My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/ZeldaLinksAwakening.html
Michael 'Tigger77' Welle's Single-segment DX version run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: You've only crushed the current records at two marathons, Tigger. Good to see a run from you!
Michael 'Tigger77' Welle's Single-segment DX version run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Cheating - Nope, unless you count being a DIRTY LITTLE THIEF!!!
Audio/Video - Solid throughout, no complaints.
On the whole, this is a fantastic run. Player displays an amazing knowledge of routes, planning, and executing a plethora of high execution techniques that save bucketloads of time throughout the run. The run is not without it's mistakes but the vast majority of them are minor, being a second or less of lost time at various parts of the run, and those are just an unavoidable part of running a game that takes nearly 90 minutes. For the sake of completeness I'll list out the most obvious improvements.
Path to the sword: Right off the bat there are a couple times link gets stuck on a wall, they are minimal mistakes costing maybe a second or two at most, but since it's so early in the run it's worth mentioning. Only trivial mistake i'll point out.
Saving Bow-Wow: The Boss fight on the moblin leader is probably the single biggest blemish on this run. Easily cost 12-15 seconds here, and again it's pretty early in the run. Not a super difficult boss fight so there is certainly room for a chunk of improvement here. Really the only part of the run that made me cringe.
Dungeon 2: The room where you have to kill the three enemies in order is a pretty big time loss here. The room itself goes kinda bad, and in the process runner loses the piece of power, which obviously slows down his speed for the rest of the dungeon. I'd estimate 10-15 seconds could be made up here without that mistake.
Dungeon 6: Tossing the 2 knight heads was just brutal brutal luck. Up until i asked while watching the run, i thought this could be manipulated by throwing one head on the south wall and one on the north wall, but i was corrected on that assumption. With great luck 10 seconds easily gets made up here. No fault of the runner of course. Just a rotten break.
Dungeon 8: This dungeon is the bi-polar section of the run. Runner puts on an absolute clinic for performing difficult execution shortcuts and saving tons of time. Then, sadly, the platforming sections do not go well at all. The lava room and the iceblock rooms both have some issues and cost the runner a good chunk of time. Done perfectly, again maybe 15 seconds are recovered.
Like i said other than these parts the run is incredibly well executed, very entertaining to watch, and a nice improvement over the current SS run. Tighter execution on specific parts, along with better luck on the knight heads, and assuming a similar number of minor mistakes i'd say shaving 40-45 seconds off this time is realistic, maybe a minute with an absolutely stellar run. So for me the decision on this one is a no brainer:
REJECT - FOR BEING A DIRTY LITTLE THIEF.
......
I kid. Absolute accept. Great Job Tigg.
Audio/Video - Solid throughout, no complaints.
On the whole, this is a fantastic run. Player displays an amazing knowledge of routes, planning, and executing a plethora of high execution techniques that save bucketloads of time throughout the run. The run is not without it's mistakes but the vast majority of them are minor, being a second or less of lost time at various parts of the run, and those are just an unavoidable part of running a game that takes nearly 90 minutes. For the sake of completeness I'll list out the most obvious improvements.
Path to the sword: Right off the bat there are a couple times link gets stuck on a wall, they are minimal mistakes costing maybe a second or two at most, but since it's so early in the run it's worth mentioning. Only trivial mistake i'll point out.
Saving Bow-Wow: The Boss fight on the moblin leader is probably the single biggest blemish on this run. Easily cost 12-15 seconds here, and again it's pretty early in the run. Not a super difficult boss fight so there is certainly room for a chunk of improvement here. Really the only part of the run that made me cringe.
Dungeon 2: The room where you have to kill the three enemies in order is a pretty big time loss here. The room itself goes kinda bad, and in the process runner loses the piece of power, which obviously slows down his speed for the rest of the dungeon. I'd estimate 10-15 seconds could be made up here without that mistake.
Dungeon 6: Tossing the 2 knight heads was just brutal brutal luck. Up until i asked while watching the run, i thought this could be manipulated by throwing one head on the south wall and one on the north wall, but i was corrected on that assumption. With great luck 10 seconds easily gets made up here. No fault of the runner of course. Just a rotten break.
Dungeon 8: This dungeon is the bi-polar section of the run. Runner puts on an absolute clinic for performing difficult execution shortcuts and saving tons of time. Then, sadly, the platforming sections do not go well at all. The lava room and the iceblock rooms both have some issues and cost the runner a good chunk of time. Done perfectly, again maybe 15 seconds are recovered.
Like i said other than these parts the run is incredibly well executed, very entertaining to watch, and a nice improvement over the current SS run. Tighter execution on specific parts, along with better luck on the knight heads, and assuming a similar number of minor mistakes i'd say shaving 40-45 seconds off this time is realistic, maybe a minute with an absolutely stellar run. So for me the decision on this one is a no brainer:
REJECT - FOR BEING A DIRTY LITTLE THIEF.
......
I kid. Absolute accept. Great Job Tigg.
Quote:
Verifier 1 covered many of the relevant criticisms, so I'll just say that the time lost from the segmented run appears to be mainly errors in executing very frame precise glitches like the text skips. Even among those, the runner sticks them more often than not. Sub 1:30 is very impressive.
The route is good, but I'm not familiar enough with version differences between DX and B&W to say if some of the tricks in Exo's segmented run are possible (e.g. damage boosting over the hole to skip the raccoon nonsense). Also, not to harp on the early corner issues, but if I understand correctly, each corner boost advances Link by 1 pixel. I doubt that any time is saved without perfect execution: it seems analogous to Super Metroid shoulder pumping, except you can't use it several times per second. Even in Super Metroid, the time saved is on the order of seconds, so I think even minor errors, like we see in this video, are likely to make the technique cost time overall. In any case, I'm happy to file those under "improvements for a future runner."
I think my favorite part of the run was the Yarna Desert quick kill.
I have one question I've PMed to the runner, but overall, any criticisms are outweighed by the high quality of conception and execution.
ACCEPT
Update: the reason the runner doesn't kill the orange guys in the dream world is to manipulate the piece of power drop in the 5th dungeon. The moar I know about this run, the more I like it.
The route is good, but I'm not familiar enough with version differences between DX and B&W to say if some of the tricks in Exo's segmented run are possible (e.g. damage boosting over the hole to skip the raccoon nonsense). Also, not to harp on the early corner issues, but if I understand correctly, each corner boost advances Link by 1 pixel. I doubt that any time is saved without perfect execution: it seems analogous to Super Metroid shoulder pumping, except you can't use it several times per second. Even in Super Metroid, the time saved is on the order of seconds, so I think even minor errors, like we see in this video, are likely to make the technique cost time overall. In any case, I'm happy to file those under "improvements for a future runner."
I think my favorite part of the run was the Yarna Desert quick kill.
I have one question I've PMed to the runner, but overall, any criticisms are outweighed by the high quality of conception and execution.
ACCEPT
Update: the reason the runner doesn't kill the orange guys in the dream world is to manipulate the piece of power drop in the 5th dungeon. The moar I know about this run, the more I like it.
Quote:
Verification for Zelda: Link's Awakening DX Version by Tigg
A/V A-OK! There is a little bit of audio slow-down here and there, but that's quite definitely in-game lag. The text in the final credits is in seizure-vision. Not sure why. No cheating besides the stuff Twin Galaxies would bitch about.
The awesome:
I'm pretty sure the runner did not miss one text skip. Badass.
Nice one-bottle-throw on the boss there. Shame about losing the piece of power earlier.
The dirty thieving went quite nicely. That's always a pain in the ass for me.
DAMN the slime boss went down quickly.
And the Yarna Desert “boss,” not to be outdone, gets killed before even appearing on the screen
Just about everything else in the run.
The not-so awesome:
The moblin boss >.<;
The bunny/keese/stalfos room hurt.
The RNG during the Catfish's Maw boss battle
Knight heads.
The overall et cetera :
Top-notch execution throughout, with very few errors. Enemies are taken care of quickly, the pause menu work is quick, and tricks and time savers (most of which are extremely precise) abound.
Thorough planning is quite evident, from movement to gear changing to puzzle and boss strats.
I'm quite sure that the two-knight-head “puzzle” can be manipulated, but it's totally faster to spam throwing them until you get lucky. Sadness.
Let's just say that every boss battle (with the exception of the annoyingly-luck-based Catfish's Maw boss) goes phenomenally well, final bosses included.
Room for improvement? Yeah, but not much. Accepting this run IS THE ONLY OPTION!
A/V A-OK! There is a little bit of audio slow-down here and there, but that's quite definitely in-game lag. The text in the final credits is in seizure-vision. Not sure why. No cheating besides the stuff Twin Galaxies would bitch about.
The awesome:
I'm pretty sure the runner did not miss one text skip. Badass.
Nice one-bottle-throw on the boss there. Shame about losing the piece of power earlier.
The dirty thieving went quite nicely. That's always a pain in the ass for me.
DAMN the slime boss went down quickly.
And the Yarna Desert “boss,” not to be outdone, gets killed before even appearing on the screen
Just about everything else in the run.
The not-so awesome:
The moblin boss >.<;
The bunny/keese/stalfos room hurt.
The RNG during the Catfish's Maw boss battle
Knight heads.
The overall et cetera :
Top-notch execution throughout, with very few errors. Enemies are taken care of quickly, the pause menu work is quick, and tricks and time savers (most of which are extremely precise) abound.
Thorough planning is quite evident, from movement to gear changing to puzzle and boss strats.
I'm quite sure that the two-knight-head “puzzle” can be manipulated, but it's totally faster to spam throwing them until you get lucky. Sadness.
Let's just say that every boss battle (with the exception of the annoyingly-luck-based Catfish's Maw boss) goes phenomenally well, final bosses included.
Room for improvement? Yeah, but not much. Accepting this run IS THE ONLY OPTION!
Quote:
Most things are already mentioned by the previous verifiers. And Tigger himself knows what flaws his runs have, so I'm not going to point out everything here. There are some bad looking mistakes, such as the things the above verifiers mentioned. Including the first Master Skeleton fight, which was a bit messed up.
One thing it seems like Tigger doesn't know, even though I have mentioned it before, is in Eagle's Tower, when you first get the steel ball. You can just grab the lever, without pulling, and the stones will move automatically and stay in that position all the time. This does not work with the German version of the game however, which I probably why Tigger are using this method.
When pushing the blocks to the third pillar, would have been better to just hit the enemies close with the ball so that they wouldn't be in the way.
In the Nightmare fight, Moldorm phase, instead of slashing like crazy, just slash once and hold your sword out until the boss is hit, then you slash again and repeat. This way it is very easy to get the quick kill working.
But yeah, I don't have much else to say about the run. It's a good run, but it has several flaws in it, many which look quite bad from my point of view. I still think it should be accepted and hopefully so that hopefully someone, including myself, will improve the run in the future.
One thing it seems like Tigger doesn't know, even though I have mentioned it before, is in Eagle's Tower, when you first get the steel ball. You can just grab the lever, without pulling, and the stones will move automatically and stay in that position all the time. This does not work with the German version of the game however, which I probably why Tigger are using this method.
When pushing the blocks to the third pillar, would have been better to just hit the enemies close with the ball so that they wouldn't be in the way.
In the Nightmare fight, Moldorm phase, instead of slashing like crazy, just slash once and hold your sword out until the boss is hit, then you slash again and repeat. This way it is very easy to get the quick kill working.
But yeah, I don't have much else to say about the run. It's a good run, but it has several flaws in it, many which look quite bad from my point of view. I still think it should be accepted and hopefully so that hopefully someone, including myself, will improve the run in the future.
Decision: Accept
Reason: You've only crushed the current records at two marathons, Tigger. Good to see a run from you!
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