Boing! is a Q*bert clone developed by Alex Leavens and Shirley Russell and released in 1983 by First Star Software as its only A2600 game.
Boing! is in many ways simpler than the original, as it only offers 6 levels with 5 stages each. The most significant difference though, is arguably the playing field. While Q*bert offers the player a triangular playing field with more complex movement possibilities, Boing! is played on a rectangular 6x6 grid.
Game Objectives:
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.4.1
- Core used: Atari2600Hawk
- Plays through levels 1-6 as fast as possible
- Aims for shortest input
- Genre: Action
- Genre: Puzzle
About the game:
As the protagonist, you play as a bubble (named Bubble) and your goal is to turn on every platform in every Stage of every Level. But watch out for the hungry Bubble Eater and the Pin, as they are trying to eat and pop your bubble!
The Game is divided up into 6 levels, with 5 stages each. Every level is based on a different concept:
- Level 1: Every platform the bubble jumps on gets turned on
- Level 2: Core principle as in Level 1, but now every platform of a row starting from the bottom, must be completed first, before being able to turn on platforms of other rows
- Level 3: Core principle as in Level 1, but now rows 2, 4 and 6 must be complete, before being able to turn on platforms of other rows
- Level 4: The state of whether a platform is on or off is switched every time the bubble lands on one. Thus, it changes from off to on and from on to off
- Level 5: Same as in Level 2, but with core principle of Level 4
- Level 6: Same as in Level 3, but with core principle of Level 4
Within a level, the Bubble Eater moves faster every Stage.
(Note: Jumping up or down takes 14 frames, while jumping right or left only takes 13 frames. So, the main strategy is to avoid jumping up or down unnecessarily)
Tricks used:
- When the Pin and the Bubble Eater are not standing on a platform, but moving from one platform to another, the bubble can jump right through them without getting harmed
- Sometimes waiting a few frames is necessary in order to alter the path of the Bubble Eater, who moves in a logical way based on yours and his position.
- When jumping into the Bubble Eater some frames before it starts to move, it will move one tile upwards. Sometimes this is useful, as it reduces the waiting time, but most of the time it ends up being worse, because for the most part I am moving up the playing field, so this maneuver would often end up blocking my path.
- The Pin's spawning points are RNG based and can be manipulated by exiting previous stages on different frames. Every 2 frames you wait at the end of the level, the Pin's starting position moves left one column. This manipulation is mainly used in Level 2 and 5, such that the Pin spawns in the rightmost column and kills the Bubble Eater to reduce waiting time.
Level by Level:
- Level 1: Simply rushing through the stages as fast as possible
- Level 2: Manipulate the Pin to kill the Eater in the first three stages. He wakes up fast enough on Stage 4 and 5 to play them normal, though the Pin can still help keep him out of the way
- Level 3: Nothing to add here
- Level 4: Basically, the same as Level 1
- Level 5: Same as Level 2, except that I need to jump up and down at first to not mess up the on-off state of the second platform
- Level 6: Same as Level 3, except that I need to re-activate some platforms I cross on my path downwards
Screenshot suggestion:
Well, that's an awkward concept for a game that is never drawing its entire self at once. Frame 10887 neatly shows off all three elements of the game, with the ball and eater centered, and the eater's silly face showing.
ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a 291 frames improvement.
ThunderAxe31: Removing Blazephlozard's name from autors list per his request.
Memory: Judging
Memory: This submission looks well optimized as far as I can tell and reaches a clear looping point.
However the game is still really boring and repetitive and barely got any feedback.
Accepting to Vault and continuing to pretend this movie never had a coauthor
fsvgm777: Processing. Zinfidel is handling the encodes for this one.