[TAS] SNES Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge by jaysmad & Brandon in 23:28.18

This is a tool-assisted speedrun. For more information, see https://tasvideos.org/1969M
TAS originally published on 2012-02-11

Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge is an action platformer starring the iconic Marvel characters Spider-Man, Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, and Gambit. After the X-Men get kidnapped by Arcade, Spider-Man must deactivate bombs, infiltrate the abandoned building where they were taken, and confront Arcade. From there, Arcade puts each hero to the test as they navigate through his bizarre "Murderworld" until Spider-Man can finally confront the madman head-on.

This infamous game was made by LJN, and although it might be better than many others from that label, it still has serious gameplay flaws that make it frustrating, let alone incredibly difficult. However, it works great for a TAS. Using careful precision and many exploits, the team of jaysmad ( https://tasvideos.org/Users/Profile/jaysmad ) and Brandon ( https://tasvideos.org/Users/Profile/Brandon ) make it through this "Juggernaut" in less than 24 minutes. Please see the authors' notes ( https://tasvideos.org/3448S ) for a detailed breakdown of the levels, a couple of glitches that were unused in the run, and a video of a camera hack for the Black Queen fight that mostly happened off-screen.

Please also check out the run for Wolverine ( https://tasvideos.org/1953M ), which is a NES game, also made by LJN, where most of Wolverine's gameplay came from.

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YouTube stream and downloadable encodes have subtitles.

#tas #tasvideos #toolassisted #toolassistedspeedrun #speedrun

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Kind: captions
Language: en

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Thanks for watching this TAS of Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge by jaysmad and Brandon Evans.

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jaysmad primarily authored the Spider-Man sections.

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Taking damage here is necessary to save time.

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For those who've never played this game, you need to deactivate the bombs in a specific order.

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When hit, we are propelled in the opposite direction. This allows us to take many shortcuts.

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Web-swinging and web-cancel are much faster than walking or jumping.

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As web-swinging makes you skip a pixel, we are able to damage boost here.

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Turning around is very slow after web-canceling, so swinging is unnecessary here.

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We must wait until the web is totally gone until we can swing again.

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We skip the Shockers as killing them is useless.

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While standing, we can only shoot once every 8 frames.

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We use the backward web-shot trick, which consists of dropping down a ledge for 1 frame while shooting in the opposite direction.

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This technique allows us to shoot every 2 frames. Swinging does not hurt this boss and web-shots deal 1 damage.

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Considering that N'astirh has 30HP and each web-shot does 1 point of damage, this leads to him dying nearly instantly.

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We backtrack to reach the lower ledge for a big swing.

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We skip the higher section by swinging under the wall. This is the only known time where this is possible.

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Jumping against the wind will slow us down, so the best thing to do is either swing or take damage.

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Rhino has 24HP and can't be damaged by web-shots.

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Carnage has 25HP. When hit, he gets knocked back and becomes temporarily invincible.

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He receives 1 damage point from web-shots; he also takes 2 from a swing hit, but this can be doubled if positioned correctly.

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Brandon primarily authored the Wolverine sections.

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If properly timed, you can pass through a stunned Jack-in-the-Box unharmed.

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We punch at arbitrary times to manipulate the positions of certain enemies, namely the soldiers.

00:04:04.567 --> 00:04:07.567
This might work because this changes what addresses enemies are loaded into, as punching is perhaps handled like an enemy.

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If you withdraw your claws at exactly the right time, you can do the same damage as claws while dropping a heart.

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The Jack-in-the-Box normally drops hearts when you kill them with your fists. Collecting hearts is just for style.

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You can "kill" the water gun shots by hitting them. This becomes useful later.

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Most of this level has a fairly straightforward strategy. Just run and jump at the right times.

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You can slash in mid-air to take off 1 layer of the destructible wall.

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The punching manipulation allows us to hit these soldiers without stopping.

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We're not sure if the water gun objects can be manipulated, but doing so probably wouldn't help.

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This is the only known case in which we can detonate a block while simultaneously jumping on it.

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The punching manipulation also pays off here.

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Sadly, it doesn't seem like we can manipulate the clown.

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Jumping from here is fastest.

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Apocalypse has 48HP.

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Claws will hit a variable number of times per slash, doing 2 damage for each hit.

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We have tried multiple times and can't seem to do any better on this fight.

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WARNING: These subtitles contain spoilers. We recommend you watch this level without them first.

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Juggernaut begins with 32HP.

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Hitting him on the head with an anvil does 4 damage, while the 1 ton weights do 2 damage.

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Claws do 1 damage, but contrary to common belief, they will only do so at the end of the level.

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Worse yet, his health can't go below 2HP until you can use your claws.

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The game's failure to explain this has haunted non-assisted players!

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As Juggernaut gets pushed back whenever he collides with a block, we detonate the blocks in his way.

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From this point on, we try to get to the end as fast as we can purely for stylistic reasons.

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When Juggernaut collides with an anvil / weight, it does 1 damage, but this is useless and slows him down.

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...Does anything seem wrong with this picture?

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As we got Juggernaut down to 2HP, we merely need to perform 2 slashes, which are now both allowed.

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Although we're told that this can't be done on a console, this ending amuses us.

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jaysmad primarily authored the Cyclops sections.

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Rubies give life and points. When your HP is low, you lose the chance to shoot rapidly.

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The lower route is much slower than the higher route here.

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We take damage for entertainment purposes and to show that detonating a mine while in a cart doesn't automatically kill you.

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Jumping from this platform helps us avoid invisible blocks in the ceilling.

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Carts filled with rubies give large amounts of life and points.

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Running in a cart is not possible unless you enter the cart while running.

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The yellow enemies are immune to optic blasts, but the rocks that they throw at you aren't.

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Luckily, we can shoot the rock and punch the yellow enemy in a single jump.

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Big rubies yield a lot of HP, but more importantly, they double the power of Cyclops' beam.

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The boost wears off after shooting a couple of times, so it is best to save some shots for the boss.

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The sentinel has 127HP. The first shot deals 24 damage and 54 when boosted. After that, it will only deal 2 damage.

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The following shots must be done right after the sentinel lifts his arm.

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We stun the bot so he can't shoot, then stall for 2 frames to shoot the rock. This is much faster than jumping into the ceiling.

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As we can't get both the ruby and kill the bot, we choose the bot has it gives 600 points as opposed to 300.

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Here is another example of where stalling 2 frames to shoot is faster than jumping and punching.

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When the sentinel is up in the air, shooting only deals 2 damage until he lifts his arm.

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Master Mold is defeated in 3 parts: the arm, then the head, and then the body. Shooting deals 6 damage while hitting deals 16.

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The arm has 72HP. When he lifts his arm, it becomes out of reach so that it can only be shot.

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The head has 80HP and is out of reach, so you can only defeat it with shots.

00:11:11.963 --> 00:11:14.963
The body has 112HP and is out of range unless Master Mold is hovering on the left side of the screen.

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jaysmad primarily authored the Storm sections, which he blasted through despite being one of the slowest parts of the game.

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Storm's levels consist of blowing up water reactors to raise the water level in order to reach the end of the stage.

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It is impossible to reach the next reactor before the water stops raising, so there's no rush to blow them up.

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Shells give a lot of points and contain a pearl giving the ability to shoot a whirlwind that deflects enemy projectiles.

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Passing through the exploding doors is faster than waiting.

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8-Way Lightning allows Storm to do a shot going in every direction as well as destroy doors in 1 shot.

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Bubbles recover your air.

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Staying away from the exploding reactor and the fish reduces lag.

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You can stand in the electric current without taking damage.

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The boss is 10 glass globes that can only be hit 1 after the other.

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Each globe needs to be hit twice. After 24 frames, the next globe can be hit.

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The trick is that as soon as the next globe becomes vulnerable, there is a small amount of time in which 3 globes can be hit.

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After defeating the boss, it is impossible to take damage.

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There is 1 last reactor that raises the water level to the boss, but with the 8-Way Lightning, it becomes unnecessary.

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Still, we blow it up after the battle for extra points.

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Brandon primarily authored the Gambit sections.

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Gambit can throw cards forward, upward, and downward if he's in the air.

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The cards you throw forward go farther the longer you hold down the throwing button, and it's very precise. Perfect for TAS!

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Notice how we make the knight piece run into the death dealing card.

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You stop traveling horizontally for 1 frame when leaving the ground, so we avoid doing so whenever possible.
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The big debate for the next section, which involves a wall of blocks, is whether or not to use the fireball move.

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Early tests of it created lag and melted the block we need to jump off of, but we thought it might destroy the wall faster.

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We managed to make it not lag and melt the block below Gambit early enough to allow him to jump off of the block below it.

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This maneuver allowed us to get past the wall 2 frames faster than our best attempt without the move.

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Gambit hits his head to fall faster, then hugs the wall on the next jump. We'd lose time getting the item.

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Jumping here is faster than walking off. We absorb a bullet with the fireball move to avoid getting hurt.

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The King of Spades has 56HP and can be attacked with 8 cards, each dealing 1HP, per phase.

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After hit 8 times, he becomes invincible and starts circling you.

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Gambit's positioning when he starts and finishes moving greatly impacts how long it takes for him to stop.

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When he stops, he spawns enemies and eventually becomes vulnerable again. This cycle repeats until the end.

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In the final phase, we throw extra cards to occupy many of the addresses that the boss uses to spawn enemies.

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If we don't do this, there will be too many objects on the screen to throw all 8 cards.

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Another suicidal victory!

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Although this level is an autoscroller, it proved to be very entertaining thanks to Gambit's highly exploitable abilities.

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That's right! Gambit's cards can be used to make drum noises (Brandon plays the drum kit, by the way)!

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Some headbanging of sorts.

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You have to appreciate how well the explosion sound effect complements the bass drum hits.

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Headbanging in the air, which looks a little more realistic.

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Here's an example of one of the many invisible platforms found in this level.

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Jumping and starting to move after starting to throw a card up makes Gambit's running animation play in the air.

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More sliding like we had in the previous level's boss fight.

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It wouldn't be an autoscroller if we didn't have to resort to doing left-right-left-right a lot. Notice the headbanging?

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In order to collect the maximum number of items in this section, we have to move faster than the camera.

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The column of items farthest towards the right doesn't seem to be collectible for some reason.

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If you collide with the wall at a certain angle, you can pass through it, though we cannot go far enough to collect the stars inside.

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Doing so traps us inside the wall, and the only way out is by blowing up the block next to you, and it's too late to do that.

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Hooray for explosions!

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When Gambit throws cards off to the right side of the screen, pay attention to the left.

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Somehow, we managed to corrupt that tile repeatedly...

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The cards manage to blow up blocks on the other side of the screen.

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Managed to wedge Gambit in between these bricks unscathed.

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Multiple cards can hit walls at the same time if done correctly.

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Dance Gambit, dance!

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Gambit can overlap an enemy so long as it's stunned and not take damage.

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Thanks to the blocks, we can reach the boss, the Black Queen, sooner than normal. This is the fastest route we could find.

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From there, we attack both of the boss' arms until they come off (18 hits each). The cards hit them as soon as they become vulnerable.

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After that, we attack the head 44 times and the battle is over.

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To see the full battle using a camera hack, see the submission page for a video.

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We can have Gambit hold his arm out without throwing cards because the explosions overload the screen with objects.

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Here are the final levels. Here, each character has a small segment to complete.

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These levels mostly employ a simple strategy: run right / left for great justice.

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We need to fall in between these barrels in order to pass.

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If we try to hit our head on the ceiling to descend faster, we'll just jump through it and hit it like a wall.

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We have to stall in order to get behind the first 2 clowns and kill them.

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We must jump over this clown to avoid getting hit, forcing us to stall at the ledge to continue.

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For some reason, jumping on the canister instead of falling onto it allows Wolverine to continue without stopping.

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Again, we use the fireball move to avoid unavoidable bullets.

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For some bizarre reason, jumping here is slower than falling. Oh well, we can still kill all of the enemies.

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As Storm plays like Gambit in her final level, Brandon primarily authors this section.

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She stalls when she jumps and has a special whirlwind move that operates like Gambit's fireball move.

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For some odd reason, the last projectile she fires at an enemy will go through it even though it hits.

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It's very hard to avoid taking damage in this level without wasting time.

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A lot of the optimization for this level is reducing lag. We did our best, but it could be improvable.

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We have Storm hit her head here to fall faster.

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The level ends when Storm lands, no matter how soon she reaches the goal. She gets pushed back for going beyond it.

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Here, we do a pixel skip damage boost like we did in the intro stage.

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We jump here instead of swinging so that we don't have to wait for the web to retract to make the next swing.

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Because of the low ceiling, it's impossible to do a web-swing as well as kill the thrower without wasting time.

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This section ends when Spider-Man's feet touch the bottom of the screen. Damage boosting and jumping takes the same amount of time.

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The final boss, Arcade, starts off in a large robot that operates like Russian nesting dolls with 24, 16, and 12HP respectively.

00:23:07.085 --> 00:23:10.085
This phase is similar to N'astirh in that swinging is useless and webshots deal 1 damage.

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After the smallest robot is destroyed, Arcade robots appear 1 by 1 until 3 appear at once. There are 10 total.

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Swinging kills them instantly, while web-shots and the X-Men need 2 hits. Gambit kills the second bot.

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Input can be cut off after starting this swing. Instead, we dance and press start on the next screen to reach the ending quicker.

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Thanks for watching this TAS of Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge by jaysmad and Brandon Evans!