Prehistorik Man is a platformer about Sam the caveman collecting food for his village that the dinosaurs stole. Deciding that revenge is far sweeter than cake, Sam blasts through all the levels as fast as possible while hardly collecting any food. This run is 1 minute 24 seconds faster than the current run due to general optimizations.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 1.11.4
- Beats game as fast as possible
- Takes damage to save time
Comments
Most of the improvements simply come from optimizing movement such as jumping before falling, not clipping edges, and being on the ground as soon as possible so that Sam can start accelerating as soon as possible. RNG plays a small, yet very significant role in this game, so that any changes to one level will affect every level after it. Comments will appear on stages where special tricks are used or if anything seems out of the ordinary.
Stage by stage comments
Stage 2 - Ancient Bridge
Need to collect 100 bones for the level skip on stage 4
Stage 3 - Cloud Canyon
Need to collect all 15 diamonds in order to bribe the policeman at the end of the stage
Stage 7 - Old Volcano
I skip the 4 rubies in the middle of the stage because collecting them will cause the fire to rise up just a little bit further in the next part which means it takes longer for it to go back down.
Stage 9 - Burnt Forest
Javelins disappear once they go off-screen, so no javelins other than the first one can be pre-set when falling down the line of cherries
Stage 10 - Windy Tree
The wind appears 2.5 seconds after it disappears from the top of the screen. It's much faster to slow down and let the wind disappear off the top so that you don't have to wait around when you need it again. This is also the only time in the game where I use R+direction to manipulate the camera (for 3 frames at the Rees-tatah). *Side note, the game will freeze if you touch the exit sign while on a leaf
Stage 11 - Ape Man Village
I intentionally get hit here so that I can die after getting the first key in order to start from the Rees-statah
Stage 14 - Dark Tree
I was not able to get the boss to start grabbing the spike balls until after the 4th hit.
Stage 18 - Crystal Caves 1
You cannot jump through platforms. There are also many parts in both Crystal Caves levels where it seems like Sam should be make a certain jump or make it onto a ledge. The game designers must have noticed this because nearly every one of those ledges are just a few pixels too high to reach without jumping on something else first.
Stage 19 - Crystal Caves 2
It seems like I'm going out of my way to get that heart at the beginning, but I have to get on that platform in order to jump over to the ledge.
Stage 23 - Dino Graveyard
Without stopping and turning around, there is no way to get past all of the spectres without getting hit. The final frame of input is when swinging the club to take away the Dino Lord's last health pellet. Sam walking to the left and shouting is automatically done by the game.
Other comments
End of level comments are affected by how much stuff you collected in each level. Getting 21-49% of the items will provide the shortest message
Sam cannot speed up while in mid-air. He has to run on the ground for a little bit in order to achieve max speed.
Possible Improvements
Better RNG on the first two bosses so that they can be hit sooner.
Better spearing in the Burnt Forest (stage 9).
Better use of wind and camera in Windy Tree (stage 10).
When reaching the end of Ape Man Village (stage 11) it's possible to mostly skip the hunter's dialogue box by jumping far enough into his area that you skid into the lock and unlock it before the dialogue box fully pops up (thanks to Challenger for the trick).
There are probably other tricks that have yet to be found :)
Suggested Screenshot
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Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: Great stuff. Accepting as an improvement to the published run.
feos: Pub.