About the Game:
Candyman: Be My Victim is an NES homebrew horror game based on the 1992 film Candyman, created by FistaGames. It was originally made for PC in 2006, with a demake for the NES releasing in 2022 along with his other horror games. You play as Candyman, who visits 5 locations and 5 bonus levels killing everyone in sight.
About the TAS:
This TAS aims for fastest completion, which means completing all 5 levels and bonus levels as fast as possible.
This TAS was a recommendation from the developer himself, FistaGames, and is an improvement of 1:23.62 over his 2nd rejected submission.
Level 1: You Brought Me Here...
This level is essentially the tutorial for this game. First we have to kill our victim, which - in this case - is done by chasing him until he has nowhere to run. Then we stab him and turn around at the earliest frames possible. After killing every victim in a level (apart from Level 5: I'll get to that later), we have to collect a mirror. After we collect said mirror, we can enter a portal, thus ending the level.
Bonus Level: Use Your Swarm of Bees
Here we just have to wait for the timer to run out.
Level 2: Sweets to the Sweet...
We start by going to the right and killing our 1st victim. After this, we head left and then go upstairs to find our 2nd victim hiding. We can kill her the moment she stops running. Then we head downstairs, collect the mirror and kill our 3rd and final victim. The portal is straight ahead.
Bonus Level: Attack Through the Mirrors
Just like the first bonus level, we have to wait for the timer to run out.
Level 3: I Am the Writing on the Wall
We start by going to the right and chasing after our 1st victim, who - on the next screen - we find urinating in... well, a urinal. Then we find another victim who "accidentally" smashed one of the toilets. (Or was it Candyman's spirit?) Anyways, after that, we walk past all the urinals and sinks to find our 3rd victim, who we attack with a swarm of bees. After this, we go back past the sinks, collect the mirror and turn around again. Then we go to the very back of the restroom to a mysterious door. Here we find 2 more victims to stab. With a hint of RNG manipulation, we can stab these guys as fast as possible. Then we go back through the door and walk past the graffiti to find 2 more victims. After walking past the urinals one more time, we head into the portal, which is near the toilets.
Bonus Level: Make the Imposters Pay
Just like the first 2 bonus levels, we have to wait for the timer to run out.
Level 4: I Have Shed Innocent Blood
This time around, we're in an office with a lot of busy office workers victims. The first 2 of said victims are found on the opening screen. After stabbing those 2 victims (and waiting for the 2nd victim's death animation to finish), we head left, where we find our 3rd victim, who somehow falls through a wall after being stabbed. After heading down, we find another victim, who's cheekily ordering Domino's on the phone. We abruptly end his order and then we head right. After chasing our next victim, he gets a pistol out and shoots. But since his aim is quite bluntly a load of crap, we can easily avoid the bullet and stab him. Then we head back past the lockers and up the corridor to the broken bit of wall from earlier. However, it turns out to be... A SECRET HIDING PLACE! Here we find one more victim. Strangely, this is the only room that looks 2D rather than 3D. After leaving the aforementioned hiding place, we find 3 more victims who have foolishly gone near it. With a bit more RNG manipulation, we stab this trio as fast as possible and then head back down through the corridor. After walking past the lockers yet again, we collect the mirror and turn around. On our way back, we find another victim who tries to run but isn't fast enough. Then we head back up the corridor, kill one last victim that's standing next to a locker, and enter the portal.
Bonus Level: Protect Your Mirror
If we just stand there menacingly and don't bother protecting our mirror, this bonus level is over in a matter of seconds.
Level 5: Be My Victim
Our first 3 victims are on the 1st screen. However, 2 of them manage to escape... for the time being. So we stab the 1st victim and head to the left. Here we find 2 more victims, one of them being one of the 2 victims who "escaped". We stab those guys and head down, where our 4th victim is lurking. We decapitate him and move on. On the next screen, we find 3 more victims, including the other "escapologist". After sprinkling a bit of magic RNG dust, we can stab them all without any major slowdowns. On the screen after that, there's another victim, who - after being stabbed - faceplants into a wall, guaranteeing him dead. After heading up through a corridor, we find 2 more victims to stab, which gives us a total of 10 victims for this level so far. Then we head back through the corridor and sneak through a crevice, where we find victim number 11. You should know the drill by now, we stab him and move on. A bit further in the crevice, we have to predict a painting which is a source of our power by stabbing victim number 12 before he steals it. Then we head back to the crevice's entrance, go up through the left most corridor, and enter the mouth of the Candyman statue. Here we find the final victim of the game, Candyman's ex-wife Helen. Then we chase Helen until we catch her before she catches Baby Anthony.
To quote the game: "The pyre burns... at long last, you and Helen are together forever..."
And That's It!
Thanks for readi- BUT I'M NOT DONE YET! (- BIlly Mays, R.I.P.)
FINAL BONUS LEVEL!
This final bonus level is essentially a boss rush of the antagonists from all 3 of Fista's other horror games.
The first boss is Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. We want to stay as close to Jason as we can, since we can fire faster that way. In each boss level, we have 3 hit points, meaning we can only take damage a maximum of twice to save time. This means - at one point - we cannot fire as quickly as what would be ideal since we have to wait for Jason's knife to fly past us. But we still make light work of Jason. And now it's on to...
Michael Myers from Halloween. The first part of this fight is pretty much the same as Jason. We have to stay as close to Michael as the game allows us to be and - if mandatory - take a hit or two to save time. But Michael can teleport from side to side. With the power of TAS, we can predict exactly when this happens and head to the left before Michael thinks about teleporting. After that, we get our last hits in while taking a hit to save time. Now it's time to face the final boss, which is...
Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy is completely different from the other 2 bosses. He comes towards you, no matter where you are on the screen. I came up with the following strategy for this fight:
- Approach Freddy while firing at him.
- Once we're next to Freddy, move to the left while briefly turning around to shoot him as quickly as we can.
- Repeat this same strategy again after taking your first hit.
This way, we can beat Freddy in just 2 cycles, and make him look like a laughing stock. After this we can enter the final portal of the game, and now, I can safely say these 3 words...
And That's It! (for real this time)
Thanks to DrD2k9 for helping with RNG manipulation, and thank you for reading. If you find any improvements, please e-mail me on the TASVideos website.
DrD2k9: Claiming for judging.
LogansGamingRoom: Added DrD2k9 as a co-author since he‘s working on improvements.
DrD2k9: After I claimed this for judging, LogansGamingRoom sent me a PM asking for help improving the run (as he expected better RNG manipulation was possible, but wanted help to figure it out). Due to this request, I dug deeper into the game than a basic judgement and was able to find improvements. --Frankly, the original submission was already acceptable as gameplay was adequately optimized from the standpoint of not containing any obvious sloppy play.-- I used LogansGamingRoom's input as a base and (after converting to BizHawk) I worked through the run. The table below details my work/additions for this submission.
| Level | Improvement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Start-B2 | 0 | No improvement in time but I attempted to make the first two bonus levels more interesting by actually killing people instead of just bouncing side to side. |
| RNG was manipulated in both of these bonus levels to make people spawn in ideal locations. (Bonus 1 may still be improvable in this.) | ||
| The final two people of Bonus 1 are not killed as it adds two frames before getting to Level 2. I'm not sure why, but I think it may be due to death animations. | ||
| Level 3 | 98 | RNG manipulations of randomly wandering people allowed for faster kills and movement through the level. |
| Bonus 3 | 0 | Unfortunately killing people in this level introduces lag, so none are killed. I still tried to move around in a more interesting manner. |
| Level 4 | 71 | RNG manipulations of randomly wandering people allowed for faster kills and movement through the level. |
| Bonus 4 | 0 | Allowing the mirror to be broken ends this bonus level before the timer runs out. |
| Level 5 | 92 | RNG manipulations of randomly wandering people allowed for faster kills and movement through the level. |
| Bonus 5 | 70 | Better fights saved time. |
| TOTAL FRAMES SAVED | 331 |
On another note, a Max Score or Max Kills run of this game is an option as there are unkilled people in this run.
So...I'm doing the following:
- Unclaiming
- Updating the movie file, temp encode, emulator used, and ROM filename (the .nes extension was missing)
- Resetting this submission to New for someone else to judge
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Alas!!! Another revision that actually measures up to the TASing quality that we seek. I will say again...the difference between recording with a controller and using the TAS Studio Editor.
Accepting.
despoa: Processing...