The Adventure of Little Ralph (Chippoke Ralph no Daibouken) in 32:03.182
Emulator used was BizHawk 1.11.8, BIOS SCPH-5500.
Goals
- Aims for fastest time
- Manipulates luck
- Takes damage to save time
About the game
Adventure of Little Ralph is a Japan-exclusive action platformer for the Playstation. In addition to the typical running and jumping, there are regular boss encounters utilizing the same mechanics as the platforming sections, as well as the occasional Street Fighter style encounter where Ralph doubles in height to defeat the bad guys. Normal difficulty is chosen, as Easy mode ends the game after stage 5 and is otherwise nearly identical.
Stage layouts are fairly linear, there are side paths that typically lead to bonus items (that are for points only) or power-ups. For the most part, they're slower paths, and power-ups can be found in plain view later if you want them.
Ralph's movement is momentum based, accelerating at 56 subpixels/f in either direction until reaching max speed (512 sbpx/f, or 2 pixels/f). Jumping with no directional input sets your speed to zero, can be nice when changing direction sometimes. Bumping into walls doesn't change your speed, Ralph just waits until the obstacle is gone to move at full speed again. Jump height is completely fixed, no matter how long you hold X, making some platforming sections rather irritating since you overshoot one by a mile but don't quite reach the next.
Ralph is equipped with a sword he can use in a few ways:
- Normal slashes of the sword deal 1 damage and hits a large area in front of Ralph, and can hit below him when he's airborne. Landing during a slash will inhibit your movement. Two power-ups exist for this attack, and both are grabbed in stage 1-1, a minor range increase, and a fireball.
- Fireballs are fired midway through a regular attack, travel straight ahead slightly faster than Ralph, and deal 1 damage.
- Charged slashes can be used in two ways, holding square while doing a normal slash on the ground, or holding square while landing from an air attack. They take about as long as a normal slash and deal 2 damage. Sends enemies flying as a secondary effect.
- Downward stabs can be used in the air, won't affect your movement, and deal 3 damage.
In addition to two power-ups for the slash attack, there is a health power-up that lets you take one hit without dying, and a companion power-up that follows you around and shoots projectiles when you do a normal attack (this one isn't actually used in this run).
Stage Comments
1-1
The town is under attack by pigs and robots, apparently. There's an upper and a lower path through the town, leading to two different power-ups. The lower path is much faster, and yields the range upgrade, the upper path has the companion. There's a cutscene right before the "miniboss" (really its just a regular enemy with > 1 hp) that takes control away, the game doesn't set your speed to zero so jumping into the cutscene gets you closer to the enemy.
1-2 Waterworks Bureau
Rope climbing speed is 1.5px/f, repeatedly jumping is faster. This stage has the game's first real boss fight. You just have to beat up the guy controlling the big machine. It can drop large balls or snails on you. Sadly, attacks won't hit a target more than once, so a few slashes are used before a downward stab at the end of a jump, then a charged slash. The boss's hitbox isn't very tall, so attacking with more jumps and regular slashes is relatively inefficient.
2-1 Aqueduct
After the first drop down, I jump over the companion power-up. This is because the stage 2-2 boss will not use the optimal pattern if this specific power-up is collected.
2-2 Sewage Plant
Despite being able to survive long falls without issue, Ralph refuses to let go of ladders once he's grabbed them. Across the pit with all the platforms that drop out from below you is a path that leads back to the pit but has some collectibles.
The boss typically lets you hit him twice, then has an extended invulnerability period where he flies up and changes color before coming down to fight more (this happens in the second encounter). Instead, if you wait until his recoil is over, you can hit him again without triggering his invincibility. Baiting him near the raised ledge lets you maximize down stab use.
3-1 Velda Desert
Pressing left or right in the air for one frame to turn around doesn't alter your speed.
3-2 Pyramid of Sphio
Taking damage during the floating block section is faster than taking damage during the boss fight. Speaking of, this is probably the worst boss in the game. It's the first boss to have multiple segments, only the main face matters. Breaking the other segments prevents the boss from using certain attacks. Using down stabs is harder on this boss since the floor is so far away and Ralph keeps his momentum so well. I'm not really sure why the first half of the flame attack doesn't seem to hurt you, I stayed in for as many attacks as I could before really having to get out. As far as I know, this attack isn't rng and is always the first one to come out.
4-1 Donan Highlands
This stage introduces swinging ropes a la Donkey Kong Country. It doesn't seem to matter what you do on the ropes except the final one in the sequence, since there isn't much option but to wait for them to move back and forth anyway. Roughly 10f are lost collecting the health upgrade again.
The log cycles are not exactly ideal for going fast, and they fall way too fast to try to get an early cycle.
4-2 Donan Ruins
Taking damage to skip the first fire cycle also lets you skip the next ones as well, which is pretty nice. The charge attack is used to whack an enemy into a switch needed to progress.
Next part of the stage is an autosroller on mine carts, nothing too specatular to see.
4-3 Travant
The introduction to the Street Fighter part of the game. The health bar down below is not indicative of what their health actually is. All of the opponents in these sections seem to have an inner-ear disorder, they fall down incredibly easily, roughly every 5-6 hits they need to take a dive unless you wait an exceptionally long time. Falling down even takes priority over anything else. The main damage-dealing move is a 3-hit combo move, and if the opponent decides to fall down after the first or second hit, the subsequent hit(s) will miss. Sometimes waiting a handful of frames will let more hits occur, other times you're screwed. Manipulating opponent behavior can be done via spacing, ducking/jumping, whiffing an attack before they stand up from a knockdown, changing RNG by attacking more/less enemies in the platforming sections, or waiting. Avoiding the opponents jumping is a top priority, hitting them out of a jump is an immediate knockdown in one hit.
Ideally, you want the opponents to attack after you hit them, so you can just cut them off with your own attack. Ducking or walking will likely cause them to block your attacks unless you wait a bit.
As for the Travant fight in particular, this was the fewest knockdowns I could manage, so I took it.
5-1 Etona Mountains
There's a detour you can take for a companion power-up, but it wouldn't be of much use in upcoming boss fights.
This stage has the one refight in the game, 6 down stabs is exactly enough to kill him. The quick-kill strat won't work in this fight, once his recoil is over he's invulnerable, so his little power-up animations are unavoidable.
5-2 Ice Stronghold
The first part of the stage is an autoscroller leading to the entrance of the stronghold proper.
There's a power-up that makes the ice not slippery, which is about as useful as it sounds.
Like in 1-1, there's a cutscene that takes control away right in front of the boss, so jumping right before gets Ralph much closer. If the boss reaches the edge of the area and is still alive, it teleports back in bounds which takes forever, so Ralph just kills him before that can happen.
5-3 Valgo
The final boss of Easy mode. In addition to needing to manipulate him so he doesn't jump, he also has an attack where he rockets toward you, propelled by a fart, and kicks you in the face. This puts him in the air so it, sadly, isn't a viable attack to let him use or you knock him down in one hit.
6-1 Queen Desta II
A quick autoscroller, then a quick platforming section, then a fight with a dragon. To beat the dragon, you have to either destroy the head, or destroy every other segment. The head is invincible until the dragon is in position to attack, and is up and out of the way, so destroying the other segments is easier.
7-1 The Sky
Platforming on floating islands with a bunch of... weird looking dudes, I don't know what their deal is.
7-2 Ferica
Loves to jump, and even likes to use a super high jump and float down slowly. Has fairly low health, though.
8-1 Broaver Castle
There wasn't a reason to climb all the chandeliers, but landing on them breaks them and this is the bad guy's castle (I think?) so I felt like it was necessary.
If Ralph gets water in his boots he dies, so waiting for a platform cycle is necessary.
8-2 Secret Passage
Bunch of conveyor belts, but they're all going the wrong way so Ralph has to smash his head into the ceiling over and over. Also has more swinging platforms and ropes.
8-3 Castle Tower
Two health power-ups are in the first section of the stage, then it's one long gauntlet of obstacles to navigate. It does allow for a few damage boosts in the stage, though.
Ducking every other frame keeps Ralph's hitbox shorter while maintaining high speed, about 1f is lost ducking under the swinging axes.
The fireballs in room IV are random.
The boss can't actually be hurt until the armor is destroyed, but hitting it a few times pushes it toward the wall. Unlike some of the other bosses, it doesn't have invincibility frames, so the slash+fireball offers pretty decent dps.
Destarroza
A two part final boss, he attacks with magic, then when you defeat him he uses martial arts instead.
Destarroza has a lot of health in round 2, and despite being highly mobile and very strong, he loves falling down as often as all the other bosses.
Luckily, there wasn't a horrible pattern in either fight, since manipulation would necessitate going back to 8-2 at least, and redoing quite a bit.
Closing
This game is actually pretty fun, and was fun to work on. Shoutouts to Zeplins and oopses (RTA and TAS, respectively), otherwise I probably wouldn't have known about the quick kill on the second boss.
There's actually one last thing that can be done after the credits, and that's a name input for the high score. I'll let the viewer claim credit for all those points instead of having like 8 minutes of no input tacked on the end.
TAS tudio is still best tudio.
Suggested Screenshots
33547, 62150, 77540, 86026
feos: Judging...
feos: This run is as optimized as one can be with a basic "run right with occasional jumps and turns" game. What is obvious here is how much boss fights differ from a barely tool-assisted play, that's still kinda close in time to this one due to all the "run right" gameplay.
While having to offer some high quality graphics and music, gameplay wise this game is still really simplistic, with the same action you've seen in level one dragged out throughout the whole game, and even the later levels (that do offer some more turns and jumps) don't help much. The viewer feedback (or rather, the lack of it) proves that.
Accepting to Vault.
fsvgm777: Processing. Also changed the title to the English one, since an official English title exists for this game.