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Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures is a side scroller point-and-click like game and a self-proclaimed "interactive cartoon".
In this game you guide Pac-Man through caves, mountains and cities by telling him to look around and shooting at objects and Pac-Man himself.
Your goal is to beat the Ghost Witch of Nector who has stolen all the bubble gum from the kids in Pac-City.
Emulator used: BizHawk 2.3.1
The objective of this movie is to complete the game as fast as possible.
This game depends a lot on Pac-Man's mood. If he is sad or angry he may not want to do certain actions which becomes troublesome if you want him to do as expected.
In this run we manipulate Pac-Man's mood by having him interact with different objects or by shooting directly at him. Some moods will cause him to ignore objects, saving a lot of time as these animations can get quite long.
To complete the game you need to find 3 ID cards hidden around the game. There are also bonus cartridges that contains the original Pac-Man games but those are not collected in this run.
Chapter one: Get the milk.
In the first chapter of Pac-Man 2, Pac-Man has to go out and find milk for Pac-Baby.
This is the shortest chapter of the game, only requiring to move one screen to collect the milk from the cow.
Chapter 2: Get the flower.
In the second chapter, it's Pac-Man's friend, Lucy's birthday and she loves fresh mountain flowers, so Pac-Man has to go pick one at the top of the mountain.
This is the hardest chapter of the game as it contains a difficult minecart section as well as a hangglider section. These sections are usually "run-enders" when playing the game in real time.
Chapter 3: Get the guitar.
In the third chapter, the ghosts has stolen Pac-JR's guitar and ran off to the city.
This chapter uses the "Cola skip", one of the few major animation skips still used in the Pac-Man 2 run.
By shooting Pac-Man as he passes the Cola machine, the almost 20 second animation is cancelled and Pac-Man continues on his way.
Chapter 4: The Gum Monster.
In the final Chapter of Pac-Man 2, the ghosts are terrorizing the city and are stealing all the chewing gum and the Ghost Witch is calling out Pac-Man.
There is not much to say about the final chapter. In the SNES version of Pac-Man 2, it is possible to beat the Gum Monster in "once cycle" where the Genesis version can do it in two. We count one cycle each time Pac-Man reaches the end of the screen.
This TAS completes the game in 21 minutes and 27 seconds, beating the current world record by 19 seconds.
This time should be doable by a human as there are very few 2-5 frame tricks used.
The strategies and tricks used are a mix of optimizations found during the making of this TAS, the SDA 2007 speedrun and all the current speedrunners of this game.

ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a 1121 frames spiked version.
slamo: New improvements were found while this run was being judged, and a new run is already being planned. Canceling.

TASVideoAgent
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EZGames69
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Oh god this game, I really cant see judging this movie to be very easy considering it's textbook RNG Hell. btw, do you have a video of the tas to post? if not I can make one for you.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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The run should come in at around 21:30 when using RTA timing just before this sets any red flags for anyone due to the massive time difference with the extended input. Should note there's 1121 frames of blank input which the file can be replaced by a judge.
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EZGames69 wrote:
Oh god this game, I really cant see judging this movie to be very easy considering it's textbook RNG Hell. btw, do you have a video of the tas to post? if not I can make one for you.
The game looks like RNG hell but all of Pac-Man's moods and interactions are 100% predictable. The difficult part is to figure out what each mood does to what interaction. The only RNG I experienced when making this is what rocks are falling down in the hangglider section and where the ghosts stops moving after appearing on screen. I currently don't have a video of the TAS. BizHawk won't run smoothly whenever I try to record anything so if you could make one, that would be very much appreciated. :)
Spikestuff wrote:
The run should come in at around 21:30 when using RTA timing just before this sets any red flags for anyone due to the massive time difference with the extended input. Should note there's 1121 frames of blank input which the file can be replaced by a judge.
Would you care to explain what extended input is and why it causes time difference?
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SelfDestructor wrote:
Would you care to explain what extended input is and why it causes time difference?
The movie length depends on how many frames of input are in it. The issue is that you included blank input frames after your last input.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
The movie length depends on how many frames of input are in it. The issue is that you included blank input frames after your last input.
Oh, I see. This is my first TAS so I apologize for the mistake. Is there any way I can re-upload the zip with the blank frames removed or do I have to wait for a judge to do so?
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ThunderAxe has already switched the file around.
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Oh awesome!
nymx
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Oh my gosh! I was a pacman fan, until I bought this game for the SNES. I never could figure this game out and wrote it off as being a bad game. AGDQ 2014 featured this game and classified it in their block as an "Awful Game Done Quick". This only confirmed to me that this game sucked. Well, if there was only some way an encode can be provided...I would love to see how this is really supposed to be played. Abstaining vote for the moment.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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I vote yes. Very good for your first TAS.
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[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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Is there any reason for this version over the better SNES Version? The audio is bad on this version compared to the SNES Version. Also, If I remember right, the Ms. Pac-Man game is locked until you find the three cartridges. the Pac-Man arcade game comes unlocked/playable at the start of the game. At least the SNES version was.
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EZGames69
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hegyak wrote:
The audio is bad on this version compared to the SNES Version.
I never understood why people hated the genesis sounds so much. I personally like it. unless you dont dislike the genesis sound effects but just the sound from this game in general.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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EZGames69 wrote:
hegyak wrote:
The audio is bad on this version compared to the SNES Version.
I never understood why people hated the genesis sounds so much. I personally like it. unless you dont dislike the genesis sound effects but just the sound from this game in general.
Listen to the Genesis Version and then the SNES version. It's a world of difference. Edit: I don't mind the Genesis overall but this is one clear case of the Genesis not being anywhere near as good as the SNES
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I highly disagree about the sound. The Genesis version here sounds far more pleasing than the obnoxious sounding SNES version for this particular game. Plus, the Charlie Brown-esque voice of Pacman in this one sounds more fitting than the chipmunk-esque voice on SNES.
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No! No! Oh my goodness NOOOO!! Did the game really say that? "The Ghost Witch of Netor Ran Away With Her Ghosts To Plan Her Next Wicked Scheme"???
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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Thank you for the video, EZGames69!
hegyak wrote:
Is there any reason for this version over the better SNES Version? The audio is bad on this version compared to the SNES Version.
The SNES version doesn't let you instantly skip the cutscenes between the chapters and some interactions causes different moods. For example between chapter 1 and 2, from the last visible frame when Pac-Man enters the door to the first visible frame when he exits the door, on Genesis that takes 181 frames. On SNES it takes 660 frames. I don't remember what interactions are different anymore as it's been many years since I played the SNES version.
hegyak wrote:
Also, If I remember right, the Ms. Pac-Man game is locked until you find the three cartridges. the Pac-Man arcade game comes unlocked/playable at the start of the game. At least the SNES version was.
The SNES has Ms. Pac-Man and the Genesis verison has Pac-Jr. According to the game's Wikipedia article, Pac-Jr is a "graphic and level hack of Ms. Pac-Man".
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SelfDestructor wrote:
Thank you for the video, EZGames69!
hegyak wrote:
Is there any reason for this version over the better SNES Version? The audio is bad on this version compared to the SNES Version.
The SNES version doesn't let you instantly skip the cutscenes between the chapters and some interactions causes different moods. For example between chapter 1 and 2, from the last visible frame when Pac-Man enters the door to the first visible frame when he exits the door, on Genesis that takes 181 frames. On SNES it takes 660 frames. I don't remember what interactions are different anymore as it's been many years since I played the SNES version.
Ah, that makes sense. Proceed.
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Extremely surprised o see anyone liking the audio on this version and not the SNES one. I'm personally in the SNES camp. I can't stand the Genesis version's stereotypical MIDI music instrumentation, note dissonances between instruments, and the screeching lo-fi SFX. As someone that is pretty familiar with this game, I can't see any optimization issues. Well done! Hoping to see a 100% TAS someday! Note that I have mixed feelings about this movie due to several biases, so I'll refrain from voting.
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SmashManiac wrote:
Extremely surprised o see anyone liking the audio on this version and not the SNES one. I'm personally in the SNES camp. I can't stand the Genesis version's stereotypical MIDI music instrumentation, note dissonances between instruments, and the screeching lo-fi SFX. As someone that is pretty familiar with this game, I can't see any optimization issues. Well done! Hoping to see a 100% TAS someday! Note that I have mixed feelings about this movie due to several biases, so I'll refrain from voting.
For me personally, this version sounds more chill and relaxing, compared to the overly energetic feel of the SNES version. The SNES instruments are really grating too. The sound effects on Genesis are not bad honestly; There are definitely worse on the system. Plus I just really hate his chipmunk voice on SNES. This version just sounds more fitting overall. By the way, I'm not sure why you are mentioning MIDI. MIDI is an interface, not a type of sound. The Genesis uses FM synthesis.
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RaijinXBlade wrote:
Plus, the Charlie Brown-esque voice of Pacman in this one sounds more fitting than the chipmunk-esque voice on SNES.
I don't know about that, Pacman's voice here is giving me flashbacks of Silent Hill.
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SelfDestructor, just so you know, you can end the input earlier than you do in the movie. The rules dictate that the movie must reach an obvious ending, and I think in this case triggering the credit roll is good enough (the last input to trigger it seems to be at frame 80385). I normally wouldn't mention this but this adds over a minute to the movie time so it's pretty significant. We tend to give authors some liberty over how they end their movie, so it's entirely up to you. Either way is fine, just let me know if you want to change it.
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slamo wrote:
The rules dictate that the movie must reach an obvious ending, and I think in this case triggering the credit roll is good enough (the last input to trigger it seems to be at frame 80385).
Cutting the movie at the credits is fine with me. :) As a beginner at this I wasn't completely sure where I should have ended the movie. A speedrunner of the game has found some new possible time saves and animation skips in the last couple of days, so I will submit an improved run later on and I'll end the movie at the credits when I do so.
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SelfDestructor wrote:
Cutting the movie at the credits is fine with me. :) As a beginner at this I wasn't completely sure where I should have ended the movie. A speedrunner of the game has found some new possible time saves and animation skips in the last couple of days, so I will submit an improved run later on and I'll end the movie at the credits when I do so.
If you're going to submit a new run it would make sense to cancel this one, we wouldn't want to go through publication only to immediately obsolete it, unless you think this new run will take a long time to make. You can set the run to cancelled yourself or I can take care of it.
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What's considered a long time on this site? I have some new ideas for RNG manipulations I want to try out as well when I got some spare time so I would guess maybe 2-3 months before I submit an improved run.