Empire of Dreams is the first Klonoa game released on the GBA. In it, Klonoa must travel through the Empire of Jillius and defeat four monsters terrorizing the land, to be pardoned from breaking the sacred law that forbids dreaming. Using tricks you might recognize from the sequel of this game, this TAS is 32 minutes faster than the RTA WR.
Table of contents
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
Every world has four stage types which are presented in the same order: visions X-1, X-2, X-3, X-5, and X-7 are platformer stages; visions X-4 are board stages; visions X-6 are autoscrollers; and X-BOSS are boss fights. In an Any% setting you can skip X-4 or X-5 and X-6 or X-7 levels, but we're going for 100% completion of the game. This requires beating all levels, collecting all the dreamstones within them, including the 3 EX stages.
In platformer stages—which represent the majority of stages—the objective is to find three stars to unlock the ending door. These platformer stages have 30 dreamstones each. X-4 levels have Klonoa riding a surfboard to the end, and X-6 levels are autoscrollers which have nothing but playaround since they can't be sped up. These two latter types each contain 100 dreamstones per vision.
This TAS is done on the Japanese version of the game, as it allows the NAMCO screen at the start to be skipped, saving ~5 seconds.
Movement, Glitches, Tricks, and Stuff
- Klonoa can run, jump, flutter (for ~1s), and shoot his wind bullet to grab enemies (e.g. Moo's) for a double jump, or to throw them at other enemies or switches.
- Klonoa moves 1, then 2 pixels horizontally at max speed (1.5). Since double jumps stop his movement, each one can be a pixel SLOW, so we always jump the frame he moves 2. That way, his speed goes 1, 2, 2, 1.
- **Damage boosting** is done by firing the wind bullet and turning before an enemy hits you to get sent in the opposite direction faster. This gives you extra height as well, which is used to reach higher areas faster than intended. Another form of damage boosting involves walking into an enemy and jumping at the same time to increase your jump height by 10 pixels. This can also be combined with grabbing the enemy to bring it to higher platforms.
- By fluttering for 1 frame in the air, Klonoa can reach the ground 6 frames faster. If you want to stay in the air longer, you can **air step** by fluttering and shooting the wind bullet on the same frame to reset Klonoa's Y velocity.
- A **perfect flutter** is performed by frame perfectly releasing the A button at the end of it. This gives 1-5px of extra height.
- Holding a direction while moving up or down a ladder can save 16 frames by triggering the block to load the next area earlier.
- In board stages, Klonoa’s speed is dictated by his Board Speed Momentum (BSM). Klonoa accelerates as he moves downhill, and his acceleration is only lost by landing on an upwards hill, landing on a springboard, or entering a new room. Repeatedly jumping up hills loses less BSM than riding them, and fluttering slows you down so we try to avoid it.
- You aren't supposed to be able to carry Moo boxes through low ceilings, but you can double jump before it enters your hands, letting you DJ before holding it to bring it further under the ceiling.
- After a double jump with a Moo box—if done low enough—it's possible to regrab it in midair to get the box higher up. This is done frequently to either skip or speed up sections.
- When jumping into a ceiling, or with the extra height from a Perfect Flutter, you can clip into it slightly which allows you to make another jump. This can theoretically be combined endlessly, but that sadly has limited use in the run.
- Waterfalls—introduced in 4-2—can be zipped through instantly by first using a box or enemy to clear a path, then moving Klonoa under it and turning him around.
- Only the bosses have some kind of RNG element to them. The RNG changes every frame and there are limited ways for Klonoa to change it. Most convenient is to delay frames between hits, which was done in all boss fights to some degree.
World 1 - Ghazzaland
The first world, which just has basic mechanics. There isn't anything else really worth explaining here.
World 2 - Priamill
Introducing the wind turbine vents. These will make Klonoa fly upwards until he hits a ceiling before he is able to move left or right again. The only way to get through the wind otherwise is by using a block. We tried many methods to be able to clip through them without a block, to no avail.
World 3 - Jiobob
This world introduces the Boomie bombs. Upon being grabbed, a timer starts ticking down on a 26 (0-25) frame timer for each “second” on their clock. Each time it is regrabbed, the timer goes down by 1 second and the frame counter resets to 25. Optimally, you want to regrab it just as it has ticked down, saving 26 frames. This makes for some interesting strategies on how to optimally throw or double jump and then regrab as quickly as possible.
World 4 - Santal
The theme here is Arrows! Blue arrows can be changed by throwing the wind bullet at them; red ones can not be changed. Not much more to say.
World 5 - Leljimba
The magnet blocks starting in 5-1 are fairly uninteresting and not worth commenting about.
5-Boss: The first boss, Jillius, has a 255-frame timer that runs when he starts charging up the lightning ring. This timer keeps ticking until the eye in the middle has been hit. Then for the second phase, the timer will continue where it left off, meaning the lower the time is, the further the boss has to travel before starting to charge and the further he has to travel back after the hit. The first hit is therefore set up to be as high as possible while still getting a time of 91 after the second hit, which sets up the third hit to be charged as early as possible.
The lightning storm during the final phase can either be three at once (fast) or 1+1+1 (slow). It was faster to bring up the pause menu after the first lightning hit, as RNG changes every frame then as well, rather than delaying frames before the previous hit. The same RNG manipulation strategy is used in the final boss as well for the projectiles that attack your from below.
Thanks
Gstick - For his Any% TAS that was posted to Nicovideo. Had a lot of great tricks and strategies and it was nice to have a run to compare to!
Kan - For helpful feedback and support throughout the process!
nymx: Claiming for judging.