Hey guys! Having never TASed a game before, I really wanted to choose something that had little to no speedrun community. I thought it would be fun to find tricks and route the game.
Yushiro started a TAS of this, but they have had no activity on the game for months. I've already found tons of tricks and a few skips while playing through the game. I'll keep posting my TAS progress for this game and any feedback or help would be greatly appreciated :)
WIP
It's taken me a long time, but I've made a TAS of 1-1 that i'm happy with.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/22364380789626825
General Speed Tricks
Spinless Dash
Normally after learning the Star Spin ability, you must perform one before Stafy can start dashing. This can be avoided by holding Down+B for 1 frame then Left/Right+B on the next frame. This can also be done by holding B before you take control of Stafy. Examples include entering a new area/level, after dialogue etc.
Quick Fall
Rather than letting Stafy run off a ledge, it is faster to have him jump off of one. He should only jump for 1 frame because he loses speed while in the air. This is a pretty common trick in platformers.
Skip Text Boxes
Pressing start 1 frame before a text box appears will skip the dialogue and save a lot of time over holding A to get through text.
Quick Speed on Ice
While on ice, Stafy's dash is slow at the start and requires some time for it to gain speed. But by performing a jump for 4 frames while
holding the desired direction, you'll keep your speed you had in the air once you touch the ground.
Damage Boosting
A common trick in multiple games that also works in Stafy 2. When getting hurt by something, Stafy can be boosted in a certain direction depending on where he got hit from. This is useful in World 4 where you can get damage boosted by ice statues to skip certain parts of levels.
Speed Slides
This is the trick I'm most proud of, the Speed Slide. Any of the spots that you need to slide under allow any of the Speed Slide glitches to work. Normally when standing up before getting to the other side of a crawl space, Stafy will be pushed back until he is no longer OoB. I discovered there is a one pixel spot in a crawl space that will not push Stafy back OoB. If you jump while in this spot, Stafy will be pushed back OoB at a very fast speed. This leads into multiple tricks that I will detail below.
But first, the setup for a Speed Slide is as follows. Stopping a dash for two or more frames, then holding down to duck slide allows for the easiest positioning. There is always 1 specific X coordinate that when duck sliding from, Stafy will end up in the OoB spot for this trick. It's obviously different for each level, but can be done easily.
Quick Slide
While in this spot, simply jumping will give you a short speed boost. If you hold down while in the boost state, you'll go faster and keep the speed for longer. This is not as quick as the other methods but is better for shorter distances.
Super Slide
Jumping every other frame will actually make Stafy clip OoB and repeat a jump pattern infinitely until you stop jumping all together. The Super Slide is done by jumping every other frame until the 13th frame. This will then shoot Stafy out at an incredible speed and can be sped up by ducking. The Super Slide will only shoot Stafy out from the direction you originally came from.
Hyper Slide
Jumping every other frame for 6 frames will put Stafy in another spot OoB where he will not get pushed out. If you press right 1 frame, then left for 2 after jumping for 6 frames he will shoot out at speed that's even faster than a Super Slide. This is by far the fastest SS I have found and can be done even faster if you duck during the boost. This is also the fastest movement method in the game.
Super Jump
Although not a SS, this is also a result of the OoB spot. If you hold Up+Right+A, Stafy will clip into the ground for a frame then launch straight up into the air very quickly. He will also fly pretty high up so this could be used to gain a lot of height to reach otherwise unreachable ledges.
It should be noted too that most of these tricks work in the other GBA Stafy games in some form. The only one that doesn't is the Speed Slide because the Duck & Slide ability does not exist in the first game.
