Submission #8935: Exonym's NES The Flintstones: The Surprise at Dinosaur Peak! in 14:06.74

Flintstones 2 (NES) or as it's known by it's full title, The Flintstones: The Surprise at Dinosaur Peak, is a sequel to The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, also for the NES.

After reviewing old submissions of the game and how it was rejected for game choice (even if it is wayyy outdated from 2004) I thought it would be an interesting task to make the game actually interesting. After a brief playaround in the game I wasn't finding much, but the ability to swap characters was intriguing to me and I knew there had to be something you can do with it.

After a bit of playaround in the first few levels I started looking at speedruns and GameFAQ guides for any information. I was surprised at the real time world record held by Tipu at the time of writing this, and I learned a lot of techniques I didn't know from my inexperience with the game. And then I saw a thread posted on the forums there that Prince_Leaf had created a flintstones discord, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/REhfHHd if you are ever interested in speedrunning these games or have any questions, they are very eager to answer your questions and have helped a ton in reviewing my TAS progress and throwing out ideas for improvement.

I had known for a while that Prince_Leaf had a TAS on youtube, seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x9wqN6uYow, which I was using extensively for time comparisons when creating early versions of the TAS. But without a user input file it was hard to tell where I was losing/gaining time. However after reaching out to him in the discord he was kind enough to provide me with the input file for his youtube TAS, which I won't post here because it was sent in private. If you wish to see that one you'll have to ask him yourself.

It took a while of experimenting but I slowly started discovering small timesaves here and there, and as I better understood and investigated the game I was even able to uncover completely new strats, though mostly all very minor admittedly. The game has some surprisingly stingy coding that doesn't allow for many big game breaking sequences. I did find several glitches that turned out to be useless but amusing, some of which are listed here: https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/TheFlintstonesTheSurpriseAtDinosaurPeak

I wont go into details on the small mechanics of the game, if you want to view those you can visit the game resources page listed above. Instead I will focus on individual level comments and refer back to certain points on the resources page whenever necessary, because this game has a lot of situational tricks that dont really apply to anywhere else in the game.

Immediately upon starting the game you can reset the console on the first available frame and this will cause the intro text to be skipped, saving around 2 seconds.

I'll use the speedrunners denominations for the stage names just for consistency.

Now, after starting the game we move on to the introduction stage for the game. Immediately we find that we have to climb one of the ledges of these houses in order to reach the ledge above. Fred is the only one who can grab these overhanging ledges, and from a max distance of 4 pixels from the left side and only while facing the direction of the ledge.

I'll go ahead and say this here, if any animation of swinging your club overlaps with your character being on the ground, it will stop you in place. This also applies to your special weapon animation, such as throwing axes or bowling balls. Therefore all club swings should be done in the air. Alternatively you can press A+B on the same frame and you can jump, swing your club and not be stopped in place.

After making our way up we come across the first slope in the game. Now is a good time to talk about movement speed. Normally, your speed increases by increments of 2 until it hits 20, the max running speed. for some reason 20 movement speed moves you in this interval of pixels: 1 1 1 2, 1 1 1 2, and it repeats for as long as your movement speed is 20. This means it takes 10 frames for you to reach max speed, but each increment of 2 is not enough to gain you another pixel, that only happens at certain periods where your accumulative speed values are enough for the game to register that you have enough to "go faster"

Now, entering a slope will put your speed at 33. This seems a bit odd, but also appears enough to move you at a constant 2 pixels per frame. Because this game loves inconsistent coding, swinging your club or weapons while on a slope does not slow you down. In fact you can turn around and face the other direction and your speed will remain 33. The only way it will change is if you jump or reach the end of the slope, where it will drop to 20 immediately. There is no way to preserve 33 speed off of the slope (that is known anyway).

I pretty much always hit barrels when it doesnt cost time to do so. This usually reduces lag by having less objects on the screen.

The dragon fire near the end of this stage are on a global timer. There is a speedrun strategy where you can manipulate them, but in a TAS setting this isn't possible. The flames exist so long that taking damage on them is actually faster. Also the jumps over the dragons seem awkward but there is only 1 jump height in the entire game, including both characters jump the same height. I'll go ahead and post this here, the only way to jump shorter is to switch to barney 1 frame before jumping. This is because switching to barney while standing on the ground actually pushes you 1 pixel into the floor. But since switching characters freezes you in place for 1 frame this is almost never useful.

That concludes the introductory stage. There are several powerups you could grab but since the dragon flames at the end will be on an even worse cycle it is not worth it to grab them. Onto the next stage

Immediately at the start of this stage there is a barrel that contains the first pickup of the special weapon in this game. Special weapons are thrown by pressing U+B and have unique trajectories and damage values. The axe picked up here does 6 damage.

The alligators on this stage put your x-speed to 24 which is enough to get increased pixel pattern to this: 1, 2, 1, 2 etc. Why they increase your speed, I don't know.

A bit later we come to the mini boss of this stage, the armadillo. He has a registered HP value of 20 but that is pretty much irrelevant given the current strat. By breaking the right most block and then clubbing the armadillo at the right timing (while moving right slightly) you can club him completely off the right side of the screen. This trumps any kind of hp he ever had and as soon as he's off screen the game counts him as dead.

Next up is the first forced rope climbing segment of the game, so let's talk about these tightropes. Barney is the only character that can grab these and climb up them. Jumping into them as barney will cause an invisible collision with the rope, stopping you in place, unless you are shooting a projectile or special weapon. In that case you ignore the collision until that particular animation is over. Alternatively you could swap back to fred since he doesnt have collision with ropes but that costs a frame to switch characters. Also if barney grabs the very left edge where the rope starts he can actually be pulled forward by 7 pixels. This can't always be used however because letting go after grabbing a rope will reset your movement speed back to 0. Also, if you hold A you can shimmy along the rope, at a reduced speed of 1 pixel/frame, so you want to do this as little as possible. When hanging onto these ropes barney can pull himself up by pressing U on the d-pad. While this animation is shorter it can also be cancelled midway by switching to fred. This is used for the final dismount because pulling yourself up for 1 frame puts you 18 pixels higher, meaning you can land on the next ledge much sooner.

Just after this, we now come to the raft section of this level. Your character behaves very bizarrely on this raft when you're in the air. This is because the game is trying to auto correct your character to be above the raft, so it adds your speed to the raft's speed as long as you are in the same Y axis plane as the raft. Timing the raft to give you a +4 pixel boost on the last frame of it's existence puts you slightly farther ahead than just falling off the raft as early as possible. There are also several minor glitches in this segment listed in the resources page. Funny, but useless.

Just after this segment we come across a barrel that contains the first Burger powerup that I collect. These burger powerups increase your club meter length, meaning your fully charged clubs as fred will now do slightly more damage. Basic fully charged club does 6 damage, but now it will deal 8 with the extended meter. (increases value by 2 during the charge, so while charging your club it increments like this: 2,4,6,8 at various points on the meter).

The burger powerup is very important for triceratops boss immediately afterwards.

This boss has 24 hp, and since we just picked up a burger powerup increasing our charged club damage to 8, this works out perfectly (8+8+8=24). When damaging the triceratops he'll enter a long invincibility faze where he'll run to the other side of the room before crashing into the wall. The direction he runs is entirely based on which direction fred is facing when damaging the boss. There is a trick where you can actually swing your club behind you by turning around the frame before swinging your club. This causes the triceratops to run to the center of the stage instead, shortening his invincibility time considerably. Afterwards, grab the item that appears as high as possible to end the stage as early as possible.

Immediately in this level we come across the first instance of conveyor belts. These conveyor belts don't actually add to your x-speed value. Instead they add to your pixel advancement. If you're going WITH a conveyor, your speed changes from 1,1,1,2.... to 2,2,2,3. So, all the conveyor is doing is offsetting your pixel count while you're in contact with it. Fred can actually grab the edges of the conveyor as though they were cliffs, but for some reason he can't climb down them if they are attached to solid ground.

Just after the conveyor section we come across an impossible gap to cross, filled with a tightrope below. This means we must swap to barney to grab the rope in order to proceed. Firing a slingshot projectile into a block at the peak of your jump gets rid of one of them early. Then, throwing an axe will prevent barney from hitting the invisible barrier on the rope. After pulling myself back up on the rope, fire 2 slingshot projectiles as early as possible to get rid of 2 more blocks so that fred has enough space to walk in there. (If I never said before, fred has a larger vertical hitbox than barney). While walking on the block near the floor you can press B+A on the same frame for a frame perfect club swing while jumping. This is just enough to destroy the block above without the need to ever stop moving.

After this we eventually come to the elevator section of the cave, where I actually found a completely new strategy. By loading the first set of elevators but stalling as early as possible so as to avoid spawning the second set of elevators for a bit, you can make sure that one of those platforms is in a position where you can just run and jump off it, and not have to wait for it. Also the tops of these pulleys do act as conveyors so they are increasing your speed by walking on it. Near the slopes just after this I found that you actually can jump shorter on slopes by firing a weapon just before jumping.. but you have to be moving DOWN the slope for this to work. The reason this was important is because with this variation I wanted to land early to get speed from the opposite downwards section of the slope as early as possible. It was actually very close to jumping normally, it came down to which one would produce less lag.

Finally you jump on the cart and enter the cart autoscroller. I won't go into much detail but the cart acts similarly to the raft from the forest stage before, where you will gain speed as long as you are in the cart's Y-axis. not much to say, but moving while on the cart actually does increase your x-speed value to a max of 40, which for some reason in this instance it does NOT go back down after you jump off the cart. This can be abused at the end to jump into the end of the stage.

Before I get into this boss I now need to talk about a trick that was discovered by Prince_Leaf in the discord. He found that sometimes he was killing a spider boss in 1 less hit than before, and this was baffling me as well as I couldn't figure out why. We were thinking it was a double hit for a while but actually what I found was happening was swinging the club on the same frame as a previous club swing ended will combine the damage of both of them on the same frame. With a slow club, you can deal 4 damage with a basic club by overlapping them in this manner. So with that in mind, now let's move on to the boss.

The caveman boss here has 30 hp. Normally it would be advised to hit the boulders that fall from the ceiling with fred as this deals 11 damage (it hits the caveman twice, for 6 and 5 on consecutive frames). However, I discovered that turning around and throwing an axe with the hitbox inside the caveman can have the same double hit effect, dealing 12 damage (2 consecutive hits of 6 damage). This can only be used as a last hit as you can not avoid taking damage by doing this. This just barely beats out the old strat of using 2 boulders to kill him, as he is dead before the boulders would even be low enough to hit him.

So to put it short: 2 slingshot hits that deal 1 damage each, followed by a regular axe which deals 6, followed by 2 overlapped hits of 4 damage each, then followed by a regular club swing of 2 damage and finally the double axe hit of 12. 30-(2+6+8+2+12) = 0. Boss is dead. Need to make sure I'm facing right so the boss flies off the right side of the screen, spawning the item faster, it's based off which direction your character is facing.

This stage is an autoscroller and since the camera always moves at a steady rate, swapping characters does not slow you down. Not much to say about this, but there is one small trick near the end of the second surfing section. By taking damage into the final narwhal ramp you can start the jump on a lower y pixel value. Because of this your jump is cut a bit shorter, and since the stage end animation doesnt trigger until you hit the water, this saves a little bit of time.

During the dialogue at the beginning of these level segments you are given 2 free frames where you can jump before the dialogue triggers, but can't be used as it delays the dialogue even longer when you land.

After killing the pogoing monkey and dropping into the pit, I grab the next burger powerup here. This is one of the only places where I switched to barney on the frame before jumping for a shorter jump. It also generates 1 less lag frame.

Then we immediately come to the most bizarre frame rule contraption in the game. Each individual part of this contraption has it's own frame rule, so getting it all to line up is difficult. Hitting the switch causes the rock wall to lower, and then the stone wheel starts moving. Taking damage on the wheel was funny because I still had time to jump back on to it because of the sticky properties of the wheel. However, it actually did save a little bit of lag when jumping off for whatever reason (1 less heart, less pixels to generate?).

It's actually faster to ride the wheel all the way down the lower path since the wheel pulls you with it. However, you miss out on the powerup above (large chunk of meat). This powerup is necessary as it makes your basic club swings around twice as fast, and even speeds up your slingshot projectiles and animations considerably. This is also important because now your basic overlapping club glitch will deal 6 damage instead of 4.. I'm still not quite sure why it does 6 damage but it very useful for later bosses that have little invincibility time.

Next, there's another switch that spawns a rising log platform. There is also another glitch involving these by just ducking as barney the entire ride up, which will put you in the ceiling. Can't do anything with it.

Then we come to the dinosaur kicking section, initiated by hitting the switch with your club. There is no known way to break out of the automatic path it puts you on when you stand near the first dinosaur. Also, only the first one will trigger the sequence, you can actually jump down to the ones below it but they wont trigger even if the switch is still pressed. So there is no way to abuse any momentum from these unfortunately.

Have to wait on the last platform to get in position, nothing else to say about this level.

Level starts off with another conversation like Quarry 1, but this time it actually takes your special powerup (Axe) away and replaces it with a useless healing item. Luckily there is a new powerup just before the boss later.

There's another stone wheel here but not much to say about this one. Just get off as early as possible to grab the ledge with fred.

After the section with the 3 rising logs there is a trampoline that is required to reach the ledge above. The height gained from bouncing on the trampoline is dependent on which character you use. Barney bounces higher than fred. Luckily however, switching to fred midair will still trigger his weight causing the jump to be slightly shorter in order to land in a perfect spot for barney to grab the rope. Here is where we grab the new special weapon: the bowling ball. This deals 10 damage as opposed to the axe that dealt 6 before. However it has a small trajectory, but it can roll on the ground.

Next up is the boss for this stage.

This boss has 32 hp, it seems a bit odd but because of a double hit glitch with barneys slingshot projectile it still works out. For some reason certain bosses can be double hit on the first frame of activation. However with this boss you can't get close enough to the monkey to hit it with anything else other than barney's slingshot which only deals 1 damage each. But since it does 2 damage now we can use 3 10 damage hits. A bowling ball is used for the first hit because there is not enough time between the slingshot and fully charging your club for a 10 damage club hit. his invincibility is so long after the bowling ball hit that you do have time to charge your club fully now. Also note you must be facing left when the monkey takes damage or he will fall to the right instead of the left.

So the damage totals looks like 32-(2+10+10+10) = 0. Boss is dead. Unfortunate that you can't get a double hit with something more damaging. Also the boss must be killed as far left as possible so that he's off screen early. This loads the final object sooner just like all the other bosses.

These teacups at the start of this stage have tiny gaps you can actually jump and land on inside the wall. However there isnt enough room to clip through or do anything cool.

The toaster in this stage surprisingly doesnt launch you higher based on how long you stay on the sinking platform in the middle. You need to launch yourself somewhere near the middle to make the ledge.

The underwater frogs cause a lot of lag especially if you swing your club at them. This is avoided by staying as high on the screen as possible without hitting the spikes.

The next screen starts you off in a current immediately there is not even 1 frame of allowed input before it moves you. Holding right when coming out of it allows you to cut the vertical movement short so you fall faster.

Just after that segment comes to the first use of a completely new trick I discovered. Taking damage on the spikes allows you to move around inside the spikes with invincibility frames. However, I noticed that jumping put your y-speed at -72 when normally underwater it would put it at 27. I found this curious and combined with a corner boost so that you can jump away from the wall you keep that -72 vertical speed. Since the water causes the value to decrease super slowly you get a massive super jump which cuts a lot of small tedious jumps previously needed.

Just after the first boost I killed a seahorse which causes a few less lag frames down below when the shark spawns on the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately it respawns on the way back up but luckily it's not nearly as laggy.

The spike jump technique is used several times in this level, and in fact I needed to make sure I had the max 5 hearts of health to get the most number of these boosts the stage would allow (4). After all of the spike abuses we finally come to the spider boss

This boss has 50 hp. For whatever reason this boss has a phase at the start where it can be double hit, just like the monkey boss, but only if you load the boss on a frame where the frame rule lines up for the double hit. For this boss you have enough time to reach it for a bowling ball hit in order to get maximum damage on him since the bowling ball does 10 damage twice. This immediately puts him at 30 hp. The rest is self explanatory really, it doesnt matter which order you hit him in as long as you're doing 10 damage each hit. You do want to spawn him on the left side of the screen just like any other boss to knock him off screen faster.

So the boss looks like 50-(2*10+10+10+10) = 0. Boss dead.

This level features a lot of mini rooms with a switch that opens a door to send you to the next one. The switches can only be grabbed by fred and suffers from the same invisible barriers as any other ledges. However, switching to barney immediately will allow you to start gaining x-speed because barney's hitbox doesnt interact with the switch's barrier.

Most pits would kill you but for whatever reason falling in one of them actually leads to a pretty significant shortcut, which puts you above a room you would arrive at much later if you just moved on normally.

There's not really much to say about this stage as these room are mostly self explanatory: either lag reduction or switch optimization. There was one room where Matepe from the Flintstones discord pointed out that landing on the switch on the left side was not the same position as landing on the right side. After investigating it turns out he was right, grabbing the switch from the left is 10 pixels apart from grabbing it on the right. However in this position some of the time was lost as I had to wait to shoot a watermelon before it spawns, which would cause a ton of lag.

The section with the alternating pictures generates a ton of lag for whatever reason, it's probably one giant object sprite instead of several small sprites or something. Either way there is no way to avoid it at all.

The witch has 50 hp also, and there isnt really anything to say about this boss. There is a glitch with this room since the game starts you inside a jar. If you swap to barney and then fred you can glitch out the bottom of the screen, but that results in death and a reset to the last checkpoint.

Turning left at the start however will cause the jar to push you to the right resulting in a faster hit on the boss since the bowling ball released will be closer to the boss now.

There are no double hits on this boss sadly, and all spawns are timed the same, no matter if if/when you kill the bats that spawn. It's all on a spawn frame rule. The locations the witch can spawn at are completely random however, but they can be manipulated pretty easily by changing inputs. The only location that truly matters is the last spawn, killing the boss on the left side of the screen. It's getting a bit repetitive now.

This stage starts us off on an autoscroller while riding a pterodactly. The only thing you can do is move around and fire a single projectile. The rocks spawned can drop a star but it's completely RNG whether they do or not. I manipulated every single one to drop one, because why not. You want to end the stage being as far right as possible before the game automatically moves you. Nothing else to say about this, moving on.

Next we're back to platformer. Some of the jumps in this are awkward because of the single jump height and there's no way to grab the ropes quicker. On the first screen, did a few swaps to barney for lag reduction.

On the second screen, I throw a bowling ball to open a barrel for seemingly no reason. However.... You are correct, it was for no reason other than I can without lagging the game.

The third screen is one of the most annoying screens in the game. The pterodactyls here are on a frame rule as to where their hovering animation should be, and it's a pretty large frame rule because it's based on the entire up and down animation. Luckily I was able to find enough improvements to meet the absolute best timing on this and I was able to skip the delay at the pterodactyl at the top of the screen. Otherwise, I would have had to climb up the rope slightly to lure him out first and then fall back down, which was a lot slower.

Baby Dino has 60 hp but actually dies when the hp reaches 15, so in effect he has 45 hp. Also, this is the only boss in the game that can be double hit at any time if you hit it with the club and special weapon at the same exact frame. So combining a bowling ball with an overlapping club can deal 16 damage. There was actually a way to get him to 14 hp in 3 hits instead of 4 by timing a bowling ball throw on the ground as he was falling and then fully charging a club hit (shoutout to Tipu for the idea), but unfortunately he doesn't die from a double hit, probably because it isn't registering the second hit as legit (?).

You can't do the double hit on the first hit either because him moving with the lava wall is on a strict timer at the start. If you double hit on the first hit he will go into other attacks. Why is that important? You want the boss to move to the middle left position as that is where the stage ends. If you dont do this there is an extremely long animation of him jumping along the ground until he gets to that spot. It is so long that it is faster to wait for him to move beforehand..

You also want to move fred into this same position so that he jumps down off the screen faster.

Anyway the damage totals are a fully charged club hit (10), then another on his way down (10), followed by a bowling ball + overlap club double hit (16) which puts him at 24. Then another fully charged club will put him below 15. so 60-(10+10+16+10) = 14. Boss dies.

At the start there is a gap that you can't jump because of the ceiling spikes, even if you swap to barney for a lower hitbox/jump. So unfortunately you must fall and climb up with fred.

Nothing much to say about the boulder chase section of this, you have to change to barney so that you can walk under the spikes. If you are fred your head will hit them. Other than that, jumping to have maximum y velocity down the ledges.

When you reach the end of that boulder section there is a segment where you would normally have to wait for the boulder to fall in the lava to make a platform for you to jump on. However, you can grab the ledge as fred since that will reset your vertical momentum. This is just enough to make it to the other rock that is already down there. I tried to reach the rock without grabbing the ledge but it is ~1 pixel away from being possible. Infuriating.

On the next section with the tightrope, it is faster to get yourself as close to the ledge as possible, pull yourself up as barney but swap to fred immediately. This will put you on top of the ledge without having to go through barney's full climbing animation.

Near the end of this screen there is a wooden platform waiting for you. If you just run onto it you will have to go completely off the ledge before it notices that you are standing on it. It is always faster to jump onto this platform because your vertical momentum will force it to recognize you earlier, even if you are still on the ledge technically. There is a small glitch where the platform can carry you through the ground and you can zip yourself out the bottom of the screen, but it kills you.

This screen starts you on the platform you were on in the previous screen. Originally I had waited the whole length of the ride down, but I noticed if you were facing right the platform would pull you considerably far into the spike platforms before you took damage. I combined this with intentionally taking damage in a cramped space so that I could bypass taking damage from the spiked platform below. However I was unsuccessful at actually making it all the way through and I tried switching to barney for a smaller hitbox, but that seemed to have no effect. I abandoned the idea actually for quite a while until I remembered that ducking exists. If you duck as barney your hitbox is actually low enough that the game will eject you downwards before you even take damage. This initially saved 44 frames but a lot was lost due to the unfavorable platform cycles below.

The platform cycles caught me on a bad position meaning there is a small waiting period for the second one to arrive. I was still able to conserve 19 of the 44 initial frames saved however, so the trick wasn't a total loss.

As said earlier in the run I destroy a lot of barrels when it doesnt cost time in order to reduce objects on screen.

Now we come to the only place where a wall clip trick was actually useful. By switching to fred under these spikes we can get a really short invincibility window because he bounces rapidly between the floor and the ceiling. And since we have invincibility frames I can jump up through the spike block. If you are far enough into the block without facing the block (that will push you out of it immediately) you can actually turn around and get a 1 frame window to jump from. This cuts having to walk all the way to the right and climb up as fred, saving around 92 frames.

Next we see a return of the caveman from earlier though he is a bit different. He has only 20 hp and a lot longer invincibility window than before. I tried to double hit him but it seems like he is immune to it. When he's dead an alligator seesaw will spawn. This seesaw can be used to launch you and the distance is based on which character you are currently. Barney will launch further than Fred. So, if you swap to barney it will throw you higher and you can switch to fred midair to actually slow you down. This was just enough to make it into the gap without having to land and jump first, which is slightly slower than the old strat of using the bonus room above.

Nothing much to say about the tighrope section that comes up next, as I've explained all of the tricks before. Avoiding invisible barriers and full climbing animations.

Then there is an autoscroller segment triggered where the screen is constantly moving downwards. I thought that the level was moving downwards independently of your character so I wanted to do rapid character swaps midair to make the ledges without having to climb. But I quickly found out that you are moving with the stage so you will never gain any height on the ledges doing this. I threw a bowling ball because I can, it does nothing!

Welcome to the laggiest screen in the game.

You are constantly being chased by a stone wheel, but this one turns red and moves fast. You have to club the blocks that you land on, and because of the awkward hitbox of the club it is impossible to destroy the block directly below you, so you have to run a bit to reach the gap. Jumping in most places reduces lag because the jump animation has only 1 frame of animation compared to walking. This isn't "always" the case but in general it usually works.

It especially works from this destructible bridge. This is the single laggiest point in the game, there is no way to avoid it because of the narrow passageway and limited options given. Jumping slightly reduces lag but not by much.

When falling and approaching the 3 breakable blocks that are stacked on top of each other, it is better to get the perfect frame rule for the club to break them so that you can break the bottom 2 without losing movement momentum.

After climbing the final tightrope, for some reason the ceiling next to the end row of spikes will push you further out of it than any other ceiling in the game, whether it's because you're closer to it on the tightrope or not. Either way it saves time to abuse this to get a boost to the right.

This boss said he will get his revenge after you beat him the first time, and he was almost right. He's back but he won't be getting revenge. Unfortunately this version of him can NOT be double hit like the previous one. He has 24 hp so he can still die in 3 hits instead of 2. Bowling ball 10 damage since it will reach the boss faster than your club will. Next a fully charged club does 10 leaving him with 4. You know what that means, overlapping 6 damage club will finish him off. Unfortunately the boss's corpse always flies left so there is no saving time by having him fly off screen. You can wait for him to jump all the way left but it is too slow.

Now we come to the true final boss. The boss's head is the only thing that can take damage so barney is completely useless here, he can't reach that high with his slingshot. Not to mention barney's damage is garbage.

The boss dialogue will eat any bowling ball that exists and the bar meter will still be gone, so that is avoided. A fully charged club timed to release on the first frame after the dialogue box is gone to deal a quick 10 damage. A bowling ball is then thrown for another 10 damage before falling.

There is a frame perfect strat I figured out using the overlapping 6 club damage to get 12 damage per jump. Because of this the boss is dead before ever going into his secondary attack. A bowling ball is used for the last 10 damage because it's faster than using a club.. by 1 frame. Should be noted that if there were around 50 more frames to save before this point it would put the bowling ball on a good cycle to get 2 bowling ball hits in earlier. Either way the boss still dies incredibly fast, and that's the end of the game.

The credits don't begin until you skip the last line of dialogue by pressing Start, so that's where the input has to end.

Special thanks to all the speedrunners of the game who had already discovered just about everything that could possibly be done in real time. Also shoutout to everyone on the flintstones discord: Prince_Leaf, Tipu, Matepe, and others as they showed interest and were constantly providing feedback on my WIPs. Also another special thanks again to Prince_Leaf for providing the userfile for his youtube TAS, as it made it a lot easier to compare times/strategies.

That's pretty much it. As far as possible improvements the most obvious thing would be lag reduction, even though I did try to reduce it as much as possible, it's kinda impossible to remove it all. Also there are various glitches that had no use in the run, but I have little faith that they would ever have relevance. I would love to see a completely new strategy discovered, as this game is actually enjoyable to work on.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.

Darkman425; Replaced input file with one that has the cycle count added.

Darkman425: This has a lot of neat parts to it. The research on optimizing damage on bosses as well as precise movement to minimize slowdown makes for a good watch. You've yabba-dabba-done did a good job!

Accepting to Standard.

EZGames69: Processing...