Recorded in FCEU 0.98.12 w/ Blip Record Patch
- Takes no damage
- No deaths
- As fast as possible
- Abuses hit detection a wee bit
- Manipulates luck an even weer bit
Cocoron is one of my favorite hidden gems for NES. It runs on what appears to be the Mega Man 2 engine, but instead of receiving powers from the bosses you kill you get another character to add to your roster. Each character is built from a sequence of head, body, and weapon parts. Each of these parts is assigned a weight and an HP or damage value. Putting heavy parts together results in a slow bruiser, and putting light parts together results in a frail little speed demon.
Guess which one I chose.
This is where Cocoron gets tricky. Weight affects not only your movement speed and jumping height, but also your momentum. Even when planning jumps frame by frame you have to take into account how much momentum you have built up. This usually means holding the opposite direction of travel for five or six frames to come to a dead stop before jumping. I think I handled this pretty well.
My weapon of choice, Parasol, is far from the most damaging in the game. However, there are several points in the game where its unique "unfold and rise" shot path is indispensable. Grabbing powerups doesn't increase the damage done so I only do it near the beginning for variety.
My main character isn't the absolute lowest weight you can put together, but when momentum, flight, and weapon utility are taken into account I'm betting it's the fastest to complete the game. Also, I spend a few extra frames building all my characters to showcase different parts.
The route here is pretty solid. There are a few preconditions to reach the last level:
- Beat all five bosses
- Then, and ONLY then, does the princess appear in a mid-point egg
- In fact, she's always in the same egg. It's a plot thing. We skip the plot.
This is my first submission. As such, there are two technical problems with the recording:
- I used the fan-translated Akujin ROM. It's the one I had handy and since it's not competing with another Cocoron run (yet) I went for it. I know fan translations are against the submission rules, but I work it into the entertainment value of the run.
- I let the movie record all the way through the credits. The only button I pressed after dealing the death blow to the final boss was the turbo, but I neglected to stop recording.
And a few minor niggles on top of that:
- In the Silver Dragon fight I "miss" two shots. This is to manipulate his path, bringing him down closer to me rather than flying out of my reach for a good five seconds.
- The Trump Castle boss' spade attack always fires at the same rate. To bring down the next card only depends on if any spades are left on screen. Theoretically only the last two need to be shot to advance as fast as possible...but I wanted to spice this battle up.
- Tapir is a mostly-invincible jerk.
Wow...after reading all that, you barely even need to see the movie. Try it though, you won't believe how fast this game gets.
Suggested Description: A winged pumpkin man rights wrongs in the World of Dreams with his tiny twin parasols of doom. No, that's not a euphemism for anything.
CANCELLED because fan-trans are teh s uck. Monthenor shall return in CocoronJ: Pumpkin Boogaloo.
