Baby Felix Halloween

Baby Felix Halloween is an action platformer released for the Game Boy Color in Europe in 2001. Felix's friends have been captured inside of a haunted house, and Baby Felix and Kitty must rescue them by traversing through five themed worlds. The best part of the game is the incredible soundtrack by Alberto Jose González, one of the kings of Game Boy music.

Game objectives

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Uses death to save time (once)
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Uses easiest difficulty
  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.11.9

Comments

If seeing the words "baby" and "Felix" together remind you of anything, then you know why this TAS exists; SiIvaGunner, and the Puzzle Room incident. This rip in particular is the reason I even know this game exists, and has a great soundtrack to boot! I tried running the game real-time for the meme, but was terrible at it, but I thought it had some TAS potential.
I did a testrun/V1 TAS which was the base of this. I thoroughly double-checked all the movement, tried some different routes, improved boss strats/RNG, optimized subpixels, etc. to end up saving 601 frames. You can see his V1 here (in a slightly odd format): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv_vS-coct8
For the most part, you want to just hold right, and defeat enemies as you go. You have a close-range hat and a long-range slingshot at your disposal, and both attacks can be charged to deal more damage. Neither waste any frames to use at all. Jumping is to be minimized; there's one frame when you land where you don't move forward, unless you land on a trapdoor or just right on a slope (like the mushrooms in stage 2). There's also ledge-grabbing, much like the critically acclaimed game 7 GRAND DAD for the NES.
I optimized subpixels as much as I could entering loading zones, doors, climbing trees, etc. When I get hit in boss fights, it's to make my subpixel an odd number so I can max it out at 15. (Your x speed only hits even numbers from directional input... Which probably means 14 is the same as 15 in most cases, but, I wanted to max it out anyway, just in case.) It's a pretty simple game so I don't know what else there is to say. Here's our watch file (made by qqwref): http://pastebin.com/H8gzG6dp

Difficulty

The difference between the difficulties is how much damage you deal/take. Here's how much you deal:
WeaponEasyMediumHard
Slingshot421
Charged slingshot842
Hat642
Charged hat963
Easy was chosen because it's faster and looks nicer, as almost every enemy can be killed without losing time. For some enemies, Hard would be more interesting, stringing multiple hits together to kill them without losing time, but for most enemies, you'd just need to wait in place or take a hit because there's no good way to kill them fast with the extremely weaker damage, and it's impossible to jump over them. (Vertical hitboxes are NOT on your side.) Bosses would also take at least 3 times as long, and have some slow phases/periods of invulnerability. It'd all look a lot less TASsy. So, me and qq both agreed Easy is better than Hard in this case.

The obligatory frame save chart even though it's comparing to a testrun

The main reasons for saved frames are a lot of subpixel optimizing, less ledgegrabs thanks to a different route through the level, and better enemy/boss dodging/hitting. Overall, I probably put way too much effort into this meme.
AreaFrames savedTotal
Halloween World77
Boss 17784
Prehistoric World173257
Boss 217274
Outer Space143417
Boss 335452
Pirate Island8460
Boss 442502
Western World52564
Boss 537601

Suggested screenshot

I dunno. 9445. sure

Special Thanks

Shoutouts to Simpleflips

feos: This game wasn't as simplistic as I expected, it also has cool music and nice visuals, and got good feedback, so accepting to Moons.
feos: Updated the movie with the one that's a bit more entertaining (and has the same length), per author's request.
Spikestuff: Publishing


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15601
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5379: qqwref's GBC Baby Felix Halloween in 13:18.14
Zarmakuizz
He/Him
Joined: 10/12/2013
Posts: 279
Location: France
My headset broke 2 minutes before reaching the end, so I'll watch it later. I didn't know the game. The musics have their charm, the graphics are good, the autoscroller was original, bosses are completely destroyed. I enjoyed watching it, yes vote.
Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1107
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Pretty enjoyable TAS. It's simple, but fast paced enough to not get boring. And of course, the great music also helps! That's a yes from me.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1360)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
I have to give a Meh vote. I see you did a good job with the TASing but the gameplay is pretty repetitive and the graphics are horrible. Still, I'm curious about how would be a run done on Normal difficulty, because I feel like it would be interesting to see the enemies killed with some clever attack combinations and some actual health management to cope with the taking-damage abuse.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Blazephlozard
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 2/27/2013
Posts: 175
Location: Ohio
Yeah, it's a meh from me, the bosses look very nice but the majority of the gameplay is just holding right and occasionally pressing B. total vault tier
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2240)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
да
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Blazephlozard
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 2/27/2013
Posts: 175
Location: Ohio
Samsara wrote:
да
Whew, someone else gets it.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15601
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3333] GBC Baby Felix Halloween by qqwref in 13:18.14