Submission #2766: Keirden's SMS Alex Kidd in Miracle World in 12:31.80

"Originally released in November 1986, and later built in to the Sega Master System II, Alex Kidd in Miracle World is the first of several games to feature the big-eared Radaxian prince who was Sega's unofficial mascot before the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog. In this game, Alex Kidd must save his family and at the same time end the tyranny of Janken the Great. This game offered many different types of gameplay with an assortment of different vehicles, swimming levels, puzzle elements, and a rock-paper-scissors mini-game (called Janken) in addition to basic sidescrolling stages. Because of its diversity it was widely accepted to be far ahead of its time and was easily one of the most popular games for the SMS."

This is an improvement of 2953 frames (~49 sec) over the previous submission.

"punch to stop" : I especially used this trick in the entrance of the shops and in the last room of the game. In this run I never punch unnecessarily. Sometimes I punch when there are no rocks/enemies, I do that because when you punch on the floor your speed goes immediately to 0, you don't have to wait for Alex to slow down. That's very useful to turn back quickly or in the shops where your speed must be exactly 0 to enter/go out. But there is a problem: when you punch on the floor you have to wait 11 frames before you can move again. The solution to avoid this is to jump and punch in the air so that you touch the floor at the same time your punch ends. Thus, you don't have to wait.

Note: in the first level I punch in order to touch the edges of the floor.

"the cam glitch" : I used it to skip a few rooms in the last castle. It's easy to destroy the game with that glitch, so use it with caution. Watch this to see what happened with my game... You can use it almost everywhere the camera is moving. To do it, pause and unpause the game while the camera is moving. If you do it at the right time the camera will not stop and you will have a free tour of the game and sometimes a reset... The difficulty here is to manage to make Alex reappear on the screen. I think it's only possible when the camera goes down at the beginning. It's hard to understand what happen... During the (vertical) moving, the camera stops in each room. Then, there are 2 possibilities (depending on your X position) :

1 – The camera stops indefinitely in the room. If you jump the camera will go up, but you will not reappear.

2 – The camera stops some time and continues to go down. While it is stopped, you see in the RAM that Alex is falling. If you jump just before (otherwise it will do nothing) the camera goes down, the camera will go up and you will reappear on the screen. Now just try to be at a good place and not in a wall...

There are some variant of this glitch, but I will not describe them here as I didn't use them in the run (I couldn't reappear or win time).

The only random thing in this game is the money in the boxes. It can be a small ($10) or a big bag ($20) of money depending on your position and the time when you destroy the box. In the first level I managed to manipulate luck for all the boxes without losing time. In the rest of the game, I didn't need to manipulate luck because I had enough money. But I did it nevertheless because I find it looks better to have only big bags. I always tried to get the maximum of money I could on my way. The only small bags you will see are places where I didn't manage to have a big one without losing time.

(Click here to see the levels)

This first was the worst... In this level I need to collect $200 to buy the bike in stage 2, but there are a lot of different ways to get the money and as I can't guess which one is the fastest, I had to test them all... I calculated how much time it takes to get each bag of money. This was very long but now I'm pretty sure I use the best route.

Improvement : 147 frames

In this level, I miss two bags of money that I should obviously have taken. But I didn't because I have to slow down (losing 1 frame) to get them.

Improvement : 36 frames

On a real console, it would be almost impossible to swim perfectly straight when not next to a wall... It's useless, but it looks nice.

Improvement : 9 frames

Small improvement here by doing a better first jump.

Improvement : 6 frames

The helicopter goes up at the beginning because I need to press the jump button to start moving. I saved 106 frames by crashing the helico sooner and lost 4 frames because the rice at the end is farther than in previous run. I don't know why...

Improvement : 102 frames

Major improvement here because I don't buy the helico. And I see no reason to buy it as it's speed is the same as when walking.

Improvement : 522 frames

No comment here.

Improvement : 29 frames

Just one interesting thing to know here... The programmers of the game hadn't expected that you could hit the boss so fast. So, if you hit him as soon as possible, his position will go over 255 and become 0. Then, you will not see him because he becomes invisible, but he continues walking (from the left) and can kill you.

Improvement : 24 frames

Better last descent for a huge improvement of.... 1 frame.

Improvement : 1 frame

Nothing to explain here.

Improvement : 51 frames

When you die you have a 2,55 seconds invincibility. It's just enough to pass the last flame.

Improvement : 183 frames

New route and better boss fight.

Improvement : 52 frames

Little optimizations and better end.

Improvement : 40 frames

I really didn't think I could improve this "level"... Just jump and get the rice. But I jumped better than in the previous run and punched because Alex can touch the rice sooner when he punches.

Improvement : 3 frames

No comment.

Improvement : 46 frames

Saved 298 frames with the glitch and 1025 frames with the new route at the end. The rest comes from a lot of little improvements. I pause the game two times: the first is for the glitch and the second is to use the item (i can't use it with the first pause because the camera is not exactly placed in a room).

Improvement : 1595 frames

Killed the frog 79 frames faster...

Improvement : 107 frames

Enjoy the run !

adelikat: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.

sgrunt: I'll tackle this one.