Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 1.12.2
- Aims for shortest input
- Abuses death... after movie end
Target categories
About the game
Go! Go! Tank is a game that totally makes sense. You play as a cartoonized airplane that has to fly back and forth transporting huge cement blocks in order for a cartoonized tank to walk freely his way toward the enemy base. Since the game is supposed to be played by childs, it features an extremely hard gameplay, with sloppy moving controls and microscopic hook hitbox. And no, it's no bootleg.
About the run
Since the goal is to finish the game fast, I'm doing all the extra work possible for making the tank to walk his way through faster. This merely consists in removing blocks that would block his path and putting them together in order to make him fall as few times as possible, since that momentanely stops his orizontal moving. Also note that the higher the fall, the more vertical momentum he will get.
This resulted in a lot of trickery in order to abuse the collision detection to the maximum, creating in every stage the best path possible, as of the time available for doing it before the tank clashes into a wall. Planning wasn't hard, but putting in pratice every construction project in time was often tricky, resulting in many very close calls.
Commands
- D-pad: "control" the plane
- A: shoot
- B: release block
- Start: pause
- Select: restart stage
Movement
If you don't press any direction buttons, the plane will keep flying forward his facing direction and rising altitude. If you press and keep the facing direction button it will fly faster, if you press the opposite horizontal direction will change facing with a slow, "realistic" steering. If you keep Up button, it will rise faster, and if you keep Down it will go down.
While you're changing facing direction, you can't shoot, pick blocks, release blocks, or die. You can still move vertically however, making it an interestingly exploitable movement for passing through level tiles.
Blocks
You pick them by touching them with your hook, if you are skilled enough. If while falling they touch your tank, an enemy, or another block that is as well falling, it will disappear. You can't release blocks while they overlap on level tiles, on other blocks, or on your tank. You can't pick another block if the precedent one has not completely stopped on ground yet.
Enemies
These are the last of our concerns. You just need to shoot at the right time. Easy, at least in TASing.
Items
These appear when you destroy an enemy turret; it is predetermined which one will drop. You need to pick them with your hook before they disappear. They look like a circle with a letter inside.
- (D): Gives you an extra plane to control at the same time. Incredibly useful.
- (P): Replenishes your tank life, and erases your extra plane.
- (C): Instantly de-materializes all flying enemis on screen, and erases your extra plane.
- (T): No idea. I'm pretty sure it does something, beside erasing your extra plane.
Tricks used
- Releasing one block at time when having two planes with one block each. You just need to have the other block overlapping on level tiles in the moment you press B.
- Quick re-picking: when you can't use the above trick, just make the block fall to the ground from point blank distance. The hook will grab it again instantly.
Notes
- In some Stages you can't avoid getting at least one damage to your tank. In this run I didn't get any damange beside the unavoidable ones.
- There is no Stage 11. When you reach the 11th map checkpoint, the game will give you the ending screen. And there are no credits.
Possible improvements
I'm not sure.
Suggested screenshots
10630, 18078, 25210
Noxxa: This is an interesting little game, which clearly shows some interesting challenges in terms of optimization. The movie looks well-executed at that, and viewer response was good enough. Accepting to Moons.
feos: Pub, since it's already encoded.
