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Veediots was released for SNES in 1993. It is based on four episodes of the Ren and Stimpy television series. The game consumed much of my childhood, and since there was no video for it on TASVideos, I felt one needed to be made. This is considered an any% run, completing the game as quickly as possible.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.5.3
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time

Comments

This game is notable for being tough to beat, and not in a good way. Enemies spawn out of nowhere and move quickly, hitboxes are really weird, and sometimes the game will instantly kill you for touching something. The hardest part of TASing it was trying to manipulate enemies, finding optimal ways to kill/avoid them, and health management. Collecting money was also an issue, as it gave an extra life while stopping gameplay for an animation. All in all, I'm happy with how it came out. Note that the rerecord count is a little misleading because I mostly used TAStudio.

Stage by stage comments

The Boy Who Cried Rat!

You play as Ren, dressed up as a rat, and being hunted by Stimpy through a house. The first level wasn't too hard, mostly avoiding money and trying to find where the platform edges are. Touching the phones when they ring throws Ren forward, which was abused as much as possible. Fans do the same thing, and are always on. The clocks also throw you, but require an input. In finding the optimal throwing speed/angles, I actually managed to go so far ahead of the screen that Ren appeared back at the left side of the screen. Being ahead of the camera meant that later in the level, I couldn't abuse the phones as much. There were two stoppages: Waiting for a phone to ring (did save time), and running into the lamp near the end. I couldn't find any other way to get over it, but it didn't cost much time.
The second level in this chapter is inside a dirty mouth. This was the first major challenge of the run. Touching any of the exposed roots/nerves causes the mouth to close, resulting in instant death. There are speed powerups (sock), as well as invincibility (powdered toast). There are beaver looking creatures that latch onto you, slowing you down quite a bit.
Boss Battle - A beaver/squirrel/whatever it is has taken control of the tongue! I managed to slap him to defeat fairly quickly.
The next section is going back out through the mouth. I had to use my speed sock wisely in order to jump over certain gaps. I also collected a total of five dollars, which lost some time due to the animation, but seems to be unavoidable.

In The Army

Ren is the playable character again despite Stimpy being dressed up in the level artwork. These levels are a lesson in health management. The soldiers hiding in the ground were easy to defeat, but the bombs were tough to avoid. There are bullets soaring through the level, which I use for a momentary speed boost. The cannons and umbrellas were annoying to strategize around, but ultimately were the best (sometimes only) way through. Avoiding the fire was of little concern, since there was usually a pool of water nearby to extinguish it.
Next section is inside a cave. It was tough to get the umbrella and spinning thing to cooperate, but it was smooth sailing after that. A minor stoppage for a tall ledge, and a longer full stop waiting on the cannon jump timing. There was no way to reach the other cannon without grabbing the umbrella at a very specific time.
The third army level was all about health management. It took a lot of routing to get an optimal acceptable damage strategy. The long strings of bombs and the mudskippers in tanks were the worst of it.
Boss Battle - Sarge is calling in bomb drops on you from his tank. Luckily, Stimpy tosses you a grenade periodically and the fight isn't too hard. The bombs in the beginning were pretty much impossible to avoid without dying, and there was nothing else to do anyway so I rode the helicopter.

Stimpy's Invention

Sharing a name with a Ren and Stimpy game released the same year, you control Stimpy as expected. The chapter is entirely puzzle based, including springs to jump on, explosive potions to mix, and scales to tip. I discovered an interesting part of the physics in this chapter: Depending what frame you press jump on, your jump speed/height vary. Usually it was a speed of 6 or 7, but about every 3-4 frames would result in a vertical speed of 8. This was very useful in making some of the jumps in the chapter. I used that trick combined with a first frame jump on the springs, which would propel Stimpy much higher and faster than a normal spring jump. Some obstacles in the section include insta-kill electricity, backtracking for items, and destroying doors in a variety of ways. Another concern was how to fill downtime with limited tools - Jumping, tonguing, and playing with a ball were the most interesting things I could do.
The second level introduces moving pistons in the floor and explosive potions. The potions required the collecting glass, and pouring both yellow and blue fluids into it. The fluids and collection glass had fairly generous hitboxes, but the resulting explosion did not. It also took a while to explode.
The third level introduces switches and moving platforms. No matter when the switch was flipped, the platforms would wait until spawning on-screen before moving, which halted gameplay for a while. Once on, I used the frame-based jump speed manipulation to minimize waiting to be lifted.
Fourth level uses blowtorches to burn ropes and destroy doors. It also expects the player to light it and juggle between it and positioning things like a spring. I used the crouching technique to be as far away as possible from the doors when cutting them open, as the final block took a moment to unblock the way, leaving me with enough time to get back to full walking speed.
The fifth level features potions, scales, safes, and balls. The potion collecting glass had to be positioned before mixing in the second color. The scales can be jumped on without tipping in a very small frame window.
Boss Battle - Ren doesn't want to wear Stimpy's invention, a hat that forces him to be happy. Your job is to throw it on Ren's head, which is much easier said than done. There are two platforms that block your way, which seem to have move randomly. Ren also moves back and forth. There is a very small chance of getting the hat to be in exactly the right place on his head, mostly due to your jump speed and what frame you throw it on. I actually gave up on this TAS for a few months because of how difficult it was. On a whim I loaded my save and got it first try.

Marooned

The final chapter of the game. It involves many falling sections, in which I just tried to use minimal inputs and avoid money as much as possible. It was also a chance to show how broken hitboxes could be. Not much else to say about the falling levels.
The first platforming level shows off new enemies and weapons. Enemies that look like cabbage and turn into monsters, eyeballs that shoot at you, and mutated frog things. Weapons include a green slime that seems to follow your Y position and X speed, a book (?) that returns to you and is catchable, and a garbage can lid for blocking eyeballs. Health management was an issue, as well as lag and those bouncy globs on the floor. The worst part was timing the floating fish things. Usually there was no way to jump over them without taking damage (although sometimes their positioning could be manipulated), and killing them involved stopping and waiting a few frames.
Second falling level. Broken hitboxes on the darting green enemies. That's about it.
The second platforming level was mostly about avoiding lag. The floating bubble section was fun because you can damage boost off the eyeball cluster and bypass a couple areas, saving quite a bit of time.
Boss Battle - An evil slime monster is the final boss. Getting to him is tough to optimize, since the floor is hard to locate exactly, resulting in a lot of jump routing. The level also rotates on a timer, which was both a blessing and a curse. I managed to make the first cycle (barely), and the next required stoppages. The boss fight was pretty easy, you just grab the pink globs and drop them on him. The only difficult part was that he needed to be slightly on-screen for the hitbox to be active, which meant I had to fall down a bit. The globs were easy to use, since you could throw them behind you even if moving full speed. Globs also spawn on the bottom of the room, but are much harder to use and took a long time to kill the boss with.

Other comments

I think anyone who has played this will have an appreciation for the tricks and strategies involved in the run. It is very punishing to play realtime, and nearly as much to TAS. Those new to it might get an understanding of how wacky this game is, and I hope you decide to play this "gem" of the 90s!
For possible improvements, I would like to see somebody try and beat this run one day. The only thing I can think is that maybe they could manipulate the Marooned enemies in ways that I could not, and save a few frames.

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: Hello HyperZoot, and welcome to TASVideos.
Your run looks fairly good for a first submission, but unfortunately, the forum topic about this game contains a 7-years old testrun (which has also has a more recent BizHawk version), which beats the stages in this run by several seconds. Since it loses time compared to existing (test)runs, I'll have to reject your submission. I have to say that regardless, your run looked fairly well done, and I hope to see an improved version in the future.
Better luck next time!

TASVideoAgent
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Noxxa
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Temp encode: Link to video
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
jaysmad
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Sorry... I love this game but I'm going to have to vote no on this one. I had did a test run of this, back in the days, and it was faster than this. You can find it in the veediots topic. I tried again, last year, and gave up, since the last levels were not entertaining enough for my liking. Here is my latest run, if ever you would want some tips. It was done on Bizhawk 1.6.0. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/get/1851212144/Ren%20%26%20Stimpy%20Show%2C%20The%20-%20Veediots%21%20%28USA%29.bkm
Samtastic
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No vote because of a faster movie file before publication of this run.
Enjoys speedrunning, playing and TASing Oddworld games! Has TASed: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee in 12.06.13 (with Dooty) Oddworld: Adventures II in 20.03.78 (with Dooty) Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus 100% in 2:08:28.4 (with Dooty) Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee 100% in 1:05:01.65 Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus in 37:18 Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus in 37:15 Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus 100% in 2:!5.44.12 Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee any% in 13:01.3 Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee any% in 12:59.95 Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee 100% in 1:04:16.27 Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee 100% in 1:04:01.07 Currently working on: Waiting for Windows TAS Tools to work so I can TAS PC version of Exoddus.
Noxxa
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jaysmad wrote:
the veediots topic
Thread #5417: The Ren & Stimpy show - Veediots (U) for reference
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Samlaptop wrote:
No vote because of a faster movie file before publication of this run.
Er....but is it entertaining?
Ford
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Well, I didn't know about the other run that was done on this game. Since it doesn't appear to be published, though, I'd actually be for this one, and perhaps it can be improved upon later. (Couldn't you have jumped off at least one ledge instead of just falling off in Stimpy's Invention to save some time?) But yeah, I'm thinkin' yes to this one and later down the line make an improved movie.
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om, nom, nom... blech, salty!
Patashu
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I hope HyperZoot takes a look at the testrun and comes back with something faster :)
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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Thanks for the reviews. I knew about the old topic but I guess I forgot to adopt tricks from it. I'm also not sure what happened to jumping off ledges in the early game, those parts were done several months ago. I might redo this down the road, but I think jaysmad should finish his latest wip since it looks really good and is near the end. Those last levels go by faster than you think.
Patashu
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HyperZoot wrote:
I might redo this down the road, but I think jaysmad should finish his latest wip since it looks really good and is near the end. Those last levels go by faster than you think.
You're allowed to use Jaysmad's TAS/input when you're making an improved TAS and have him as a co-author when you submit. In fact, it's encouraged! If it's a good base to work off of, why not?
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu