Game controls and physics in this game are, for all intents and purposes, nearly completely identical to those of Rockman DX3/Zook Hero 2, a game I have
. So I'll copy all movement-related notes from that publication's submission notes (with some changes), omitting any tricks depending on weapons or environments exclusive to that game.
While this is still mostly the same as Rockman DX3, it should be noted that a few glitches (such as the final boss phase 2 skip, downwards ladder entrance, spike wall glitches, and the save/hitbox glitches) are not in this game. There are a few new ones instead, though.
Air stall is a (probably unintended) action done by pressing Down+A in the air. It effectively starts a slide for 1 frame: it moves Zook forward 2 pixels, puts him in dash speed horizontally, and resets Y velocity to 0 (hence "stall"). Combining the two-pixel forward boost with regular moving forward, it's possible to reach faster horizontal speeds than intended by air stalling every other frame, leading to a horizontal movement oscillating between 2px/frame and 4px/frame every frame. Naturally, this is abused everywhere in the run. This also causes Zook to move ahead of the camera, which leads to many more glitches.
Getting Zook close enough to the edge (or outside) of the camera/screen bounds causes terrain collision and object collision to wrap and mess up completely. In certain cases, this allows Zook to pass through walls, floors and ceilings, or to ignore enemies that would otherwise harm him (although he can instead be hit by enemies on the other side of the screen).
Getting Zook outside the screen also can lead to a few more glitches:
Anyone who ever played half a stage of either Zook game will know that the minibosses are by far the hardest part of each game, as they have a whopping 50 hit points and have damaging and hard to dodge attacks. They are also in every primary stage (except for the Bird stage in RDX3). Conveniently, this run does not fight a single one of them - this is because the trigger to load the boss, which is normally hit right before entering the miniboss room, can be skipped past by being far enough off the right side of the screen. In combination with the room skip glitch below, the miniboss room itself is also skipped a few times, making it seem as if there isn't a miniboss room in the stage at all.
Exclusive to Zook Hero Z are two stages where the miniboss cannot be passed conventionally - these are the Water stage and the Grass stage in Zook Hero Z. However, both of them still bypass the miniboss by other means. In the Water stage, it's possible to use the room skip glitch to glitch into the next room while the miniboss spawn still is triggered. This room doubles as a checkpoint, so by dying here, Zook Z respawns in the room past the miniboss without having had to defeat him.
Similarly, in the Grass stage, the room skip glitch is used to bypass the miniboss room, die and use the checkpoint in the next room to respawn after the boss room. However, it turns out that it's possible to skip loading the miniboss here by being low enough during the screen transition. However, this still puts Zook low enough that he has to die and death-warp still. It makes the scene look a bit nonsensical as Zook appears to go down and die for seemingly no purpose, but this is still the fastest way to bypass the miniboss room.
Although dying takes some time, it's still far faster to skip the minibosses this way rather than defeat them conventionally. 50 hitpoints are just too much to clean out fast enough, and the boss' fade-out animation takes too much time as well.
When entering a 1-screen wide room from the left or right, with the next room entrance the same way, it is possible to skip to the next room right away by moving more than 2 pixels horizontally while entering the room (by using e.g. air stall or a well-timed slide). Due to the requirements of the rooms in order to pull off the glitch, it can't be done in every stage. Most of the time, it can be used to skip the miniboss rooms entirely.
If this is done when entering a long horizontal room, it will not skip the room, but instead a graphical glitch occurs where some graphic columns are offset wrongly, causing graphical glitches throughout the room.
A severe glitch which tends to crash and reset the game, and for that reason, it is unused in this run (although there might be possible uses for it found later). Entering an upwards ladder and reaching the top of the screen, the screen will always scroll upwards no matter where the camera actually is. If it is not where it is expected to be (for instance, using the screen out-of-bound tricks so you're far enough to the right that the screen has not entirely scrolled to the rightmost part of a room yet), the screen won't scroll to the next room, but instead to a glitched room where all kinds of random effects may happen.
Sometimes, nothing happens and Zook is transported to one of the first rooms of the stage. Sometimes, a graphical glitch occurs (usually with interface graphics overtaking the room) but otherwise nothing happens. Sometimes the game simply freezes. Most of the time, though, the game will crash and reset itself. After resetting, the tileset usually will be glitched (turning into either garbage, or sometimes all-black or all-white colors). However, so far, no useful applications are known yet.
If the last weapon fired was a charged shot (or a weapon was charged, but not fired), it is often possible to get an instant charge, simply by charging the weapon without firing a shot. This can be done in a few different ways, such as starting holding the charge button when in the pause menu, while the screen is scrolling, when using movement that inhibits shooting (such as air stall, slides or walljumps), or just while a previous charged shot is still on screen. This is useful whenever a charged weapon shot is needed quickly.
With certain precise movement, and seemingly only possible in certain locations, it is possible to wedge Zook into a wall in a standing position. In this situation, jumping up causes Zook to zip 16 pixels upwards. At its fastest, this can be done once every 3 frames and allow for fast upwards zipping. It can also be used to go through ceilings when applicable.
(In Zook Hero Z, applications for this trick are even rarer than in Rockman DX3. Only a few very specific rooms/walls allow doing this, such as the Ice boss room right wall)
In Zook Hero Z, taking damage before entering an upgrade capsule skips part of the upgrade animation and makes Zook warp up immediately. While taking damage costs time on its own, it still saves about a second overall.
Some timer-related events (including boss movement patterns and move charging) can be stalled by repeatedly using air stalls. Repeatedly air stalling into a wall can be used to completely freeze a boss' action sometimes. This is sometimes abused when a boss would turn invincible when I'm supposed to hit them as soon as possible (I found out about this utility during the first Cannon boss fight).
A trick I newly discovered in Zook Hero Z (by Fortress 5). Repeatedly pressing and letting go of both jump and left/right at the same time allows Zook to do multiple jumps against a wall while seemingly ignoring ceilings. This allows Zook to clip through a few ceilings and
Also new in Zook Hero Z, I discovered this much later than the wall rapid jump (around the second Fire stage run). It has similar results to the wall rapid jumps (except it doesn't require a wall to be present), allowing clipping into ceiings, and also allows doing repeated jumps in mid-air without a wall present, making it possible to reach greater heights than just a jump and airdash would. This is used in Fortress 8 to enter the Fire boss refight teleporter in an unintended way, and to reach a greater height after the final boss fight to teleport out faster.
The leg upgrade, which enables the airdash, has a few movement glitches that come with it. Most of these involve cancelling air dashes into other things.
Cancelling an air dash (either horizontal or vertical) into a slide triggers an air slide. The air slide cannot be cancelled except by hitting a wall or enemy, or waiting until its timer runs out. It's not possible to jump or shoot out of the air slide.
Cancelling an upward airdash into a horizontal airdash triggers a glitched horizontal airdash which, if no horizontal direction is pressed, remains suspended in air in the airdash animation. The only way to exit is is to either air slide, hit a wall or enemy, or move left or right (with air dash motion/speed) until the timer runs out (which only runs while moving left or right). This has no practical application, but is used during some bossfights for fun.
Cancelling an upward air dash into climbing a ladder causes a glitched ladder climbing state, which acts like normal except it cannot be jumped out of. Most of the time this is just a nuisance and is generally avoided.
They're all lame. That's basically most of what I have to say about them.
The bosses, their stages and their weapons are not named in-game, so I simply call them by the element they represent. The instruction manual scan does have separate names for the stages, bosses, and their weapons, but I still go with my own names for the sake of brevity, clarity, and consistency.
Clockwise from top left: Cannon, Earth, Ice, Fire, Water, Grass
Bosses have 16 hit points and a lengthy stun/invincibility period (over 3 seconds in total, the exact amount of frames varies a little) after every hit. Because of this lengthy invincibility period, it is crucial to ensure that the bossfights take as few hits as possible overall. Uncharged buster shots do 1 damage, semi-charged shots (or fully charged without the Hand upgrade) do 2 damage, fully charged shots with the Hand upgrade do 3 damage, special weapons do 2 damage and charged special weapons do 3 damage. Unlike Rockman DX3, in this game the bosses have actual weaknesses. Weakness weapons do 1 point of damage more than normal (so 3 uncharged, 4 charged) to the boss.
The bosses of Fortress 4, Fortress 5 and Fortress 6 also follow these boss rules, but take 1 less damage than listed above (for every weapon that does 2 or more damage). Hence, weakness weapons do 2 damage uncharged and 3 charged to these bosses instead of 3 / 4 respectively.
List of bosses and their weakness weapons:
- Cannon - Grass
- Earth - Water
- Ice - Water
- Fire - Water
- Water - Grass
- Grass - Fire
- Fortress 4 - Water
- Fortress 5 - Water
- Fortress 6 - Water
Yeah, the game is not very balanced with regards to boss weaknesses.
(According to the instruction manual scan, the weakness cycle is supposed to be Water > Ice > Fire > Grass > Cannon > Earth > Water. However, this simply is not the case.)
Last thing of note: Every boss in this game has a completely fixed movement/attack pattern. They're not affected by randomness or player position (although their attacks may be), other than turning their sprite around to face the player. The only way to stop them in their tracks is to hit and stun them, or to abuse a weird timing bug involving repeated air stalls that can sometimes freeze a boss' attack pattern for a short while.
Minibosses
Fortress stages 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9 do not have bosses, but instead have minibosses. Minibosses are large, have 50 HP, 24 frames of invincibility on hit, do not get stunned, and have no weaknesses. (Fortress 9 has the final boss, which just consists of two consecutive miniboss fights).
Since the minibosses basically all have the same rules for hitting them, they are basically all dealt with the same way.
Boss refights
Fortress stage 8 has the traditional boss refights in a single teleporter room with the six Robot Masters/Mavericks/whatever, and the stage has no other boss associated with it. The boss refights can be done in any order, and Zook automatically progresses to the next stage after the last robot master is defeated.