periwinkle | [TAS] Cave Story+ "Machine Gun Challenge" (no Booster unequips) in 1'14"8 @periwinkle. | Uploaded May 2022 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
Sensitivity warning: The inventory flickers open and closed in various places throughout this run.

This is a TAS of the Machine Gun Challenge in Cave Story+, made using libTAS with the Linux port of the game. It aims for fastest in-game time (290 Counter time) completion, and thus pauses in ways that saves in-game time but not real time. However, it does NOT use the Booster unequip technique (unequipping the Booster mid-boost to conserve the speed). Here's why you don't want to watch a TAS that does use Booster unequips: youtu.be/nBrejdxk6A0

Prefer the original soundtrack? Here is an encode with that music setting: youtu.be/WNKS4HC8mXk

Q&A:
• Why the goal of "no Booster unequips", rather than "no pauses" or "minimize real time"?
I wanted to strike a balance between optimizing for in-game time (which is what most people care about) versus making the video actually watchable (see video linked in first paragraph above). Now, pausing *does* actually save real time in several places, so eliminating all pauses would make the run *slower* in every way. So, given that a TAS optimized for real time would still use pauses, I figured I'd go one step further and pause everywhere where it saves in-game time, but just not to unequip.

• So, what do the pauses do, exactly?
I go more into depth about this in the description of my Wind Fortress TAS (youtu.be/V6IWKvAdRRk), but in short, most pauses are used to release the jump button during the pause, in order to do things like first-frame boost jumps or switching boost directions without stopping the boost. There's also a couple of instances where I pause to hold jump for lower gravity without starting a boost.

• How much (in-game) time could be saved by incorporating Booster unequips?
A couple of seconds, I think. (At the expense of maybe 20 minutes of extra real time. Yes, I said minutes, not seconds.)
Stay tuned...