Chou Kousoku GranDoll (超光速グランドール) is a Platformer 2D video game published by Bandai and developed by Kid released on July 24th, 1997 for the PlayStation.
Game Objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.8
- BIOS used: psj-30.bin
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Genre: Platformer
Game Information
Chou-Kousoku Grandoll (Also known as Hyper Speed Grandoll) is a bright and breezy platformer based on the anime series and the license is put to good effect with some entertaining cut scenes between levels. Reassuring 2D feel to the game with good old fashioned gameplay which sees you picking up key cards and swinging on a grappling hook across tricky terrain. The female star of the game can also power up her mecha suit after each completed level giving new powers that need to be utilised to progress.
The game's plot closely follows the OVA's storyline, except for a few minor differences. Unlike the anime where Hikaru only fights in her standard armor, in the game she gets multiple different styles of armor upgrades after defeating a boss.
Overview
This game has a total of 6 areas and 4 unlockable power ups. These power ups are unlocked after defeating a boss at the end of the stage. The next area is usually centered around the power up you just unlocked, with the exception of area 6, where you have to use more than 1 power up to traverse the stage.
The power ups are:
Grandoll Base form (not a power up): Shoots projectiles which deal 10 damage by pressing square. Grandoll can deploy a grappling hook by pressing R1 to cross dangerous terrain.
1. G.Aggres: Shoots lasers which deal 20 damage by pressing square. Grandoll can climb walls by pressing R1.
2. G.Arm: Shoots what appears to be a shockwave that pierces enemies, dealing 9-18 damage if the enemy is wide enough. Grandoll shoots a grenade which can destroy breakable blocks by pressing R1.
3. G.Mach: Shoots 3 ball projectiles which can bounce off of walls, dealing 9 damage. Grandoll can press R1 to double her speed. In addition, she can now double jump.
4. G.Master: Shoots a projectile which deals 50+ damage over time in an area. Grandoll can fly by pressing R1.
Tas approach
It's rare for me to find a game to tas that has been speedrun before. otogitune's run has been a great help for me. It saved me a lot of effort because their run was optimized, so all i had to do was follow the run and optimize it with tas tools.
Unlike the tas, otogitune's run is played on the easy difficulty, which reduces damage taken.
Movement tricks
Running speed and taking damage
The RAM Address 082A21 shows Grandolls movement speed. It increases by 4-5 on ground and by 2-3 midair. Her full movement speed is 64. When Grandoll takes damage, her movement will always be set to 32 no matter how much movement speed she had previously. Grandoll does not turn around instantly and instead faces the viewer for a few frames before turning around. This makes it so she will have to start at 0 movementspeed again.
Taking damage is done so by jumping into an enemy (or spikes) and then facing the opposite way for 1 frame. Depending on the size of your jump, the knockback you get from a damageboost is either increased or decreased.
Jumping and cornerboosting
Jumping loses 1 frame because Grandoll stands still for 1 frame once she lands, this does not set her speed to 0. It's always best to cover as much distance as possible when jumping. You can clip a corner and have Grandoll be pushed forward by 1 frame, this goes both for corners on the ground and the ceiling.
If Grandoll tries to run the opposite way after jumping or dropping down a big ledge, she will only do so if her movement speed is sufficient enough. Movement speed below ~25-30 will not have her run and instead make her crouch and pause on the ground.
Pressing the jump button midair lets Grandoll perform a forward flip (summersault) which deals a lot of damage and makes her invulnerable.
Low HP Damage increase
Grandolls damage doubles once her HP reaches ~10%.
Lagframes
Everyone hates lag of course. Every 90 frames there are 5-6 lagframes where you cannot make any inputs. These lagframes exist naturally and cannot be prevented, they need to be worked around with over the course of the tas.
I think this is all i have to say for now, there are more stage specific tricks coming up.
Stage by stage comments.
1st Stage
Room 1
The first stages are always the most basic. We collect the first keycard. The grappling hook can be used to collect keycards from a fair distance. The problem with this keycard grab however is that there are lag frames which prevent us from a much faster grab. There are also lagframes at the end where we could do another cornerboost, but no dynamic jump would actually get that cornerboost.
Once we get to the door, we stop on the first possible frame our keycard unlocks it, so that we can build up movement speed and cross it on the 1st frame. Facing left here and then building up speed is apparently faster, but only because we were able to make a big jump towards the door happen. It does not work with low ceilings and this is the only case of this strategy working. Saves 1 frame.
Room 2
Simple room, the enemies are destroyed before they can fire projectiles which we would have to jump over.
Room 3
For this room you can do the strategy the tas uses here with the grappling hook. This strategy only works with the biggest jump and damageboost after. You can also just damageboost regularly and get the 2nd cornerboost in the middle which the grappling hook strategy misses. They are both equally as fast.
Room 4
This room has another keycard which we need. The crouching section cannot be skipped. After we are done crouching, we jump onto the 1st platform and try to not have Grandoll touch the wall which would lose our movement speed.
Room 3 Part 2
Same stuff as before, cornerboosts and get out.
Room 2 Part 2
This time the enemies shoot projectiles which cannot be avoided, so we have to jump. By the way that 1st jump over the 1st flames is only possible on a single frame, because lagframes. We shoot projectiles the opposite way after dropping down from the ledge and our speed shows 61-62 for 2 frames, but its not enough for us to actually lose a frame.
Room 5
Both a big and small jump work when dropping down, but we cannot go left immediately because we would miss the platform and land in the flames. We need to land on the platform and then use our grappling hook to go over. Once we do that, we miss another platform and fall into an enemy which damageboosts us with 32 movement speed the opposite way. Much faster than turning around manually. I had to try a lot of different approaches for this.
When using the grappling hook to go up in the next section, we want to be as close to the platform as possible so the grappling hook doesnt have to pull us up the whole way.
Room 6
Here we do a damageboost which wastes 3 frames, but lets us be on low hp for the double damage increase for the bossfight.
I had an idea with the grappling hook where i would shoot it towards the ceiling when im near the door. Once the grappling hook is attached to the ceiling, Grandoll gets pushed downward. I thought i could bypass the door like this and save minutes this way...
I made this really quick just now to show off. When it was properly optimized you could see Grandoll inside the door, but it wasnt enough to push her through.
Boss 1 Sigil
HP: 300
For this bossfight i followed otogitunes strategy. Their strategy made sense in the way that we need to shoot Sigil first and then have her follow us to the wall. This makes it so Sigils attacks end as soon as possible. If we would not be near the wall we would have to optimize the bossfight in the middle of the arena which would be too hard and very slow.
Two things that stand out here are the summersault which damaged Sigil on the way to the wall. We do not have the ability to shoot during the summersault and we need the i-frames to not die. We could damage Sigil a little more with the summersault, but it would only save time if it dealt a little more damage. Sigils HP was 240 and i was able to get it down to 228, but it would not be faster because our regular attacks deal 20 damage.
So we still would have to do 12 shots regardless. If we touch the boss directly, we take next to no damage.
Once Sigil reached 20 HP i was expecting her to do another attack, but she awkwardly stares at us while we jump to the middle of the arena. This jump is necessary because once the boss is defeated, Grandoll will go to the middle and save her senpai. So we jump towards the middle and fire one last shot at Sigil, as Grandoll still finishes her jump during the cutscene.
2nd Stage
Room 1
Now that we have unlocked the Aggres powerup, we can switch to it immediately at the start of the stage. It does not really matter when you transform, but you must be careful of the 5-6 lagframes that appear every 90 frames. Selecting the powerup is done by pressing triangle and then pressing left or right, which takes 8-40 frames (40 frames if you need to go left or right twice) and a total of 3 seconds.
The first room is just holding right and doing cornerboosts.
Room 2
Here we actually use the Aggres powerup to climb up a wall. Alternatively to climbing up, you can jump from the wall and then go on top of the wall, but its 20 frames slower in this instance because Grandoll jumps way too much to the left initially even when holding right. Near the end of the stage you could do another cornerboost on the pole, but Grandoll would land on the ground first instead of entering the next room.
Room 3
It is faster to jump up the wall in the middle of the room instead of climbing up all the way from the bottom, Grandolls jump height is just too good.
Room 4
This room has the keycard in it. A strong enemy will spawn once we approach the keycard and we dont have enough time to kill that enemy, so we take a deliberate damageboost from one of its projectiles. We could move a little more to the left before getting hit by the projectile, but we would still jump on the same frame and wait for Grandoll to finish jumping up.
Room 3 Part 2
Only thing that is important in this room is the damageboost from one of the spikes on the ceiling. It allows us to get another cornerboost shortly after.
Room 5
We take the 2nd cornerboost on the ceiling instead of the 1st cornerboost, otherwise we would have to jump twice. This room can be cleared with the base form and the grappling hook, which would ultimately save 1.5 seconds. The issue is that we have to transform back into Aggres for the next room. Since transformation time takes 3 seconds and the baseform would only save 1.5 seconds, its not worth it.
Room 6
Lots of vertical movement, jumping from the wall up is a few frames faster than climbing up. We take some more damage from the spikes and projectiles for the low hp damage increase.
Boss 2 Garbiggi
HP: 900
Garbiggi is an easy bossfight. Just rapidfire as fast as possible with the Aggres powerup and he melts. Each shot deals 40 damage. We need to approach Garbiggi before the 5-6 lag frames appear. We need to be as close as possible to him for our first shot after the lag frames, it must connect with his body on the 1st possible frame. After that we jump to the left because after the bossfight is finished, someone will enter the room and the screen will move to the left. We do that instead by jumping to the left when the last shot hits Garbiggi.
We can technically jump even further to the left, but the screen has already moved as far left as possible.
3rd Stage
Room 1
Switching to the new power up, G.Arm. In the middle of this room are blocks that need to be destroyed to get the keycard. otogitune's run went around the whole thing and grabbed the keycard from the other side. I thought that it should be somehow possible to squeeze Grandoll in the small passage where they keycard sits on top of. Oh my, this is the hardest trick in the game. It requires a frameperfect jump and a very precise damageboost from one of the enemies. You can either get the cornerboost from the ceiling or the cornerboost from the protuding electrical wire thing after, but not both.
Room 2
Summersault and take damage from the enemy in the middle of the shaft. We build up the 64 movement speed before we exit the shaft but sadly there are lag frames which prevent us from doing a cornerboost off of the ceiling next.
In the lower section we need to destroy blocks that block the way. I initially destroyed the 3 blocks on the top first, but later i realized that destroying the 2 blocks in the middle opens up another cornerboost which we can do on the topmost block. Not rta viable as the jump into the small space is frame precise.
Room 3
There is a keycard hidden inside one of the blocks at the end of this room and the upper area is what we will use to get to it. We dont actually get a cornerboost from the protruding wire thing on the ground, its not possible. We can get a cornerboost from the upper one, but its only possible with a very high jump and we want to take damage from the spikes afterward to get to the keycard location. If we do this cornerboost, the damageboost from the spike will send Grandoll back up. Not good of course.
We destroy the block and reveal the keycard inside. We want to jump early into the keycard so Grandoll can pick it up quickly and be on the ground to build up speed as fast as possible.
Room 4
Simple rooom. There is no jump that lets Grandoll snap onto the platforms as fast as possible, so it looks unoptimized. Near the end i need to face left midair for 1 frame so Grandoll can keep going over the spikes without getting hit.
Room 5
Take damageboosts a few times on this screen to set up the damage increase for the incoming boss. Its not actually enough and we would require 1 more hit, but we will get hit on the incoming boss early for that.
Boss 3 Sigil 2
HP: 600
Oh man this boss...
Sigil has learned a new attack where she swings her blade around wasting lots of my time. I followed otogitunes strategy for this boss because it worked quite well. I would have Sigil get stuck in the air and hit her on the 1st possible frame. Sigil will gradually descend to the ground regardless. Finding the best position for her to get stuck in the air took a bit of work to find out.
But i noticed something.
When you stand below Sigil and have her turn around after she finished swinging her blade, she will fire projectiles at us. This is significantly shorter than the blade swing. Then i found out that if Grandolls hitbox perfectly aligns with Sigils hitbox on the same frame Sigil gets hit (Sigil needs to be above or below Grandoll for this), she will get stuck in a new animation where she appears to be hurt. This is frame and pixel precise.
This new animation makes Sigil more often vulnerable. She will still fire projectiles from time to time which cannot be avoided, but its still an immense timesave over otogitunes and my older strategy. I believed this saved over 10 seconds. The hits themselves are also frameperfect because if we do not hit Sigil on the 1st frame of being vulnerable, she will start swinging her blade.
This animation happens because Sigil cannot decide whether to face left or right since Grandoll stands perfectly below(or above) her in the middle.
Stage 4
Room 1
We unlocked G.Mach and can finally go fast. Instead of 64 movement speed, we can go up to 128. Dont land on the ground after the big jump, as it wastes 1 frame.
Room 2
Go into the lower room by double jumping over the fire.
Room 3
This room has one of the keycards. We take damage from the enemy which has 40 HP. G.Mach's projectiles can bounce off of walls which makes it very useful for defeating difficult to hit enemies. After we get the keycard we leave the room, but G.Mach's double jump is not high enough to reach the exit. We need to switch to G.Aggres to climb the wall for a short period before switching back to G.Mach and double jumping out.
There will be more instances of this... very annoying to figure out the best times to transform.
Room 2 Part 2
When entering/exiting a room from below, Grandoll gets ejected out of it. This ejection can be slightly cancelled with the G.Mach's double jump ability. This room has a bunch of jumps we need to do. The double jump ability lets us be more precise than with the base form.
Room 4
In this room we have to decide whether or not to take damage from the enemy near the exit. I decided to not take damage from the enemy, because it was way too much. Grandoll would be at 55% HP and we need to take a lot more damage soon. This costs us ~5 frames. One of the earlier jumps onto the platforms also requires a frame perfect left input for some reason. No really, just a single left input after holding left for several frames and then letting go and holding left for 1 frame.
Room 5
When G.Mach uses her hyperspeed she will be invulnerable to most damage sources. You would think that you could just jump out of the section with this much speed, but no. We have to slow down and take damage from the fire.
Room 6
This room was not too difficult. We switch to G.Aggres and keep this powerup for most of the stage. Its important to not kill the spiky enemy before grabbing the last keycard, as we want to take damage from its projectile when going down. The end section needs to be carefully optimized by resetting our momentum by touching the walls and building up speed.
Room 7
There are not enough frames after the walljump for us to kill the enemy above, so we have to kill him before we grab onto the wall. Taking damage from one of the fans.
Room 8
2 keycards are used in the last room. Once we unlock the first barrier (which can damage Grandoll if she touches it), we drop down the ledge and instead of hugging the wall, we build up speed by going left for a few frames. Boxes are destroyed with G.Arm and we take a final hit from the enemy and switch back.
Boss 4
Ultra Garbiggi
HP: 800
The same as before but apparently hes got a new attack, which we dont get to see. Lag frames in the middle of the fight which loses some frames. We go to the left wall at the end because Grandoll will move there after defeating Garbiggi.
Boss 5
Sigil 3
HP: 500
Oh its Sigil again. She hasnt had enough yet. She will fire projectiles at the start and either at the end before being defeated or immediately after we damage her. Surprisingly, she shows us her "hurt" animation without us being below or above her.
Boss 6
Peos
HP: 600
Well a new boss, but he honestly does not do a whole lot. We hit Peos once before switching to G.Mach. Once Peos gets hit, he will go invisible and always succeed in backstabbing us if we are on the ground with movement speed below 86. He cannot spawn midair. We use G.Mach to build up speed and then switch back to G.Aggres.
Yes, the 3 second transformation time is still faster than G.Mach's ball projectiles.
Stage 5
Room 1
We unlocked the final power up, G.Master. We switch to G.Mach for this stage though. We can also select the powerups a few frames faster, because all of the power ups are now collected.
Room 2
The keycard is on top of the stage in a similar spot as in area 3. This time we cannot squeeze Grandoll into this spot, we have to collect the keycard with the base form's grappling hook. We switch back to G.Mach after grabbing the keycard and avoid damage with the double jump. We need to drop down because if we were to use the area above, a wall would block our way.
Room 3
otogitune's run still has Grandolls base form in use here. You can use hyperspeed to run through those flames.
Room 4
No ideal way to damageboost here, so we just run into it.
Room 5
We get asked a bunch of questions. After answering them correctly, Grandoll will switch back to her base form and get sent to space. This must be the reason why otogitune kept the base form, because they thought the transformation is slow. It is not, keeping G.Mach is 40 frames faster than switching to the base form before entering this room.
No bossfight here.
Stage 6
Room 1
Switch to G.Mach and go.
Room 2
Dropping down.
Room 3
Jump height does not transfer through rooms apparently, so we get small damage knockback from this enemy.
Room 4
The enemy at the end of the room could hit us if we delayed our jump. Its also faster to just run to the door here instead of activating hyperspeed, takes too long to build up speed.
Room 5
This is a keycard room. We can only jump once we make sure the projectiles dont hit us. We bounce some ball projectiles on the floor so we can kill the fan enemy above quicker. This is one of the harder rooms to optimize because there are a lot of projectiles on the screen which we need to avoid.
G.Machs double jump ignores the electrical door which is another plus.
Room 4 Part 2
We jump onto the next platform and build up the 128 movement speed there and at the end of the room, we switch to G.Master.
Room 3 Part 2
Jump up and then hold up halfway through. We can only ascend by holding up. The address for our vertical speed 0A2825 will be very useful in this stage.
Room 2 Part 2
Just go right.
Room 6
A cornerboost is taken at the start of the room.
Room 7
Just go right part 2.
Room 8
For this room i would usually start a lot lower on the flames so that our vertical speed maximizes after clearing the ledge, but lagframes prevented early right inputs once we get to the top of the stage. We drop down and hold down to slightly increase our downward momentum.
Room 9
This room is extremely difficult because there are just so many projectiles to avoid. I have not mentioned yet that G.Master can change her stance. When G.Master is in the flight stance she increases her movement speed as if we were in the air, so 2-3 per frame. In this stance we take less knockback from damage.
In the other stance she accelerates as if we were on the ground, so 4-5 per frame. In this stance we take more knockback which is much more preferable when going up vertically.
Now the problem with stance changing is that G.Master will have to pause at the start of the room for atleast 1 second before she moves. The stance change is also removed in the next room if we take damage. Her normal flight stance needs to be kept because there are more vertical rooms coming up where we need to drop down. Large knockback would not be good for that.
To be honest its still quite confusing to me how it works.
Anyway, this room was cleared with 1 damageboost. I feel like if i had 1-2 more frames of leeway near the cogwheel enemy, i would have gotten out of this room without taking damage.
Room 10
We get the 2nd keycard from this room. The new type of enemy reacts to your projectiles and will move out of the way. We stay low near the flames for maximum vertical speed again.
Room 11
I was able to clear this room without taking damage from the flames on the ground, but when i saved an additional frame in Room 9 this wasnt possible anymore. Something must be going on with subpixels...
Room 12
The first time we actually pick up health. The other item is a powerup for your special ability, depending on which suit you are wearing. This special ability is not used in the tas because it takes too long and barely deals any damage.
Room 13
Drop down and avoid the 2nd damage by jumping.
Room 14
Cornerboost and take damage from the flames at the end. For some reason you cannot change to another powerup if you are using G.Master, unless you take damage? Switch to G.Arm.
Room 15
I guess we are picking up a healthpack again, because the blocks are in the way. This health is crucial for the next rooms anyway.
Room 16
Fall down.
Room 17
For this room we need to destroy the wall in the middle which has 200HP (Address 0B66A4).
Other power ups could destroy this wall much quicker, but G.Arm only takes 2 seconds to get rid of it. Destroying the wall is a constant battle of avoiding projectiles and not let Grandoll crouch after she finishes jumping. We only have starting movement speed of ~15 once we destroy the wall, but i didnt see myself getting any more movement speed out of this optimal strategy.
Room 18
We take significant damage from one of the enemies that spawn in. We can only take damage from the 3rd enemy because the 1st enemy will hit us with a projectile which doesnt deal a lot of damage. We destroy the blocks after when we are as close as possible to them, otherwise the 3rd enemy will shoot projectiles which will reach us at the end of the room.
Room 19
The last room. If we were to take damage at the bottom of the room slightly earlier, it would kill us. Only the last flames have reduced damage towards Grandoll for some reason. Good.
Final Boss
Freedshalf
1st Form HP: 1000
I made the choice to switch to G.Aggres instead of G.Master. G.Aggres dishes out a lot of damage in a short period of time while G.Master is more suited for longer battles and area of effect damage.
Freedshalf HP address is actually different compared to the previous bosses (0B66D8).
The 1st form of this boss will spin around in a circle and then disappear for a few seconds before reappearing. This is why i chose G.Aggress, because i want to avoid as many cicles as possibles. Before Freedshalf disappears from his first cycle, i get his HP to 560.
This is very important, otherwise i would not be able to defeat him on the 2nd cycle and lose seconds.
The 2nd cycle can be improved by a few frames but man, its so difficult to damage him on the 1st possible frame everytime when he spins around like that. While i was able to save 1-2 frames on this 1st form, the textbox that appears after appeared 2 frames later, so i stuck with the slower kill.
2nd Form HP: 1500
Now its the address 0B66C4 which shows his HP. Freedshalf immediately takes off but he takes a hit from us first because we are standing very close to him. He will then sweep the screen from right to left. I was not able to damage him before he disappears. He is just as fast as my projectile. We stay on the left so we can climb up the wall and damage Freedshalf who now appears from above.
Freedshalf will descend to the middle of the screen where he stays, taking all of our damage. The lasers that surround him will kill us if we were to get hit. Unluckily, we have to deal with 5 lagframes and there is no way for us to jump any earlier to get close to him, the lasers would kill us.
I tried different positioning for this, but nothing would work. We can only stay on the left too because after defeating his 2nd form, Grandoll moves to the left.
3rd Form HP: 12000
Surprised at the HP increase? Well i was too. I thought his HP would be 3000, only to realize that his HP bar on the bottom barely moved after i got his HP to 0. Turns out his body is divided into 4 different parts, each having 3000 HP.
Head, lower body, wings and tip of the tail. The rainbow beam that comes out of the body will reverse our controls.
This is why i chose G.Master. The aoe projectile can damage multiple bodyparts at once. The tail needs to be dealt with seperately, because its really far back. We got a HP refill before this final bossfight and im not sure if i should be happy about it or not.
My 1st objective was to take as much damage as possible, so we can get the increased damage output on low HP. 2 Breath attacks and a falling fireball are enough for it to trigger. Now my decision on what body parts to focus was the following:
1. Both the lower body and wings can be damaged at the same time.
2. The head needs to be focused once Freedshalf comes out of the wall.
3. The tail needs to be the last bodypart to be destroyed. Its the last bodypart that can be hit before Freedshalf disappears off screen.
The first body part that was destroyed was the lower body, then the head and wings were both destroyed with one projectile. The tail is last and it was almost too close. I was worried that i wasnt able to kill the tail in time.
We drop down after killing the tail and Freedshalf is defeated.
Final Words and Thoughts
It has been some time. I have been stuck in a difficult mindset where i thought all of my tases need to be as perfect as possible before submitting. I still think this way, but i realize that no first tas of a game can be perfect, especially for this game.
I should ease up a little and maybe try to not take it as seriously, there is always time to improve.
Notable mistakes and improvements
Stage 3 Room 3
The drop down from the ledge can be improved by 5 frames by letting go of left for 1 frame and then holding right.
Stage 4 Room 3
The jump onto the platform can be improved by 16 frames by double jumping. This timesave is only possible with the previous timesave of 5 frames, because of lagframes. When i tried to implement both of these timesaves i was only able to get 16 frames out of this improvement after exiting the room (different lag).
In the next room the lagframes appeared much earlier on the set of jumps, making it look awkward. Grandoll just stands there and has to wait for 5 frames for any input.
I think you could still save 10 frames with this, but im unsure of the areas that come after, they werent affected by lagframes as much and im worried about the improvement making it unoptimized.
Stage 4 Room 5
You could "save" 5 frames with better jumping at the end, but those 5 frames would not be enough to get rid off the lagframes in the spike section in next room. You would still have to wait.
Freedshalf Final Form 3 can be improved i think, splash damage is difficult to optimize.
Thanks for watching my tas if you did. If this tas gets accepted, i would like the publisher to use this file https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/639224062371660444. It shows the ending before the credits.