Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun in 19:30.83 by Noxxa

Game objectives

• Emulator used: BizHawk v1.5.3
• Aims for fastest time
• Plays on hardest difficulty
• Takes damage to save time
• Manipulates luck
• Goes through even more autoscrollers than the other Tintin run

About the game

Gameplay notes

• See the notes on Tintin in Tibet. Gameplay is mostly the same, but with a few differences.
• Tintin's controls are slightly different from Tibet: B doubles as a crouch button when not holding an item, and it's possible to jump out of a crouch or picking up an item.
• On Hard difficulty, Tintin has only 3 hit points compared to Tibet's 4.
• Falling from large heights does a maximum of 2 damage points. This is used a few times for shortcuts.
• Hitboxes are still terrible.

Stage by stage comments

Stage 1 - Museum

• The first stage is already long and boring.
• There's a little Z-axis movement in this stage: pressing up or down to switch movement planes in order to get past some obstacles.
• It's possible to corner boost when switching movement planes. This gains a few pixels here and there.
• It's impossible to jump over the people walking around without taking damage. Their hitbox extends vertically to way past jump height.

Stage 2 - Fireball

Stage 3 - Garden

• This is the definitive Run Right For Justice: The Stage. It's long and completely flat.
• This stage also introduces a new form of movement (which isn't in Tibet): climbing ledges by standing under them and pressing up. Often times in later stages, I need to carry a crate or rock or something somewhere in order to be able to climb ledges this way.
• The bullets from the right side of the screen are spawned based on position.

Stage 4 - Car

• The first minigame of sorts in this game.
• Horizontal position does not matter for time or speed purposes, which gives me something to play around with - driving around as recklessly as possible.

Stage 5 - Docks

• We finally reach a stage with some actual platforming.
• Level design in this game is not as foolproof as in Tibet: it's possible to use a really precise jump at the start of the stage to prevent having to drag the vertical pillar of goods down. There are more little sequence breaks like this later on.

Stage 6 - Docks chase

• First real autoscroller in this game. Relatively straightforward.

Stage 7 - Ship

• This stage has several switches, which either open certain doors or move up certain boxes, allowing further progress.
• The jumps to get over the sailors are really precise. Their hitboxes are bigger than they appear.

Stage 8 - Town

• By running, briefly crouching and then jumping, I barely manage to get under one of the falling vases without taking damage.

Stage 9 - Mountain

• I sequence break a lot of this stage:
  • Early on (when getting the health pickup) the player is supposed to use another route to go down safely, but by using pixel perfect positioning next to the spikes on a platform, and then landing high enough on the next platform, it's possible to go down without taking fall damage. It's also possible to just go down and take damage, but that would hinder further sequence breaks.
  • The people with llamas follow Tintin along the horizontal axis and move faster than him, which means it's not possible to avoid taking damage from them unless you grab a rock and put it in front of them to block their path. Early on this is trivial because the rock is right there, but later on the rocks are far away from them and it takes a lot of time to go out of the way, pick them up, and return them. Fortunately, it's also possible to pass them taking just 1 point of damage.
  • There's a big and really precise jump (the jump has to be frame-perfect with maximum velocity), followed by another big jump, which allows skipping to the end part of the stage with the final llama guy. I just take damage to get past him, and the end of the stage is there.

Stage 10 - Vulture Descent

• Get used to seeing autoscrollers here for about four minutes, as there are three of them in a row here.
• Another gameplay change, and basically a vertical autoscroller. Even holding down the whole time, it's still slow.
• It's just barely impossible to skip the second clock item. Time will run out and the stage will end even though the floor is in sight.

Stage 11 - Avalanche

• Another autoscroller, this time with Tintin facing the screen.
• At least the music in this stage is good.

Stage 12 - River

• And now we're in a canoe. The stage is now a horizontal autoscroller.
• Movement speed as well as scroll speed are way too slow.
• I play a game of whack-a-crocodile here in an attempt to make it any interesting.

Stage 13 - Waterfall

• Finally, another platform stage.
• I do some more sequence-breaking jumps here

Stage 14 - Cave

• There are a lot of doors here that lead to all kinds of other doors. It can get confusing very fast. It's also subtly divided in four 'sections'.
• A precise jump in the first section allows me to get to the area with the rock without having to take a detour and enter a few doors.
• You're also supposed to push a tall rock down to land safely, but who cares about safety? The rock is enough to reach the needed exit anyway.
• Another sequence break in the second section skips having to move around the tall rock at all. Oddly, falling off the platform with the health pickup makes it impossible to reach the ledge, but jumping off it (or jumping off the rock) works fine. Falling off the top ledge also works (and is faster), but causes taking fall damage, which is still needed for later on.
• There's another "rocks fall" section after moving down the second tall rock in the third section, but by careful camera positioning it's possible to avoid triggering it.
• Defying safety again in the fourth section. Normally, to go down there, you're supposed to enter multiple doors and go through another "rocks fall" section, but just falling down there works just as well.
• Midway through the fourth section (a bit after the damage fall), I do another precise jump to avoid having to get the rock up ahead.

Stage 15 - Newspaper

• Just like Tibet, the semifinal stage is a puzzle. Unlike Tibet though, this is just one puzzle. It's a 15-puzzle.
• Solving the puzzle optimally involved luck manipulation for an optimal pattern, analyzing the patterns (which was only feasible using some memory digging and lua displays) and using external tools to solve it as fast as possible.

Stage 16 - Escape

• Another autoscroller. Pretty basic, aside from the spear-wielding enemies with really tall hitboxes.

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