Submission #1761: Cardboard's NES Adventure Island IV in 21:19.88

Prologue:

Takahashi Meijin (Codename: TM) is back in a not so straight-forward game. This time, TM lost his car keys inside of a pyramid, but the pyramid is protected by a diamond, and the protector of the diamond is protected by an ice cube, which is protected by a... well, you see where this is headed.

TM has to go up against all kinds of stupid enemies and he swings several different for-his-time hi-tech weapons to achieve his goal of finding the car keys, and possibly saving the world.

Hello. This run is 76793 frames, 21 minutes and 20 seconds, long, and it is the first of its kind. I am using the Japanese ROM because no official translation is out there as far as I know, and the game has very little dialogue either way. Takahashi Meijin no Boukenjima is known as "Hudson's Adventure Island" in the US and Europe and while the first 3 parts of the series were very straight-forward, number 4 instead gives us a world with changeable equipment, a life bar, no stamina bar, and the player must backtrack through several areas to complete the game. The game also has a password-system.

I decided make this run No Damage because this game has an "almost dead"-sound which makes the "almost dead"-sound from Legend Of Zelda sound like heavenly music. Taking damage would be faster but make huge portions of the run sound like a car hitting a truck hitting a glass factory which explodes. Kinda.

Every now and then in the run, I duck for a few frames to avoid being hit by falling flames and stuff. That was something that had to be done.

I also must thank ElectroSpecter for watching and commenting WIPs for me, and for writing a FAQ, and thanks to Boco for commenting on the same WIPs.

So yeah, here goes!

The first objective on TM's list is to get the sledgehammer and apply it to a mean looking rock deep inside of a cave, but before that, TM stop by at his neighbor and pick up the Teleportation Egg. And yes, it is an egg which helps you teleport. Yes, the game will only get weirder from here.

The way to the bat is kinda painless, and the bat himself offers little to no resistance, and the winner (TM, who else) gets the Hammer! OH YEAH! To try the power of this shiny new Hammer, TM uses it to attack a butterfly, and the butterfly takes the count, which means that the Hammer must be the most powerful weapon known to man. Feel free to notice how I plant the Teleportation Egg next to the flower for future use.

Nothing at all happens up until the boss, where I switch to the weaker Bone, because in real life, a stronger weapon would be a better choice, but then again this is a video game, so... The Bone massacres Rocky quickly which results in all big rocks on the island having a nervous breakdown. As the red/purple dino Bruce set free, TM gets a Torch, which never is used.

With his red/purple friend set loose, TM decides to take him for a test-run in the fires of the underworld. Bruce can walk in Lava but dies from a fire ball, which is awesome. Bruce quickly mutilates the Slimebag holding the... sigh... Water Gun. The Water Gun is used a lot through this level, by watering plants and killing fires on... wooden platforms. Please game, start to make sense now.

Time for the boss, Edison, who gets his rear end kicked a lot by Bruce. Bruce kills Edison about 3000 frames faster than TM can with regular weapons. Edison crashes and burns, and TM can rescue Will, the blue dino, who hands TM the Snowboard, something that TM really appreciates, judging from his smile.

TM returns home to the wife and decides to move on with his car key-quest.

With the fires all put out on the island, TM returns to the first cave and carefully falls into the first pit he sees (Or possibly did not see which would make more sense) and would you look at that, it's full of ice! TM jumps on his snowboard and decides to try this brand new invention.

Without really knowing what happens around him, TM suddenly ends up in a room where someone is throwing ice cubes at him! How dare they?! The truth is soon revealed as a Walrus appears from the hole in the ground, and TM decides to kill the Walrus using the... Snowboard. No I am not making this up, the sane-part of my head is too large for that.

It is safe to tell you that the run most likely will not be more drunk than this, and the winner TM gains a Spear, which can be used to grill marshmallows, stick into logs stuck on wires, and possibly kill something. TM progresses in the icy cavern until he meets... a penguin, who wants to... wrestle. Make it stop.

Tool-assisted as he is, TM wins this battle as well and gains a P-coin, which allows TM to... p...p... progress into the second half of this area. Man, I can't believe I managed to avoid that joke. I really have no idea how the wrestling works, I only got TM to stop on that very push. I have no idea.

Okay suddenly TM is carrying a block of stone the size of his torso on his head as he rides the Snowboard, awesome. The rock is used to gain some extra height to make the jump to the end of this level and a battle with Ice Cube Machine, a battle which the Spear finishes swiftly. For his work, TM encounters Barney, who rewards him with an Umbrella. Why an Umbrella? Beats me too.

The Teleportation Egg is used to get a head-start, almost placing TM at the entrance of the next area.

The first thing which needs to be done here is get the Diamond/Glass Hammer from James the Jellyfish, which is hard, because TM is close to impossible to control under water. For some reason, I believe that the designers of this game messed up, and gave us the flyer, Barney, rather than the swimmer, Keith, after the last area. Getting Keith would have made MUCH more sense since he actually could have been useful in this part of the game.

Either way, James, against his will, has to give up the Diamond/Glass Hammer, which TM uses to smash a jewel which probably could have allowed him to buy all the ice cream he ever wanted. Here, in this area, TM uses the... sigh... Umbrella to stay in the air for a longer time. Brilliant. And stupid. After a lot of hovering, smashing, running, bribing and killing, TM reaches the boss, the Crystal Crab. Crystal Crab is quickly beaten into nothingness, and TM saves Keith and also receives the Surfboard, yay! TM returns home to his lady to get a good luck kiss before he once again aimlessly starts to wander off on the island.

With all the crystals on the island destroyed, TM finally has gained access to the Pyramid, and to get there, he has to... walk... on... clouds. Wow. Well since that sounds a bit dangerous, TM decides to rely on his flying friend, Barney, and this is the reason why I decided to run this game.

LOOK AT TM'S SMILE! It is crazy, retarded, happy and insane, all at the same time. I love this smile he is giving us here. After some flying with Barney and running with a fox, TM reaches the desert. Here, I could have slid down and, and probably two more slopes, but doing that for some reason made me lose time, even though I gained time from the one I slid down from. Makes sense to me.

Either way, inside the pyramid, Barney is invaluable despite having the mobility of a refrigerator. Without him, I would have to take insane detours to pick up blocks to create temporary platforms, but Barney allows us to say "Screw that" and makes us fly around as we please.

An undead bat is placed to his final rest in a battle for the Boomerang, which allows us to open closed doors here. Yay for that! The Teleportation Egg saves us backtracking time, as we run on towards the end of the pyramid.

At the end, I throw the Boomerang a lot, and that is to brake faster. The boss, which I cleverly enough named "Evil Eye" has nothing against the Boomerang, which, like everything else inside this pyramid, seems to be haunted and have a mind of its own. Evil Eye quickly turns into Wet Eye, and TM saves the green dino, Lance, who kinda ate TM's car keys, but instead offers him a Skateboard. Sweet!

With something WAY better than his car keys in his pocket, TM returns home to his wife, but an evil face is seen in the sky, and it snatches the wife away from TM!

TM, slightly retarded, does not notice that his wife is missing, and is enchanted by the dark face in the sky that is floating away from him, and as TM turns around, he notices that his favorite palm tree has been run down by the evil face! Fueled by anger, TM sets off after the evil face. He will pay for that tree. With his dear life.

TM jumps on his Skateboard and sets off into the dungeon of the evil face who brutally mutilated his beloved tree. The objective in this level is to get a Tomahawk to gain access to the boss and kill him. Too bad that the dude holding the Tomahawk is 10x harder than the final boss of this game.

The battle against the Undead Slimebag is hard. Not because he has a complex attack pattern, but because his stupid attack pattern prevents TM from using the Skateboard well.

Well TM decides to bring out his haunted Boomerang and shows off some awesome boomerang handling, which leads to victory. With Undead Slimebag dead again, TM gains control of the Tomahawk and sets off for the final fight.

As fans of the series might know, TM can not stand egg plants, and here he has one big egg plant, the Egginator. Luckily, the Tomahawk gives TM an unfair advantage, and he quickly shows Egginator who's the boss, and TM has avenged his tree, and rescued his wife at the same time. Groovy.

This story is happy end.

Thank you for reading.

Also suggested screen, frame 55287:

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Oh! I also replaced the ROM name.