Introduction...
During preparations for a surprise party for Doraemon, Nobita is notified by Doraemon about a letter from Sewashi (Nobi's future great-great-grandson), telling him to bring his friends to the Cretaceous period to experience "a world of his memories". Naturally, Nobita forces gets his friends to travel with him across 18 levels filled with memories of their past from across the Doraemon franchise.
In this run, Nobita (and most of the gang) are slacking off throughout the journey. Rich kid Suneo will have to remember the memories of the past 30 years almost all by himself.
Game Objectives...
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- Fastest any% completion
- Intentionally takes damage
General Details...
Character Choice
In the game, there are five characters you can play as: Doraemon, Nobita, Shizuka, Suneo, and Gian. Their grounded walking speed is always the same (1 pixel per frame), but their aerial horizontal speed varies...
- Gian has the lowest, with only .75 pixels per frame.
- Doraemon and Nobita both have their aerial speed set to 1 pixel per frame, the same as their grounded walking speed.
- Shizuka and Suneo both have the highest, each with 1.5 pixels per frame.
However, the reason Suneo is faster overall than Shizuka is their differing Memorial Shot requirements.
If you receive an A rank on any stage (or successfully complete a final-stage), you will also receive a Memorial Shot (a memory corresponding with a page from the original manga). After every stage, each Memorial Shot will be shown if you've obtained any; one Memorial Shot would be around 54 frames (0.9 seconds) slower than completing the stage without obtaining one.
- For Shizuka, the Memorial Shot requirement is based on how fast you complete the stage. By proxy, a TAS using Shizuka would get a Memorial Shot after every stage.
- For Suneo, however, the Memorial Shot requirement is based on how many ¥ symbols you collect. Speed is not a factor when calculating if you get a Memorial Shot most of the time, thus meaning that Suneo would get no Memorial Shots in any of his stages (except for Stage 1-5)
Due to this, Suneo is the faster character in terms of speedrunning and TASing the game.
Maximizing Air Time & Speed
Having air time is IM-POR-TANT. It's what results in Suneo's faster speed, so this run does as much as it can to reduce time on the ground. This is done usually through either jumping, or if there's no room to jump/doing so resulting in death, by walking off the edge of the floor.
...Mostly jumping, though.
Enemy Bouncing
Usually, every time you land on the ground from the air while moving, your character's speed gets zero'd-out for a frame before returning back to its grounded walking speed the frame afterwards. Considering a jump can't be inputted until after walking speed is restored, this results in 4 consecutive frames where your character goes from aerial speed, to no speed, to walking speed, to aerial speed in that order.
Bouncing on enemies, however, is different. Your character gains the same amount of vertical speed that jumping does, and since the game never detects that you've reached the ground, speed never gets zero'd-out, resulting in longer, uninterrupted periods of speed. This can save a few frames per stage.
Strategic Pausing
You are actually able to pause the game during the fade transitions that occur when you enter and exit a level. In normal gameplay, this is pretty useless.
However, if you pause the game early during said transition, it can actually reduce the number of lag frames that the game normally produces in various degrees:
- For entering a level, pausing between the 1st and 5th frames can save two lag frames, while pausing between the 6th and 11th frames can save one lag frame. Anything afterwards reduces no lag frames.
- For exiting a level, pausing on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th frames can save two lag frames, while pausing on the 4th, 7th, 10th, 12th, and 13th frames can save one lag frame.
By unpausing later on during the enter transition, gameplay can actually start earlier than intended. This is done for every transition that this is possible with, resulting in a time save of 72 frames (1.2 seconds) throughout the run.
Lag Reduction
Due to the amount of lag that can occur during gameplay, usually due to there being many things loaded at once onscreen, it makes sense to use lag reduction in order to optimize.
There are many strategies that are used during the TAS, including taking damage, killing enemies, picking up items, and using routes that incur less lag than other areas.
Quizes
Before every final stage in each world, a character (Dorami, Jaiko, Dekisugi, and Sewashi, in the order of each world) will give you a quiz based off your knowledge in Doraemon.
These quizzes are useless; they are not necessary to beat each world, only giving you additional hearts if you perform well. Despite this, getting questions wrong is actually faster than getting them correct, thus meaning that almost every question will be answered wrong; most quizzes will therefore be exempted from the Stage-By-Stage Strategies portion of the author's comments.
The exceptions to this strategy will have its reasoning cleared up soon.
Stage-By-Stage Strategies...
Stage 1-1 "Into the World of Dinosaurs"
The idea stage is simple; jumping and enemy-bouncing to make it to the end door as fast as possible.
Stage 1-2 "The White Morning Cave"
This is the first of the stages that use caves as the enivormment. This means very narrow paths that result in jumping actually losing time rather than saving, therefore meaning a lack of jumping in some areas.
There are two such cases of these jumpless paths, although one is skipped because of the existence of a lower, very jumpable path.
Make sure to not hit the dice item at the end, otherwise you WILL have to play the entire level again.
Stage 1-3 "Go on Pilgrimage"
The Take-Copter is the fastest way to finish the level, necessitating its use for this TAS.
If you get the Take-Copter by jumping at it from the ground up, the momentum will carry over. Add that with the reduced friction that results from the items being equipped, and it results in it being faster to wait until you reach around 2 pixels per frame of vertical speed to start mashing A rather than just immediately mashing A.
Stage 1-4 "Sunlight's Coast"
The TAS uses a moving platform to go faster; as the platform can result in a grounded walking speed of 2 pixels per frame, it is faster to use the platform than jumping over it.
Stage 1-5 QUIZ
Although it's faster to get questions wrong, the TAS actually gets two questions correct. This was actually unintentional on my part, but it actually manipulated the game in such a way later on that it ended up saving time in the end.
Stage 1-5 "Suneo, the Ideal Older Brother"
This is the first boss stage in the game, where Suneo apparently has to COMMIT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE against his own younger brother, Sunetsugu... Before that, though, he has to interact with five of his friends in order.
This is the first vertical-centric stage, which means that jumping on platforms is now just as important as horizontal speed. This results in very optimized platforming up the stage.
It is faster to get to Shizuka by dropping down using Down+B from the lower roof rather than going around it and jumping at her.
Near the top of the stage, the TAS uses the short distance between the roof and one of the pipe platforms to cancel Suneo's ongoing jump, thus allowing him to jump immediately afterwards.
Stage 2-1 "Upside-Down Jungle"
Another relatively simple stage. There is a complex jumping pattern that results in no slowdown to the end door, though.
Stage 2-2 "Climb That Mountain"
...WHO NEEDS TO DO ANY CLIMBING?
- 1. Jump off the edge at the start.
- 2. Use the Voice Thickener (which, while mainly an attack item, can also be used as ground)
- 3. Jump to the other side.
- 4. Profit.
Certainly one of the stages of all time.
The fastest one in this TAS, too.
Stage 2-3 "Nightmare Temple"
A level with a decent amount of damage boosting, lag reduction, and fastest-route taking.
Around the end, there is a jump that may look menacing (what, with the narrow hole, the VERY close wall that has the chance to slow you down, and THAT DICE ITEM), but Suneo does make it through without slowing down, so...
Stage 2-4 "I Won't Go Back to Being a Normal Boy"
This boss stage is the first of two stages in this run that uses a slower-moving character, that being Gian. Because of his slow speed while in the air, the TAS essentially grounds Gian for as much time as possible.
This stage also requires you to defeat both Suneo and Nobita; if you don't, Doraemon reprimands you, tells you to "remember your memory", and puts you ALLLL the way back to the beginning of the stage.
Yes, that means you have do the quiz again too.
Over the first pit, instead of getting onto the platform, Gian both does a one-frame jump and uses a Voice Thickener on the same frame to not only let him stand on it, but also save frames, as this results in less air time overall.
This also marks the debut of the Quick Pills, an item that can temporarily give you faster speed. In this stage, the Quick Pills are obtained twice; first from one of the Doraemons, and then from Nobita.
The strat used at the end of the stage is where the Stage 1-5 Quiz slowdown comes into play; the game has been manipulated into a specific RNG value, thus letting the Quick Pill last for longer, which results in a faster boss kill.
Stage 3-1 "Suspicious Factory"
Unlike the other first stages of the previous worlds, this stage is not simple.
There are MULTIPLE instances of damage boosting, as well as several places where Suneo jumps a bit after landing so as to save time.
At a jump-through platform, you can move to the direction of a wall with a ledge to cancel the slow falling that results from pressing Down+B, thus allowing you to fall at regular speeds.
At a crouch-under passage, there is a space at the end where you can start walking normally without having to crouch.
Stage 3-2 "In The Darkness"
This level continues the pattern of constant damage boosting to save time, along with the inclusion of many breakable rocks to go through.
Dorayaki is also VERY important in this level, as it can give you health. Around the end of the level, there are two sets of spikes (pointed up and down at each other) that Suneo can't go through without touching. Because he is only one hit away from damage, he needs to grab the dorayaki CONVIENIENTLY placed before the spikes.
On the subject of damage, Suneo actually runs into an enemy early on, but doesn't actually take damage. My guess is that Suneo only slightly happens to brush on the enemy hitbox, touching it but never actually overlapping it. If anyone has any other hypothesis on why it happens, feel free to share your thoughts.
Stage 3-3 "The Forest of Deception"
At the beginning, if you bounced up the wall from the bug at the start of the stage, you can actually clip inside of the wall. You can't walk normally and can only move via jumping, and in many times of this specific case, you need to jump twice before clipping back through to the other side of the wall.
However, if you clip from the very edge of the bug, you can actually just jump a single time before clipping, which saves time on not just the two-jump method, but also the intended method of walking through a very narrow pathway that you can't jump using. This jump from the bug's very edge is done by using a specific setup.
Outside of the clip, the rest of the stage is a simple case of jumping, enemy-bouncing, lag reduction via killing enemies, and careful positioning to jump onto the end door without having to slowdown shortly preceeding it.
Stage 3-4 "Machine's House"
This stage was a pain to TAS optimally.
This stage is essentially a museum of lag reduction, damage boosting, and when damage boosting is no longer an option, using the Voice Thickener to strategically kill enemies to move on through.
Outside of that, there are not really any other things to talk about in this stage, save for using the Voice Thickener to enter the end door rather than the baked-in platforms.
Stage 3-5 "Goodbye, Shizu-Chan"
This stage is VERY vertical.
Shizuka essentially dominates the downward-vertical-centric strats in the first-third part of the stage, specifically cancelling the slow-drop by using either the spikes or the edge of the regular terrain close to the drop-through platforms. In the second-third part, she jumps very shortly, clipping onto the platforms in such a way that she starts to out-jump the camera, only being forced to jump higher because if she continues to clip, she'll end up downwarping with barely any feasible way to get up.
It's only AFTER she saves Nobita that she decides to perform a downwarp from the lower roof of the house; even when the camera can't see her, she still performs slow-drop cancels to get down quickly. At one point, the TAS uses Down to scroll the camera down so that the unseen platforms disappear due to being loaded by another chunk of the stage, dropping her all the way down to the end of the stage.
...Shizuka is still unable to be found by the camera.
All in all, the downwarp strat saves 16 frames over intended, non-glitchy strats.
Stage 4-1 "Echo Valley"
The strat is simple...
...The TAS still makes sure to optimize it to the max by minimizing the amount of times Suneo touches the ground.
Stage 4-2 "At The End of the Mirage"
Outside of the regular jumping and enemy-bouncing strats, this is the third and final time the Quick Pill is used throughout the run, being obtained from one of the ghosts.
Just after obtaining the Quick Pill, Suneo is moved strategically so that he lands on the very edge of the ground possible, allowing him to make three particularly tight jumps without any issue.
Stage 4-3 "The Golden 9th Palace"
Compared to other previous stages, this stage, the final regular stage, is simple; some damage boosting, jumping, and enemy-bouncing strats.
Stage 4-4 "Goodbye, Doraemon"
Man, for a stage entitled "Goodbye, Doraemon", there's a TON of Doraemons...
...AAANYWAYS, this well-deserved final stage is the second of the two slower-character stages, this time with Nobita being the character. Although you may think jumping should be encouraged, the fact that landing results in one frame of the walking speed being zero'd out means, unfortunately, that is not the case.
Although Nobita gets through the walking section of the stage with ease, he still needs to jump to escape the "Doraemon" (probably really Suneo in disguise) that is flying directly at him early on, as that will result in him having to play the entire stage over again due to both of their hitboxes almost entirely overlapping.
Unlike how the short film goes, Nobita defeats Gian with EASE, ending the ten minutes that Doraemon and his gang of 20th-century human kids spent on their memorial tour, just in time for the party.
Other Author's Comments...
Certainly one of the games of a time.
Is frame #23141 a suitable thumbnail, or do you like some other frame?