LEGO The Lord of the Rings DS TAS 1:32:52 RTA Timing

Recorded on Bizhawk 2.0 with MelonDS core 2.10 Rerecord count: 2922 Frames: 337261 A few notes: 1. This run is meant to be a proof of concept of what a perfect RTA run of this game would be. I created it with RTA rules in mind, and did not optimize it highly. Combat is probably what could be cut down the most, followed by movement. You can call this a LOTAD(Low Optimization Tool Assisted Demonstration) if you wish. 2. There are a few skips I did not do that could theoretically save time: In Black Rider, you can jump past a Nazgul vision to trigger a rock to fall. This saves little to no time, and the cycle was the worst it could have been, so I would have lot time. In Moria, you can launch up to the top section with the troll and end the level. However, the troll would not follow me to the rock he needed to go to. I think that an older version of this trick may be possible on this version of the game(see 3 for version differences), but I did not know of this possibility when I was TASing this level. In Taming Gollum the jump up the platforms at the start of the Gandalf section can be optimized, but I missed this while TASing this level. In Helm's deep you could theoretically skip building the ladder and let the cpu do an impossible jump up. I had missed this while TASing this level. In Pelennor Fields, you can jump over the tower that you need to get past by fighting orcs. It is extremely easy on 3DS(see section 3), and has been done on DS. However, we only have one video, and after trying for many hours over a 2 week period, I had to give up. I even matched my attempts up with the video frame by frame and still couldn't get it. If we understand this trick more in the future, I hope someone will complete an optimized TAS with it. 3. I decided to use the DS version because it is the fastest version of this game, and it is the easiest to TAS. There are many differences between versions, like DS loading faster, and both DS and 3DS have exclusive skips(Vita and Mobile are not normally run, Mobile has most skips patched, and Vita is almost identical to 3DS(It may have some patched skips though, we are not sure)). A big notable difference is that the final room of level 5 is missing on DS. I am typically a 3DS runner, and making this TAS gave me a lot of insight into this version. 4. A big thank you to the entire community of this game! Thanks to BetaAhnung, Brandino, Bretzel, and Matthiasgg for all of your help during my journey with this game! If you want to learn this game, join this discord and go to the lotr_handheld channel:   / discord