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Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/EarthBound.html

Earthbound (Any %) (Single Segment) [Large-skip glitches]

Verifier Responses

Quote from Scott315:
The run lost about 25 seconds in the end due to poor execution of the "check area" glitch, which allows the player to open the debug menu from the pause screen. I feel like this time can be improved by ~15 seconds if this glitch is performed more effectively. Otherwise, the rest of the run leading up to the glitch looks great. Audio and Video look fine, as well.


Quote from CyberBotX:
A/V good, no cheating detected. I think despite how many tries it takes to activate the Check Area Glitch, the fact that a non-TAS can pull it off in (what I'm considering) a reasonable amount of time is impressive enough for me to give this an accept. Plus, there is a concern by another verifier that it takes 30+ seconds to get the glitched dialog to bring up the debug menu, but they did get the debug menu to come up on the first try once they got the empty dialog box, which is where the small frame window comes into play. I would say that the runner or anyone else attempting this glitch just need to figure out how to make the glitched dialog to occur quicker, and maybe look into trying to make the stutter steps to skip the Starman Jr. fight and Buzz-Buzz cutscene more consistent.


Quote from HyperZoot:
A/V looks good and no evidence of cheating.
First part of the run is pretty solid. A couple issues with movement, but it probably doesn't even add up to half a second. Good menuing as well.
At first I was concerned about how long it took to get the glitch at the end, especially for how short the run is. Given how precise it is to perform, I think this has to be an accept, with hopes that we can see a perfect run one day.


Quote:
The audiovisual quality is good and there's no noticeable cheating. Very noticeable glitching, however! It's understandable that the runner forgoes a couple of other timesavers while aiming for what is already a very difficult trick to pull off, while the short part of the game that they do have control over is well-handled. I definitely think it's worth putting up on the front page, to display the power of this glitch and welcome any potential improvements.


Quote from __sdfg:
A/V is good.  The glitches used in the run are all well-known.  I see no evidence of cheating.

Timing stuff:

I'm not sure about timing since this run uses glitches to jump to the ending early.  Since past runs have been timed according to when the final prayer sequence against Giygas starts, I guess timing for this should stop when the runner enters the menu command to jump to the end.  On that assumption, the part of this run that counts is frame 5386 to frame 41210, giving a time of 9:56.


The "normal" parts of this run are executed very well.  I think the runner bumps into a tree for maybe half a second at one point, but all of the other movements, menuing, etc. are very clean.

There are two places where significant gains are still possible:

1.  Skipping the Starman Junior battle.  When this run was recorded, the only known way to do this was to mash Up at 30 Hz for a few frames.  Since then, I believe it was discovered that it is possible to do it by tapping Up and A a frame apart a few times (tapping them more than one frame apart triggers the battle).  However, this is still a difficult thing to do and I do not fault the runner for choosing not to attempt it in this run.

2.  Getting the "check area" glitch to bring up the debug menu faster.  I don't know all of the internals of the glitch, but my understanding is that it depends on a value in memory that is constantly changing and that is not expressed to the player in any way other than whether the "check area" glitch works.  So, unless new stuff happens, it is essentially random whether the glitch will trigger, and it furthermore requires a later frame-perfect input that the runner does get.  So, time can be saved on this glitch, but only by grinding out attempts at an extremely fickle trick.

Basically, the only way to save much time is to add one nearly-TAS-only trick to the run, and then get another nearly-TAS-only trick to be even more nearly-TAS-only.  Given the circumstances, I think this run executes the check area glitch well enough, and I can't fault the rest of the run at all.  Congrats to the runner on completing a run in this category on console.

Accept.


Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'nemi'!
Thread title:  
Thank you to everyone involved in verifying this submission. As mentioned, the glitch could have potentially brought up the debug menu about 30 seconds faster. Also, a new method for skipping Starman Jr. and Buzz Buzz's final words was posted by CacheLine, so another time saving of over a minute is possible.

However, getting all of this to fall into place is quite difficult, and I feel getting a run where everything goes smoothly will most likely not happen in the short-term. I think this run is a decent first submission for this category.