Mr. Bones (Japanese release) is a multi-genre game for the Sega Saturn. This submission aims to beat the game as fast as possible using various tricks/skips and RNG manipulation along the way.
Game objectives
- Beat the game as fast as possible
- (Optional) Thank Mr. Bones for good bones and calcium
Comments
Mr. Bones is a revolutionary entry among skeleton multi-genre video games, thus a few terms and concepts will be described here before delving into further details:
- Skeletism (HP)
HP in this game also affects Mr. Bones' "Skeletism Level" or life force. As HP diminishes, it becomes more difficult to keep Mr. Bones in one piece. Actions like taking damage or landing from a jump will result in dropping body parts until HP is replenished via item pick ups or defeating enemies with the plasma beam attack.
- Body Parts
Mr. Bones can pick up dropped body parts by channeling his Skeletism Magnet (mashing the A button). Body parts must be picked up in order: Arm bones cannot be picked up unless Mr. Bones already possesses the rib cage. Additionally, in certain levels, Mr. Bones can detach his bones and reassemble himself in different configurations. These will be explained in the level breakdown as necessary.
- Movement
In certain platformer levels, Mr. Bones' movement is heavily affected by the number of bones present in his body. Certain skips can only be performed if Mr. Bones is hopping on a single limb.
- Auto-scrolling/Endurance Levels
A considerable number of levels in this game are auto-scrollers, where the sole objective is to "survive the level". Detailed explanation for these levels will not be provided unless there is an interesting skip or mechanic.
Stage by stage comments (Disc 1)
Graveyard Escape
The game's first level is a rather lengthy auto-scrolling level. As there are no time-saves, this level is used to showcase the full range of Mr. Bones' possible body part configurations and tight movement to avoid enemy projectiles.
Mausoleum
Another survival round, but this time a new mechanic is available: X/Y/Z buttons can be used to disassemble Mr. Bones. It turns out that this move grants i-frames, and it can be spammed to render Mr. Bones invincible. Once the attack waves are over, the game spawns 4 enemies that must be cleared before finishing the level. A precise positioning is used make sure the enemies spawn on the right hand side of the level (closer to the exit). Then the first enemy is attacked from another precise position to despawn the remaining enemies (around 5:05).
The Valley
This is the first platformer level in the game, where the goal is to simply go from point A to point B. Sometimes the game will require Mr. Bones to be in a specific body configuration in order to clear these levels. This restriction is not applicable to this submission as a different method will be used to clear platformer levels: Wrong Warps.
It's possible to get Mr. Bones stuck in level geometry by turning away from a wall for a few frames and immediately holding the opposite direction, which will make him run into the wall. By jumping at a precise moment during this sequence (2-frame window), Mr. Bones can be pushed further into the wall. Once inside a wall, Mr. Bones will begin to warp upwards. If the wall is tall enough to get stuck inside for almost a full second, the level will end instantly. I suspect that this is a form of fail safe, as this trick doesn't work on shorter walls or walls with other collision objects. This trick can only be performed while running on two arms or two legs, as Mr. Bones will hop around in other configurations, meaning he can't jump and move at the same time.
There is not much to say about the level itself. It's cleared quickly by performing a wrong warp against the first available wall.
Night/Dawn/Day of the Bats
A trio of platformer levels. Once again, a wrong warp is used to complete the levels as soon as possible, but not before collecting the necessary body parts. Night of the Bats is the only level where a wrong warp is performed by directly running into the wall from a precise position.
Rolling Logs
Yet another auto-scroller and a very long one at that. This time, however, we have another wrong warp that saves minutes! As there are no walls in this stage, it's a bring your own wall type of situation. By taking damage intentionally early in the level, it's possible to align respawn timing of a dropped bone such that it appears as a log obstacle jumps over the player right at the edge of the screen. If Mr. Bones happens to be mid-air during this sequence, the game triggers a wrong warp and ends the level immediately.
Stage by stage comments (Disc 2)
Little People Village
Unfortunately the spider spawns are on a global timer and cannot be sped up in any way. Instead time saves come in the form of not missing any spiders and killing the final one on the earliest possible frame. A fun fact is that it's possible to perform a wrong warp in this stage as well, but it results in the game placing Mr. Bones behind the map. This trick was skipped due to its tendency to heavily lag the console.
Icy Lake
Welcome to one of the worst levels of the game: Ice mechanics and breaking platforms. Intended method is to stick to surfaces with glaciers beneath, but most surfaces can take some damage prior to breaking. This mechanic is exploited as much as possible with careful positioning and running at top speed at all times. Jumping is avoided except to perform sudden turns and activate moving platforms later in the level.
Dry Moat
This is the first proper boss fight of the game. The objective is to jump on the wing nuts on either side of the stage, 4 times each. After each hit, the dinosaur(?) boss will start roaring and trashing about, which will cause boulders to fall on Mr. Bones. The biggest time save comes from finishing the fight within the least number of roar cycles. The first hit is delayed until the boss starts a bite attack. The time it spends executing this attack is just long enough to delay its first roar. This delay provides adequate opening to execute a new trick that I call "Nut hover" once on each side of the stage. Using this trick is key to skipping one roar cycle, saving around 200 frames versus dealing the first hit as early as possible.
Main method used to reach the wing nuts quickly involves Mr. Bones' "Slim Jim" mode (yes, that's the official name). In this mode, Mr. Bones arranges his bones vertically and extends himself up like a rope. However, when opportunity arises, it is much faster to use the "Long Legs" mode. This is the mode where he looks like an AT-ST unit (see 22:00). When timed correctly, collision with a falling boulder will incorrectly reposition Mr. Bones on top of the wing nuts, allowing for a quick hit.
"Nut hover" is performed by jumping to the far right or left of the screen while dealing a hit on either wing nut. There is a one-frame window after hitting a nut, where pressing one of the configuration change buttons will trigger the bone summoning animation. However, Mr. Bones will stay suspended in the air even if the collision under him is removed while this animation plays out. Once the wing nut rotation animation completes and the platform collision is reactived, Mr. Bones' animation can be cancelled to land another hit immediately. This trick only works if the screen isn't shaking, which is a very rare occurrence throughout this fight.
The fight is completed within 3 roar cycles by combining all the strategies described above.
Skeletism Generator
This levels is basically a game of Asteroids. Once enough blue orbs are collected (enough to spell out "BONE" on the HUD), the next destroyed plasma beam has a chance to morph into a blue skull pick-up. Picking this blue skull up ends the level.
The beams fired after picking up the skull are intentional: This is done to manipulate the RNG in order to get a favorable first joke in the next stage (more on that in the next section).
Funny Bones
Oddly enough, this is the level with the largest time save potential.
Mr. Bones has to tell 8 jokes to clear the level. Each joke is randomly selected from a a pool of 40 jokes. Each joke is broken down to multiple button prompts and the correct sequence must be entered to tell the joke successfully. Unfortunately, button mash doesn't work; a dialogue line's playback must complete before the next button can be pressed. There are few exceptions to this (see 26:52). This run hits every sequence on the earliest possible frame.
While working on this level, I realized that hitting pause during a dialogue has no impact on the playback progression. Besides being an interesting quirk, it turns out that pausing shuffles RNG, meaning it's possible to influence the next joke on the list with ZERO time loss! This is an incredibly useful strategy as we can pause 1-4 times during each joke and try various combinations and lengths in order to find an optimal joke. This run heavily relies on the pause strategy to get only 3-button prompt jokes (shortest possible combo), while avoiding ones with lengthy dialogues and laugh tracks.
The only downside is that early button presses and pause buffering ruins the delivery of the jokes.
Los Endos
In the final level, Mr. Bones has to absorb and deflect incoming projectiles to break the electric fence surrounding him. Projectiles can only be launched in 4 cardinal directions. The biggest time save here is to carefully break the barriers such that the final projectile can be launched in the next frame after absorbing it.
Other comments
- I would like to thank GreenBomber and Colinbolts for discovering Wrong Warp strat and its various setups used throughout the run.
Technical Information:
- Emulator Used: Bizhawk 2.11
- ROM Checksums:
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Samsara: Claiming for judging, and file replaced with a 425 frame improvement.
Samsara: I can still proudly say that after several years of knowing about this game's existence and several watches of this TAS... I still don't know what the hell's going on in it. I don't think I'll ever know. I don't think it's possible for anyone to know. I will, however, thank Mr. Bones for good bones and calcium from now on as part of my usual nightly ritual.
Great work! Solid and varied playarounds that kept the autoscroll-y parts of the run feeling fresh, and all the platforming (or what little of it was left in the game with the whole wrong warp thing) looked good as well. Only question I would've had was about Icy Lake, and that was answered nicely by the submission text. Accepting!
EZGames69: Processing...