Released in June 2000, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is a 2.5 dimensional, side-scrolling adventure game featuring Kirby, our little pink hero. This time around, it's up to Kirby to collect the seventy-four crystal shards and save the fairies' home, Ripple Star.
Game Objectives
- Emulator used: Mupen64 0.5 rerecording v8
- Takes damage to save time
- Manipulates luck
- Collects all Crystal Shards
- Genre: Platform
See
this page for most of the tricks used in this run.
Yet another new N64 title from yours truly! The soundtrack and atmosphere of this game captivated me as a kid so I decided that it deserved a nice TAS. I decided to go for 100%, otherwise I would have just ended up using the fire ability all the way through. This game isn’t really fast-paced, but I still suggest you watch it all because each stage has a nice little touch to it.
Alright, now sit back and enjoy!
1-1
Unlike the SDA run, I just use the single fire ability instead of the double fire ability. sonicpacker and me tested it and it turned out to be way faster to blow air after each use of the single fire. Boss battle is optimized.
1-2
Pretty short stage, there. I try to entertain as much as I can during the boss battle.
1-3
Jumping before the stairs and use the single fire afterwards is faster. Jumping on the side of the platforms instead of climbing through them is also faster. I easily one-cycle the boss.
1-4
Here, I’m forced to take a hit to save time. I think I could also have manipulated the boss to avoid the falling apples animation at least once, I’m not sure.
2-1
Sadly, there’s no way to make the sand go up faster. Also, rolling down the hill being in the rock form is slower.
2-2
It’s possible to get a fire enemy hit boost in the King DeDeDe maze part, but it’s slower.
2-3
I’m not really satisfied with this stage. There are some tiny mistakes that should be fixed in v2. It’s faster to avoid the last big underwater bone from the left.
2-4
There’s a little trick here that I call float-reset; when you take a hit, your floating counter resets, thus giving you the ability to fly again. You’ll also notice that I keep my single fire power-up instead of getting the light bulb ability. There’s a limited amount of possible 3-items combinations (about 5, that I know of) so I just tested them until I found the good one.
2-5
Now, this boss battle was a pain in the ***. Manipulating the different phases was insanely hard and I’m glad I could one-cycle them all by still keeping my best friend, the fire ability.
3-1
Not much to say here.
3-2
The major timesaver here is to run in the water as much as possible because the current gives you more speed.
3-3
Two things to point out; first, turning into rock form will give you much more falling speed than being in Kirby form (thanks physics??). Second, I had to wait a little bit before turning into the hamster, otherwise I would have gotten in the owl form (you can’t reach the shard by just flying up there).
3-4
Like you, I hate water stages, but at least they are easy to optimize ;)! Pulling a fish up your head saves time in this case.
3-5
Loved this battle as a kid! Everything is optimized here, to my knowledge.
4-1
By getting hit by the spider while swallowing, I can clip trough the ground and collect the first shard a bit faster.
4-2
Constantly jumping with the mine cart saves a lot of time. The room with the pillars going up and down can’t be done faster, afaik.
4-3
I chose to manipulate the sculpting part and get the umbrella instead of the hat or the pizza because it turned out easier to do with the curling ability.
4-4
Optimizing the curling was the most annoying thing in this whole TAS. I think some frames could still be saved with better optimization (same thing goes for 4-3).
4-5
I take damage both to save time and entertain. All the boss phases are manipulated.
5-1
Same as in 4-2, constantly jumping with the sleigh saves a lot of time.
5-2
I love this stage’s theme song!
5-3
With some testing, I figured it was still faster to re-visit 5-1 and get the fire ability. Also, like in 2-4, I just tested the different regular possible combinations until I got the good one.
5-4
Ah, the factory! I did some silly stuff at the “ceiling-crushing” part because it can’t be manipulated and thus can’t be done faster. I also had a big decision to make and whether or not I was keeping the fire ability or switching it for the electricity ability. Why?
5-5
Because this boss is a troll inside a huge robot costume! He is a pain to manipulate, but there’s worse... when trying to hit him with the fire ability, in his second form, you have to hit a very specific spot to hurt him, otherwise it won’t work. Anyway, off to the last planet!
6-1
This stage looks a lot like 1-1. Same music, same shard locations, same tomato before the room transition, mini-boss battle, same ground design, same enemy position... (déjà vu?) Everything went well, what can I say?
6-2
Ohhh, that scary feeling I got when playing this stage as a kid is still haunting me... hence I beat the stage as quick as I can! You know, looking back at this, I still see some tiny improvements, but nothing major.
6-3
The light saber is mandatory for this stage... what a deadly weapon! Fun fact: enemies don’t “die” until you fully swallow them. That’s why I couldn’t just put the fire dude up Kirby’s head and wait for the cactus enemy to appear.
6-4
Here comes the final boss (or is it?). I was easily able to one-cycle him on every phases, unlike the SDA run.
Last stage
I tried to find a good pattern to end up the input early, but didn’t get anything. I hope you enjoyed the run, thanks for watching!
Special Thanks
- sonicpacker: He encouraged me and gave me feedback throughout the run.
- Survive: His 1-1 TAS run motivated me to pick this game up again and finish the run.
- peril1337: His SDA run gave me a nice goal to beat.
- Comicalflop and CoolKirby: For watching my WIPs and giving me advices.
Baxter: Not the fastest paced game, but a well executed TAS. The 100% goal lead to significantly more variety and planning. An any% category for this game seems almost pointless given this movie, so collecting all shards was a great choice. This TAS got a good response from the viewers; accepting.
