- Takes no damage, no death
- Abuses programming errors
- Aims for fastest time
While watching the NES Tiny Toons run, I was reminded of this SNES game which I had and loved for years. With no apparent update to the rejected submission of a few months back, I started this movie on monday, and after a dozen horrendous bouts of desyncing during boss battles I've got a completed movie on thursday. Cooooool!
About the Game
Buster busts loose! That's about it for plotline. Every stage is its own world and its own objective: Get through school, survive the old west, explore a haunted house, score a winning touchdown, find treasure in a cloud-bound temple, and, lastly, rescue Princess Babs from Duck Vader or something out in space. Every level has its own intro sequence but I skip them completely, lucky viewers!
Buster himself has some slick moves to complete this game--he attacks with a sort-of dropkick manuever (that stays attacking until he touches the ground, even though his feet just dangle after the first kick) and he can dash around fast enough to climb up walls. When dashing, he can slide for an extra attack that if held will also end the dash (the only other ways to stop dashing are to run out of dash power or to try to turn around, at which point Buster will just grind to a halt.)
The game itself, from room to room, is very varied in what you can or must do to progress, but each little bit is pretty self-explanatory, especially while watching the movie.
About the glitches weee
I never said Buster could jump multiple times in the air, did I. Well he can't. However, he does allll the time in the movie, so how?
When you are winding up for a dash, pressing back will cancel the dash. This will also give a one frame window where the game thinks you're on the ground, meaning you can jump again briefly! Prepare another dash, cancel, jump, and tada, Buster can fly!
Another thing about dashing: As long as there's a smidgeon of dash power remaining, you can jump and maintain the dash status until you hit the ground; but if you hold down to slide, you'll slide when you hit the ground, even though your dash power is LONG gone by then--this can extend the full length of a full dash run by almost half, and can ALways be used for that little extra bit of speed to clear a room faster.
Important fact: Any wall or column that extends above the roof of an area ENDS there. Twice I take a shortcut by going over a wall like this.
Every other glitch found and used was merely for looks.
About luck manipulation
It seems that 'randomness' in the bosses is affected largely by where you are, not just by when you are there, so boss fights do look a little erratic as I bounce around looking for spots where they do what I want them to do.
Further, the final boss decides whether he goes clockwise or counterclockwise depending on what direction the gun is facing at the time, so I have to manipulate that as well.
About the bonus stages
In the thread of the previous submission of this game by Dark Kobold, there was some discussion on doing all of the bonus stages which occur between levels. However, I was going for fastest possible time in this movie, so I only did the Hamton bonus stage over and over.
HOWEVER! I decided to make a separate movie that uses a password to reach just the bonus games, and it can be found here: http://www.twistedeye.net/TAS/TTA-BonusStages.smv --I gave up on the squash halfway through just because and started playing full speed, but if anyone thinks I could continue this perfectly and submit it as a separate submission under the category of concept movies perhaps, hey, I can do that, too.
Miscellaneous stage by stage notes
The game is pretty obvious, yes, so just watch and you'll get nearly all of what happens, so in this section I'll just explain what little might not be so readily apparent.
Stage 1
- In the second room (with the constant dashing), I got the idea really late into the movie to try dashing off the cliff and jumping there at the third jump (where I climb the right wall) and it turns out I can save 10 frames. However, hexeditting this in seemed darn near impossible--this game desyncs so easily--so that's unfortunate. Overlooked improvements like this do not occur beyond the starting stage, I'm sure.
- In the bookcase room I stop my dash at the top of the first bookshelf so that by the time I hit the ground I have enough dash power stored up to not have to wait to dash up the next bookcase.
Stage 2
- Ah yes, a really long scroller makes the last half of the stage :(
Stage 3
- The boss here desyncs so easily, grr. The final result came out beautifully, though, so it's for the best I got all that extra practice then, eh wot?
Stage 4
- No frame wasted. Jumping is slower than running I'm sure, so I spend not one frame in the air longer than necessary.
- If I go into the endzone on the return, the game gives me 110 stars as a reward, and that takes a LONG time to count up, so I made sure to get hit just once and as early as possible so that a dash will end it ASAP (as a result, Buster scores the touchdown without himself ever crossing the goal line!)
Stage 5
- Another 'scroller' before the pinball-type 'boss' room. :(
- Speaking of the boss, you have to watch the doors at the top open, come down, and then go back up before you can get through there.
Stage 6
- That scroller loved to desync as well. As a result, I didn't tempt the big explosions as much as I'd like, but it came out a'ight.
- The final boss desynced worse than anything else YET, but it finally came out right.
- YES I end the movie before the boss is defeated, the spinning 'paralyzer' does the rest of my work for me automatically, and without damaging me either!
adelikat: Polished run that has received good votes & responses. Accepting for publication.