I have deduced from the comments in the discussion board that this game is not worth the second pass! As I feared, it's a bit too long and repetitive for most people's tastes. If it were 25 levels, I think it'd have gotten a more favorable response. 50 is pushing it. And 100 is pretty darn nutty. It wasn't a total loss... I got a lot of practice with frame advance and luck manipulation (two TAS skills I'm normally weak at) out of this. =)
- uses snes9x v.1.51 w/default settings (will not work with earlier versions)
- aims for the fastest time
- uses luck manipulation
Puzzle Bobble is also known as Bust-a-Move, and is one of the more well-known puzzle games, where the player helps the characters of Bubble Bobble clear away playfields full of bubbles using skills with aiming and strategy.
The SNES version of the game is a mix of the stages found in the arcade games, with a few of its own stages, new powerups, and a boss fight. All in all, it has 100 stages total.
Admittedly, this is not the most difficult game to so a TAS of, but it may prove entertaining nonetheless. The strategy for each stage is as follows
- Figure out the quickest way to destroy all the bubbles at the top of the playfield. (more often than not, this was pretty straightforward)
- Use frame advance to manipulate luck and get all the colors needed.
- When shooting bubbles, make sure they're aimed in a way to consume the least frames possible to get where they need to go.
For the most part, the correct bubbles always come up, but there are rare cases where bubbles are wasted. As shooting a bubble does change which colors come up next, there are some moments where it consumes less frames to do so (particularly if I need two specific-color bubbles at the beginning of a stage). Along with that, there are times when certain-color bubbles won't appear at all until certain bubbles in the field are cleared out (this almost always happens in stages with water bubbles)
It's also worth noting that the collision angles on the right side of the screen are slightly different than the ones on the left. So a couple stages that have seemingly symmetrical solutions may end up having different strategies for each side. Don't be alarmed.
There's a chance I may make another pass at this run, but it will be a while before I'm able to do so. As it is, the run is pretty tight, so I thought I'd go ahead and submit this one to the Workbench, mainly to see if people find this game interesting in general. I know 100 stages is a lot. Is it too much? Let me know!