Doom GBA in 9 minutes on a real Cartridge, attempting the lowest barrier in 2020.

[Alexo]

Its been about a month since my recent personal best time was achieved on real hardware, and I forgot to update you all here on DW with it. Doom GBA has been played in 9 minutes and 55 seconds on a real GBA cartridge finally!

 

Full run with no added commentary:

https://youtu.be/ghHua9QTfuE

 

The current best time on emulation is 9:40, however.. further testing has proven emulation saves massive time over real hardware. Easily 15 to 30 seconds over all 23 levels. (Loads, lag is reduced in certain places).

 

My goal for 2020 is to play 9:40 on real hardware, which is technically possible... but my sum of best segments thus far for is 9:42. Further strategy has been developed in a few places to make RTA 9:4X possible, I'll list just a few below.

 

-Keeping walls loaded on the player POV in nearly any instance with longer hallways. Occasionally, it can become RNG dependent if Imps or zombie men walk into your path, so there is some reset heavy points just to save a few seconds over all. Its starting to get to this point.

 

- Avoiding shot gunners in Level 6, near the blue key. Taking no time to fire on them, and praying they dont hit you and take health away. Easily saving 3 to 6 seconds, but its a heavy reset point.

 

- from level 10 into level 11, having 63+ health, and enough armor, to rocket out of the level, and avoid grabing health in far off places, which losses time. If any enemies in level 11 hit you, its a failure at 9:4X pace.

 

-Getting Level 5, 7, 9, 12, and 22 returning clips in the first attempt. Failing any of these more then twice is automatically loss of 9:4X pace.

 

-Ensuring the cacodemons in the final level don't enter the final portal room. Backing up after opening doors, will sometimes trigger the caco's to pause and shoot fire balls at the player, which in turn saves them from getting to the room. This is very RNG heavy in dependence.

 

Pretty much, the run is coming down to a perfect set of RNG parameters being met for the 9:40 on real hardware. I have retired Any% on emulation, and strictly play on a GBA player for the nintendo gamecube now. While I haven't been heavily reseting for a PB lately, I have been practicing for a potential AGDQ 2020 run. I'm still waiting to see if it has made it into the event, and we will all know on october 6th! I can currently play 10:39-11:30 on no reset runs, which is pretty awesome considering everything that can go wrong during episode one, and the last half of episode 3.

 

Hope to have an update for you all later this month with a world record progression video, give some more indepth showing of the routes developments since 2017. Take care fellow Doomers!

Edited September 18, 2019 by Alexo

[Doomkid]

Awesome run!

[Robo_Cola]

Damn this is great...haven't played this port in years.

[Eurisko]

Well done sir! brilliant speed-run.

[Nevander]

Hope to see this at a GDQ!

[diosoth]

Impressive, especially considering the almost sluggish & incredibly limited controls the GBA port had. I do like both Doom GBA games and can play them if I'm stuck with a handheld but they are incredibly basic ports that rely on precious few buttons.

 

I wonder if running on an EZ-Flash IV cart has any differences vs a real cart? In theory it should not, but you never know, depending on if the cart fully supports the game 100%- and if the original IV or the new IV Omega have any differences in that regard, or if the SD card also matters.

 

I also wonder how many of the tricks will work in Doom II GBA since that was built on an entirely new custom engine? I believe GBA was a slimmed version of the Jaguar/32X port, as it has the same replacement levels.