Hey Arnold improved by 3516 frames (58.82 seconds). Mostly from small precision improvements throughout, more glitching and better bossfights.
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.4.2
- Takes damage to save time
- Heavy glitch abuse
- Manipulates luck
- Genre: Platform
Info
Hey Arnold! The Movie is a fairly standard sidescroller. There are 5 worlds each with 4 levels, where you control a number of different characters, presumably following the plot of the movie/show. Most levels have some additional goal, like "collect all the objects", but there are some standard "reach the end" levels too.
The game is a little glitchy as you'll see watching the TAS. The biggest bug is that if you shoot your weapon during a specific window when jumping, you go much higher than you're supposed to. This was used in the previous TAS, but relatively sparsely, so I was able to save time by incorporating it a lot more. There's another jump bug with the barrels near the end, where getting hit and jumping instantly makes you fly up.
A new glitch that was not used in the previous run is jumping off objects you can hang off of, which show up in four levels in the run, most notably, the first two stages. Normally you just fall if you try jumping off them, but there is a brief jumpable window if you grab the lowest pixel. This was actually my main motivation to do the run, even though it doesn't really save too much time.
I was able to improve some boss fights significantly. Most notably improved are the first boss and the final boss, since they behave quite randomly. The final boss is pretty awkward to watch, but it's to manipulate him to charge, since it makes him vulnerable a lot faster than in the published TAS.
Aside from that, I saved time everywhere from better movement. I estimate almost all screens have 10-20 frame improvements in them, mostly from larger jumps (since each jump costs a frame, but is still the fastest way to move), avoiding enemies or collecting objects better. I also took more damage in this TAS, especially in the first two levels when I don't have the running powerup since it's faster that way.
Also, I should mention that 5-2, the autoscroller level, isn't really an autoscroller. You can make the screen scroll a little faster by tapping the left button. So I picked up a handful of frames there.
That should be all, but don't hesitate to ask anything. Hope you enjoy the TAS.:) Thanks to xy2_ for his run, and his informative submission text, which was quite useful.
Memory: So the optimization here looks quite good.
So I decently liked this run and the audience seemed to be in favor of it as well. In the past I remember not liking this game that much but looking back I'm not really sure why. The
ratings of the published run aren't great but for now I'll accept to moons and we can observe if they'll be any different.