This TAS was created in Dolphin v5.0 with the default dsp_.bin files. This is the NTSC-U version of the game.
What is Pac 'n Roll Remix?
Pac 'n Roll Remix is a recreation of the original Pac 'n Roll for the DS that is featured exclusively in Namco Museum Remix and Namco Museum Megamix. The remixed version features a new world, a missing world, adjusted physics, and lots of other gameplay changes. As far as I'm aware, there are no noticeable gameplay differences between the Remix and Megamix versions. The goal for Any% is to beat Pac 'n Roll Remix by defeating Golvis and reaching the end credits as quickly as possible. Exiting to a different subgame within the collection is obviously not allowed but other skips and glitches are okay.
I decided to update my previously existing Pac 'n roll TAS due to the discovery of a couple of new strategies, most notably 4-1 and 4-4 skips that save a combined 20 seconds. In addition, I took the time to clean up some of my movement as there were a good amount of small routing improvements.
Level Analysis
Here is a level-by-level comparison over the entire game. I determined the times for the boss levels by looking at the memory address for the timer. In Megamix, this is located at $80BDC5C4 and is stored as 4 bytes.
Level New Old Time Saved
1-1 23.73 24.08 0.35
1-2 17.73 18.53 0.80
1-3 13.51 13.96 0.45
1-4 18.11 18.75 0.64
1-5 20.08 20.30 0.22
2-1 10.65 10.70 0.05
2-2 13.91 14.51 0.60
2-3 53.51 55.06 1.55
2-4 35.35 35.78 0.43
3-1 38.50 39.21 0.71
3-2 27.21 28.81 1.60
3-3 34.05 34.55 0.50
3-4 66.55 68.10 1.55
3-5 26.65 27.58 0.93
4-1 15.50 25.10 9.60
4-2 25.16 26.63 1.47
4-3 32.18 32.41 0.23
4-4 55.61 67.60 11.99
4-5 40.15 41.81 1.66
4-6 22.62 23.10 0.48
5-1 2.40 2.43 0.03
5-2 7.83 8.06 0.23
5-3 5.43 5.46 0.03
5-4 22.08 22.65 0.57
5-5 42.60 43.43 0.83
5-6 20.18 21.08 0.90
The Important Stuff
If you want to hear my full thoughts on the TAS I plan to do an author commentary video where I break down everything. I'll add that to this submission as an edit under its own section once I upload it but for now I'll just explain the important parts:
How Golvis gates work and how to skip them-
Golvis gates act as barriers blocking progression through a level unless you collect and deposit enough Pac-dots in order to pass. Most Golvis gates are unskippable, meaning that the TAS has to find the fastest route to collect enough Pac-dots within the level in order to complete it. However, you can sometimes go around gates by either jumping around them or finding a way to reach the goal that isn't blocked by one. The game keeps track of which Golvis gate you're supposed to be depositing Pac-dots into and won't let you deposit Pac-dots into any other gates. This means that if you skip a gate in a level, you have to skip all the rest of them as well. Luckily, this has not posed an issue for TAS so far but it does prevent the viability of making certain gate skips RTA viable. For example, skipping the 2nd to last gate of 4-2 is much easier than skipping the last gate but both are required so both are unviable RTA.
Advanced Movement-
Sticky Boost-
This isn’t a particular action on its own but rather the behavior of some surfaces. If Pac-man has a specific align and boosts while near another surface, Pac-man will sometimes "snap" onto the new surface, despite Pac-man's previous speed. How specific the alignment has to be varies based on how much two pieces overlap with each other. Being able to dash AND take a more direct route saves a lot of time compared to RTA where the trick just isn't feasible.
Ramp clipping-
By moving parallel to the bottom of certain ramps and then tapping towards the ramp, you can clip into it and propel yourself forward slightly. This is faster than just holding straight in a direction by actually quite a surprising amount although I'm not entirely sure how this happens. Since the last TAS, I've discovered more places where this is possible. The most notable places where this happen is the beginning of 2-2 and 4-4
Closing thoughts-
There's still a lot I haven't discussed like how weird jump pads are and how I survive when it appears that I should die in 4-6 but I plan to save some of those explanations for later. Overall I'm quite proud of how this TAS ended up and I think there is still some cool new stuff for people who have seen the original. If anybody has any questions, I'd love to explain some more!
slamo: Great work again. The previous movie was crazy and I had no idea there was room for improvement, but apparently you found some. Like the last one, it was made with a .wbfs but syncs on the uncompressed .iso so it doesn't matter. Accepting as an improvement to the previous movie.
EZGames69: ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN