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Game Page: https://speeddemosarchive.com/MilonsSecretCastle.html

Milon's Secret Castle (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verifier Responses

Quote from CarpetCrawler:
A/V good, no cheating detected.

Is sub-9 possible? Yes, absolutely. However, none of the things holding Havoc back in this 9:03 are through his own fault. Havoc held up his end of the deal, the rest of the game relies on having good boss patterns, which as of right now we are not sure is something that can be accurately pre-determined or not. Typically in Havoc's attempts Kama will end his run, or Milon will be too battered and abused by the frantic, chaotic enemies that he will lose his health and die. This run has some pretty good luck with boss patterns and a decent Maharito fight.

I'm curious to see if a sub-9 run will ever come to fruition. Getting on Havoc's level of play with this game is no easy task and would take heavy repetition and grinding. Havoc does not lie when he says he's put in thousands of attempts to get the time he got here. A definite ACCEPT as this is a great, ideal run as it is with only minor hopeful RNG improvements if anyone was curious enough to try and beat this time. Which is something that I don't see happening.


Quote:
time: Appears correct, 9:03
a/v: I'm no techmologician, but this indeed looks and sounds like Milon's Secret Castle.
cheating: Nope! This is really how the game actually plays! Seriously!

Run: I see no obvious errors, execution or otherwise. There appears to be only a few very minor hiccups that don't seem to be caused by bad luck amounting to maybe a couple of seconds lost across the whole run.

Overall optimization of play and health/umbrella management is impressive. Well, I say management of health but what I mean is not getting bum rushed by boss fireballs.

Speaking of bad luck, although there is a bit of that in here, there appears to be more than enough good luck too.

Other than that, the run comments by the author are very informative and honest, and those say way more than I could.

Extremely tightly played run of an extremely unfriendly to play game! Can't really fault the runner for grinding out excellent RNG in stead of perfect RNG. Easy peasy ACCEPTesey

Congrats on the great run Smiley


Quote from Dragondarch:
Game: Milon's Secret Castle
Category: RNG Fuckfest Any%
Audio/Video: Everything looked good.
Cheating: He cheats death a few times, but that's acceptable.

Good god, this game. This was one of the earlier NES games I had as a kid, and I remember spending who-knows-how-many-hours attempting to beat it. I did manage to complete it at some point, and many times after that, but good god was this a monster of a game for kid to try to beat.

This run is made of the tears of Queen Eliza who, while it only took Milon 9 minutes and change to rescue her on his successful attempt, has waited patiently for what's probably the equivalent of months for Milon to finally reach her. I'm sure she must have cried many-a-time as she watched Milon get bodied time and time again by the various monsters inhabiting the castle. I'm also betting that at some point she gave up hope that Milon would ever reach the top of the castle and defeat Marihito, given his success rate.

As for the run itself:
This is a nightmare to play, let alone speedrun. The runner articulates the issues of running this game quite well in his comments. Umbrellas need to be obtained at specific points to re-obtain double shot (good game design right there...), money is necessary for a few items, the fireplace is hell without the Fireproof Vest, boss battles are incredibly and dangerously random, and the only saving grace for Milon are a scant few Hudson Honeybees and some Honeycomb. Milon doesn't exactly have a lot going for him, does he?

The runner overcomes all of this bullshit and finishes in record time (9:03 by looking at the video). Congrats to the runner, and please for the love of god bury this game somewhere you'll never find it again. You'll be better off for it.

Easy ACCEPT.


Quote from PJ:
A/V looks great and there are no signs of cheating!

Sorry for being so late with this reply!  I am giving this the strongest ACCEPT possible.  This is seriously one of the most impressive NES runs I've ever seen.  I thought that the absolutely relentless difficulty and randomness of this game would prevent it from ever getting an optimized run, but the runner proved me wrong pretty convincingly.

He is using the most reckless route possible, not collecting enough extra money to get a single health refill from any of the later shops.  As a result, he has to play through the last two thirds of the game with the same life bar (note: bosses kill you in 2-3 hits from full health).  He manages to get to the final "traditional" boss of the game without losing any health at all!  I can't stress how ridiculously impressive that is.  The boss fights are completely random, and a lot of the possible trajectories are completely undodgeable because you don't accelerate quickly enough to move out of the way.  He still charges forward without fear and crushes them!

This route is incredibly strong.  Every enemy kill is planned to force umbrella drops in optimal locations, all the early damage boosts are done with the honeycombs in mind, all of the uses of the shield are planned perfectly, and he has a very efficient kill of the balloon-dropping guys in the well escape.  I see no route improvements here.

Congrats to the runner for an astonishing run of this game, and for finally getting a run you are satisfied with!  Here's hoping you can play some enjoyable games from now on.  Cheesy


Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'HavocProdigy'!
Thread title:  
Wow.  I don't think I could properly articulate how kind everyone's words were so I'll leave it at a sincere "Thank-you".

Because I will no longer be running this game and because I don't foresee having much of a public platform to discuss this game ever again, I'll take a couple moments to mention a few things.

Off the top of my head, there's only 3 real instances that I could think of in which I was screwed by severe randomness:

1.) I lost time in the Right Tower due to enemies being completely unwilling to drop hearts.  I needed a heart to restore my health and an additional heart to boost my shield.  I never did get a chance to boost my shield, which usually results in me having to reset.

2.) It is my belief that Kama's fireball pattern was utter shit in this run.  Even after hours of failed study, I still don't really understand how the boss patterns work in this game.  Judging by my extensive research/translating of comments by Japanese runners and players, it appears that no one else understands it either and probably never will.  I was forced to take a rather defensive stance in this fight which ultimately hurt my time by around 10 seconds.

3.) I executed the Maharito fight as well as you realistically can.  I killed him in 4 cycles which is not only typical for me, but is the least it has ever taken me without the sword.  However, Maharito gave me 3 slow cycles and only 1 fast cycle (the final cycle).  I have had ridiculously good Maharito fights where I was given 4 fast cycles.  However, this virtually never happens.

As far as I can recall, any other losses of time are entirely my fault.  Sub 9 is ABSOLUTELY possible.  For anyone interested, the sum of my best splits in this game is a staggering 8:10.9.  That's how far this run is from being "optimized".  However, I learned a long time ago that this game will NEVER be optimized...not by me or any other runner.  This is the ONLY run of this game that I have ever done that did not have at least one unbelievably glaring mistake in it.  Optimizing this game, despite the incredibly short run time, is like trying to fully optimize an RPG.  I'm not lying when I say this: Milon's Secret Castle is in all honesty a terrible game to learn to speedrun.  If I had the knowledge of this game that I have now back when I started routing this game, I would never have bothered to learn to run it.  I can't say that I regret running this game, but it is a rather poor choice for a speedrun.  My condolences for anyone in the future, as unlikely as it appears, that decides to pick up this game and try to beat my time.  Sub 9 is possible but I have zero plans in running this game ever again.  If anyone does plan on pursuing runs of this game at some point, I would first direct you to my rather lengthy run comments that will appear on the site.  Secondly, I'm willing to answer any questions via my Twitch chat, Twitch inbox, or the SDA thread for this game.

As a final farewell, I suppose I'll share some videos of other Milon achievements that I was able to produce since obtaining this run back in May.  For the few that may find this game interesting, I hope you enjoy.  Thanks again.

Speedrun - 9:03 - (May 20th, 2014): http://www.twitch.tv/havocprodigy/c/4302032

100% Run/Guide - 21:57 - (June 30th, 2014): http://www.twitch.tv/havocprodigy/c/4571825 (possibly more impressive than my 9:03)

Bonus Stage: 60 Notes - (July 21st, 2014): http://www.twitch.tv/havocprodigy/c/4714411

Last Call: A Farewell to Milon - (Late May, 2014): http://www.twitch.tv/havocprodigy/c/4350133

It's been fun.  No, seriously.