bat.
Timing: I have the runner gaining character control at 0:07.25 and losing it at 11:04.07 when the screen turns black after the final head dies. You have no control over the game after this point. Anyway, that’s a time of 10:56.10 (in frames).
Verdict: Accept. Despite the flaws I do see, this game is very random, and I know that from my own play-thru. The enemies can drain half of your power in one shot out of no where too. The speed this runner gets through the game is rather amazing and shows complete dominance and memorization of the game, and all in under eleven minutes.
It’s the verifying lawyer again! Ya know, the one who writes way too much? Yeah…me
ANYWAY, I played the heck out of this game as a kid. Never was any good at it, but I did, evidentially beat it some years later, and a once more recently. I remember the controls being rather loose, the jumping being frustrating, and the enemies being rather ruthless. Oh, and the animal kings were all bitches too. The treasure they want is normally like 40 FEET AWAY! GET IT YOURSELF!
I always liked the music of this game…
Level 1-1
…wow, that was a quick path to the golden egg. Why do I always try to figure a runner will do what’s expected? This part is over in a matter of seconds…wow…I already feel inadequate at video games again…
Level 1-2
Bouncy clouds! The place you get windbane from…I HATED those jumps. The runner even makes a mistake here, losing him about 2-3 seconds. I blame the controls, and I’d love to know how many attempts died because of jumping mechanic problems.
The W&W games seem to like their hidden areas…magic gathering time! Boss fight is about as quick as I can imagine it being. No real movement seems wasted, the runner always seems to be moving towards his goal.
Grabbing the piece of the Ironsword…I’m not sure why the runner used the Windbane to get it. Does that really save any time?
Level 2-1
This level is interesting. The game’s glitchy enough for it to completely screw you over if you mess up using the water spout spell to boost yourself high enough to get the fly. I remember there being a game breaking glitch around here…
Er, anyway, more jumping, nicely timed, moving forward and … WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? Wait a second…he just used Windbane to pick up the Golden Fly?! How do you do that?
Okay, so I had to go look this up real quick, but apparently using Windbane to pick up the piece of the Ironsword at the end of Level 1 in the manner the runner did glitches the game into letting you keep it into the next level. Holy crap…I never knew that. How do people figure this stuff out?
So, fly gotten, into the next part of the level…
Level 2-2
The sound is de-syncing here…
Oh look, you can use Windbane on the water boss…why not? The runner uses the magic gathering glitch, which I also did not know about until I looked up the Windbane glitch just a few minutes ago. I swear I played the hell out of this game, how did I never notice this one?
The runner gets hit by an enemy in the middle of being forced to walk on top of the defeated boss, causing him to pause for a few seconds. I’m sure there’s not much that could be done about this above just getting lucky.
Level’s over, using the Windbane glitch again…We’re like 3:26 in and he’s already beaten two levels.
Level 3-1
Little mistake here getting one of the gems. The runner seems to hop in place when I think he meant to pick up the gem.
The runner actually dies here. I’m surprised slightly, but then again, the enemies here hurt you a lot and the game respawns you exactly where you died, so the loss of time is minimal. If there is a place to die, this level is the place.
Runner gets a Silver Fleece which makes you invincible I believe. (Not invisible like the vaunted Cloak of Darkness from the first W&W game...).
Golden crown collected with Windbane…I’d love to see if the runner uses this spell to defeat the fire element boss…I don’t see it being possible, so it probably is…
The sound’s really de-synced here…it’s off by like a half second or more now.
Level 3-2
More jumping. I hate the jumping in this game, but the runner is doing it with rather nice precision.
Hey, the runner picked up Firesmite after all. I’m honestly surprised. Ignoring everything else in the level, the runner drops right to the boss. The magic glitch is in full effect here, and you really need to time your shots for this boss. I don’t know how random the boss fight is, but the runner states he didn’t think the fight went as well as it could. Considering the sheer amount of luck I’ve seen so far, an unlucky bit was bound to happen. It doesn’t look bad or really cost that much time…
Level 4-1
I love how the rat wants a mug…
Wow, one bat basically killed him in one shot. Another death. Again, the deaths don’t take up that much time considering the game just puts you in the same place.
Level 4-2
Earthscorch achieved quickly.
The runner dies on the boss because he was near death in the first place. This game is evil in that it doesn’t refill your health at the start of a new level, so he was either going to die here or later.
Invincibility spell activated! Boss pwned.
Ironsword achieved! Size really does matter folks…
Level 5-1
Ice mountain! …wouldn’t that have been the water element’s place? …never mind…
I love how this brave knight is forced to hop all over the place like a bunny, and does so with relative ease considering he’s wearing a FULL SUIT OF ARMOR. But since when did physics matter in an NES game?
Runner grabs the Seven League Boots which I believe you NEED to get. The game gives you at least one impossible jump without them. I remember playing this state for like ten minutes to figure that out…and if you don’t have a key, oh boy…
Speaking of ten minutes, we’re not even there yet in the length of the video…sound’s getting worse though…
I love the compete and random music change in this cave. There’s no apparent reason for it, but there you are…they didn’t have enough time to make a new song so we used the music from that game inside the shops…brilliant…
Level 5-2
Final boss time, and yes…this is one of the worst final bosses I’ve ever beaten. You have four floating heads of the different elements, but the “heads” are really just their respective icons.
Another use of the fleece and time to lay the smackdown. The runner gets bounced around like a rag doll and drops down rather far. I assume the idea is to separate one head from the others as fighting all four at once is suicide.
Or, I might be wrong as he just goes up and tries blasting all of them again…
As compared to everything else in the game, this fight takes the runner the longest. It’s probably the most random part of the game as the heads can fly “behind” the mountain and hide, just to be more annoying.
Incoming message from the big giant head: You just destroyed this game. Curses!
Horrible ending
Verification:
Video: Just fine
Audio: De-syncs rather quickly and gets progressively worse. This REALLY annoys me on any video I watch. I hope this can get fixed somehow…
Cheating: Major…well, okay, they’re all in game glitches so no, there’s no outside cheating or modification, but…I mean, the runner basically breaks the game. I know that’s the point and all, but damn…this is a glitchy, broken game…
Overall thoughts: This is not perfection, but I’m not entirely sure this game can be beaten quickly and deathless. (I’m not sure deathless is possible, but I’m sure someone can prove me wrong there…). The deaths really don’t harm the quality of the run too much. The only one I sort of take issue with is the one in the middle of the Earth stage after getting rapped by a bat.
Timing: I have the runner gaining character control at 0:07.25 and losing it at 11:04.07 when the screen turns black after the final head dies. You have no control over the game after this point. Anyway, that’s a time of 10:56.10 (in frames).
Verdict: Accept. Despite the flaws I do see, this game is very random, and I know that from my own play-thru. The enemies can drain half of your power in one shot out of no where too. The speed this runner gets through the game is rather amazing and shows complete dominance and memorization of the game, and all in under eleven minutes.
Quote:
Overall it's a good speedrun. Glad we finally got a speedrun with glitches.
Level 1-A:
Everything goes fine here. I guess there might be a more optimal running route, but that's not very significant.
Level 1-B:
There might be a better jumping route, but this one is good too. Some problems with the fairies (?), but I know from experience they are assholes. Getting past them carefully is actually the way to go in a speedrun, because dying is pretty much unavoidable without grabbing a lot of unnecessary stuff. Optimal magic refilling. OK bossfight.
Level 2-A:
Smooth sailing.
Level 2-B:
It might look like he waits for no reason before getting the second magic refills, but he has to wait there for the 500s from the earlier magic pellets to disappear. The boss can be a dick when you beat him with this magic. He often spams the water on top of him after he's defeated so that you can't get past for a long time. Nasty bug. But it goes fine here.
Level 3-A:
A bit of trouble grabbing a large gem for some reason. Nothing major though. Climbing goes fine.
Level 3-B:
Some shots missed against the boss, but it's sort of hard to time correctly. I say it's OK.
Level 4-A:
Yeah, he has to step on the platform for the tankard to appear. It's silly. What is also silly is how much damage some of these monsters do. But it's random and unavoidable.
Level 4-B:
I think the TAS did some sort of bug so that he could kill the boss on the left side of the room. That way he could avoid getting hit. But I'm not sure how that works to be honest.
Level 5:
It's all good. The bossfight is totally random and annoying. But he does a good job with them in my opinion. Sure, it could be faster, but you can't be prepared for this bossfight to get everything done perfectly.
All in all it's a solid speedrun. Further improvements would probably skip some extra lives and depend on luck to not get hit awfully much and get a better bossfight. But that's a lot of frustrated moments for a record on a stupid game.
Final word: Accept
Level 1-A:
Everything goes fine here. I guess there might be a more optimal running route, but that's not very significant.
Level 1-B:
There might be a better jumping route, but this one is good too. Some problems with the fairies (?), but I know from experience they are assholes. Getting past them carefully is actually the way to go in a speedrun, because dying is pretty much unavoidable without grabbing a lot of unnecessary stuff. Optimal magic refilling. OK bossfight.
Level 2-A:
Smooth sailing.
Level 2-B:
It might look like he waits for no reason before getting the second magic refills, but he has to wait there for the 500s from the earlier magic pellets to disappear. The boss can be a dick when you beat him with this magic. He often spams the water on top of him after he's defeated so that you can't get past for a long time. Nasty bug. But it goes fine here.
Level 3-A:
A bit of trouble grabbing a large gem for some reason. Nothing major though. Climbing goes fine.
Level 3-B:
Some shots missed against the boss, but it's sort of hard to time correctly. I say it's OK.
Level 4-A:
Yeah, he has to step on the platform for the tankard to appear. It's silly. What is also silly is how much damage some of these monsters do. But it's random and unavoidable.
Level 4-B:
I think the TAS did some sort of bug so that he could kill the boss on the left side of the room. That way he could avoid getting hit. But I'm not sure how that works to be honest.
Level 5:
It's all good. The bossfight is totally random and annoying. But he does a good job with them in my opinion. Sure, it could be faster, but you can't be prepared for this bossfight to get everything done perfectly.
All in all it's a solid speedrun. Further improvements would probably skip some extra lives and depend on luck to not get hit awfully much and get a better bossfight. But that's a lot of frustrated moments for a record on a stupid game.
Final word: Accept
Quote:
Cheating:
Nope, a couple glitches, but no cheating.
Audio/Video Quality:
Video looks good, sound sounds good. Now only if they'd sync up. Sure nate can handle that though.
Play Quality:
The run's far from flawless, but with this game if it were my blurb about cheating would probably be longer.
Let's go level by level, shall we?
Level 1. No problems with the first section. Little wizard guys by Windbane are handled cautiously, but I see that as rightfully so. The only real gripe I have here is the missed jump on the way out of the room. This early I think that'd merit a reset. Rest went fine.
Level 2: A little difficulty grabbing some of the loot. Sets up infinite magic and gets by the boss without a death (which is really hard and random without the water spell). Pretty good.
Level 3: First area's a little rocky, again with loot pick ups and some trouble with the enemies. Sucks up death number 1. Rest of the way to the boss goes well. Boss fight could've gone better, missed the platform at the start, took a while to get him into the pattern, and lost the pattern once. Could probably be a good 10 seconds faster.
Level 4: Starts out ok, nails the tricky jump out of the chamber first try. I really don't like the detour for the extra guy here, would've liked to see him try to go without. Some bad luck in the second section with the enemies, but it's just that, bad luck. A couple tiny movement errors too, but nothing egregious. Silver Fleece against the boss is definitely a little faster than the 'hit him from off screen' glitch, and burning a charge there instead of saving them all for the end is a ballsy touch that I personally like.
Level 5: Movement through here went really, really well. Pretty much no gripes to the boss. And the boss is really what runs of this game hinge on. I say without hesitation that this is one of the hardest boss fights on the NES, and this fight went really well considering just how random their movements are and how far south things can go once they start knocking you around. There's really only one instance of him getting knocked around badly, and that instance isn't nearly as bad as it could be. He does take another direct hit after that, but manages to recover very quickly so I won't even count that as a strike against. He manages to score hits pretty consistently and gets some truly great luck to not get hit in several spots. Not 'like TAS' certainly, but a really good fight overall.
So is this run improveable? Most definitely, but what he's got here is really pretty good, and I think people who know the game will agree. It definitely won't be a shining gem of SDA, but it's not gonna disgrace the site or anything. Good show man.
Accept
Nope, a couple glitches, but no cheating.
Audio/Video Quality:
Video looks good, sound sounds good. Now only if they'd sync up. Sure nate can handle that though.
Play Quality:
The run's far from flawless, but with this game if it were my blurb about cheating would probably be longer.
Level 1. No problems with the first section. Little wizard guys by Windbane are handled cautiously, but I see that as rightfully so. The only real gripe I have here is the missed jump on the way out of the room. This early I think that'd merit a reset. Rest went fine.
Level 2: A little difficulty grabbing some of the loot. Sets up infinite magic and gets by the boss without a death (which is really hard and random without the water spell). Pretty good.
Level 3: First area's a little rocky, again with loot pick ups and some trouble with the enemies. Sucks up death number 1. Rest of the way to the boss goes well. Boss fight could've gone better, missed the platform at the start, took a while to get him into the pattern, and lost the pattern once. Could probably be a good 10 seconds faster.
Level 4: Starts out ok, nails the tricky jump out of the chamber first try. I really don't like the detour for the extra guy here, would've liked to see him try to go without. Some bad luck in the second section with the enemies, but it's just that, bad luck. A couple tiny movement errors too, but nothing egregious. Silver Fleece against the boss is definitely a little faster than the 'hit him from off screen' glitch, and burning a charge there instead of saving them all for the end is a ballsy touch that I personally like.
Level 5: Movement through here went really, really well. Pretty much no gripes to the boss. And the boss is really what runs of this game hinge on. I say without hesitation that this is one of the hardest boss fights on the NES, and this fight went really well considering just how random their movements are and how far south things can go once they start knocking you around. There's really only one instance of him getting knocked around badly, and that instance isn't nearly as bad as it could be. He does take another direct hit after that, but manages to recover very quickly so I won't even count that as a strike against. He manages to score hits pretty consistently and gets some truly great luck to not get hit in several spots. Not 'like TAS' certainly, but a really good fight overall.
So is this run improveable? Most definitely, but what he's got here is really pretty good, and I think people who know the game will agree. It definitely won't be a shining gem of SDA, but it's not gonna disgrace the site or anything. Good show man.
Accept
Decision: Accept
Reason: Now we have glitch runs of the first and second games in the series? Is a run of the third game far off? I hope so!
Thread title: