Dodgem Arena is a vehicular hockey video game developed by Formula Game Development and published by Project Two in 1998 for the PS1.

Dodgem Arena is a futuristic racing game that takes place in 2049 AD. In this racing sports game four players are controlling so-called "Dodgems" that hover in huge bowl-shaped arenas. An ice hockey puck can be picked up from a dispenser, said puck can be shot into a goal that moves around the arena.

You can choose between various dodgems and during the match you can stockpile weapons and ammo to improve your dodgem. There are eight stadiums and each match has four rounds. The first round starts with four pucks, the second with three, the third with two, until one is left in the final round. Three opponents battle against you in each arena.

The Verification Movie: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638319615102476061

When playing Dodgem Arena for the first time there are only three arenas available from the start: Osaka, New York and Los Angeles. All 3 of them combined are called City league, and need to be ranked in 1st place to unlock the next league, "Outdoor League". After Outdoor League comes Interplanetary League. There are 4 rounds in each arena, it is mentioned above that the 1st round has 4 pucks in the game, the 2nd round has 3 etc. If you have completed the game and finished all of the arenas in 1st place then congratulations, there is no reward. To me the reward is what comes after, and thats all of the arenas unlocked with only one round: Round 4 with only 1 puck.

Now i did play through the game for this reason, to only have 1 round in each arena. Each round lasts 2 minutes. Because this is a TAS that focuses on playaround, 2 minutes in each arena is enough for me to find enough playaround. Some arenas are quite limited with what they have to offer, if i had to do 4 rounds of each arena then yea... this TAS would be finished in 2026 with 1kk rerecords.

I switched vehicles throughout the TAS. It adds more variety.

I did not use this dodgem in the TAS, It is slow but quite tanky, it can take a lot of hits but the TAS is basically damageless because of lag.

Same as Onsai 200, the design is very cool but its even slower than Onsai 200. I did initially plan on using it on Kalar Pathar, but it can barely get up the small slopes.

A little upgrade from the previous dodgems, average speed and average durability. Not used.

Used in Jungle. A little slower than fuerte twinex. I thought it would fit the jungle arena environment.

Incredible speed but frail. Used in Osaka, Kala Pathar and Dark Side Resort.

A little less speedy than Alpha but i like the design more. Used in New York, Los Angeles, Tharsis Ring and Outpost.

D Pad: Left and Right to go left and right. Up to Jump and Down to go backwards.

L1 and R1: Roll to the left or right.

L2 and R2: Turn sharply to the left or right.

Triangle: Switch weapons, can only be done every 10th frame. Can be held too.

Square: Shoot puck, can be charged for a few frames to increase puck travel distance.

Circle: Use item.

Cross: Accelerate.

Energy: Looks like Orange Juice. Can be picked up to refill your HP. You can't die in Dodgem Arena, instead, you lose hp. The less HP you have the slower your vehicle becomes. When you pick up Energy it will instantly heal you and if your HP is full, it will be added to your inventory. You can have 5 of them in your inventory.

Rocket: Rocket oneshots any vehicle and gives 250 points. Rockets can only be used if theres an enemy nearby, it will then try to home in on the vehicle. 3 of them can be in your inventory.

Laser: Looks like a purple sword. Has 10 charges and each charge fires 3 shots. It can deal significant damage to opponents and can be evolved by picking up another laser, but your laser needs to have full ammo to evolve. The normal laser fires purple shots, the evolved version fires yellow shots, the last evolved version fires green shots. Points range from 50-200 depending how many shots you hit.

Magnet: Magnet is quite overpowered. When used, it will try to draw in any nearby pucks. If an enemy dodgem has the puck then they will lose it, sometimes it will end up in your path and you can pick it up. You can hold magnet to increase the draw, but uses up more of the item. Magnet can have up to 100 uses, given that you press it for 1 frame. Can be used to get rid of lag frames.

Autopilot: Looks like an Orange Arrow. Why does TAS need an Autopilot? The developers probably thought that putting this item in will make the game easier. When Autopilot is used your vehicle will become transparent, gaining up to 30% more speed. Autopilot will home in on the pucks destination and if you have the puck, it will home in on the moving goal. If there is no puck, it will home in on the dispenser. Autopilot can be used to correct your position aswell. I will do this when im all out of options. Autopilots homing-in sense can be negated by pressing the opposite direction it is trying to go, so you only benefit from the speedboost.

Star: The speedboost item. When used your vehicle gets a ~250% speedboost. The vehicle becomes a blue transparent shape. Up to 5 stars can be in your inventory.

When picking up specific items, another item will appear next to it, ahead or behind, or at the opposite side of the arena. The item that is spawned in by picking up the original item is the bonus item. It will stay until you pick it up and if done so, the original item will appear again. This can be done indefinitely.

"Item Duplication" can be achieved with the help of another player or enemy. By staying inside the original item and having a CPU Player stay inside the location of the bonus item, you can instantly spawn a lot of items.

Random: At least one enemy will have this behavior when the match starts. They wont necessarily go for the puck straight away, but go for random items in the arena.

Puck focused: At least one enemy will have this behavior when the match starts. These types of enemies are the hardest to deal with in casual playthroughs. When the match starts they will immediately go to the dispenser and camp in front of it, waiting for the next puck to spawn. If you have the puck then they will try to get it from you. In round 4's (or in this TAS) they can be quite frustrating to play against because they will stand in front of the dispenser to get the puck as soon as possible.

Player focused: Only happens when you pass a certain score. All Enemies will ignore everything but you. They will try to bump into you, making both of you lose HP because of vehicle collision. If they have low hp they will locate the nearest energy item to refill their hp. If they happen to get the puck from you then they will try to score a goal.

Do know that Random and Puck focused CPU behavior may change throughout the match.

This game is PAL only, but still very fast paced. The game also has a lot of lag, so a big part of making the TAS was lag reduction. A few things that cause lag are missiles, items, collision with enemies, dispenser collision, wall collision and touching the goal. There are a few instances where i left lag in:

-Osaka: 1 lagframe when the enemy gets hit with a rocket

-New York: I remember there being 1 lag frame that was really hard to get rid off

-Los Angeles: 1 lagframe during the dance on top of the slope

-Jungle: Getting stuck in the tree at the end, 4 lagframes

-Dark Side Resort: Enemy balancing on top of my vehicle, 4 lagframes

-Tharsis Ring: During the crash with the dispenser, 4 lagframes

The camera may have a hard time following your dodgem at certain spots in each arena, when you are near a wall for example. The camera will try to zoom out because it can't turn to the side. This can be seen on Tharsis Ring. Another weird camera moment is located at the start of Los Angeles, when going behind the slopes. The camera can't turn and the slope is in the way of the dodgem, so the slope is made see-through.

Dodgem Arena is a really hard game to complete. It is easily one of the most challenging games that i have played on the PSX. A few factors that contribute to this are:

-No map: Where are the enemies? Where are the items? Where is the puck? Where is the moving goal at this moment? Well...

-Sensitive controls: The controls are absurdly sensitive. Tapping left or right for too many frames is already enough to have a very different outcome.

-CPU Difficulty: It feels like the CPU is cheating. If they have a magnet in their posession then its almost always game over for you, because they will get the puck back from you. Even if you do manage to get puck back from them, chances are that they will get it back with magnet anyway. CPU can also use items on the 1st possible frame. If shot with a rocket, they can use an energy refill on the 1st possible frame, which makes it look like they didnt lose HP.

By pressing roll 8 frames after jumping into the air your vehicle will roll without moving left or right.

This can be done in a few ways:

-Damageboosting: Taking damage will make your dodgem lose its puck and get knocked into the air. Pressing jump a few frames before this happens will increase the jump height.

-Rolling while jumping: If you take a sharp turn to the left or right and then jump and roll, you can increase jump height by around 20%.

-Sharp turn jump: Works best 10 frames after pressing jump. Jump into the air and press left or right on the d-pad and sharply turn left or right for 1 frame on the same frame, then press left or right on the d-pad and sharply turn left or right for 1 frame on the next frame. This also works best if your vehicle didnt face left or right to begin with. The reason this works is because of "rolling while jumping", but its a more extreme version. Increases jump height by around 200%.

Press roll, press left or right on the d-pad and turn sharp left or right (depending what direction you are holding) on the same frame.

Some walls, slopes and platforms can be gone through by going at an extremely precise angle and speed. The game will have no choice but to put you on top of the slope or platform. As for walls, if there is nothing behind the wall you may go through.

Jump or roll into an extremely precise spot on a slope, this will eject the vehicle high into the air.

-Roll extension: Press jump on the same frame as you roll, this will push the vehicle further.

-Sideways: Press jump before your roll ends, this will push the vehicle to the left or right.

Jump has a cooldown, which means you cant press it again for a certain amount of frames.

Works in 2 ways: When midair at slow or specific speeds: Hold left or right when midair and roll left or right (if you hold left you have to roll left and if you hold right you have to roll right) when above ground, this pushes the vehicle into the ground into an instant stop. You also have to let go of accelerate and sometimes go backwards.

On ground: Let go of accelerate and hold backwards for 2 frames. Let go of backwards and hold accelerate for 2 frames. This only works with slow speeds.

The item you score goals with. When picked up it will leave a blue trail. You win a match by having more points than the enemy. It is boring to score goals by just plainly shooting into the moving goal, so i put trickshots into the TAS. You get 1000 points for scoring a goal, afterwards the puck will respawn in the dispenser for around 4.5s. The puck also has a cooldown, which means you can't regrab it immediately after shooting it. Cooldown should be around 1.5s

The dispenser spawns in the pucks. The dispenser has collision which can boost you forward or to the side, which causes lag.

The goal moves around the arena in a pattern. Sometimes the goal will become transparent, which makes it have collision and knock back any vehicles if they come too close. When the goal is in this state then you wont be able to shoot pucks into it, they will just fly through.

My thought process while making the playaround for the arenas. I will rate the difficulty of each arena and how likely you are going to beat it as a casual player or speedrunner. For example 10/10 is impossible to beat.

Things are kept fairly simple on Osaka. This is the arena where i found item duplication for the first time and was perplexed on how it worked. This arena features some rocket league like trickshots which im very proud of. You will see that i shoot the puck into the space where 2 walls meet, making it go upwards. At the end of the stage i go to the same two walls and get stuck which only works by going backwards into the walls.

New york is the best designed arena in my opinion, lots of slopes and speedpads, so many options for playaround. What makes this stage a little hard is the fact that the lasers, rockets and magnets are found on top of slopes or platforms which are very small, making them hard to grab. New york features some crazy optimization and jumps, very happy with how it turned out. At around 50s i wait near a magnet for some calm time. The enemies will slowly move up the slope while im camping on top of the slope. Near the end of the stage i go near the slope and have the camera zoom out, which is good because i dont want the camera to go completely crazy while i have my dodgem rapidly turn sharply left and right every frame. I unfortunately could not find a better ending for the stage because of lag.

Los angeles is a bit more simple than new york, making it harder to tas. The lasers are found ontop of an incredibly narrow platform of a slope. You will never get both of them on the same attempt. The magnet and autopilot are found on a slightly bigger platform, but still quite a troll because of the speedpads pointing the opposite direction. At the start of the stage i will have to make some tight maneuver to avoid the enemies and the slope. I only had to use RAM Watch twice when going behind the slopes, to see if i would lose speed. I thought it would be cool to go ontop of a slope and then wait for the moving goal to pass by, then shoot the puck from a great distance into it, which only worked with a very big jump. At the end i go behind the slopes again and have the front of my vehicle go inside of the slope. This puts the puck im holding into the slope and i shoot, making it bounce upwards.

Jungle is a really hard stage to win, mostly due to the fact that at the start of each match you won't be fast enough to get the puck from the dispenser. If an enemy happens to grab it you better pray that you will get it back, otherwise its reset over reset. In the verification movie i had to use rewind to actually beat the stage, it was very frustrating. The waterfall holds a little secret. If you pick up the magnet on top of the waterfall another magnet will spawn down the slide. I had to really optimize this to make it look good and near the end of the slide i had to let go of accelerate for 1 frame, which stabilizes the camera more. At one point i went through a tree with a precise speed setup. The instant stop is achieved by letting go of accelerate and holding backwards while rolling on a specific frame. At the end of the stage i have my vehicle get perfectly stuck in the tree, this requires lagframes but i was willing to take that sacrifice. No inputs are needed to stay stuck.

Kala Pathar has nothing to offer. Its an empty arena with no speedpads or slopes. The stage likes to annoy you at the very beginning when being ejected into it. If you picked a fast vehicle like Genetic Alpha or Genetic Beta you will get immediately stuck on the floor for 1 second. I negate this by rolling a frame before this happens. Because the arena has nothing to offer i had to come up with lots of CPU playaround and manipulation. Before the stage ends i shoot 3 enemies with a laser, 1 shot is fired, 3 bullets come out and every bullet hits a different enemy.

A stage i have been eager to tas since ive seen it in my playthrough. Lots of big jumps are possible on Dark side resort. Some of the items are located in craters, which you have to jump into. This may sound easy at first, but you have to account for the sensitive controls. When there are 1:15 left on the timer you can see me in one of them, an enemy is inside driving circles around me. It is possible to jump onto the outer rings of the craters, but its very difficult to look good and without the camera going haywire. At around 30s i shoot the enemy so that he jumps on top of my head. Because this is considered collision, we both drastically lose hp. It also requires 4 lagframes. I go into the crater at the end and have all the enemies inside with me. I delay the ending to show all of them.

What makes this stage so difficult? The first reason being the entrance to the stage itself. You get ejected onto a slope, which makes the camera go crazy. Even if you see it coming, its still quite hard to navigate the stage without touching any slopes and losing control of your vehicle. The circular shape of the arena helps a little, because a wall is put in the middle. This means you can go for stall tactics after scoring a goal. You can grab another puck and then go the opposite side of the arena and stall out. I still give Tharsis Ring the highest difficulty of all the arenas in the game though, because of the small slopes, moving goal and lack of room. At around 24s i get stuck in the dispenser which causes lagframes but still, it was too funny to not leave in.

Outpost is easy to play, but for me it was very hard to tas because of the middle of the arena. The small slopes can lead to unoptimization and i had to be very careful with what movement and strategies i chose. I hope you find the secret at the end of the match.

This tas has been in work for 6 months, there were many frustrating parts because i could not decide on what type of playaround i wanted to go for. Im quite happy with how it turned out in the end. Its a lot crazier than i anticipated it to be. The TAS uses SRAM, im not sure if this will get accepted because of this, but its much better than doing 4 times the work and spending 2 years on it.

The Encode is bad, sorry about that.

CoolHandMike: Claiming for judging.

CoolHandMike: Verification movie worked to start the submission based on the Current SRAM at the end of that movie.

This TAS took me by surprise. The more I watched and understood what was happening the more enjoyable the TAS became. Technically proficient with a lot of subtle movements and tricks weaved throughout, this is quite impressive. Particularly enjoyed the speed of a lot of sections here and how even during those sections there are precise tricks being performed. A playaround for this game changing out vehicles with only one round being available for each level was the right way to go. This gives a good mix of change without things becoming stale. Happy to accept this playaround TAS!

Accepting to Alternative with goal "playaround".

despoa: Processing...

CoolHandMike: Replacing file to get correct cycle count.