Game:

Counter-Strike: Source (2004)

Duration: 54:01

2,427 views

71

https://www.patreon.com/ulillillia --- This is a tool-assisted super play of Ristar being played on super difficulty. I display the controller inputs and select RAM values of interest.
When I first tried super difficulty, I was only able to get to round 2-1. There would always be something that would cause me problems, even with pause buffering as a helping booster. The thing about super mode is... take even just a single hit and it's an instant game over... though there are a few exceptions. You can't gain more health, and you can't gain extra lives either. I've always wanted to see how super mode would play out but it was too difficult for me to do. That's where the TAS came in, to answer long-lingering questions.
Being a TAS means that I can also do all sorts of crazy stunts and other unusual things. I've discovered several interesting bugs along the way. I couldn't show 2 of them because it meant being impossible to complete the game. The first involves the boss of round 2. If you make a nearly frame-perfect jump out of the water on getting the last cork removed and reenter the water right at the lowest entry point possible, you can get stuck under the ground where it becomes impossible to move. Instead of going straight down, I move to the right to showcase it in part. In round 4-1, if you grab and throw the metronome in exactly the right location under one of those falling gates, the metronome gets shoved underground and falls to about 5xxx and causes the game to hard freeze. I work around this by moving 1 more frame to the right.
I originally intended on this being a speed run, but decided against it in favor of showing off craziness. I left some stuff out because of that thought including a key spot involved with getting 99 lives with at game start.
As for the stats in the bottom left, I display the speed and position of the character. Speed is an 8.8 fixed point value. Position is 16.8. X is the horizontal; Y is the vertical.
Swing speed is the speed of angular change while on a star pole. Reach angle is 00 right, 40 down, 80 left, and C0 up. Mercy time is the number of frames remaining for mercy invincibility, as from taking damage. Stun time is the number of invincibility frames while stunned (such as from head bashing or flipping over a pole).
Meteor flag is 00 when not active, 04 when ready for use on a star pole, 02 when actually a meteor, and 01 upon exiting meteor mode. Meteor speed is the base speed of the meteor, also serving as ground speed. Meteor angle is the angle of the meteor while in meteor mode.
Screen is just the screen position, like character position. Y offset under background is the vertical pixel shift of the background. Y scale ref doesn't seem to exist in the system's RAM (I couldn't find it), so it is manually set. It is simply the number of pixels the background moves vertically for every 256 pixels in the foreground.
Score is the obvious score, but score doesn't always display on screen. Water level and lava level are the respective heights for water and lava, for the levels that use them. They serve other roles otherwise. Lives is the number of lives, and health is player hit points. During boss fights, the boss's current HP and other hit-based parameters are displayed above the lives.
The controller data just shows what buttons are being pressed and when, for each frame - if that block is filled, the button is pressed on that frame. From left to right, the controls are up, down, left, right, A, B, C, then start.
The biggest thing I love most about Ristar is just how incredibly beautiful the game is. Almost tied in second are the planet transition screens where Ristar goes from one planet to the next. The main thing I don't like about Ristar is that it lacks replay value. There isn't really all that much to do for side stuff.
As for the bonus stages, I've been able to figure out how to beat the Sega record in all of them except for 4-2 and 5-1. I came really close on 4-2, just 4 frames or something too long. 5-1 I wasn't even remotely close to, having no idea how to trim off any more time. There must be something I don't know about with those 2 bonus stages.
I deleted out the ending where controller input is not set throughout the entire gap. I was going to add vocal commentary, but my living situation makes it frustratingly difficult to find opportunity to do so.
My favorite level is that of either 1-1 (easy to get unlimited lives with), 5-1 (love the song for it), 5-2 (best for ridiculous score), then 4-1 (love that background and the finish song). My least favorite levels are 6-2 (dull music, rather tedious), 2-2, and 2-1.
The only other TAS I'd like to make of Ristar is getting a ridiculous score. I did the lives grind to 99 lives part but need to get through the bulk of the rest of the game until 4-1, recollect lives in 5-1, then go nuts on 5-2 and finish from there. 10 million is easily doable in reasonable time.

Other Statistics