This is one of three Powerpuff Girls games released for the Gameboy Color closely together. The other two games have link cable connectivity with this, and play the same, featuring the other 2 Powerpuff Girls, traveling through similar locales but with different level design. In this game, Bubbles flies quickly through the five levels to stop HIM and his minions at various locales.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.9.1 (originally used 2.8, but confirmed it syncs on 2.9.1)
- Beat the 5 levels and get the ending cutscene, while still getting into the heart afterward.
Helpful RAM addresses
- 0C56: Flight meter
- 3010: Cooldown for attack
This movie saved 46 seconds over the previous submission by yep2yel, mainly due to optimizing the flight a bit farther. If you fly up at the correct time, you can get a boost and move more quickly than if you moved up a frame earlier. I also found some slightly faster routes in levels 4 and 5. I discovered a way to bypass the attack cooldown as I was making the TAS as well. This run is 9:27 in RTA time, which beats my WR by 2:06.
This game also works on a checkpoint system, where if I try to access doors to a later part of the level before doing the objective, they'll be locked. This is why you'll see me skipping a few doors that may look faster.
Mechanics
Flying
Generally, flying is the fastest form of movement, and you move fastest if you switch from moving right to flying straight up at a specific time.
Flight meter
When you're flying, this decreases, and you start flying back down when this reaches 0. If you still hold up when you reach the ground when it hits 0, however, you regain a bit of the flight meter, and can bunny hop back up for a bit, and this is frequently used to move quickly. Even when the meter looks like it's full visually, you still need to wait a bit for it to reach the max.
Attacking
When you attack, you don't fill your flight meter, which can occasionally be useful, to make sure you can fly straight up and bunny hop without hitting a wall. There's also a cooldown after attacking. Attacking does 1 damage.
Chemical X
This doesn't do any damage by itself, but it stuns the enemy, which is used a few times for enemies to get around them. This also cancels out the attack cooldown, which is helpful for bosses. However, there's a Chemical X cooldown as well which you have to keep in mind.
Phones
You can call one of the Powerpuff Girls(including yourself, lol) to attack with the phone powerups. Buttercup does 5 damage, Blossom does 2 damage to all enemies on screen, and Bubbles stuns the enemies. The damage is decreased by 1 if the enemy is in their hit animation.
Bonzai Gardens
At the beginning of the level, I do a precise flight to the top of the level to get a Buttercup phone, which saves time against the boss. Against the boss, I use the Chemical X to bypass the attack cooldown.
Townsville Streets
There are a couple of places where I need to walk along, to wait for the flight meter to build up to full.
Pokey Oaks School
In this level, the people who you normally rescue are brainwashed to try to attack you. Toward the end of the level, where's a triangle building which I think you're supposed to have to go inside, but you can easily fly over it.
The Art Museum
The boss fight here is really funny; you're supposed to fly to the right, then in a tunnel and back to the left as Mr. Mime makes a dangerous field which moves toward you, however by using one of the phones or Chemical X, you can attack Mr. Mime before the field hurts you, and finish the boss fight instantly!
Townsville Subway
There's a headwind section which I just need to slowly bunny hop through, occasionally walking on the ground to restore stamina to fly across trains.
Challenges with making the run
- Given how the flight meter and flight speed works, it was tricky to sync rooms. Theoretically, I should have been able to resync a level after improving it, however I wasn't able to get it to sync up after improving, so I had to resync manually. I wonder if this is due to some kind of frame rule with the flight speed.
Possible improvements
- I'd imagine a bit of time could be saved by tightening up the flying movement, given how that works.
- By reordering when the Chemical X is used in the boss fights to bypass the cooldown, a bit of time could probably be saved.
Special thanks and shoutouts
- yep2yel, who made the original TAS of this game
- Frozenflygone, who used to run this game with me, and helped with routing it
Suggested screenshots
Frame 25377
Darkman425: Just as a small note, this submission has a different input ending point than the
published movie where for this submission the game percentage screen is cleared. This only adds 42 frames from the published movie's end point of clearing the last dialogue boxes and still works as a perfectly fine ending point.
The improvements found by this submission sound like they'd be small but watching this submission with the current publication shows that those small bits definitely added up over time. Nice work on further optimizing this game!
Darkman425: Input file replaced with one that matches the ending point of the previous movie by trimming out the 42 extra frames and slightly adjusting movement before the dialogue.
