Introduction
Slide Boy in Maze Land is a homebrew Atari 7800 developed by VHZC Games in 2021. It's a kind of simple puzzle game where Slide Boy moves around by sliding in a cardinal direction, stopping only when hitting a wall. While the mechanics are straightforward, this was a good TAS to make for practicing cycles. This is played on Normal mode through all 30 rooms. Survival has a fixed timer that doesn't replenish between stages and I'm not sure if it's beatable in the given time.
The game is available for download by the developer on the AtariAge forums.
Run info
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
- A7800 core
Room comments
In real time, inputs can be held before hitting a wall or object which will cause Slide Boy to move at the first possible frame. This means some rooms are trivial to complete and will not be mentioned in the comments if there's nothing else of note.
Room 02
This level introduces buttons needed to activate various objects. This stage requires opening the exit door. There is a frame perfect input to get under the ball while it's out of the hole on the way out.
Room 03
This level introduces sliding walls. There's a quirk that if Slide Boy gets into where moving walls and platforms would be, he gets pushed out until he's ejected. This ejection also makes player movement impossible until it's over. Generally movement should be done in such a way that Slide Boy can make immediate movement upon contact, saving a bit of time. This stage is one where it doesn't matter due to having to wait on the orbiting saw.
Room 04
A bit of waiting has to be done to slip past the balls on the way to and from the button.
Room 05
Some more waiting on the orbiting saw. When hitting the left wall bit jutting out, it's 4 frames faster to go up rather than down to reach the exit.
Room 06
There's a bit of waiting to get past the ball to the button. Going left after hitting the button meant that there was no extra waiting needed to get past the ball again.
Room 07
This is the first instance where hitting the moving platform at the right time to move again sooner is faster than getting caught in it.
Room 08
Movement until hitting the button is trivial. Getting back requires waiting on the flames to go out.
Room 09
Some more waiting to get past the flames and the face walls.
Room 11
Waiting on the wall saw to move Slide Boy downwards is 19 frames faster compared to moving Slide Boy up from the wall saw.
Room 12
This time there's some waiting on the electric walls. There's also a weird invisible block at the bottom right of the room that I don't have an explanation for.
Room 14
A little bit of waiting is needed to get past the paddle ball to the button.
Room 15
Some waiting was needed to get past the big saws.
Room 16
Movement to the right had to be timed right for the quickest movement.
Room 17
This is the first dark room. While all the dark rooms are visually a challenge the movement is trivial. Since they're all trivial the remaining dark rooms will be ignored in the notes.
Room 18
A bit of waiting is needed to slip past the wall rider.
Room 19
Waiting is needed to get past the face walls after hitting the button.
Room 20
A fair amount of waiting is required to get past both the electric walls and the spinning mines.
Room 21
Buttons have to be pressed to summon a gun and shoot a wall to exit the room. Otherwise movement is trivial.
Room 22
A lot of waiting on the moving platform and the disappearing platform to avoid the lava.
Room 23
This room introduces P blocks which can be moved by Slide Boy bumping into it. Slide Boy can be moved immediately after hitting the P block. A minor bit of waiting is done to hit the moving wall. The P block is used to block the lava waterfall.
Room 26
A fair amount of waiting is needed on the moving platform and the spike tube.
Room 27
Waiting is required to not run into the face ball.
Room 28
A lot of waiting to get past the wall pincers is required.
Room 29
There's an initial wait for the horizontal moving platform before going to the exit.
Room 30
This is the boss room where the buttons have to be pressed to shoot bullets. The buttons reset after hitting all four of them. Going right for me saved 1 frame over going left, though I'm not super sure if this is the most optimal fight due to all the waiting.
Possible improvements
The only real big one I possibly a better strat for Room 30 since I might not be seeing it. Otherwise I don't think there's much else that time could be saved.
Memory: Claiming for judging.
Memory: Wow I can't believe they made a game based on the sliding ice block puzzles from literally every top down 2D game.
Anyways, no noticeable flaws, the run seems non-trivial due to the waits as well. Accepting.
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