Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - Any% Speedrun in 30:52 [Former World Record]
699What a tough speedrun! The amount of things that have to go right, both from the execution side and the luck side, for a good run, is pretty insane. After almost a year of having learned the run, and close to two straight months of running this game extremely actively (almost daily, often for 6-8 hours a day during the final couple weeks) this is the result. I'm not completely satisfied with this time but I'm probably ready to move on for the moment being. Good luck to whoever will attempt to beat this.
And shoutouts to truefalse for gifting me an original cartridge of the game since mine was dying. Forgot to mention him at the end but it was a very kind act of him, thank you man :)
- How are you clipping through floors?
It's a glitch. When Simon whips on the same frame he falls off of a 2-block height and his Y-subpixel is of a specific value (usually 3/32 possible values) he'll clip through the floor on landing. This makes floor drops a frame-perfect and subpixel-dependent trick. In actuality, the controller input "left/right + B" allows to pixel advance fairly easily, which makes hitting the frame for the floor drops easier.
It's even possible to chain floor drops one after another if the two floors are separated by a 3-block gap, but it's again frame perfect, this time with nothing that can be done to make them easier but just timing them well. Sometimes lag can make them a 2-frame window though.
- But how are you going through some floors without whipping and even some walls?
Game's nonsense. Castlevania II is filled with fake floors and walls, especially inside mansions. It's supposed to be an extra trap/troll/puzzle.
- What is happening inside Rover mansion?
I'm not entirely confident of the technical explanation, but what I think is going on is that the game checks loading zones based on Simon's position on the screen. If he gets to the edge of a map, the screen will stop scrolling and will allow Simon to walk to the side of the screen, which is how the game most likely determines when to load a screen transition. By using the moving block, it's possible to arbitrarily move Simon to the edge of the screen and trigger a loading zone in unintended places by pressing the opposite direction on the dpad (so it's possible to do it on command, and that's how I delay it the first time until after buying the oak stake). On that screen there doesn't exist a map to the right, so Simon ends up in a glitched screen that resembles Laruba mansion. And then by doing a double floor drop to the bottom and going back left again it's possible to end up fairly close to the orb containing Dracula's Heart.
- What is happening in that cemetery around the 21 minutes mark?
This is another screen that has no proper level connection on the left side. This is normally not a problem because it should be inaccessible, but by doing a whip-jump (a bit higher than a normal jump) and getting hit by a blob at the peak of Simon's jump, it's possible to get up the 4-block ledge and access the left loading zone, which ends up wrong warping very close to Laruba mansion. This is known as the Blob Boost, and is probably the most infamous trick in the entire run. There's zero ways to manipulate the blob's jump heights and jump delays, so whether or not the run will even be able to continue, 21 minutes in, before Simon's health is depleted, is mostly up to chance.
- How are bosses dying that quickly with the holy water?
It's another glitch. The last active frame of most subweapons is incorrectly coded and will always end up dealing 185 HP of damage instead of the normal amount. This ends up being enough to potentially one-shot every single enemy in the game except for Carmilla and Dracula. The way the golden dagger crits enemies is a bit different, it has to do with overlapping hitboxes and will always only kill one of them.
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