Speed run of Rygar done on about July 10 2005. Available in three versions: low quality, normal quality, and 60fps high quality.
Author's comments:
Note to those at the Minibosses message board: I told you it wasn't 31:xx. ;)
Anyway, this run is probably the finest of my (Hopefully young) speedrunning career to this point. At 30:34 or so, it beats the only other listed time for the game at Twin Galaxies by more than four minutes. If you've never played Rygar, the object is to collect five items plus the Pegasus Flute, which allows you access to the Sky Castle where you do battle with Ligar, open the Door of Peace, and return tranquility to Argool.
A thanks goes out to Walker Boh, who did a tool-assisted run of the PAL version of the game. As it turned out, most of the glitches (And some things that weren't glitches per se) he used proved to not be console-friendly, like some huge jumps that I wind up needing the Crossbow for, but it was nice to know that my boss strategies were pretty much identical to his, even if the wonders of slowing the game to a crawl and endless rerecording cause his execution to look much better than mine. Additionally, I had initially independently come up with the basic idea of going to the Tower of Garba (Where you get the flute) before Lapis (The place with the robots) as he does, but it's just not console friendly at all.
So, basic strategy is to go the recommended route, and hope for a total of eight Mind Points (The stars you sometimes see me grab; the groups of two stars are actually worth 3 points)--3 for Power-Up, which is more of a range increase than anything else, and 5 for Attack and Assail which I use on Ligar, the final boss. However, something unexpected happens--as I believe happens in every speedrun--when I get slammed down to no energy on the way to Sagila's Cave (It's the only cave in the game; you'll know it when you see it). I'm thus faced with a decision to either keep going and risk getting hit, or stop and use Recover at the cost of all the Mind Points I've built to that point, and risk not picking up five more on the course of the run. As it turns out, I choose B, and proceed to look like a goof as the next six or so enemy drops are life bottles. Yeah, these only fill one life point each--but after I use Recover, I don't get hit again until Lapis. Whoops. Hindsight is 20/20 and all of that I suppose. As an aside, the fireballs that come out of the pits in the last leg of Sagila's cave are random in a sense--their timing is fixed, but sometimes they come out of more pits than they do others, which is why I hesitate just before every pit.
Lapis. You know, the place with the robots (Robots? How the hell do they fit in with the rest of the game?). As I mentioned, I considered saving this as the last thing I do before the Sky Castle, because I think it's a little less time spent in Garloz (The overhead world that I return to after collecting items), but found it too impractical--especially as this run is also sent to Twin Galaxies, whose rules state I'm not allowed to die at all--as I really needed the potions which I can only get after receiving the Coat of Arms in Lapis...at least, I thought I did. More on that later. And no, I don't intentionally grapple down a platform for no reason at all near the beginning of Lapis--I just forgot where I was in the level. Whoopsie. I do some weird things at Belzar--the boss of Lapis--because of a glitch I'm trying to avoid which kills you regardless of how much life you have.
Eventually, I make it to the Tower of Garba, and the run comes crashing to a halt for a minute and a half or so as I stop to level. You see, Rygar's strength system is sort of like an RPG. Rather than discrete levels at which you power up, however, your attack (Tone) and defense (Last; this also increases your maximum life meter at discrete points) increase with every enemy you kill. Any enemies I kill that don't go down in one hit are usually because they give me the most Tone and/or Last at that point in the game. This is why I kill that one snail repeatedly, and also why I stop killing him at a seemingly random point; it's actually the first time I'm strong enough to kill it in five hits. At the top of the tower, something unexpected happens again, as I get a dream fight with Deathpigor, the boss--he never even FIRES A SHOT at me before I kill him. Usually, I end up using my potion here as I'm too close to him even powered-up to reliably be able to dodge anything he fires at me, but in this run it's obviously unnecessary. So, once again, I change my game plan on the fly, and skip a detour in the Sky Castle which would involve me obtaining a second potion (I can only have one in my inventory at a time). Oh, the creature before Deathpigor (Who resembles a race car and arguably fits with the rest of the game even less than Lapis's robots) is too close to the ground for me to use the "duck under him and bounce him back and forth" strategy I employ for Sagila the Spider.
So, let's talk psychological barriers related to our system of time-keeping. Is a sub-30-minute run possible? Sherv from the Minibosses message board assured me that it was, but I disagreed before nailing this run. It's possible, yes, but it won't be easy. Consider:
- The detour for what turned out to be an unnecessary potion (These places also restore your life to full, by the way) cost me 14 seconds. - I stop to heal early on. It turns out to be necessary, thanks to the aforementioned slamming I received on my way to Sagila's Cave, but it was 25 seconds out of my way nonetheless. - I lose a total of about 7 seconds between my mistakenly grappling down instead of up, then subsequently grappling up into the door near the beginning of Lapis. - Most importantly, I spend about a minute and a half leveling off of the snail. It's easy to argue that some/all of that was unnecessary; however, this would influence the run later on, particularly the Deathpigor fight that occurs immediately thereafter. I may get hit there because he'll take longer to kill (Yes, he DOES ordinarily fight back), which means I may have to go get that second potion in the Sky Castle, and of course Ligar will also take more hits. - And of course, various other things that add up to precious lost seconds. The two I can think of offhand are the various spots in Garloz where I need the pulley--it's seemingly random when Rygar decides to hook onto the wire--and the fact that I kill more enemies than usual that DO die in one hit in an attempt to get them to drop Mind Points after I use Recover.
So it'll definitely be possible, but it'll require the same degree of luck I receive, particularly late-game, plus better early-game execution to avoid that 25-second health detour.
Glitch-o-Rama! This is one of the glitchiest games ever produced. Besides the greater-than-usual NES slowdown, there are a ton of glitches, some good, some bad. I use a "good" glitch in Eruga's Forest to scroll the caterpillar-type enemies off the screen, and the wacky hit detection in the overhead levels helps me out too--suffice to say you're invincible in mid-air. I use this to great effect against Dorago (The one boss I fight in an overhead setting) in particular. Two "bad" glitches are as follows:
[...]"Belzar shot a projectile almost straight down. He then shot another projectile straight at me that I had to jump. From here it's a bit difficult to describe, but if you were to think of the top and bottom of the screen as being continuous (In other words, the projectile would have gone off the bottom of the screen and reemerged at the top), my jump would have intersected with the initial projectile and I would have been hit. Of course, this isn't how the projectiles ACTUALLY behave (They go off the bottom of the screen and are never seen again), and I don't know why the phantom hit killed me as opposed to merely damaging me"[...] Truthfully, I'm surprised the glitch didn't get me on my first jump in the fight.
Yeah. This is why I fall off the ledge as opposed to jumping a projectile during the Belzar fight.
Additionally, [...]"the one snail that constantly reappears in the middle of the tower, if you approach him from the right (As it's almost necessary to build levels at some point, and this particular snail is the quickest way), and jump over him at just the right time, his first fireballs won't show up on the screen. If you then beat him and proceed back to the right where you came from, you'll again take some sort of (Non-lethal this time, presuming you have the energy to survive it) phantom damage as you move to the next screen."
This is why I jump over the snail sooner than I have to when approaching from the right.
And I think that's everything, albeit in a rambling form that will take you longer to read than the video is. ;) Hope you enjoy it.
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