As far as I know this is the first TAS of this game which is one of the reason I chose this. That and it is a fun side-scroller that makes for your typical random TAS. I really have not much else to say
Tricks and Glitches
Soft Obstacle glitch
I don't have an official name of this glitch but it is exploited heavily. And in many places it is human achievable and exploited heavily in speedruns. Any "soft" obstacles can be skipped by wobbling back and forth in the right pattern such that your x position slowly shifts until you are completely through them. A soft obstacle is generally things like enemies, carpets, etc that require an item to pass. Obstacles that needs to be bombed don't count.
Jumping though explosions
If you are two close to a bomb you die. However, if you are jumping, that radius is greatly reduced. I exploit this is many places to avoid having to run away to detonate it.
Damage boosting
There's a lot of time savers, and a few good shortcuts from this. It is your typical damage boost trick, jump in the air, then get hit to go higher than the programmers intended. Not much different than examples like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden games.
Jump cancelling with the tail spin
This is a small and subtle time saver. There is a minimum height you can jump that is pretty high. You can lower it by jumping for 1 frame (well, 2, this is a 30 fps game) then wait 1 frame then do a helicopter tail spin, you will cancel out the jump making it lower. This doesn't save much time but it saves some frames throughout the run.
Stage by stage
Stage 1: The Luxitania
I found a major shortcut here compared to the speedrun that allows me to skip getting the bomb and blowing up a wall. Saves about 20 seconds. There is another subtle trick here that saves a few seconds. There's an unavoidable ? block right before the gorilla. I was able to time it so that the gorilla grabbing the bananas scene happens at the same time as the info screen. While I'm scrolling the info, the gorilla is going away.
Stage 2: The Railway Line
A roller skate level. These are annoying. You hold down to go faster. If you go up hill you gradually lose speed. If you go downhill you gradually increase speed. If you jump, you lose all your speed instantly. Unfortunately there's always obstacles requiring jumping which makes these levels jerky feeling. These levels are the easiest to optimize in comparison.
Stage 3: The construction Site pt 1
Pretty much the speedrun route. I save some time with damage boosting.
Stage 4: Egypt
The speedrun does something impressively hard here. It glitches through the carpet, which is nice and cool but unfortunately you have to get the key and go back. Now you have to do it again while someone is chasing you to get the key back. There's very little room for error on the way back. This TAS does it too, but obviously it isn't as impressive, heh. This one had a lot of tricky places to optimize but they were mostly your typical platformer scenarios.
Stage 5: The Greenhouse
A boss fight. This game is cheap and annoying here, if the plant sees you, you are frozen in your place until it eats you. This means you have to avoid it seeing you. It's pattern is on a global timer. There's a scenario that is 5 seconds faster than this, but would require delaying that much to get the pattern anyway.
Stage 6: The Stone Age
Did a soft glitch trhough the campfire here that the speedrun did not. It was surely known it is just likely too hard to do in real time.
Stage 7: The ice rink
Another roller skate level, ugh
Stage 8: Dracula's Curse
Did a nice damage boost here to save some time. Other than that, your usual platformer stuff. This was one of the more complex levels to TAS, and the results are fun to watch I think.
Stage 9: The Dinosuar
Another boss fight. The goal is to put a bone and a bomb on the top platform and detonate it when the dinosuar tries to eat the bone. You can't pick up both at the same time, but you can pick up something at the same time you drop something else.
Stage 10: Tee construction site pt. 2
Yet another roller skate level, ugh.
Stage 11: The gangster's lair
I due a soft glitch through the obstacle in front of Jack's bar. This is a must shorter route than the speedrun but this trick was known and mentioned by the runner. I think maybe it was just too hard (or risky) to pull off in real time. In addition I have a rather large damage boost skip here by jumping into one of the electrical line sparks. This level also shows off another exploit of this game. You can jump up to a window and go into it, then quickly exit and end up on the platform, in a situation you otherwise couldn't make it all the way up. You just need to get close enough to enter.
Stage 12: The attic
The final boss fight. There's really not much to say here. You need to place bombs. In realtime you should be putting them on the opposite platform than he's on because when he sees you he quickly jumps over there. However, with TAS timing you can set them off on the same platform before he runs away.
Info
- BizHawk 1.11.7
- Takes damage to save time
- Heavy Glitch Abuse (I don't know if it is enough for this one. Certainly these glitches skip a huge amount of the game and there's at least one in almost every (non-roller skate) level. But overall the TAS doesn't feel "broken" like many games do with this tag)
- Any% category
Special Thanks
- wesen for his speedrun and for discovering the ability to glitch through certain obstacles
Noxxa: Solid viewer response. The aesthetics of the game and of the run are received well. Accepting to Moons.
