Submission #878: IdeaMagnate's Genesis Jurassic Park in 02:43.37

Sega Genesis
Raptor
(Submitted: Jurassic Park (U) [!].bin USA)
Gens 9f
9802
60
4854
Unknown
Submitted by IdeaMagnate on 11/6/2005 4:47 PM
Submission Comments
I recommend watching the run before reading this writeup. There are a few tricks that I think will be more fun if they're not expected.
This is a raptor movie of the Genesis version of Jurassic Park, which is completely different from the SNES version. In this game, you can choose between Grant and the raptor, each with his own set of levels. Grant gets 7 levels, and his game is like Price of Persia except with dinosaurs and better weapons. The raptor's game is only 5 levels long, and goes by much faster. Especially here.
Settings:
The movie was recorded with Gens 9f, with sound set to stereo at 44100 Hz and controllers 1 and 2 set to 3 and 6 buttons.
Features:
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Plays on hardest difficulty
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Plays as the raptor
  • Manages health
Bugs:
  • The screen can sometimes move more slowly than the raptor. Guards and spitters that aren't rendered yet don't effect the raptor, so it can look like I'm walking through them before they appear.
  • The collision detect is quite buggy, letting me land on nothing and jump through walls. Usually, I'd have to crouch-walk out of a wall, but this can also be avoided.
  • The raptor is immune to rockets when he's up against a wall or opening a door. This may be related to the fact that rockets explode in open doorways.
  • The doors suck. I sometimes keep walking after bumping into doors. The position I need to be in to kick them open is very precise, and any goofy walking I do is needed to get into that position. There's one time (second-to-last room in the Visitor's Center) where I obviously walk into a door longer than necessary. This is to avoid the spitter's goop. You'll see why. ;)
Oddities:
  • The raptor also has a short non-obvious invincibility period after getting hit. In the middle of the visitor's Center, I get hit by two rockets about half a second apart, but only the first one hurts me.
  • Jumping on spitters moves the raptor quickly to the right, whereas carelessly jumping on guards moves him to the left. This does *not* depend on which way the raptor is facing. Gaurds need to be attacked carefully to keep from throwing the raptor backwards.
  • If it looks like I take an unnecessary step, it's probably to avoid/get food. Jumping too close to a drumstick will cause the raptor to duck and eat it instead of/while jumping. If I get it by jumping on top of it or while it's offscreen, there's no time penalty.
  • The rerecord count is so high because of desyncs (mostly) in the last level and because I found a couple of major optimizations after recording most of the game.
  • The guards are badass on the highest difficulty. In the right circumstances, they'll shoot several rockets per second and can go from idle to firing a lightning gun in very few frames.
  • Each instance of catching onto a platform should be optimal, ie I never jump higher than absolutely necessary. The game doesn't allow me pixel-perfect control, so a few jumps look overshot. They're optimal, barring a new bug.
  • Grant is supposed to show up at the end of each level, but sometimes I'm too fast for him and sometimes I take a route that bypasses him. You get to see him at the end of the game, at any rate.
Levels:
1 - Jungle
Other than off-screen action and abusing the guard's lightning gun, there's not much special here. I was pleasantly surprised by how the lightning gun took care of my problems for me.
2 - Power Station
It's possible to jump through walls and do the whole level on the floor, but the time it takes to exit a wall makes my route more efficient. This level features the raptor racing rockets and running through a guard with and without taking damage.
3 - Pump Station
This is a good level for acrobatics. The first set of jumps is the second-hardest move in the game. I jump over the little green dinosaur (compy) because they cause damage when walked over. It's not possible to jump through the pipe that I have to duck-walk over. I've tried, but the raptor runs into the top of the pipe before I can exploit the jump-through-walls bug. If you observe carefully, you'll notice the last guard change colors as he goes off the screen. If I go back at that point, all the gaurds will have different-colored uniforms.
4 - Canyon
This is the only level with pteradactyls, and they don't last very long. The jump at the beginning of this level is the hardest one in the game, although you'd never guess it. I feel bad about killing the guards at the beginning of the level, so I don't hurt any of the last six.
5 - Visitor's Center
I don't like this level. It kept desyncing on me and contained some very annoying sections with doors. Fortunately, this level also has the biggest timesaver in the game, which I abuse with style. I go through the same area twice. This is because I'm not supposed to be there the first time, and the game assumes that any exit door I go through is the right one. The fight with Grant isn't terribly interesting. I needed to time my kicks so that his gas grenades didn't interrupt them, so I couldn't do rapid-fire kicks. It's a good thing that the last grenade doesn't hurt me.
Last Edited by Phil on 2/19/2006 9:44 PM
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