Introduction
Dungeon Explorer is Hudson Soft's take on a Gauntlet-styled top down action-adventure game for the Turbografx-16. Chances are most folks that know about this game here know it from the fantastic [1645] PCE Dungeon Explorer "5 players" by DarkKobold in 20:19.30.
However, there's a secret/bad ending accessed through using the debug code. The goal of this submission was to reach the secret ending without the use of any other progression cheats. In the process I also learned a bit more of the game as well as a simple way to save frames between every area transition.
Run info
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.11.1
- TurboNyma core
- One player
- Uses in-game codes to enable accessing the debug code needed for the secret ending
- Takes damage to save time
Extra notes
- The route
- The bad ending TAS uses the debug password to reach the secret bad ending since it requires clipping through the otherwise solid collision of the king's throne for the trigger. No game progression passwords are used, so Halatos, the hydra boss guarding the ORA stone, needs to be defeated to cause the king's sprite to disappear as that also has solid collision but can't be clipped through even with the debug code.
With the debug code active, the hidden warps in the trees in front of the castle can be used to warp to various parts of the game, including directly to the final boss. However, as this TAS is going for the bad ending, the warp to Mistos Dungeon is taken to retrieve the ORA stone. A short trip through the dungeon and one boss fight later, the ORA stone is retrieved from the pedestal. The ORA stone is taken to the king for the big story twist. After the cutscene to move the king out of the way, all that's left is to run on top of the throne to start the hidden bad ending.
- Slightly faster movement from input carryover
- The game logic runs at 30 FPS. During an area transition, the game processes the last polled input before unloading the previous area and uses that as the first input of the new area. Utilizing this information to preemptively begin movement or shooting saves 2 total frames, or 1 polled frame) minimum per area transition.
- Extra notes on shooting
- The debug code sets strength, agility, power, and intelligence to 20 regardless of character class chosen. The character class chosen was determined by their available spells for this TAS. The fighter is chosen due to their skull spell temporary granting double power shots. This speeds up the one boss fight done in the TAS.
The time between shots is 16 frames, or 8 polled frames. This is a little slower than 4 shots per second but does allow for a reasonable amount of maneuverability, especially with maxed out agility from the debug password.
If a player's shot is strong enough it can destroy 1 or more targets, such as projectiles and weaker enemies, while continuing on its trajectory. As it passes through, the remaining power of the shot decreases. To speed up the Halatos boss fight, every shot is positioned in such a way that they don't hit the fireballs for maximum damage. As the debug code gives 65535 HP, taking damage to avoid hitting some fireballs is trivial here.
Special thanks
- DarkKobold's 5 player TAS which was how I learned about the game, even though I didn't sit down to play it myself until over a decade later
Challenger: Claiming for judging.
Challenger: A secret ending that requires a debug code enabled in order to follow the trigger route and finish the game in one minute and half. Why not?
Nice research with this game by also finding small new optimizations to the gameplay despite the fact it runs at 30 FPS that sometimes it might be hard to find some stuff like that!
Accepting this run to Alternative in addition as a new branch.