"Elevator Action - Old & New" is a game with elevators and action, old now but new at the time GBA game released in Japan only, featuring a port of the original arcade game (the "Old", also ported to NES and many others in its time) and an actual new game expanding on the GB/GBC ones with life/powerups/characters (the "New"). I hadn't actually heard much of it (or the rest of the series) until the rejected submission a while ago, but felt it had enough TAS potential to try it myself and optimize it properly.
This run plays through the "New" as fast as possible (more on that below), 10 minutes faster than the rejected submission.
- Recorded on Bizhawk 2.11 (and 2.11.1), mGBA core
- "New" any%, fastest time to credits
- Takes fall damage and deaths to save time
- (Some) RNG manipulation
Character choice
There are 3 characters to choose from, with some differences in abilities:
- Robin: 5 speed, 9 jump, 30 bullets, 3 hearts (x/4 pixels per frame, x*4 frames per jump, more ammo and hearts can be gained)
- Berry: 6 speed, 10 jump, 35 bullets, 2 hearts (same jump height with less gravity)
- 飯(Fan): 4 speed, 8 jump, 25 bullets, 4 hearts (same jump height with more gravity)
Finishing the game with all of them unlocks a 4th character:
- Ninja: 7 speed, 11 jump, 40 bullets (fast), 1 heart, no fall damage from 1 floor
Here I pick Berry, the fastest of the base characters. (Ninja could be a separate faster category using SRAM)
General gameplay
There are 8 stages with 4 areas each (always 10 floors high), the goal is to enter every red door (3 per area except stage 7 and 8-4) for "pages" and carry them to the goal point (usually next to the elevator on the last floor). Each full stage plays like an individual level run, lives/powerups/ammo are reset on stage clear (not area clear).
There's also blue doors with random powerups, most of which are never seen:
- Gun: faster shots with shorter cooldown (20 to 8 frames) and comes with 99 bullets, but lost on death (not actually that useful but I pick it up when there's time, for extra kills and action)
- Bottle: +1 max life, not filled (often useful for fall shortcuts, can stack to 5 hearts but I only needed 4)
- Hamburger: +1 life
- Bullet: +20 bullets (never needed)
- Grenade: +1 grenade (never useful)
- Watch: +10 time (already plenty to spare)
- Glasses: temporarily disguise as an enemy so you don't get spotted (shooting lights is better)
All other doors can also be entered (and enemies will spawn from them) but only serve as hiding spots.
Elevators are effectively long framerules that will cancel out any gains if you don't reach the previous cycle and have to wait longer, but they can be controlled when riding them (only on exact tiles, not between). In fact a lot of the routing optimization comes down to catching/turning elevators at their earliest time.
Falling 48-79 pixels (exactly 1 floor to <5/3) does 1 damage, any higher instantly kills you.
Enemies
- Guard: harmless by itself, but alerts other enemies to spawn (and runs into the nearest door) when it sees you
- Bandit: slow gun shots
- Soldier (stage 3): takes 2 hits, faster gun shots, randomly replaces bandit spawns
- Zombie (stage 5): takes 3 hits (to knock down only), hits you on contact and spits goo (after some time spotting you)
- Robot (stage 7): takes 10 hits, hits you on contact, dashes and shoots beams
They also tend to immediately spawn more after each kill and will sometimes block the way by spawning in front of you (which I've had to avoid at times).
Other
- A death knocks you down for a few seconds and sends the collected "pages" flying in a random direction (so you have to get them again), but also clips you inside an elevator from above, so it's been useful a few times (see 3-4, 4-1 and 8-1, but not 8-3's last elevator)
- Jumping into an elevator (going down) from below is frame perfect
- Jump height is offset by any elevator you're standing on, so you can jump up almost a full floor from an elevator going up
- Doors must be entered from the farthest pixel (on the handle's side) to minimize time spent going in, and (while open) block shots
- Shooting while jumping in a direction usually loses 1 frame, but jumping itself doesn't so I'll often use it to kill enemies
- Sometimes enemies can be shot offscreen, other times they'll despawn or freeze while offscreen
- Jump facing backwards into the goal point (for area clear) to moonwalk, it also seems to preserve the jump hitbox and the walk animation goes in a straight line ignoring everything
- Grenades can be dropped into the void by simply using one while falling (it's spent and has its cooldown but won't spawn), I finished every stage with 0 and did that when I couldn't find better (funnier) uses
- Bullets can go through a bottom-left wall corner and hit an enemy on the other side, grenades can even zip upwards, but sadly I couldn't find a way to clip myself through a wall or ceiling
- There's a soft reset but it takes too long to be ever useful
Possible improvements?
I've already gone through this TAS twice and couldn't find more to improve (v1 was 875 frames slower and only tied 8 of the level times), but there's always the possibility of some glitch or a better route in late stages, or saving more frames somewhere (subpixels?) to catch an elevator I barely missed (5-4 floor 5 for example). The game is also very hex friendly, with each individual level being independant from others.
Darkman425: Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: The movement and routing all look very smooth and well planned, especially with cutting down elevator wait times through manipulating their cycle positions. The clever use of damage boosting with extra health surprised m quite a bit of times throughout. And to top it all off, there's a lot of funny goofs going on during the wait times for elevator cycles that I loved quite a bit. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
McBobX: Processing...