This Sega Genesis/Mega Drive TAS was started January 27, 2016 by Gronkling (aka lovelyanimal), with ccexplore completing many early levels and creating several useful Lua scripts, and paiy completing many late-game levels and giving further optimisations to already completed levels. The TAS was finished March 8, 2024 by paiy.
The aim of the TAS was to start the game at the first level, and end the game at the last level, without using any passcodes, leading to a 100% completion. We save the required number of lemmings in each level, but do not go out of the way to save any more, leading to lemmings dying to save time. We used the PAL version as this is the fastest version, as it has a physics update every 3 frames, rather than every 4 frames in the NTSC version.
We utilised many glitches and edge behaviours. Some of the most common are:
- Creating staircases by stopping bashers and miners mid-stroke
- Allowing lemmings to slide upwards through terrain by building as a group of lemmings attempts to fit into a small gap
- Destroying steel through various means, often overwriting its trigger area with a blocker.
- Pushing lemmings through terrain using a blocker
- Building in mid-air on the last frames of a digger
- Exploiting misshapen or missing trigger areas (we made these visible through a Lua script)
A downside to this game is that it has a large amount of lag whenever many lemmings are on screen. To reduce lag, we often have to scroll the screen away from lemmings and tool use, so key moments often happen just off screen.
This TAS was created in BizHawk, on various versions over many years. The final TAS file was compiled on version 2.9.1. Each level was TASed individually, before being compiled in a single file, so rerecord count will be inaccurate.
Other Points
- SHA1: 0B00509E9857CB97243E9F2741E90DE1
- Uses standard BizHawk Genesis core: Genplus-gx
nymx: Claiming for judging. Looking forward to this, since this was a top game for me on the SNES.
nymx: Replacing with a trimmed movie file.
nymx: 8 years...Wow! The work shows and I am truly amazed at the results here. Even though I've played this game a lot, I've never seen it all the way through. It got so hard that I wasn't able to figure out some of the levels, mid-way. I did a search for some Genesis runs, but I wasn't successful at finding any. My guess is that you destroyed the best human effort by at least 1 hour 1/2. With all these crazy tricks, it was certainly holding my attention and making me wonder how you pulled it off. Congratulations! Great work to the 3 of you.
Accepting.
