My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/PokemonRedBlue.html
Ben Goldberg's Red version run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: It's an improvement, and the time is now sub-2 hours. The verifiers who are complaining about the battle animations during the final battle must not remember the the game too well. The battle animations are always turned on during the final battle to make the mood more dramatic
Ben Goldberg's Red version run
Verifier Responses
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Segment 1: slight hesitation before choosing squirtle
Segment 2: only fight was against Bulbasaur, and yet no critical hits were scored. Why? This fight could have realistically been finished in 3 turns with 2 critical hits.
Segment 3: Flawless!
Segment 4: I'm pretty sure that talking to a trainer from the side so you don't get a "!" animation is slightly faster than not, but in this instance would have required an extra 3 steps, so it probably balances out. To note, the battle may have been finished about 2 turns earlier if a few tail whips were thrown in there prior to the tackles. Probably easier than worrying about crits too.
Segment 5: Maybe this could have been further segmented for crits on the bug catcher's weedle? Slight navigational error in the PokeMart.
Segment 6: Brock fight could have both been OHKO with crits, which would have also saved one potion use. Probably should have redone the segment until this occurred.
Segment 7: I'll assume the "menu error" is luck manipulation...
Segment 8: Flawless!
Segment 9: Very slight error in selecting TM01
Segment 10: Another example of the "!" animation. Critical hits on rocket's pokemon would have resulted in a OHKO. Instead, he could have picked up the rare candy earlier and evolved early. Not 100% sure if the detour would have been worth it, but I think that wartortle may have been able to mega punch OHKO without crits. I could be mistaken. A crit somewhere in the super nerd fight would have been great. Instead, the game scored all the crits Sad
Intersegmentary note: Misty should have been fought before nugget bridge. He could have fought Misty, then healed at the pokemon center. This would have given him bubblebeam early, and thus some non-crit OHKOs. Plus plenty of PP, enough to beat surge before having to use the center again.
Segment 11: Same overall issue as segment 2: No crits on rival fight. Pidgeotto could have been that means less time healing on the abra A crit on bulbasaur would have been a OHKO Instead, the crit occurs in the non-important Bug catcher battle. Also the best example yet of how you could avoid the "!" animation for time savings.
Segment 12: You can see the slight time savings throughout this segment for avoiding that "!" animation. Perhaps this could have been segmented further for more critical OHKOs?
Segment 13: Why didn't he avoid the "!" animations here? He should have fought the hiker, because, while it is true he has 4 pokemon instead of 3, 3 are OHKO by water gun, and he has exactly 3PP left on water gun. And a crit mega punch would almost for sure OHKO the machop.
Probably wasted the rare candy too.
Segment 14: Slight maneuvering error before the underground tunnel.
Segment 15: Again with an easily avoidable "!" They do add up. The segment is short, so why not try to crit bubblebeam Raticate? (Should he have avoided the rare candy battle?)
Segment 16: Not so bad on the rival fight this time, although crits on pidgeotto and ivysaur would have been nice since this was the only battle of the segment. Obtaining bike voucher prior to entering surge's gym would have allowed for only a single use of cut instead of two.
Segment 17: I'm pretty sure a critical...anything else besides dig would OHKO Surge's voltorb in one turn instead of two.
Segment 18: A crit/flinch on one or both oddishes probably should have been done. Probably faster to cut the tree rather than go all the way around.
Segment 19: I can't bitch about no crits because disable always missed.
Segment 20: Yet another "!" animation. Some slight navigational errors, but I don't fault these as much because it's on bike. Mis-selected Wartortle instead of Paras for cut. Slight menu error when teaching fly.
Intersegmentary Note: Beating Erika's gym, which should all be OHKOs with Ice Beam, prior to Lavender tower would give probably a 2 level advantage on the rival fight. This would have caused lavender rival's gyarados to be 3HKO instead of 4HKO, and that's not factoring any crits. Also would help for PP preservation.
Segment 21: Rival Battle should have 2HKO crit Gyarados. I don't know for sure on this one, but can anything besides dig OHKO the channeller's gastlys? Menu issues when selecting Pokedoll.
Segment 22: A crit on the Koffing would have been a OHKO, and nice. But he did make drowzee flinch. But then again, a OHKO would have been obtained by a crit. Also a crit on the raticate. I could see not getting all 3, but one or two...
Segment 23: One of 3 crits isn't terrible on erika I suppose...and the powder move missed. Minor error while buying goods. Might have even been able to x-special ice beam OHKO
Segment 24: He went X-item shopping, so these fights should have been X-special surfed or X-attack strengthed for all OHKOs.
Segment 25: Koga fight should have x-special surfed for OHKOs on koffings.
Segment 26: X-special would have speed up the gyarados fight and OHKOed Kadabra.
Segment 27: Crit on drowzee would have been preferred. I'm not sure that flying to the PokeCenter is any faster or slower than just biking to the gym.
Segment 28: No complaints
Segment 29: Crit needed on arcanine. Why is the rare candy used here? In Giovanni's gym, it is probably faster to not exit and re-enter the gym, rather just use the "spinny tiles" and walk behind the "Karate King".
Segment 30: 2 X-special would have OHKOed everything except gyarados, which would have been a 2HKO. It would have saved the game from displaying the "One hit KO" text anyway.
Segment 31: The only thing that could possibly have gone better is if machamp had been OHKOed by a crit surf.
Segment 32: Flawless!
Segment 33: Damn lucky
Segment 34: WTF!? Battle animations all of a sudden?! This alone probably prevented a 1:58 from happening.
My overall decision is a reject. If I had any sayso in the matter, the previous run would have been rejected too. Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty good run, and my decision will likely be the only one in favor of rejecting it, but there are enough errors, in my opinion, to cast my vote as such. There is also the factor of the suggested route changes I have made, which should save a minute or so.
Segment 2: only fight was against Bulbasaur, and yet no critical hits were scored. Why? This fight could have realistically been finished in 3 turns with 2 critical hits.
Segment 3: Flawless!
Segment 4: I'm pretty sure that talking to a trainer from the side so you don't get a "!" animation is slightly faster than not, but in this instance would have required an extra 3 steps, so it probably balances out. To note, the battle may have been finished about 2 turns earlier if a few tail whips were thrown in there prior to the tackles. Probably easier than worrying about crits too.
Segment 5: Maybe this could have been further segmented for crits on the bug catcher's weedle? Slight navigational error in the PokeMart.
Segment 6: Brock fight could have both been OHKO with crits, which would have also saved one potion use. Probably should have redone the segment until this occurred.
Segment 7: I'll assume the "menu error" is luck manipulation...
Segment 8: Flawless!
Segment 9: Very slight error in selecting TM01
Segment 10: Another example of the "!" animation. Critical hits on rocket's pokemon would have resulted in a OHKO. Instead, he could have picked up the rare candy earlier and evolved early. Not 100% sure if the detour would have been worth it, but I think that wartortle may have been able to mega punch OHKO without crits. I could be mistaken. A crit somewhere in the super nerd fight would have been great. Instead, the game scored all the crits Sad
Intersegmentary note: Misty should have been fought before nugget bridge. He could have fought Misty, then healed at the pokemon center. This would have given him bubblebeam early, and thus some non-crit OHKOs. Plus plenty of PP, enough to beat surge before having to use the center again.
Segment 11: Same overall issue as segment 2: No crits on rival fight. Pidgeotto could have been that means less time healing on the abra A crit on bulbasaur would have been a OHKO Instead, the crit occurs in the non-important Bug catcher battle. Also the best example yet of how you could avoid the "!" animation for time savings.
Segment 12: You can see the slight time savings throughout this segment for avoiding that "!" animation. Perhaps this could have been segmented further for more critical OHKOs?
Segment 13: Why didn't he avoid the "!" animations here? He should have fought the hiker, because, while it is true he has 4 pokemon instead of 3, 3 are OHKO by water gun, and he has exactly 3PP left on water gun. And a crit mega punch would almost for sure OHKO the machop.
Probably wasted the rare candy too.
Segment 14: Slight maneuvering error before the underground tunnel.
Segment 15: Again with an easily avoidable "!" They do add up. The segment is short, so why not try to crit bubblebeam Raticate? (Should he have avoided the rare candy battle?)
Segment 16: Not so bad on the rival fight this time, although crits on pidgeotto and ivysaur would have been nice since this was the only battle of the segment. Obtaining bike voucher prior to entering surge's gym would have allowed for only a single use of cut instead of two.
Segment 17: I'm pretty sure a critical...anything else besides dig would OHKO Surge's voltorb in one turn instead of two.
Segment 18: A crit/flinch on one or both oddishes probably should have been done. Probably faster to cut the tree rather than go all the way around.
Segment 19: I can't bitch about no crits because disable always missed.
Segment 20: Yet another "!" animation. Some slight navigational errors, but I don't fault these as much because it's on bike. Mis-selected Wartortle instead of Paras for cut. Slight menu error when teaching fly.
Intersegmentary Note: Beating Erika's gym, which should all be OHKOs with Ice Beam, prior to Lavender tower would give probably a 2 level advantage on the rival fight. This would have caused lavender rival's gyarados to be 3HKO instead of 4HKO, and that's not factoring any crits. Also would help for PP preservation.
Segment 21: Rival Battle should have 2HKO crit Gyarados. I don't know for sure on this one, but can anything besides dig OHKO the channeller's gastlys? Menu issues when selecting Pokedoll.
Segment 22: A crit on the Koffing would have been a OHKO, and nice. But he did make drowzee flinch. But then again, a OHKO would have been obtained by a crit. Also a crit on the raticate. I could see not getting all 3, but one or two...
Segment 23: One of 3 crits isn't terrible on erika I suppose...and the powder move missed. Minor error while buying goods. Might have even been able to x-special ice beam OHKO
Segment 24: He went X-item shopping, so these fights should have been X-special surfed or X-attack strengthed for all OHKOs.
Segment 25: Koga fight should have x-special surfed for OHKOs on koffings.
Segment 26: X-special would have speed up the gyarados fight and OHKOed Kadabra.
Segment 27: Crit on drowzee would have been preferred. I'm not sure that flying to the PokeCenter is any faster or slower than just biking to the gym.
Segment 28: No complaints
Segment 29: Crit needed on arcanine. Why is the rare candy used here? In Giovanni's gym, it is probably faster to not exit and re-enter the gym, rather just use the "spinny tiles" and walk behind the "Karate King".
Segment 30: 2 X-special would have OHKOed everything except gyarados, which would have been a 2HKO. It would have saved the game from displaying the "One hit KO" text anyway.
Segment 31: The only thing that could possibly have gone better is if machamp had been OHKOed by a crit surf.
Segment 32: Flawless!
Segment 33: Damn lucky
Segment 34: WTF!? Battle animations all of a sudden?! This alone probably prevented a 1:58 from happening.
My overall decision is a reject. If I had any sayso in the matter, the previous run would have been rejected too. Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty good run, and my decision will likely be the only one in favor of rejecting it, but there are enough errors, in my opinion, to cast my vote as such. There is also the factor of the suggested route changes I have made, which should save a minute or so.
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Overall, a very impressive and improved run. Giving a segment-by-segment rundown would be somewhat redundant, as many segments are less than a minute long. I could see no signs of cheating, and it is by me, accepted.
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Quality (Capture)
The top of the screen seems to be cropped off about 5-7 pixels.
Quality (Gameplay)
Since I’m kind of late here, I’ll just point out any mistakes he makes and big things, instead of route changes and other stuff because I’m sure everyone else will and it will also be detailed in his comments.
- Walks through all the grass without any wild Pokemon encounters. I don’t know why he didn’t save here, so he could avoid going around the long way later in the same segment, but whatever.
- I’m not too familiar with how critical hits work with Pokemon at such a low level, but when he battles his first trainer, couldn’t he have kept restarting until he got more of those for faster kills?
- Walks through all of the grass in Viridian Forest without a single wild Pokemon battle. God damn.
- Man, Geodude looks like shit in these early games. Other than that, he skips a Pokemon Center visit in favor of getting three moves to work towards his survival.
- A missed attack costs him 4 seconds.
- “Hi! I like shorts! They’re comfy and easy to wear!” “Done Like Dinner!”
- In the next segment, he manages to catch a Paras and then get to the next room without any more battles.
- Does good against the 5 trainers and the leader on Nugget Bridge. He even defeats 5 in one segment, getting some deadly critical hits in too.
- In an awesome move, uses an escape rope to warp from Bill’s place to the Pokemon Center. I thought you could only use them in dungeons.
- Oh shit, Misty is wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Don’t let 4Kids see that! Anyway, the two battles go good, even though Starmine gets two critical hits on him right away.
- The entire point of Paras was to learn Cut by the way.
- Ah yes, the garbage can segment. I’m actually surprised he didn’t save as soon as he was able to get next to Surge. He’s still down to 21 hit points at this point, but survives the battle.
- He does a good job of navigating the tunnel in the dark. Unfortunately, there’s some wall crashing after he gets out of the tunnel, the lost time totals 3-4 seconds.
- When he’s battling Gary in the Spirit Tower, he sounds out a Kadabra that makes a noise like a Ghastly. What the hell?
- Loses 3 seconds when he can’t seem to find the Poke-doll in his inventory. I also had no idea you could use it to end the battle with the ghost like that.
- By the way Erika talks and the things she says, I can tell you exactly what kind of plants she’s into. Sorry, this game just brings back so many memories and I’m looking at it a lot differently now than I did when I was a kid. Anyway, since Wartortle was taught Ice Beam, it makes short work of all Erika’s Pokemon.
- The fights against Koga’s cronies could have gone better with more critical hits. At least he didn’t get poisoned. It also has the most epic line ever near the end: “Dropped my balls!”
- Completely kicks Koga’s ass. He even survives a Weezing’s self-destruct.
- Also kicks Gary’s ass and even manages to get Venusaur frozen solid to avoid death.
- Uses Dig to teleport back to the Pokemon Center after he’s done fighting Giovanni. Sadly, he doesn’t take the Master Ball to catch Mewtwo once his quest is over.
- Mr. Mime looks like an obese Pillsbury Doughboy in drag. I love this game. After witnessing that, the runner uses Dig again to escape the gym.
- The thing that happened with Koga happens with Blaine too, including the dig. Even more impressive is that Blastoise only has 14 hit points, yet kills all four of them.
- Loses 2 seconds in the inventory when he can’t seem to find TM 27.
- That battle with Gary is very impressive. He uses Fissure, which is a one-hit KO move, but has 30% accuracy against a few of them. He uses it 4 times, and it connects each time, thanks to X Accuracy. He even manages to freeze a Gyarados solid instead of using Toxic like the last run did.
- Uses Fissure again to wipe out that ice woman’s Pokemon. Thanks to there not being any abilities in this game, like “levitate”, the ground attacks actually hit Haunter.
- I’ve got to laugh at Lance’s claim of Dragon Pokemon “having superior power” and being “virtually indestructible”. There are only three Dragon-type Pokemon in the whole game, and they each evolve from the pervious one, so really, there’s only one. There is only one Dragon-type attack, and it does exactly 40 damage each time. Also, mostly any Pokemon can learn Hyper Beam, which the runner actually gets hit by, but the second killer one misses, allowing him to survive the battle.
- Gary’s Gyarados gets frozen solid, allowing the runner to survive the fight.
Timing
The timer at the end reads 1:59.
Importance
The most annoying thing about this speedrun is having to constantly listen to the low-health beeping. Why the fuck do games do this? Do they not realize how useless and outdated it is? Whatever, this run blows away the old run by 10 minutes through better planning, item usage, and move selection. Walking through tons of grass at certain points and not getting into a wild Pokemon battle is something to behold. The only errors are movement related (along with one or two attacks), and since the timer doesn’t count seconds, I doubt it had any serious impact. I’m not saying these errors are acceptable if the timer works like that, it’s just that it’s something that is overshadowed by the rest of the run. This needs to replace the run up there.
But really, why does that Kadabra make a Ghastly noise in segment 24?
The top of the screen seems to be cropped off about 5-7 pixels.
Quality (Gameplay)
Since I’m kind of late here, I’ll just point out any mistakes he makes and big things, instead of route changes and other stuff because I’m sure everyone else will and it will also be detailed in his comments.
- Walks through all the grass without any wild Pokemon encounters. I don’t know why he didn’t save here, so he could avoid going around the long way later in the same segment, but whatever.
- I’m not too familiar with how critical hits work with Pokemon at such a low level, but when he battles his first trainer, couldn’t he have kept restarting until he got more of those for faster kills?
- Walks through all of the grass in Viridian Forest without a single wild Pokemon battle. God damn.
- Man, Geodude looks like shit in these early games. Other than that, he skips a Pokemon Center visit in favor of getting three moves to work towards his survival.
- A missed attack costs him 4 seconds.
- “Hi! I like shorts! They’re comfy and easy to wear!” “Done Like Dinner!”
- In the next segment, he manages to catch a Paras and then get to the next room without any more battles.
- Does good against the 5 trainers and the leader on Nugget Bridge. He even defeats 5 in one segment, getting some deadly critical hits in too.
- In an awesome move, uses an escape rope to warp from Bill’s place to the Pokemon Center. I thought you could only use them in dungeons.
- Oh shit, Misty is wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Don’t let 4Kids see that! Anyway, the two battles go good, even though Starmine gets two critical hits on him right away.
- The entire point of Paras was to learn Cut by the way.
- Ah yes, the garbage can segment. I’m actually surprised he didn’t save as soon as he was able to get next to Surge. He’s still down to 21 hit points at this point, but survives the battle.
- He does a good job of navigating the tunnel in the dark. Unfortunately, there’s some wall crashing after he gets out of the tunnel, the lost time totals 3-4 seconds.
- When he’s battling Gary in the Spirit Tower, he sounds out a Kadabra that makes a noise like a Ghastly. What the hell?
- Loses 3 seconds when he can’t seem to find the Poke-doll in his inventory. I also had no idea you could use it to end the battle with the ghost like that.
- By the way Erika talks and the things she says, I can tell you exactly what kind of plants she’s into. Sorry, this game just brings back so many memories and I’m looking at it a lot differently now than I did when I was a kid. Anyway, since Wartortle was taught Ice Beam, it makes short work of all Erika’s Pokemon.
- The fights against Koga’s cronies could have gone better with more critical hits. At least he didn’t get poisoned. It also has the most epic line ever near the end: “Dropped my balls!”
- Completely kicks Koga’s ass. He even survives a Weezing’s self-destruct.
- Also kicks Gary’s ass and even manages to get Venusaur frozen solid to avoid death.
- Uses Dig to teleport back to the Pokemon Center after he’s done fighting Giovanni. Sadly, he doesn’t take the Master Ball to catch Mewtwo once his quest is over.
- Mr. Mime looks like an obese Pillsbury Doughboy in drag. I love this game. After witnessing that, the runner uses Dig again to escape the gym.
- The thing that happened with Koga happens with Blaine too, including the dig. Even more impressive is that Blastoise only has 14 hit points, yet kills all four of them.
- Loses 2 seconds in the inventory when he can’t seem to find TM 27.
- That battle with Gary is very impressive. He uses Fissure, which is a one-hit KO move, but has 30% accuracy against a few of them. He uses it 4 times, and it connects each time, thanks to X Accuracy. He even manages to freeze a Gyarados solid instead of using Toxic like the last run did.
- Uses Fissure again to wipe out that ice woman’s Pokemon. Thanks to there not being any abilities in this game, like “levitate”, the ground attacks actually hit Haunter.
- I’ve got to laugh at Lance’s claim of Dragon Pokemon “having superior power” and being “virtually indestructible”. There are only three Dragon-type Pokemon in the whole game, and they each evolve from the pervious one, so really, there’s only one. There is only one Dragon-type attack, and it does exactly 40 damage each time. Also, mostly any Pokemon can learn Hyper Beam, which the runner actually gets hit by, but the second killer one misses, allowing him to survive the battle.
- Gary’s Gyarados gets frozen solid, allowing the runner to survive the fight.
Timing
The timer at the end reads 1:59.
Importance
The most annoying thing about this speedrun is having to constantly listen to the low-health beeping. Why the fuck do games do this? Do they not realize how useless and outdated it is? Whatever, this run blows away the old run by 10 minutes through better planning, item usage, and move selection. Walking through tons of grass at certain points and not getting into a wild Pokemon battle is something to behold. The only errors are movement related (along with one or two attacks), and since the timer doesn’t count seconds, I doubt it had any serious impact. I’m not saying these errors are acceptable if the timer works like that, it’s just that it’s something that is overshadowed by the rest of the run. This needs to replace the run up there.
But really, why does that Kadabra make a Ghastly noise in segment 24?
Quote:
I haven't been able to watch the first segment; I've tried downloading it a couple of times, but the file I've gotten has a much smaller size than the listed one and doesn't play properly. All the other segments are fine and have no audio or video problems.
The run itself is of excellent quality, with no signs of cheating, and should definitely be accepted. The route was well planned and the luck manipulation was very good also (you'd certainly never guess Mega Punch has a 15% chance of missing).
That said there are a few small flaws. Firstly I can't help but feel that it would have been beneficial to use an extra segment in the 2-6 section for extra luck manipulation. More concretely, when he heals in Cerulean he still has 6 PP of bubble left but had been using tackle to kill low HP enemies that bubble would also kill (and with a greater chance of success), this costs ~ 1 second per instance as "animation" (even with animations turned off) for tackle is 1 second longer than that of bubble. I believe this happens again on the route to Bill's. Later in the run this is less of an issue as the middle section uses a moveset consisting mainly of fast attacks and the use of the slow surf and strength towards the end is necessary due to the increased attack power they offer.
The run itself is of excellent quality, with no signs of cheating, and should definitely be accepted. The route was well planned and the luck manipulation was very good also (you'd certainly never guess Mega Punch has a 15% chance of missing).
That said there are a few small flaws. Firstly I can't help but feel that it would have been beneficial to use an extra segment in the 2-6 section for extra luck manipulation. More concretely, when he heals in Cerulean he still has 6 PP of bubble left but had been using tackle to kill low HP enemies that bubble would also kill (and with a greater chance of success), this costs ~ 1 second per instance as "animation" (even with animations turned off) for tackle is 1 second longer than that of bubble. I believe this happens again on the route to Bill's. Later in the run this is less of an issue as the middle section uses a moveset consisting mainly of fast attacks and the use of the slow surf and strength towards the end is necessary due to the increased attack power they offer.
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This run looked pretty good; the luck manipulation in some of the caves was amazing... those zubat don't leave a trainer alone.
My biggest concern is that the animations were mysteriously turned back on for the last segment. The health and level stayed the same for the character, but the runner did not display his changing of the battle options. I may have missed something changing, but it is something to look into for sure.
Other than that, my only gripe is a few of the earlier segments (some ~30 seconds long) could have been polished up a little better than they were. IE running into walls or something.
My biggest concern is that the animations were mysteriously turned back on for the last segment. The health and level stayed the same for the character, but the runner did not display his changing of the battle options. I may have missed something changing, but it is something to look into for sure.
Other than that, my only gripe is a few of the earlier segments (some ~30 seconds long) could have been polished up a little better than they were. IE running into walls or something.
Decision: Accept
Reason: It's an improvement, and the time is now sub-2 hours. The verifiers who are complaining about the battle animations during the final battle must not remember the the game too well. The battle animations are always turned on during the final battle to make the mood more dramatic
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