Submission #10331: Walgrey's GB RoboCop in 05:55.610

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me!"

RoboCop is a 1990 game based off the film of the same name. Developed by Ocean Software, this game sees RoboCop, who, after recently being revived by the OCP, heads out to the streets of Detroit to find the gang responsible for his demise.

Before we get into the level-by-level notes, I first need to talk about the deathwarp. When a stage ends (either by running out of power or through completing the level), the game checks RoboCop's power. If it is below 0, you Game Over. If it is above 0, you progress to the next stage. This means that we can have RoboCop lose power and then have RoboCop grab a health pickup (which is actually baby food, according to the manual) as the screen is fading out to skip to the next stage. Conceptually, I think this is funny, because we bring a man who has already been brought back from the dead, back from the dead again, sort to speak.

The game is split into run-and-gun stages (if you can even call it running :P ) and minigame/boss stages. All odd-numbered stages are run-and-gun. Even-numbered ones are minigame/boss.

When RoboCop is attacked on the ground, he will be briefly stunned for a bit. This is why you see me jump when I'm about to get attacked, so as to not lose speed. Throughout the stage, I decrease RoboCop's power to certain enemies until I reach the baby food. I then have to wait for a gunman in the window above to shoot down at me. I jump into the bullets and land on the baby food to skip the stage. When RoboCop jumps, his arc is fixed. Since damage stuns you on the ground, RoboCop is unable to walk into the baby food, so a jump has to be performed.

Just a short minigame stage. I shoot the gunman frame-perfectly. Not much to it.

In this stage, I have to occasionally make one-frame left taps to shoot enemies coming from the left side of the screen. They do quite a bit of damage, and if I just tanked it, I wouldn't have enough health to do the skip. Barrels can't be destroyed with RoboCop's gun and must be punched. I can grab the baby food by walking into it this time because if you lose all your power in the air, RoboCop can very briefly move around.

A stage where you have to search a face in a police database. The face you are given is determined by RNG, and can be manipulated by waiting frames at the "INPUT DATA" screen. You have to match the face on the left, matching the correct chin, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. You scroll through options with left and right, and you have to wait a bit every time you scroll. This face is optimal because all of the facial features are just one button away, with only the eyes taking two.

Pretty self-explanatory. I tried experimenting to see if I can get an enemy to damage RoboCop sooner after the elevator, but no dice.

RoboCop attempts to arrest Dick Jones, senior president of the OCP. However, RoboCop's Directive 4 ("Any attempt to arrest a senior officer of OCP results in shutdown") kicks in, and is frozen for a bit. Suddenly an ED-209 unit storms in! RoboCop is unable to use his pistol and must punch the ED-209 unit instead. When RoboCop is frozen in the earlier cutscene, he can actually gain distance by jumping into the cutscene, but this is detrimental to the rest of the stage. The ED-209 unit will always appear roughly 122 frames later, regardless of where in the room RoboCop is. If RoboCop did jump into that cutscene, the ED-209 unit will eventually walk behind an invisible wall, making it impossible to reach.

Only ED-209's uhhh... head(?) takes damage, so jumping has to be done to connect the punch. I have to take damage in this fight for the next stage, as some of RoboCop's power is carried over in stages. It results in a bit of timeloss in the moment, but it ends up saving 2 seconds in the long run.

After defeating the boss, ED-209 is programmed to walk right until it's no longer on screen, at which point the stage ends. We can speed up this process by moving left.

Not much to say. I stand a little bit away from the baby food so I can be hit by the bullets sooner, while still being able to reach it in one jump.

Just a simple bonus stage where you shoot targets. You don't need to do anything to win, and doing anything causes lag, which I want to avoid.

There is no baby food this stage, so I have to beat all of it. This stage has the melee enemies that deal heavy amounts of damage and take a lot of bullets to defeat. If there's one, you can defeat them without stopping by shooting non-stop. If there are two at once however (or if there's another enemy in front of it), you're basically guaranteed to get hit by the second one. When taking the elevators, I briefly stop to shoot enemies and manipulate the game so that less melee enemies spawn.

I also had to stop to manipulate this scientist-looking enemy to spawn. This enemy drops a Manta gun on death. The Manta instantly clears any enemies and barrels on the projectile's path. I have to briefly stop in order to pick up the gun. The Manta can help us get past barrels without stopping and avoid melee enemies without having to worry about health management. However, we only have a limited amount of ammo. You can punch enemies to get more Manta ammo, but this loses about half a second. Luckily, I'm able to spawn a second Manta-carrying scientist later on in the level.

At the end of the stage, two enemies spawn on the left-side of the screen, so I flick around to defeat them as fast as possible. Another ED-209 unit steps in, which gets defeated in one Manta shot.

The final stage. Similar to Stage 2. Just shoot Dick Jones.

This TAS is roughly 10.3 seconds faster than the RTA WR by TascoDLX. With RTA timing, this run is a 5:47.183.

I'd like to give a special thanks to TascoDLX for their work into speedrunning this game. For a game with only one speedrunner, I'm pleasantly surprised with how optimized their run is. It served as a great point of reference to this.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stockpile on baby food. As we've all learned today, baby food is the secret to immortality and teleportation. With all of this baby food, I will outlive everyone and everything and become truly unstoppable!! - Walgrey

Challenger: Claiming for judging.

Challenger: Great idea doing a comparison video RTA x TAS, that clearly shows how well-handled and optimized the game turned out. As I said before, the deathwarp glitch is insane! It also reminds me of the potion glitch from Master of Darkness, a Master System/Game Gear game (not a coincidence, though).

Accepting to Standard.

McBobX: Processing...