Huge thanks to RGamma for the encode !
Game objectives
- Emulator used : Dolphin 4.0-225 64bits ( settings )
- Internal DSP files are required for sync.
- ISO MD5 : B1E5D16E9D507727FFFF234F2382C0EA
- ISO SHA1 : 4BB7A5CB9A22D8BBCFB2B5D968535BB601DB2DBD
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
About the game and the run
"GOOD MORNING~~~~" - All the characters of this game
Billy Hatcher is a 2003 platformer developed by Sonic Team for the GameCube. The story is set in Morning Land, a peaceful place inhabited by chickens... until one day, when Dark Raven and his army of Crows attacks and cast Morning Land into the darkness of an eternal night. To save this fantasy world, Billy and his friends will have to wake up all the chicken elders to return morning to the world. The game is composed of 7 worlds, all of which have 8 missions. You get one emblem of courage at the end of each mission and you need 26 of them to unlock the Giant Palace, where the final boss is waiting for you. Gameplay wise, Billy can only run and jump, but when you grab an egg you can also dash, bounce, slam the egg down from the air and much more. If you collect enough fruits with an egg, it will grow and deal more damage to the enemy. Once it reaches its maximum size, you can hatch it. Inside these eggs, you will find either monsters with various powers like fireballs or an item like a jetpack.
The Sonic Team really doesn’t like invisible walls, and that’s awesome because we are in a hurry, so we are just going to break all the levels, kill the bosses way faster than intended, manipulate all the RNG this game can offer and just rush to the end. One of the great thing about this TAS is that the more it progress in the game, the more it breaks the levels.
More than one year and a half ago, I submitted an any% run of this game. People didn’t like it, they said it wasn’t optimized and stuff. And they were right. Thanks to the help of many awesome people, I made an all level% last year. It was way more optimized and got accepted. Since then, many people started to speedrun this game, we discovered many new tricks, and so I decided to redo a good any% run. This run actually took me a very long time to do – more than a year- and 8 resets, but I’m proud of the result. I hope you will enjoy it !
Besides, you should totally watch this run for the song in the credits. It’s totally worth it.
Glitches and Tricks
- Superbounce : In this game, you can use many elements such as signs, chickens, trees, torches, and even other eggs to bounce off at really high speed. The size of the egg and the angle change the level of superbounce.
- Fruits manipulation : Each egg type prefers one type of fruit and will grow faster if they eat it. So we can manipulate the drops of the enemies to get these specifics fruits.
- Double Damage : When you have a limited amount of time to hit the boss (for example, the boss of Blizzard Castle), it’s better to slam the egg down from the air since it hits twice.
- Dash cancel : You can cancel a dash by pressing the opposite direction than where you are going, and the next frame no direction at all. If you do it with the right angle against a wall, that will allow you to instantly drop the egg, as seen in 1-3.
- Fast recovery : At the end of a slope, if you have a good angle and that billy is well positioned, you can recover without the animation, saving more than half a second.
- Text skipping : Some text boxes can be skipped by simply jumping over the triggers.
- Tired billy : Pushing eggs all day is really hard, so at some specific frames, Billy will get “tired” (he will sweat a little bit). His speed suddenly drop to 0 and if he’s dashing, the dash will be immediately stop. This only happens if Billy is on the ground. No matter where Billy is, on which level or anything else, he will always get tired at the same frame, so I try to be in a jump or to use it to make a faster dash cancel, but most of the time it will just slow me down by a few frames.
- Egg Ricochet : When you superbounce into a big egg with the right angle, you will be sent in the air at great speed, distance and height. But it takes some time to set up.
The Levels
There are seven different types of levels, but we only see five in this TAS :
- Save the Elder: These have to be done to complete the game. You need to find the Elder Egg (the gold one) and make it hatch to restore morning to the world. The strategy is simple, get the Elder egg and manipulate fruit to make it hatch as fast as possible.
- Kill the Boss: These have to be done to complete the game. You just need to find the boss and kill him. Killing the boss unlocks another world.
- Reach the Emblem: The emblem is in a point normally hard to reach, you just need to find your way to get to the emblem. This is where the game gets the most destroyed in this TAS.
- Race: Each race has its own way to be optimized. For example, the opponent in Sand Ruin will slow down every time he meets an obstacle. If you break every obstacle in his path, you will finish this race sooner.
- Save a friend: Your friend is in danger! You have 5 minutes to save them… But these levels are really easy to break, none of them take more than 1 minute. There are three missions of this type in the game, and each of them unlock one mission in each world.
Special Thanks
- iongravirei, the guy who inspired me to TAS this game one year and a half ago, figured most of the strats, route, skips you will see in this TAS. He has helped me a lot in the making of the 2 optimized TASes of this game, so he definitely deserves a very special thanks !
- All the people who helped a lot by making suggestions, strats or by supporting me : AlbinoAlbatross, LiquidXSquid, 2dos, ElementalGuard, Grincevent and many others who came to my twitch to help me, thanks !
feos: Accepting for Moons!
Also, what framerate does TASvideos use for GC games ? This is (I think) something like 58.7fps... is that right ? I thought it would be closer to 60 ?
EDIT : Also, it should be noted (will add that) that you need 25 emblems to complete 6-3, and that 6-3 is required to access to the Giant Palace (7-1), which is why I go there last.
