TASaturday #16: Gradius (NES)

After a little break due to E3, our TASaturday feature is back with a rather impressive TAS. Indeed, for the TASaturday #16, we went with a game where players can’t control how fast they go (with the exception of bosses that can be killed as fast possible)… Gradius, on the NES! If you’ve played it before, you know it’s a game where the levels are on auto-scroll. Therefore, you’re probably wondering: “How can you do a speedrun on such a game?”

Well, the answer is actually pretty simple… by making it as entertaining as possible. In this Tool Assisted Speedrun, the author didn’t quite try to go as fast as possible, he tried to do lots of things that even a normal player (let alone a speedrunner) wouldn’t even think of doing… After all, if the game don’t let you go faster (once you’ve picked up all the speed power ups, that is), you might as well make the most of the time you’re given.

We’re not going to tell you exactly what happens in this video, except that it would be impossible to do the same in a non-TAS environment. After all, the level of precision required is way above what that of any humain being… and this is not exaggeration!

Here’s the Tool Assisted Speedrun of Gradius, by adelikat:

And here’s a video of this TAS being played on an actual NES:

For more details about this TAS, please click here to go check out the submission page!

We hope you enjoyed this TASaturday #14, and see you next week!