Table of contents
This movie improves the previously published movie ([1865] NES A Boy and His Blob by Kaylee, SilentSlayers & Aglar in 01:41.73) by 1358 frames thanks to 2 route changes with both old and new tricks.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: FCEUX 2.2.2
- Uses heavy glitches
- Aims for shortest input
"New" tricks
This movie's route first created by Zephyrz, who later improved it furthermore.
Later, MESHUGGAH tried to optimize it to death, recreated the same strategy with properly controlling speed from the start and used the OoB much cooler.
Even later, Aglar saw his trick was missing (which was used in his solo ABAHB submission but the previously published):
- which is a 8 frame save by throwing (feeding blob) a jellybean at the beginning on the very first frame and then throwing your desired (root beer for rocket) jellybean to change blob's transformation.
Later, MESHUGGAH tried to optimize it to death, recreated the same strategy with properly controlling speed from the start and used the OoB much cooler.
Even later, Aglar saw his trick was missing (which was used in his solo ABAHB submission but the previously published):
- which is a 8 frame save by throwing (feeding blob) a jellybean at the beginning on the very first frame and then throwing your desired (root beer for rocket) jellybean to change blob's transformation.
This trick leads to another potential as
- throwing OR feeding a random jellybean
- feeding OR throwing (you can switch the order of this) ketchup to desired location to teleport blob
- throwing a desired jellybean (for example punch)
Which can be used to teleport blob and transform to trampoline earlier, but you only start with 6 ketchup jellybeans. This means only the already existing strategy could be replaced with "jellybean combining" as long as feeding the blob (going to him and waiting to throw the bean) is faster than just simply teleporting him and then feeding him.
Other tricks
- Blob Out of Bounds with jellybean
- Use Punch jellybean on the right side of the screen with at least 235 X pos for blob and 234 X pos for boy and hold left once an additional jellybean goes offscreen (triggering the camera to go to the next scene on the right) while the boy falls down to the hole (blob).
- Blob Out of Bounds without jellybean
- The same setup but with 245 X pos for blob, press right once you fall down the hole and then left. This way you also get a higher starting speed (32) instead of the previous one (24).
- X Speed
- To reach fastest speed as fast as possible, you press R*8, empty, R*7, empty, R*3, empty, R. Subpixels alters your speed timer.
- Trampoline Y speed
- Checks U button every 3rd frame, stops when pressing B. The optimal length is pressing B as soon as possible and minimizing the length of U's.
The route of this TAS
Few things to know:
- You can't feed blob with a jellybean which is the same as the last jellybean effect
- You need to recall blob to continue progress when he left on another screen
- You need to wait jellybeans landing on the ground before recalling (B) blob
- You need to wait blob to be ready to eat a jellybean, and it's always faster if he jumps at least a few pixels.
Screen 1
- throw a jellybean right after pressing the start button (to feed blob)
- select root beer jellybean and throw it (this will transform blob into root bear instead of first thrown jellybean)
- this TAS throws a third jellybean for no reason (minimal entertainment value)
Screen 2
- recall blob and feed him a jellybean
- throw a ketchup jellybean to OoB
- recall after OoB
- throw ketchup jellybean for next screen
Screen 3
- feed blob with tangerine (trampoline)
- recall blob and feed him with a jellybean
- throw ketchup jellybean to the left side (blob will teleport from the cage to the left side)
- throw tangerine (trampoline) jellybean so blob transforms
- after exiting/reentering, recall blob and throw ketchup jellybean
- feed blob with tangerine (trampoline)
- recall blob
Screen 4
- throw ketchup jellybean and feed blob with punch (hole) jellybean
- recall blob
Screen 5
- run left and throw ketchup jellybean for next screen (at the edge of the screen)
Screen 6
- throw apple jellybean and face to the right side (and blob facing to the left side. IIRC it's impossible to trigger the ending while blob faces to the right)
Authors' comment
Zephyrz: This was the first game I ever speedran in real time, so I thought it would be appropriate for it to be the first game I complete a TAS of. With the new OoB glitch I really wanted to see how much time it saved on the TAS level, and thought I did well with my initial run; however, that's when MESHUGGAH got a hold of it. He came along and cut it down with optimizations to what you see here today and I honestly couldn't be happier.
I wanna give a huge thanks to MESHUGGAH for teaching me a couple of things about the game and optimizing it passed the point I thought was possible. Also for giving me the opportunity to be a coauthor.
Also shoutouts to the Blob community for pushing the real time run down to pretty close to the TAS and keeping the game at least a little alive.
Blob is love.
=== GAME OVER ===
Aglar: I watched the run and saw that my old trick was missing - that's all.
MESHUGGAH: See you until my next TAS =)
Aglar: I watched the run and saw that my old trick was missing - that's all.
MESHUGGAH: See you until my next TAS =)
feos: Accepting to Moons and an improvement to the existing run.
sheela901: Processing...