- Uses easiest difficulty
- Takes damage to save time
- Unofficial game
- Is a political joke
- Heavy glitch abuse
Game details
Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill is a fairly standard platforming game for the SNES. It stars Bill Clinton's real-life pet cat Socks, who catches some thieves stealing nuclear missiles from the US government and must get to the White House to warn the president. The game was developed to coincide with the beginning of the first Clinton term, and, as a result, is full of dated political satire, including caricatures of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Ross Perot, and other old guys you probably don't care about. Although complete, the game was never released due to publisher Kaneko's American division going kaput, and as no ROM was ever located, the game became little more than an odd historical curiosity. That is until 2018, when a Kickstarter was successfully able to release the game to not much fanfare as Bill Clinton is not currently president. If only Donald Trump owned a cat.
I've always been fascinated by the pure craziness of a Nintendo game as political as this, and fell out of my chair from hype when it was finally playable. Since there's very little info on this game out there, and we're in the midst of a VERY EXCITING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, I figured, "hey, wouldn't it be fun to bring politics to TASVideos as a tie-in to our decaying society?" (Yes, I can hear you screaming "no!". But come on, it's a cute kitty!)
Jump Glitch
This glitch is the key to a TAS of this game. It's a little hard to explain, but you'll know it when you see it. Basically, if you try to jump again on the first frame as Socks lands from another jump, he will not jump, and instead the animation of him landing on a ground plays which doesn't usually happen if you're moving. However, if you turn around during this animation and then jump, Socks will leap into the air again, but the game will still think he is on the ground. This allows him to jump a 2nd time. Note that for some reason, this doesn't work on moving platforms...
Misc.
- This TAS is done on Easy mode. There are no differences between easy or hard outside of boss health. The bosses in this game are really not that exciting, and they range from 10 to 40 seconds longer each on Hard, so Easy seemed like the best option.
- Socks is marginally slower in the air than he is on the ground, which is why sometimes I take damage instead of having to jump over many enemies in quick succession. This is one of those cases where the time saved is quite minimal (usually not more than 2-3 frames), but since this is a platformer, after all, it adds up.
- There is only one jump height in this game, which is quite obnoxious. Luckily, thanks to the above jumping glitch, it isn't really a big hindrance.
- There are several bugs in this game that are not useful at all. For instance, damaging bosses too quickly can sometimes cause them to survive at 0 health, which then wraps around to 255 if you hurt them again. In addition, several bosses can be pushed off screen if they're damaged close to the edge, and they never return, effectively softlocking the game until the timer runs out.
feos: The movie looks good, and the feedback was decent. Probably borderline Vault content (in my personal opinion), but the level layout is non-linear, the audio-visual part is good, so it doesn't get too old overall. Accepting to Moons.
