Submission #1420: Chamale's GB Tom and Jerry in 08:52.73

Introduction: Tom and Jerry is a kid’s cartoon where the mouse generally triumphs, with the cat being ignominiously defeated. The video game is a side scroller, with a lot of up-and-down motion as well. Jerry can take 4 hits before dying – the fifth kills him.

Update Info This is an update of submission #1417, which completed the game in 9:22:53. This movie was improved with better routes and by general optimization. The movie also strives to get points without wasting time. This movie has the last input at 8:52:44. The old one has last input at 9:21:31. That is an improvement 28:47. The movie has a final score of 29660. The old one has a final score of 27860. This improvement is 1800. This improvement is not just from time bonuses.

GENERAL Jerry never goes out of his way for an item. The game has no power-ups, only items that heal him or give him an extra life. On some levels he does pick up the healing items.

Uses no passwords*. Takes damage to save time.

I found that holding A at the score screen after a level is quicker than mashing… But by the time I had discovered that, I was at level 3. So I had to redo levels 2 and 3.

Jerry has a temporary invincibility after taking a hit that lasts several seconds. At some point or another, he’s gotten through nearly every enemy thanks to it.

When Jerry hits an enemy, he recoils, which is abused to some point in level 2, and greatly used in level 3. After that, there's less use for it. LEVEL 1 There wasn’t much to this level – just holding  and B for most of it, though at one point I had to let go of B. It was actually faster to go up the ledges at that slow speed; otherwise Jerry would get knocked back by the ledges. Cars normally slow you down, but at one point I abuse a movement glitch to launch Jerry at top speed with a car. At another point, a car is a platform to launch Jerry over a bunch of spikes. That was only in the fixed remake.

LEVEL 2 This level has quite a few ledges on it. Near the end, I simply hop on a series of ledges and land right on the exit sign. I figure this is fastest because there are no hills up in the sky.

LEVEL 3 I had to redo this level because of a mistake I made at the end of 1 and 2 (see GENERAL), but I don’t regret that because I found a few time-savers along the way that I didn’t use in the first run. For example, in the published version I start to turn in midair for the jumps into pipes. I don’t do that in the first version. I use a lot of bouncing off enemies on this level. I use both chimneys to propel me over them. Finally, there’s the mousetrap that launched me onto the exit sign. Notice the way I catch that pipe – in my test run, I couldn’t do that, and it cost me several seconds.

LEVEL 4 The staircases were tricky to navigate. It is possible to go up with B pressed.. I spent a long time figuring out how to jump off the chairs to top height – literally jumping on every frame for a few frames around landing time. There’s a lot of ridiculous couch jumping. Jerry can actually move higher, so high the camera loses track of him, but then he gets knocked down by a ledge. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to guide him, then realised the super-jump wouldn’t work at all. At the end of the level, note the 3 picture frame area. I experimented with being knocked onto the ledge by a picture frame, but it’s slower than just going onto the lower ledge and running.

LEVEL 5 This level is interesting because it has so many gaps. Enter: TAS. Viewing in slow motion, you can see Jerry getting “678” under him as he enters water. What’s up with that? There are little platforms above the shower I thought he could jump onto. He can’t jump on from anywhere close, so I abandoned the thought. They’re probably for decoration. The pools were very interesting to go through. I often had trouble getting the timing right flying out of the pool. There are actually 2 routes at the end that get the identical end time – 21 frame rule, much? The TAS uses the more impressive one.

LEVEL 6 No, it is not faster to use the banister at the start. He has to jump off, which wastes time. The second one is quicker, though. I discovered you can clear the stoves with some tricky jumping; then you can barely miss Tom and keep going, top speed. Later, Jerry has to take damage. Then he has to pull off some fancy jumps, and then make it to the exit.

LEVEL 7 I hate the saws. They’re really hard to get past at top speed. It’s often flatly impossible to do that. Notice the damage-taking. This level is interesting because there are 2 possible routes. One is only about 1 second better than the other. A couple jumps literally had no margin for error. Go one frame earlier, he hits the obstacles; one later, he can’t make the jump.

LEVEL 8 Too bad you can’t go into pipes from above like Mario ;). This level has a lot of water, which is frustrating because Jerry goes so slowly in water, and you can’t get out of it a lot of the time. It’s best to get out of water as fast as possible, as you saw in level 5. Jerry is a little faster swimming than walking on the bottom, so he bounces around quite a bit.

LEVEL 9 This level is pretty insane. I remember playing on my Game boy, before I even knew what a TAS was, and thinking “If only there was a way to play in slow motion and retry if you messed up”. I find a lot of levels interesting in the way he jumps over huge gaps without seeming to care, but this level takes the cake there. Note the way he hits spikes and uses that to run over power lines. In real life a mouse running on power lines won’t get zapped, so that whole power lines thing doesn’t make sense.

LEVEL 10 This has so many ways to go, and only 1 is right. I actually went through in normal speed to find the right way (I think my end time was 3:40 on normal time… lol). There really wasn’t much to this level – simple TAS pwnage.

Screenshots:
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Truncated: People seem to find it okay. Putting on accepted.

Bisqwit: Putting it back to "publication underway", because the previous publication was slightly borked.