Helpful RAM values
- 3F00 - post-goal marble count
- 1B68 - X speed
- 1E9E - health of Oinker, the final boss
Category
This run plays all the levels and beats the bosses of both the East and West wing. The wings feature different levels, except for the 3rd Egyptian level, which only has a different name. The bosses are identical, however.
Version Differences
There are 3 different versions of Bubsy 2, for the Gameboy, SNES, and Genesis, although the GB version is basically a different game. The Genesis and SNES versions have the same level layouts, but there are differences, notably:
- There's much more lag in the SNES version, making it about 4 minutes slower.
- Smart Bombs and Lives only cost 10 trading cards on SNES, while they cost 25 on Genesis, and you also can't sell items in the Genesis version. There are more trading cards in the levels on Genesis, however.
- Maybe more, I haven't looked into the SNES version as much.
More information
I choose to play on the 'Play for Points' mode, as the 'Play for Time' mode makes you see a screen that shows your level times at the end of each level, which is slower unless you have ~150 marbles or more at the end of the level. The marble countdown takes 1f/marble, so I try to avoid marbles.
The end of level goalpost works a bit differently than Bubsy 1; unlike that game, you can't make 0 marbles spawn by slowing down, but slowing down before hitting the goal, fewer spawn. The lowest I was able to get for most levels was 20, then I need to collect them as fast as possible, which is tricky as they bounce away from you if you leave them on the screen for too long. For the flying levels, it's possible to make only 0-4 marbles spawn, however, by slowing down and turning around at a specific time.
Items
- Nerf gun: Can shoot to damage enemies, mainly used in bosses as it can bypass iframes.
- Smart Bomb: Can use to destroy all enemies on screen, however it's unusable on bosses.
- Diving suit: Lets you enter pools of water to go to a minigame. There have been some glitches discovered where you can use this to zip on the SNES version, and it'd likely work here too, but it takes too long to enter minigames for this to be worth it as far as I know.
- Black Hole: Lets you exit a level you're on
Possible improvements
- I realized slightly before the end of making this TAS that by not holding anything before the marble count is determined, you can get the lowest amount, so some of the setups to minimize marble count may be slightly suboptimal
- On 2 Live Shrew, the third Music level of the East wing, it seems almost possible to use a guitar's projectiles below to clip up to the end of the level from the beginning, but I was just short of being able to get it, so I had to advance farther into the level to clip.
- Slight optimizations from minimizing lag are likely possible. A goat spawned at the end of 'Surely You Joust' which created a bit of lag, but changing positioning to make it not spawn was slower overall.
- Could probably clean up Smart Bomb usage.
- If I played on the '2 Player Friends' mode, the second player can attack enemies and get powerups, which would save time throughout the run.
Time/Entertainment tradeoffs
At the end of the first Oinker fight, since it's the same as the second, I show off a double KO and spend a bit of time to confirm that the game does still count as completed. This costs about 13 seconds due to needing to get to the 'Oinker has been defeated' screen.
Suggested screenshot
Frame 52307
Shoutouts
- Kowal - A friend who used to speedrun the game with me, and accidentally discovered the marble skip in the plane levels.
- Cronikeys - originally made a thread for this game with a lot of information here - https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/14031?CurrentPage=1&Highlight=345339#345339
Darkman425: Not the last Nerf game, but definitely the Bubsiest Nerf game. Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: Nice to see this quite mazey game done quickly. The movement and routing look well optimized that the slight time loss on the level end bonus marbles isn't that much of a big deal. I also appreciate taking the time to show off the victory screen of the 1st wing of the museum since it works as proof that the game was indeed completed as there isn't save data to keep track of otherwise. Nice work!
Also a small note: 2 Player Friends mode would probably be its own branch for anyone who wants to work on that in the future.
Accepting to Standard.
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