What could pawsibly go wrong?
Introduction
Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, known more commonly as trash, is a 1994 platformer game released exclusively for the Atari Jaguar. It involves evil fairy tales running amuck or something and purrfect platformer gameplay.
This run came about from glitch discoveries done by kalimag and my own research into the game, which ended up making this run a massive 16 minutes faster then the current RTA world record.
Mechanics and Glitches
- Momentum
Similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Bubsy relies on a momentum system to gain and lose speed. However, the game lacks any sort of coherency with its level design, so often casually attempting to go fast means you run into something and die immediately.
That said, momentum in this game is fairly complex. The max speed cap is 2048 pixels per frame, and any time Bubsy becomes airborne from falling or jumping his speed immediately gets halved, with the exception of sloped surfaces which can allow him to preserve or lose more speed. It's also possible on downward slopes to build up more speed by letting go of the arrow keys, since the speed cap only applies while a direction is being held.
- Gliding
Bubsy's signature move is gliding, which slows his falls and is fairly broken as a mechanic in general. Like the previous two games, 'glide boosting' is possible by pressing the glide button every other frame during the end of Bubsy's jumps, which saves a lot of time throughout the game. It's also possible to exceed the vertical speed cap of 3840 pixels per frame by holding glide during it, which leads to some pretty wild shenanigans when navigating out of bounds. Finally, so long as Bubsy doesn't touch a wall, gliding can be used to 'unleash' previously built horizontal speed in the air even from a complete stop, which is useful when needing to turn around while platforming.
- Clipping
The main reason this run was made, clipping refers to a variety of techniques to get Bubsy through walls and out of bounds, which often lets him completely skip most 'fun' levels of Flipping A Switch and Dodging The Whatevers.
Through the run there's four different methods of clipping done:
1) Gliding into the corner of a wall to enter its hitbox, then jumping to get pushed through the wall.
2) Entering a slope at the right sub-pixel to avoid a wall collision check, then jumping to get pushed through the wall.
3) Building up a large amount of vertical momentum via uncapped speed to clip through floors, notably allowing for fast horizontal and vertical speed out of bounds.
4) Clipping via an object pushing Bubsy through a thin floor or wall.
- Chapter 1 - Go Ask Alice!
A lot of platforming is needed to flip the first switch, but soon after I reach the first useful wall and glide into it to bypass the rest of the stage.
- Chapter 2 - Tweedle Dum And Tweedle Dummer
There's a slope right next to where Bubsy starts that lets him immediately clip with the right sub-pixel, making this the shortest level by far at only 8 seconds.
- Chapter 3 - Alice Doesn't Live Around Here Anymore.
Another slope clip is done nearby the start of the level to skip about half the stage, although it's faster to continue in-bounds for the second half since it's mostly a straight line. First boss (Mad Hatter??) is easily disposed of.
- Chapter 4 - Out On A Limb
This is a rare level with no notable glitches, so it's mostly movement optimization and....bananas?
- Chapter 5 - Highly Stung
The side of a spike is used to clip past the vine right at the start of the level, letting me do another vertical wrap and skip the whole level. Bananas.
- Chapter 6 - Jungle Furvor
I climb very high up in the level so I can fall back down and clip through the floor via uncapped vertical momentum, letting me immediately reach Not Dr. Robotnik and easily beat him.
- Chapter 7 - Rushing Roulette
Wow! Racial stereotypes! Oh no!
- Chapter 8 - Desert Storm
Another floor clip is used here, this one also taking advantage of extra momentum gained from a slope to go extremely quickly through the rest of the level.
- Chapter 9 - Bubsy and the Beast
A wall clip is used partway through the level to save about 20 seconds. The genie fight only ends when both her and her jar are destroyed, and it's faster to beat her up first so she moves into position faster.
- Chapter 10 - Run Silent, Run Deep
A deathwarp is used after flipping the first switch, and then a wall clip to skip the submarine section.
- Chapter 11 - Bubble Trouble
A glide wall clip is used to reach the submarine quicker, along with object clipping through some walls within the submarine to skip a switch.
- Chapter 12 - Reservoir Cats
Similar clips to the last level are used here. The lobster fight is done in two cycles from precise manipulation of its animations. Terrible fight!
- Chapter 13 - Sugar and Spice
You guessed it, wall clip is used to skip most of this stage.
- Chapter 14 - Rock Around The Choc
Via subpixel precision it's possible to clip through bottle traps, which lets me fall through and immediately reach the exit without needing to hit any switches.
- Chapter 15 - Cat On A Hot Chocolate Roof
Another bottle trap clip is done to get out of bounds this time and head straight to the most fearsome final boss ever - Hansel and Gretel? Whatever it's over.
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 26528
Darkman425: Input file replaced by a 430 frame improvement from the author.
Darkman425: I was going to contact kalimag for anything I missed with regards to glitches, but they contacted you already. You quickly implemented that skip pretty well. Thanks again, kalimag!
As for this TAS, everything seems to be in order. All the skips and glitches were done cleanly and this run saves an incredible amount of time over the current RTA records. I expect someone will try to beat those records now that this TAS exists as a blueprint on these skips.
Accepting to Standard. Congratulations on having the first Jaguar TAS accepted to TASVideos!