E Mo Dao, also know as Devil Island or Devil Land, is an unlicensed GBC game developed by Vast Fame. (more)
The game itself is a copy of Getsu Fuuma Den for NES, with different graphics, musics, and without the pseudo-3D-view dungeons.
There is an overworld seen-from-above map that have to be travelled in order to get to the final boss. Along the way, there are many minor crossroads, but the game is actually very linear: in order to proceed to the next map, you're forced to beat several bosses in a set order.
The route is the same as for Getsu Fuuma Den, with the only expection that levels 30 and 49 are swapped: map
The gameplay in the levels may look similar to Castelvania series. You have to travel from left to right (or to right to left, depending on the case) thought the level in order to get past it on the map. The levels are packed with many kind of monsters, that when killed may drop a soul, that when picked restores 5 HP, or a "bag of dollars", literally. Every monster has its own movement pattern, health, dollars drop amount, exp gain amount, and some throw projectiles at you.
Like many unlicensed games, avoiding getting hit is often nearly impossible, due to the poor game development, but on the other hand you can easly get health drops from enemies.
You start the game with a whip as weapon, that can hit from very low distance. With money, is possible to buy other weapons and items to the shops. After beating the last but one boss, you get a powerful whip that fires a sort of air blade that can hit from any distance. Weapons and Items must be set on the pause screen into a level, in order to be used. Damage of whip weapons increases with experience.
Here is the list, with relative cost/s. Note that names are arbitrary:
Consumables Items
Gauntlet (S1/S6:150$, 300$): Doubles any weapon damage until you exit from the level.
Dragon Ally (S8:400$): kills every enemy on screen. deals 20 damage to bosses. can't be doubled by using gauntlet. Takes about 293 frames.
White Jug (S3:150$, S2:200$): Grants invulnerability for 12 seconds. No, Shops names are not swapped.
Armor (S4/S5:300$, S0:600$): Grants invulnerability for 12 seconds.
Red Potion (S1:100$, S2/S3:150$, S4/S6/S8/S9:200$, S7:400$, S0:500$): Restores some HP.
Hourglass (S5:100$, S9:350$): Stops enemy movements and spawning.
Crucifix (S3:200$, 300$): currently unknown
Weapons Items
Regular Flail: You start with this.
Fireball (S2:200$, 250$): Throws a projectile that pierces throught enemies and deals 1 damage for tick
Rock Flail (S1:200$): Same as regular weapon, but can also break Brick Blocks. Getting this is mandatory.
Kunai (S0:600$): Broken weapon that can deal up to 1 damage about every 2 frames if close enough to the enemy. Can kill Bugman bosses in about 2,5 seconds. Damage does not increase with experience.
Ultimate Flail: The only weapon that reasonably damages the final boss. Deals 16 HP damages, also fires a projectile. Damage can be doubled to 32 with Gauntlet.
Passive Items
Shield (S7:350$): Halves damage to player.
Winged Shoe (400$): Allows to hit enemies by jumping, orizontal velocity is slower when jumping.
Candle (S4:150$, S7:350$): currently unknown
Unlockables
Demon Pass: You get this when you beat a Bugman boss on "P" named levels. Needed for entering gate levels.
Ultimate Flail Piece: You get this when you beat a boss on "D" named levels. Need all 3 to unlock Ultimate Flail and access final boss battle.
Here are the Shops list:
S1: Red Potion (100$), Rock Flail (200$), Gauntlet (150$)
S2: Red Potion (150$), White Jug (200$), Fireball (200$)
S3: Red Potion (150$), Crucifix (200$), White Jug (150$)
S4: Candle (150$), Red Potion (200$), Armor (300$)
S5: Hourglass (100$), Fireball (250$), Armor (300$)
S6: Red Potion (200$), Crucifix (300$), Gauntlet (150$)
S7: Shield (350$), Red Potion (400$), Candle (350$)
S8: Red Potion (200$), Dragon Ally (400$), Gauntlet (300$)
S9: Winged Shoe (400$), Red Potion (200$), Hourglass (350$)
S0: Kunai (600$), Armor (600$), Red Potion (500$)
The game has a simple experience system that determines damage output of Regular Flail and Rock Flail. The experience amount is a Word value that start at 1024, and grows with every enemy kill. Here is the table:
Damage | Experience required
1 | 1024 - 3071
2 | 3072 - 6143
3 | 6144 - 8191
4 | 8192 - 10239
5 | 10240-12287
6 | 12288-14335
7 | 14336-16383
8 | 16384
Known glitches:
Quicksave Abuse
This is technically not a glitch, but more like a development overlook. Involves pressing Select to quicksave the game right before entering the levels, and then hard resetting. This effectively allows you to skip most levels. All credits go to Mothrayas for discovering this.
Hurted Mid-air
When the hero gets hit while in mid-air, he won't get recoil and will be able to attack much faster with Flail weapons. Can be used to hit faster regular enemies and Bugman bosses.
Landing Whipping
When the hero land in the right moment, the Whipping animation will be cut and get able to whip again faster.
Drop Manipulation
The enemy drops simply depends to the moment they are killed.
Level Entering
Not sure about its possible uses, but I have to note that right before the spinning animation before entering a stage on the overworld, the game thinks for a moment that you already are in a level. So it's possible to access the level pause menu if Start is pressed in the right moment, but I didn't found anything useful in this. If you set a consumable item in this situation, you will lose it without getting its effect during the level you're entering.
So that was the theory. Here is the route I'm planning for my run:
-go to level 01 and farm 400$ with the 3 centipedes, then exit on the right
-beat boss at area P1; take damage to save time
-go to shop S1 and buy everything
-travel through gate 13; avoid any damage
-enter level 16 by the left and farm 250$, full health, and get to ~3000 total experience
-go to stairs D1; set Rock Flail and Gautlet; get to 3072+ experience before facing the boss
-go back through 13
-go to shop S6 and buy Gauntlet
-go to shop S5 and buy Hourglass
-travel through gate 17, 18, 19, 20, 21; take damage to save time if necessary
-beat boss at area P2
-get back to 19 and travel through 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
-...to be continued
There may be some changes for the part after clearing D1, but it's probably already fine. I have to study a bit the next levels enemies before confirming.
Here is the current WIP encode:
Link to video
Here the .bk2 file: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/download/35994737823374091
A quick lua script to help lag management: http://pastebin.com/2QfTpsFe]Movement
And memory addresses watch .wch file: http://pastebin.com/iLrASh1y
So, I had an idea while watching this run: [2285] GBA Densetsu no Stafy "demo glitch" by jlun2 in 03:28.68
In this run, a major skip is managed by making the second demo play to desync, and thus getting control like if it was an actual play. This resulted in getting all levels unlocked right away.
The fact is that Devil Island also features demo plays, which of the second shows the Ultimate Flail in action, which is the item required to unlock the final boss fight.
If only there were to be found a way to exploit this demo, the game would get beaten in the blink of an eye.
It looks like the game completely locks all inputs during the demos, except the Start button, which only allows to stop playing the demo and get back to the title screen. I tried playing a bit with the RAM; I made the demo desync by lowering the hero's health, but this didn't unlock the inputs and the demo still ended the moment was planned by its internal timer. I also tried lowering the hero's lives in order to trigger the game over title: this unlocked the inputs and delayed the demo timer, but after pressing on "continue" the game got back to the title screen anyway.
Edit: I succeeded. [3471] GBC Devil Island "demo glitch" by ThunderAxe31 in 02:10.27
So! After about 10 months I'm finally back at working with my non-main skip run. Here are the news:
First, here is improvement over my previous WIP, more than 3 seconds saved thanks better technique in the money farming part (and some minor optimizations in level 13): User movie #42827983717913109
Second, I've created a hitboxes and watches lua script.
Third, I've found a glitch that freezes the game. It involves spamming the object enemy; if you stop before freezing the game, you will still be able to play and no enemies will spawn anymore for the rest of level.
Fourth, I've written an actual bot for optimizing the experience grind in level 16. It's still in a very early alpha stage, but it can already be used. You need to launch it right before spawning the second group of enemies.
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