General notes
- Uses Bizhawk 2.9.1
- Rerecord count - 9528 (not fully accurate. I rerecorded considerably more times but due to a handful of reasons, the displayed rerecord count is lower.)
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses glitches and exploits to save time
Introduction
Totally Spies! 3: Secret Agents is a 2007 Nintendo DS game based on the French Animated show of the same name which I have not seen. This is the 3rd game in the portable Totally Spies series and it is very different compared to its predecessors. This game had a completely different developer from the previous two games and it never made its way to the US. This game is a 2D platformer/beat em up with light puzzle elements. The game has a total of 5 levels with each level being fairly long. You play as the three spies: Sam (the best green one), Clover (the red one) and Alex (the yellow one) who each have their own gadgets. On paper, this game sounds a lot more promising than the previous 2 games but in reality, this game is not good. While the previous games suffered from having too much variety, this game has the exact opposite problem. The gameplay is more or less exactly the same throughout the entire game and by level 2, you've already seen all the gadgets you get to use. The game has forced, unnecessary touch screen controls and it has an extremely tedious combat system which I can best describe as glorified connect the dots. There are a lot of fights in this game and they take up a lot of time. On the positive side however, the soundtrack is really good (if you are experienced with ripping DS soundtracks, this game's soundtrack isn't available online and it really deserves to be preserved outside the game) and in this TAS, we do not have to engage with the combat system a single time. These girls have a ball to go to. They don't have time to fight bad guys.
General game notes
There are not a ton of general notes to go over but I will get the main things out of the way. I played the game in English for this TAS. As the game was only released in Europe/Australia, the game does have a language select with six options. I think Dutch might be marginally faster than English although I am not fully certain. I did check although I will admit that I did not check extremely thoroughly. Every other language seemed definitively slower from what I checked. I kept the game in English as it was the language I made the TAS in and I think it would be more entertaining for a majority of viewers.
All three spies play exactly the same with the only difference being the gadgets they possess. Whichever spy you will want to use will depend on what gadgets you need to use. Unfortunately, unnecessarily switching spies can lose time. More specifically, the first time you switch spies in a section, it will lose a frame. This means that for the most part, I avoid unnecessary character switching (if there were no consequences, you'd see Sam a lot more in the run). I do still sneak in a few unnecessary character switches in however.
As the spies, you can play as them either in their disguises or their spy suits. The disguises are completely useless. You move significantly slower, you can't use gadgets and you can't attack. All you can do in the disguises is pose. The only time they are even "needed" is in the stealth sections but you always have other, faster ways to get through the stealth sections. The game forces you into Alex's disguise when you start a level or load the game and that is the only time the disguises are needed in the run Even the act of switching to the disguises loses time although despite this, I do still switch to Sam's disguise in a couple of levels for entertainment.
Attacking is normally useful for fighting enemies but in this TAS, it is almost useless. There is one room where attacking is useful and that's it. You have three attacks and whichever one you get is random. You have a quick roundhouse kick (which is active for a much shorter amount of time than the other two attacks) and you have a considerably longer slice kick and front flip. The attack you get can be manipulated by your timing and controller inputs. Attacking flat out loses time as it slightly lags the game but I do still sneak in a few extra attacks at points.
You start the game off with 3 health points. Red hearts refill your health while Pink hearts give you an extra hip point. You max out at 10HP. In this run, I max out at 6 HP, only collecting hearts which do not require me to go out of my way to collect. The extra health mattered, saving time over not collecting any extra health.
When it comes to lag frames, there are consistent instances where the game lags such as switching characters for the first time in a section or when enemies load. There are however also random lag frames which can occur in random places. It is sometimes possible to avoid these lag frames by either jumping or crouching which is why I occasionally jump or briefly crouch in seemingly random places in the run.
Main Tricks
This game has quite a few glitches/exploits and I will go over all of the main ones:
Fight skips
This game has a lot of enemies you are supposed to fight. Normally, the only way you are supposed to skip a fight is by using certain gadgets (mainly Clover's Smoke Bombs or Alex's Ice Potion) but there is a way to skip fights without using any gadgets (at least if the enemy is facing forwards). If you run up to an enemy so they run at you, turn around and jump, you can squeeze in a full height jump. The game normally heavily reduces your jump height and prevents you from moving horizontally when you are close enough to an enemy but this radius is significantly smaller if you are facing away from the enemy. If you perform this correctly, you can run straight past the enemy after landing. This can be done against many enemies and it saves an astronomical amount of time throughout the run. It is often faster to do fight skips than it is to use gadgets to avoid the enemies which is great as it allows you to save the gadgets for when you really need them. It even works against the bosses as the devs just left the trigger to finish the bosses always active. When doing fight skips, I move backwards for one frame and then turnaround the next frame. Another thing to note about fight skips is that if Alex has her jet boots, you can jump and then immediately double jump the next frame (which works as you have 5 separate jump buttons) which allows you to perform fight skips 6 frames faster which is naturally beneficial.
The main downside with fight skips however is that it can only really be done if the enemy is facing forwards. If the enemy is facing backwards, it is either impossible or extremely finnicky and slow depending on how the back turned enemy behaves. I always use other methods to avoid back turned enemies.
Gadget refills
If you quit out of the game and reload, it will refill your Smoke Bomb/Ice Potion ammo. While this is far more useful in an RTA run, there are still a few areas in the TAS where this is useful.
Gadgets during cutscenes
If you use a gadget the same frame as when you enter a cutscene, the cutscene will play while you use the gadget. This is useful in a couple of spots but it is overall situational.
Quitting and finishing a level
If you pause the game and quit back to the menu on the same frame as finishing a section/level, the game does save your progress and you can reload to the next area. This is mainly useful at the end of levels as it allows you to skip the end level cutscenes, saving a decent amount of time. This is also useful to perform gadget refills as it skips the end section victory screen and it is overall a solid bit faster than quitting out of the game once the next section loads.
Sam Slide
If you activate Sam's scanner the same frame you are about to run off an edge, you can use the scanner while moving. This is rarely useful due to the existence of another glitch but it is an entertaining exploit. This only occurs with Smoke Bomb's and Ice Potions although with those, you can only move while you are airborne.
Clover Slide
OK, here we have the first insane glitch in the run. When you use Clover's Butterfly, you normally cannot move. The gadget is seemingly useless as all it does is that it lets you look around. However, if you crouch or crawl at any point while using it, the game lets you move while using the butterfly. Clover will amusingly just slide across the floor without actually moving, hence the name of the trick. This is very broken for a simple reason. If you look up while Clover sliding, it can completely remove the collision of various objects. This allows for cutscene skips, instant fight skips, stealth section skips, door clips and floor clips. This is naturally very powerful, allowing you to breeze through all sorts of normally slow sections as well as skip detours.
The downside with Clover sliding however is that it does not work everywhere. Depending on the camera position and other potential factors, it will not work in some areas. You will sometimes have to perform normal fight skips or open doors as Sam but that's ok. It makes the run more interesting that Clover sliding has its limitations.
Instant gadgets
This is perhaps the most wild trick in this game and it is not RTA viable. This trick works with Sam's Scanner and Clover's butterfly. If you select one of the aforementioned gadgets and then on the very next frame, you drag the stylus to select one of the characters, you will select that character and it will instantly activate a gadget. If you select Sam, you will get the scanner, if you select Clover, you will get the butterfly and if you select Alex, that will also give you the butterfly. This glitch will not only activate the gadgets near instantly but you also gain full control over your character. You do have to use the needed gadgets at least once while the game is powered on however as if you try and do this bug when the gadgets are not loaded into RAM, it will crash the game.
With Sam, the glitch is quite useful as it allows you to instantly use the scanner and have full control. The scanner normally has a chunk of startup but with this bug, almost all of the startup is eliminated, allowing you to activate switches from a distance immediately. Having full control also allows gives you leniency to start the scanner from a distance and do a few wild sequences. Amusingly, depending on what direction you are pointing the scanner, Sam will do a bunch of different animations. You can get the pushing animation, a kick animation, her disguise pose (which is avoided as it loses a bunch of time) and even what I believe is an otherwise unused teetering animation. It is quite a neat bug.
With Clover/Alex, the bug may not seem too crazy at first. It cuts out the startup of the butterfly which can be helpful but it otherwise has the same effect as Clover sliding, just slightly less optimal (when the lower startup isn't needed) and with you being able to jump. What is crazy about this bug however is that if you do this bug in level 5 (using Sam's scanner and then switching to Clover/Alex), it will still give you the butterfly, even though you are not supposed to have the butterfly in level 5. This is very busted as you can use the butterfly to skip fights faster and clip through doors which you would normally not be able to do without this glitch.
This is a double frame perfect trick where you have to drag the stylus across the screen within a single frame (and then on top of that, you have to play the game while pointing the stylus in a certain direction) so I do not see it being possible in a RTA run. In this TAS however...
I won't go too into detail about each level but I will point out some notable strats:
Level 1
- In section 1, I activate the Smoke Bomb during the second dialogue box. This saves time as you have wait for the Smoke Bomb to activate and the text box so doing both of them at the same time saves a fair amount of time. The smoke Bomb is fully activated by the time the dialogue box ends and you have just enough time to bypass the first enemy. I use fight skips to avoid all of the the other enemies in the section.
- In section 3, I do the same activate the Smoke Bomb during a dialogue box trick . You have to use the smoke Bomb to bypass the enemy so activating it during the cutscene saves a solid amount of time. I also quit out at the end of section 3 in the final TAS to refill my Smoke Bomb ammo.
- In section 4 on the lower floor, you are supposed to push a plant onto a button in order to lower a platform. However, you can just stand on the platform for a period of time to raise it high enough. I activate a smoke bomb on the platform as I have to wait anyway and I need to use it to bypass a back turned enemy. The smoke bomb lasts longer enough to bypass an additional 2 enemies which is really nice.
- At the end of section 4, I skip pushing the flower pot onto the button, instead opting to use a 6th bomb on the button to raise the platform down. Once the smoke bomb is activated, you can jump up to the platform and bypass 2 out of the 3 enemies, using a fight skip to bypass the last enemy. This saves somewhere inbetween 2.5-3 seconds compared to using the flower pot.
- I use Sam during the boss fight mainly because I wanted to but I don’t think it lost any time either. Switching characters for the first time produces 5 lag frames but since I switched to her at the very end of section 4, I only got 4 lag frames.
Level 2
- Clover slide just completely skips section 1 (I did technically do an instant butterfly as I would have to wait for a bit to do a Clover slide in order to not activate a cutscene). There are loads of enemies, cutscenes and doors but I breezed past right through all of them.
- I will mention that I did not find Clover sliding until I was quite far into TASing level 2, meaning that I had to go back and adjust this level to accommodate for Clover sliding. I ended up saving close to a minute with Clover sliding compared to the work I already did and when I found instant gadgets later on, I ended up saving even more time. This level went through multiple sizeable revisions to say the least.
- In section 2, you have this section with moving platforms. To get through this section quickly, I jumped off the 3rd platform to the lower level and then I umped through the laser field, having to perform carefully placed jumps. The electric fields can easily take 2HP if you are not careful so I jumped carefully to make sure that did not happen. The cycles on the last platforms are active as soon as the level starts. I also pick up my first pink heart in this section which takes no extra time and this is the first section where we see the instant scanner in action.
- I also want to mention now that platforming in this game is wack. You have a deceptively small hitbox for landing on platforms, it is very easy to just phase through platforms. It may look like I am sub optimally landing on platforms but trust me, I am landing on them as early as possible.
- In section 3, you have these two enemies near the end of the level. You cannot Clover slide through them and you can't fight skip both of them as you do not have enough space. What I ended up doing is that I fight skipped the first enemy and then I froze the second enemy with the Ice Potion. This gave me just enough time to avoid getting hit by the first enemy.
- In section 4, I fall through I trap door which you are supposed to open by pushing a plant onto a switch. Clover Slide just lets you fall through the door however and this happens again shortly after.
- In section 5, I pick up another Pink Heart using the instant butterfly. I switched to Alex mainly to show that off.
- At the beginning of section 6, there is a section where there is a switch to open two doors. You have to open the front first and then you have to open the back door next. I just used the instant scanner to open and then immediately close the first door, giving me enough time to run through the door. You cannot Clover slide through these doors.
- Right after the double doors, there is a room which you cannot Clover slide through. This room has a bunch of enemies but they only take one hit to take out (a rarity in this game). This is the one room in the TAS where attacking is useful. You would optimally only use one type of attack but for funsies, I did more than one type and I even spammed attacks near the end.
- Later on in section 6, I use the scanner during a cutscene in order to open a door on a timer (and no, you can't Clover slide to skip the cutscene or door). You can freely point the scanner during a cutscene. I originally incorporated this strat before I discovered instant scanner but I still believe it is faster overall (and it adds variety to the run).
- In section 7, there is a room filled with lasers and moving platforms. I make good use of instant scanner in this room to get through it as quickly as possible, even showing off some of the wacky animations it can give you.
- I put Sam's disguise on in this room while on the moving platform. This loses a few frames but I like Sam's costume in this level, it deserves to be in the run.
- I did an attack during the boss fights because front flips are fun. I also show off spamming the crouch button which messes with your animations.
Level 3
- At the end of a handful of sections, I performed the finish/quit exploit to optimally fill up my Smoke Bomb ammo. This level has a lot of backwards facing enemies so you need a lot of Smoke Bombs.
- In section 4, I switch to Sam because waiting for platforms is hardly the most enthralling experience. In the final TAS, I pretty much stay as Sam the whole time, only switching to Alex when I need to double jump.
- In section 5, I take a detour to collect my last pink heart. I have to wait for a platform anyway so it did not cost any extra time. I also drop off some smoke bombs while running off ledges.
- I not only switch to Sam in section 5 but I also put on her disguise because something interesting needs to happen on that long elevator. In the final TAS, I use her for the rest of the level, once again only using Alex to double jump. I also use Sam during the boss because of course I did. :)
Level 4
- In this level, the spies enter a video game to stop a guy who is turning players into Zombies to be his friends. Clover also becomes a gamer.
- Clover slide go brrr
- In section 5, there is a puzzle where you are supposed to push one block down to the ground and then scan a switch to drop another block onto the first block to jump up to the next section. However, we can simply scan the switch (using a Sam Slide to approach it) and then we can jump through the falling block and jump on it while it is airborne to make it up to the top. Using a Sam slide was overall a tiny bit faster than using the instant scanner.
- Screw the moving platforms in section 5. I was so annoyingly close to being able to skip waiting for the platforms but because this game is... this game, I just couldn't because landing on platforms is annoyingly strict.
- After the moving platforms, there is an enemy in an enclosed space, we can't Clover Slide through him and we can't fight skip him so we have to freeze him.
- I front flip during the boss fight. I do it as early as I can when I am in front of the boss without hitting him (the hitbox is deceptively big).
Level 5
- Instant Butterfly is very busted (you aren't even supposed to have the butterfly in this level) but instant scanner is cooler.
- In section 2, there is a section where you are supposed to wait for moving platforms to go over an electric field. I just jump through the electric field.
- At the start of section 3, I tank through some lasers to avoid waiting, this puts me down to my last hit point.
- Shortly after losing all my health, we have one of my favourite strats in the run. I use the butterfly to clip through a door and then I jump and use the instant scanner to hit a switch below me to activate a moving platform.
- In section 5, I use the instant scanner to activate a switch below me. I also show off the teetering animation while using the scanner.
- I had to use the ice potion to freeze the enemies at the end of section 5 and you need a 4th potion for the next section. I freeze the first enemy as far away as possible and then I backtrack to collect a nearby potion refill. This saves around 0.5-0.75 seconds compared to quitting back to the main menu at the end of the section.
- In section 6, you are supposed to walk around to get out of the hole after opening the big door but you can just jump through the trap door to get out.
- Section 7 is interesting as it loops around itself multiple times. We can exploit this as we can simply fall to the bottom of the level. The game does not kill you unless fall too far down from the camera and the middle portion is high enough so that doesn't happen. We can easily use Alex's double jump to reset the camera, allowing us to make it down to the bottom section. We do have to wait for platform cycles so it doesn't really matter that I did not fall down as fast as possible.
- At the end of section 7, I briefly cycle through every character as quickly as possible, just to show that it is possible. It does lose a frame switching to Clover for the first time and it may affect photosensitive viewers but I still thought it was worth adding.
- After one more use of the butterfly to avoid a lot of enemy encounters and with Sam jumping past one more boss fight, the game is finished. The girls got to go to the ball as quickly as possible and Sam only had to take out 4 bad guys. Not once did the girls have to use their advanced computer Kung Fu abilities to take out bad guys. This just goes to show that violence isn't always the answer. It's faster to just run past the bad guys.
- Ending a run for this game (in a TAS setting) is weird. The only way to watch the credits is to select them on the main menu and the game never actually saves after you beat the final boss. This means that you could finish/quit after section 8 and it will basically be the same as just beating the game. For this TAS, I decided to play through the ending cutscene and then watch the credits to finish the run. I felt that was the most complete and entertaining way to end the run.
Closing Statement
And that is my TAS for Totally Spies! 3: Secret Agents finished in 28:28 (27:37 RTA). This run was quite a ride. After TASing the first game, I wasn't sure if I wanted to TAS the 2nd game or 3rd game but I am glad I chose this game because this run ended up being wild, much more so than the second game. When I started, I had no idea just how busted this game was. I knew about a few things which I had found while routing an RTA speedrun but the crazier things in the run were things I did not know about until working on this TAS. I did not think a sub 30 minute time would happen but here we are.
I am very happy with how this run turned out. The time isn't as low as it can be. I alluded to this many times but there were a handful of speed/entertainment trade offs in the run. The total amount of time I lost to this is hard to say but my guess is maybe 20 frames at the most? It isn't a lot of time though. It is also possible that execution may not be 100% perfect in specific areas, there could potentially be more lag reduction and there could be more strats which I did not find but overall, I am very happy with how the run turned out. I know the game is not particularly fast paced and it isn't the craziest run out there but I was pleasantly surprised with what this game's run had to offer and it would be way, way more dull if the key exploits were not possible. The combat system in this game is terrible and it is a miracle that you do not have to do a single fight. This run would be so much longer if you had to do the fights and it would not be as enjoyable to watch. Still, I am hoping that this run will at least entertain fans of the show and those who have nostalgia for the game and possibly even those of you who don't fall into either category.
Also, I’ve alluded to this many times but yes, Sam is the best girl IMO. :)
DrD2k9: First of all, I apologize for the delay in this judgement. For some reason, I had it in my brain that I had completed it back when I most recently updated the movie file.
Anyway... Based on the submission notes, this run seems quite well planned and executed. There's nothing in this run that visually stands out as blatantly sub-optimal, though I had two main curiosities (that I, frankly, don't have time to fully test): Firstly, I noticed that damage is sometimes taken, but the player's health was rarely decreased to 1 heart. So, I am curious if taking damage elsewhere might provide opportunity for improvement.
Secondly, the inputs in some areas appear to be simply tapping a button/stylus every other frame in order to progress through a section (often dialogue/cutscene). It's possible that an 'off' frame in some of these sections might actually be the ideal frame on which to actively push the button/tap the screen to progress; meaning that there theoretically may be a few more frames that could be saved over the course of the run. I'd encourage SuperSqank to find the specific frame which most optimally progresses the game for future TAS submissions, instead of using auto-fire or chunks of alternating inputs. Painting a section with alternating inputs in TAStudio can be useful to identify the region where the ideal frame is located, but it doesn't take much more effort to then find the specific ideal frame for the input.
Regarding concern over language choice: we don't generally consider time gained from language differences as improvements to a run. Instead, we generally require improvements in the actual gameplay. If changing the language somehow also allowed for an improvement in gameplay (i.e. allowing the player to make an earlier cycle on moving platforms instead of waiting for them), then the language choice may become a reasonable improvement opportunity.
Regarding speed/entertainment tradeoffs: The unnecessary character swapping, disguise swapping, and extra attacks that add frames to the run sound relatively minimal; but there also isn't much viewer response to this run in the first place regarding entertainment. So eliminating these things in a run with any future improvements could bring the time down even further (however minimally). Regardless, these aren't enough of a slowdown to reject this run.
The chosen endpoint seems fine to me.
Finally, this submission is well beyond the human world record for this game by roughly 16-17 minutes (also performed by the author of this TAS).
Accepting.
Note to Publisher: There are aspects of this run that may warrant a photosensitivity warning.
