Hammerin' Harry is a pretty simple platformer. Armed with a big hammer, you make your way through 5 levels, and the first 3 levels have bonus levels as well. At the end of each level there is a boss, and in some levels, there are also mini-bosses. In short, this game is a "normal" platformer, you won't have a hard time figuring out what's going on.
Essentials:
Note about the ROM: Please note that I used the Japanese version of Hammerin' Harry, called "Daiku no Gen San". There are no differences between the European and the Japanese version of the game, except for some translations between levels.
- Emulator Used: FCEU 0.98.16
- Takes damage to save time.
- Abuses programming errors in the game. (the "walk on air"-glitch.)
- Manipulates luck. (manipulates the spawning place of the boss in the bonus stage in level 2.)
Goals (in order of priority):
- Aims for maximum score in the bonus levels.
- Aims for fast possible completion time.
The goals need to be commented on: Getting points in the bonus levels actually wastes time - for example, in the first bonus level you are to kill enemies that jump down on you. For each kill, a counter will increase by 1. By the end of the bonus level, the counter will count down to 0, with a speed of 1 per frames.
In short, If I kill 48 enemies, the counter will have the value 48 when the bonus level is finished, and therefor I have to wait 48 frames for it to count down to 0. All in all, getting a high score in the bonus levels wasted about 100 frames or so, and they would probably be pretty boring if I were just to stand there and wait them out.
Run summary:
Tricks and glitches:
- Jumping wastes 2 frames compared to walking, because you stop for a short while when you land. Therefor I avoid jumping as much as I can.
- You can kill 2 enemies at the same time with the hammer, even when they're on opposite sides of you! This is done a few times, you'll see it in the beginning of level 1 for example. You need to time your attack well to pull this off.
- Doing a crouched attack, striking the hammer on the ground, deals 2 damage. All other attacks deal 1 damage. This is why I use the crouched attack on bosses.
- Your movement pattern in this game is 1-2-1-2-1-2.... If you jump on a frame where you have moved 1 pixel, your jump will be slightly longer, to be exact, half a pixel. :) This can save quite a lot of time though, since there are many jumps to be done.
- After a bonus level, I am rewarded with a first aid kit. This item heals my lifebar, but it isn't used in this run at all.
- I've only found one glitch in this game, and that is the "walk on air" glitch. By moving to the right (or left) and attacking each 6th frame, the game will think that you stand on solid ground all the time. This allows you to walk on air! I haven't found any practical use of this trick, but I show off a little with it on level 3. Because the game thinks you stand on solid ground, you can also perform a jump while in air, if you jump on the exact right frame.
The making of this run:
This run didn't take too long to do, due to the simple nature of the game. I spent about 3 days, a total of about 11 hours or so, on this run. I used memory watcher to some extent, but not that much. Again, this is a simple game, so it wasn't very necessary. :)
Credits:
- Thanks goes to mazzeneko for his almost complete run of this game, which can be found here. He used the European version of the game.
That's about it. I hope you enjoy watching this movie!
adelikat: I consider this a borderline movie but it received good response from voters so I am accepting it for publication.