Turok: Evolution is a sidescrolling shooter for the GBA with 5 stages each divided into 4 levels. One of the selectable characters has a grappling hook that can be used to move really quickly through the game since many stages have grabable ceilings.
This run beats the previous one by hejops by ~30 seconds. The majority of that time is from re-routing in stage 4. Some levels have different exits allowing some limited routing options. It turns out the route used in this run is ~15 seconds faster than the one hejops used. Strangely, the first publication of this game used the faster route, while for some reason the second publication used the much slower one (hejops didn't check according to the submission notes, nor was this caught in judging.)
Aside from that some optimized movement and boss fights make up the rest of the improvement. In my test run I accidentally managed to despawn one of the drills in stage 4 saving ~40 frames, but I was unable to reproduce this in the final version after improving earlier parts, probably related to RNG spawns.
This run is console verified as in the temp encode.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Re-uploading, because I don't know if or how the cycle count works with this emulator. Maybe it isn't a thing here.
nymx: Well, this game has gone through a bit of history. When you said the slower route was not caught in the second submission by hejops, It probably wasn't considered...since the run was a minute faster over the first one. Yet...good work noticing details that I wouldn't have figured. Now that it's resolved...this submission can't be overlooked for the roughly 30 seconds it cuts. Great job as usual.
Accepting over [4024] GBA Turok: Evolution by hejops in 18:44.83.
EZGames69: Processing...
nymx: Re-uploading a movie with a corrected re-record count.
EZGames69: For future reference, if anyone wants to re-encode this movie please make sure to use GBAHawk 2.1.3 or newer so that you get correct audio balance.