Submission #8823: EZGames69 & Sonikkustar's SNES Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse in 16:28.61

Steamboat Willie has entered the public domain as of 01/01/2024. Meaning the first two levels of this game are technically public domain (I know that's not how it actually works but it's funnier that way)

This is a 333 frame improvement over my 2018 submission. There's not really a whole lot of new stuff here, the majority of the timesaves is just due to better optimization. Some of the changes include getting slightly faster level warps and a few general movement changes to save frames. The only real change comes from the second to last stage in "Mickey and the Beanstalk" where I used a moth to skip the first ledge in the stage.

Most of the submission text is copied over from the previous one, with some things changed. But here are some general notes about the tricks in this run:

So this game has an interesting panic handler. In that under certain conditions, if the game detects a crash is about to happen (such as too many sprites on screen), it will bring up a "level warp" screen that lets you skip to the next level. This is apparently a trick that Travelers Tales did for their old games to get past bug testers. If the game does anything unexpected, it will pretend that you unlocked a secret level warp. As far as I can tell, only a few TT games have producible instances of this, Toy Story on SNES is one of them. They weirdly do not come up often for any of their Genesis titles, and my theory is that TT usually developed their games with Genesis in mind, and these bugs only popped up when they were porting it to Super Nintendo. I have no proof this is the case, but it's the most likely explanation to me at least.

This is a Japanese only glitch. By jumping off a rope on the first possible frame, it causes Mickey's to zip to the left or right with incredible speed. I noticed while TASing this new version that you can even clip into walls this way, but there isn't any useful places this glitch can be used.

Very first instance of level warps to collide with a cat as I activate a cut-scene with Willie.

In the next scene, I have to ring bells in order to open up the bridge. The crane near the end runs on a global timer, so I am free to waste time. I decided to say hi to Pete instead of sitting on the building, and also to mock his walk.

Jump and throw projectiles at the gears to beat the stage. The Japanese version contains boss music for this boss while the US version doesnt for some reason.

There's 2 rope zips and 1 level warp here, the level warp is about a 2 second timer to hit, all you have to do is throw one projectile in that time frame to get it. It's by far the easiest level warp in the game.

I improved some of the rope zips by a few frames and also tightened up the beaker section as well.

To set up another level warp, we only need to take damage 3 times, the idea is to get pluto to warn us about the incoming moose at a specific point. then he can spawn and warp us out of that level.

in the next level, we want to collect enough apples as they make us go a bit faster, also jumping above water as it slows us down.

When going up the stairs, they can stop you from moving. that's why it seems like when we're able to clear them why we dont move for a bit, that's the game doing that.

There's also the climbing section at the end of level 2 here, where if you jump low enough, you can delay when the platforms spawn, this is useful to manipulate their cycle.

The rope zip in the 3rd level we can't actually move too soon, otherwise the camera will start to pan up and think we're in the rising floor area.

a level warp is used right away simply by hitting the first enemies we see. Although I managed to get the warp so fast that you don't even see the enemy die.

Another is used when we spawn a bunch of bees on screen and throw a projectile.

This section we can skip planting two seeds by bounding on the moths. I look to the left on the 2nd ledge to prevent the beetle's cycle from exiting, this allows me to just jump over him without needing to slow down.

The candle platforms need us to move back and forth to get enough momentum to jump, we have to turn on the lights otherwise a wall will block our way. In my last TAS, I didn't do a good job at avoiding taking damage and had to grab a health near the end of the room which wasted time. This time I do a better job at avoiding taking a hit at all. Same thing in the next room too.

Another warp is done in the 3rd room of the level, I don't know exactly how this warp works other than it has something to do with the amount of lag generated. I left this one alone.

The tower stage has the wrong sound effect for the barrels, in the Genesis version they're supposed to be spiked balls instead of barrels, the port probably forgot to fix this, especially since the SNES version doesn't have the other tower level. Also since I managed to save more health, I was able to damage boost through one of the barrels which saved about 40 frames.

right before we do the last level warp (which blink and you'll miss it), we grab the two health points as they'll be useful with the final pete fight.

I wanted to change the playaround I did in this level, but I somehow lost time doing so, so I left it alone aside from the final input, where I only did the last jump for 9 frames which gives the same max height, but not as fast.

Until the wrecking ball shows up, this stage acts as an autoscroller.

When the wrecking ball does show up, we can jump on pete's sword when he throw it at the wall, jumping off of it lets us hit a switch that hits pete.

However, the hitbox for the sword is still active for a few frames, so when you jump on the sword on the first possible frame you take damage. This is why I got the extra health, so I didnt have to wait for the hitbox to go away.

We've freed Willie!

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: 333 frames is not bad at all, considering this game is fairly known with speed-runners, and nobody has challenged this since your publication. I also remember when that "Rope Zip" was discovered around 6 or 7 years ago and YellowKillerBee was working out the details for her run. It was an interesting time to it being used.

Well, this was mostly a sync confirmation. The queue is getting large again, and we gotta work! :( Anyway, great job on the finds!

Accepting over [3742] SNES Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse by EZGames69 & Sonikkustar in 16:34.28.

fsvgm777: Processing.

nymx: Missed a 28 frame improvement movie. Here it is.