Saul
Rivalry: Digshake vs. BuzzThunder Zelda II: Race to Bagu, best of 15
updated
The right one also not easy, and it will likely just snowball if you mistime a jump.
0:00 Two flawless minutes
3:00 fkn Bagu walk
5:25 Death Mountain begins. But you can't see shit.
8:30 Still can't see shit.
10:00 FETCH QUESTS.
12:42 SAFETY SAVE BEFORE PALACE 2
17:00 Flawless Palace 2 over
21:12 Horsehead is hard don't @ me
22:33 how the fuck don't I bounce 2 inches.
24:35 Don't grab the key. GRAB THE KEY! FUCK WHAT DO I DO NOW.
26:42 This boss is easy.
29:05 KNOWN PATTERN
30:45 Dumb idea. Now I can't cast ANY fairy magic until P4.
32:25 FailFeet, and then random walk because I didn't wait to exit.
34:56 I'm going to have to rewatch this to see how I landed on perfect HP
35:28 Having issues getting up/right inputs.
38:16 I'll remember to queue Jump for P5 on the run I forget this heart.
42:25 Mago phalanx
46:27 Again, need to practice exiting at the right time (and walking on OW)
47:02 Reminder that town refill can cost less than 2 seconds.
50:34 Dropping Up+right inputs
51:45 SMH
54:08 That's more like it.
55:25 UH OH FART
56:40 I'm forgetting to do VoD beam strats because of all the bad things that are happening, like
56:56 I am fucking bashing this right button and getting nothing, and I'm really expecting to miss the Fairy Foot
57:40 RIGHT ARROW GETTING WORSE
57:55 ^
59:35 ^^
1:01:00 ^^^
1:01:50 ^^^^
1:02:10 ALMOST AWESOME.
JP has a simpler level system that allows Link to reach high attack levels even faster. This benefit evens out with NA in the long run because in NA we can cancel levels to get bigger benefits from placing palace gems. The overworld encounters look different, and they have slightly smaller hitboxes making them easier to dodge and harder to intentionally intercept. The last I'll mention is that items must be picked up by stabbing them. The short cutscene holding up items isn't there, so there's no need to cancel them by casting Fairy -- in fact, we cannot pick them up as a fairy.
In New Kasuto, I've gone to the extreme for optimization. The menus, talk boxes, turnarounds... almost everything is done optimally or one frame off. In the updated footage after leaving town, the two sides will often not have equal rooms but in the long run, they are equally imperfect overall. (Mostly, this just saved me a lot of time over doing everything perfect twice.)
All the footage was made on console, and spliced together. The practice ROM is used anywhere it can display an accurate 'room time' for the previous room.
The first change is for BAT OUTTA HELL to Fairy out of the hoist animation when 40 magic points are refilled. The left side's best opportunity to use its extra magic is to Fairy at the bottom of the first elevator to save two full momentum cycles and get an easy room. Optimally, this saves only two frames.
Music
Lawn Mower (NES homebrew) - title
Sword of Vermillion - Village A
Persona - Maya's Theme
Persona 2 - Maya (Theme 2)
CF207 - Zelda 2 Battle theme in VRC7
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen - Santa's Coming
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen - Do or Die
Guardian War - Daichi
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen - Brass of Victory
Persona 3 - Maya's Theme
In practice, the hardest thing for a human to do in this video is change spells so quickly. It's possible to move the cursor every other frame, but in reality I lose about 5 frames per click. I spliced out wasted frames to make the spell menus perfect. To make it a "human theory TAS" I would have had to arbitrarily decide how imperfect a person should be. I didn't want to do that.
The hardest thing to pull off that I did was optimally refilling magic. That meant talking to her on the first frame where I was in range, closing the talk box ASAP, running at the opening door with up+right so I got in at the rightmost frame as early as possible, then closing the talkbox perfectly again.
Another absurd risk in context to an All Keys run is holding up+right exiting the Spell basement chimney. If Fairy is cast on the first frame, we will get the fastest exit; if we are one frame late, we'll re-enter the chimney. I don't want to say you shouldn't try to do this. I will say that once I knew what I needed to do, it took several tries from a save state to pull it off. It'll be up to someone else to find the fastest safe practice to exit the gable.
One well-known save I didn't use was to cast Fairy as soon as entering the rooms where it would be used to skip Link hoisting the items for 112 frames. It could have saved a few frames, but it would have made the video take even longer to make and isn't particularly instructive. If I wanted to make the video faster and lose teaching moments, I would have started by getting a red jar from Tektites.
Music
Lawn Mower (NES homebrew) - title
Sword of Vermillion - Village A
Persona - Maya's Theme
Bone Thugs n Harmony - The Crossroads
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mUtJH3XeJ5XQepbAuIVbSXGiOuv_cAHsSs8mAd6H0Yw/edit#gid=1991547787
Song is "Earth Painting" by Yoko Shimamura, from Legend of Mana for PSX
Footage was recorded by Retaksnav and me in the summer of 2008.
Video was assembled by Retaksnav aka Van aka Tony.
Music:
"Dancing Queen" by A*Teens
"Lolita's Medicine" by The Legion of Doom, a mash-up of "New Medicines" by Dead Poetic and "Lilacs and Lolita" by From Autumn to Ashes
"Canon Rock Final" by MattRach
Raid Squad
Group 1: Lazytank - warrior, aka Jeffzilla the guild leader; Cios, priest, Quebecois; Retaksnav, shadow priest and video assembler; Ulthwe, paladin tank; Zyld, resto shaman, aka Justin aka I WOULD SEMEN ONTO THIS ONTO MANNY TITTIES BBBBBIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS
Group 2: Eunos, rogue and POV for final phase; Nolanhadhoof, pleather warrior; Ranjerbob - hunter, aka Matt aka MSG RANGERBOBBY FOR WAITLIST DKP; Thiengy, resto shaman, aka Po and Scylissa's husband; Zenie - druid tank, attached at the hip to Eclairs.
Group 3: Descent, rogue, aka Ric a really cool person; Pwningu, enhance shaman; Raiid, rogue, who would raid on his night shift at the hospital; Snarll, warrior DPS; Zaloog - paladin DPS, aka Matt and brother to Envoy.
Group 4: Aerman, resto druid; Divineaea, holy paladin; Eclairs, priest and Zenie's other half; Elzix, mage and KJ dragon controller; Popejohnpwn, resto shaman.
Group 5: Envoy - warlock, aka Russell and brother to Zaloog, Mase?, warlock; Sark, warlock, hair model and kind of a dick; Scylissa - warlock, Po's wife; Wolfs - resto shaman, played by Josh the guild's First Officer aka Deadbeatdad/Ralphwiggum
Following additional context, work in progress
As I recall, we spent about four weeks dying to this pain in the ass, and shortly after this win a game patch reduced the health of all opponents in this encounter. Accounting was a 20 hour per week raiding guild, which was a light schedule compared to a lot of the top 100 worldwide, which we were among upon beating Kil'Jaeden, the final boss of of Sunwell and The Burning Crusade.
During 2022's fall tournament, I passed the 78, 77 and 76 minute barriers, the last personal best, a 1:15:57, felt like plenty at the time. When 2023's tournament season came around, first of all I wanted was to be no worse than last year. During a tournament qualifier race on October 20, I got a 1:15:34, which was good enough for the #1 tournament seed against a field of derusting veteran players. Finishing races under 76 isn't common even for the tournament champions. So I thought, if I can keep doing this, I can win this tournament.
Throughout the season, I did runs at least every other day to stay in shape and try faster tech to keep up with sub-75 PB opponents. When I was doing runs my mindset was to just focus on what I can do in this run -- stay cool by blowing off the right amount of steam over incidents, rather than weighing the success of the session on getting a personal best. I still did plenty of resets in the first two minutes, allowing those restarts to serve as practice without the burden of carrying a bad start for 75 more minutes. Overall, it made the sessions feel like a workout and part of a longer term project that had no deadline.
On Nov 12 & 19, I had new PBs of 1:15:29 & 1:15:11. To my amusement, each of those new bests seemed worse than the last, having lost time to easily correctable mistakes. That perspective made it easy to keep doing runs with a clearer head, which made getting the sub-75 milestone feel like a breeze.
0:00 The Adventure Restarts
2:00 Parapa Temple & the Red Candle
7:18 Journey to Saria by way of Ruto
12:33 Death Mountain
17:08 Trekking Mido & Midoro Swamp
22:25 Midoro Temple & the Glove of Power
25:40 Taking the fight to Jermafencer
28:24 Jaunt to Rauru & Island Temple
30:42 The Island Temple & Hyrule's Only Boat
33:01 Jousting with Rebonack
35:28 The Voyage East to Rescue a Kid
37:06 To Darunia and Back Again
41:46 Temple in the Maze
45:25 The Sorcerer -- Passive Resistance
48:19 To the Ocean Temple to find a Flute
51:45 The Giant -- Asymmetrical Warfare
55:38 A Hop to Nabooru and a Skip to New Kasuto
1:01:06 In Search of a Hidden Temple
1:04:33 The Battle of Barba
1:07:06 Keeper of the Sacred Thunder
1:10:17 The Great Temple's Barrier Opens
1:13:52 Guardians of an Ancient Power
Presumptions: 100% All Keys using current magic jar routing. Fairy was most recently cast to cross left over the false floor returning from Cross. Fairy will be needed to cross over the lava pool after this segment.
speedrun.com/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link?h=100_All_Keys_1CC&x=9d86o62n
The biggest development in this category since last I ran it is Gem Edging. Link's quest in Zelda II is to recover the Triforce of Courage from the Great Palace before Ganon's minions resurrect him using Link's blood. However, the Great Palace is sealed by a barrier which falls only after placing six crystals into the statues inside six temples. Ordinarily, after placing a crystal into a statue, that statue remains activated, and if the temple's unique item was also recovered, the temple is sealed off.
What Digshake and I discovered on November 22, 2020 is that Link's crystal count depletes the instant the crystal rises from Link's hands as the cutscene begins. But, the statue doesn't get filled until the gem fills visibly the slot. During this brief interval, the player maintains control of the spell menu and the ability to use Player 2 Up+A to access the Game Over screen. Doing so interrupts the cutscene and allows us to place another crystal, so long as we haven't yet taken the temple's unique item.
0:00 Trophy and Jump spell
1:54 Jump Cave. Nearly clean and no-encounter walk to Bagu. Second try FrostedFeet over the bridge to Town of Saria.
4:10 Death Mountain
8:48 Medicine, Downstab, Fairy, Magic Container
12:07 Walk to Midoro Palace. Missed the desired manipulation by one frame, getting a decent backup instead.
12:44 To the Handy Glove.
14:16 To Jermafenser. Got a Red Jar and a 200 XP bag, which is good.
17:18 Parapa Palace. Red Jar or 200XP Bag drops from the 6th major enemy. If Jar doesn't drop, a death abuse is required to refill magic.
19:24 Gem Edged. I'll do this one more time to skip Maze Palace (Carrock) and Hidden Palace (Barba).
20:58 Wife starts the dryer 21:09 Accident when my wife asks if the dryer is going to distract me
24:11 Walk to Island Palace. Using the classic DU DU DU SMASH on the boulder didn't get the no-encounter walk, but good enough.
25:09 Island Palace. Combat is minimized to get the most benefit from a 50% 200 XP bag drop, which doesn't come. I forget to make up the lost XP at the end, and turning around to get it costs 19 seconds.
29:21 To Maze Island. Boots and Magic Container only. Here, DU DU DU SMASH leads to double back spawn on the way toward Nabooru. Walking non-stop (or near it) through the cave makes the walk from the other side to Maze Island super easy.
30:51 ZebBlower saves a walking across a side scroll and lets me keep the magic needed to fairy through the door to Boots.
32:20 To Ocean Palace. DU-DU-DU-SMASH again.
33:28 EcoBoost saves 15 seconds and I'm able to route the palace optimally. Getting the key was superfluous.
35:02 Flute grab. Intentional death saves a little time, and greatly endangers the run. There's a magic refill in the overhead statue that will supply the needed magic until the next refill station.
37:32 Gooma fight. No Shield or Life spell. One hit deals 3.5 bars of damage.
38:13 Magic Container, Heart, and Thunder spell. Accidental encounter before the River Devil costs several seconds, with just one more encounter on the tough walk to the Heart Container outside Hidden Palace.
42:41 Valley of Death begins with a slink to the encounter skip. I have low health due to invisible eyeballs in Thunder town, and just one extra life to get to Great Palace due to a death abuse at the Flute.
44:27 Great Palace
48:22 Thunderbird
49:41 Credits and Post-game
Major Losses
16 seconds at the end of Palace 3 when I forgot to fight the Blue Ironknuckle and had to turn around for its experience. Getting the 50% Pbag would have saved 4 more seconds. OH WELL.
18 seconds in Palace 1 due to missing 50% Red Jar drops 67% of the time.
9 seconds due to accidental death when I did get the Red Jar
~8 seconds by using FairyFeet on an encounter I could have ZebBlown, then walking across an encounter I should have FairyFooted
All that more than makes up the difference for a world record run.


