Submission #1611: Soulrivers's SNES The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse in 15:56.20

This is an improvement of 1427 frames (23.8 sec) over nitsuja's previous run.

The game is about Mickey which with an array of suits giving him different powers tries to beat all the levels and bosses to save Pluto.

Set at the hardest difficulty, this game is insanely hard to play in real time. I seriously cannot understand how the SDA runner achieved such a good time without dying – I know I could never. One mistimed jump could cost you death. Mickey’s jumps are short and his movement is slow when walking. To make Mickey run, simply run down a slope. Constant jumping is used to preserve the speed gained from running.

One thing that should be taken note of is that nitsuja did not have access to the movement speed memory address, but I did. This accounted for A LOT of time saved.

7E04A9, 2u – Movement Speed. Max walking speed is 384, max running speed is 608, max ice/turbo (as I'd like to call it, like in 1-1) is 768.

1-1: When I first started off doing this run I was pretty confident that is was greatly improvable, or so had Tompa told me and I improved nitsuja’s initial 1-1 version by 40 frames. When I contacted nitsuja about this he had a whooping 300 frames faster version of this level. This is achieved by using the momentum from throwing a dazed enemy at an object so that it bounces back at you, and then running in the opposite direction, getting hit by the enemy in the back. This is used twice in the stage and will let you gain a MUCH greater speed than simple downslope running.
307 frames saved.

1-2: At first I had some real trouble manipulating this boss which discouraged me a bit. Then nitsuja told me the boss was not manipulated from what you did during the battle or in the stage, but when you entered the whole level. Just like nitsuja I use the momentum from the last minion to gain speed to jump towards the exit.
13 frames saved.

1-3: Quite an easy stage. Not much time to save here, really. Jumping between those logs isn’t possible because of that damn bee, there’s a one frame margin where you would’ve reached the log but the bee’s in the way. Oh well.
7 frames saved.

1-4: Once again, not much to save, nitsujas fight was pretty tight. I found some frames here and there to improve on though. The second body part hits a bit later than what is possible. This is so I can gain speed from it, which saves time in the long run.
9 frames saved.

2-1: Ahh, the magician suit. I love it. Here you’ll see a shortcut that I took from the un-assisted run by Rob 'Mickey_Mage' Whitener. Shooting down the bean and taking a boost from it bounces me a level up, and I manage to preserve speed for a bit longer too.
147 frames saved.

2-2: I hate water levels, period. They move slowly, they are boring to make, boring to watch and I’ve never been a fan of the ocean. End of rant. I saved most of the time saved in this stage in the water part. The mini-boss fight went smoothly too.
24 frames saved.

2-3: Just before the second batch of hacking things (what a grand name) I make a stop in movement to wait out the actions. The alternative would’ve been slower (jumping right into the club pounding down). The fish of doom shows for the first time too.
16 frames saved.

2-4: Nothing to improve on in the beginning, just jumpin’. 17 frames was saved from jumping at an earlier frame after firing the third charged shot (thanks to Tompa for this). Doing a super-bounce (getting the spider’s head under a block so that you don’t bounce up and down between hits) turned out to be slower because of the manipulation required.
33 frames saved.

3-1: A long boring auto-scroller. I hate them. This miniboss was by far the hardest obstacle in making of this run. I had originally tried to recreate the tactic nitsuja used for him, by jumping over him in the second cycle and shooting through the lava pillar to hit him in the back. After hours and hours of trying this didn’t work, so I kind of gave up on the project. When I came back to it I easily figured out an alternative way which happened to save 23 frames. Great.
23 frames saved.

3-2: Big improvement here. I think all of it came from basically keeping the speed up after going up the two flying platforms. Also no stop was made on the third burning platform, the ones over the lava. Nitsuja had stopped there to spray the fifth platform while I managed to do it in the air.
146 frames saved.

3-3: I seriously don’t know where I saved frames in this level. At first I had a hard time even matching nitsujas time and I ended up saving some. Taking damage is necessary here to be able to get the fastest time.
20 frames saved.

3-4: This boss was probably the easiest stage in the making of this movie. This is however not true for realtime playing at hard difficulty. Keeping yourself on the platforms while still spraying at the boss, staying away from the fireballs and not falling down is incredibly hard. I managed to save some time here because I aligned myself better on the platforms which allowed for less stoppage in spraying water.
7 frames saved.

4-1: So now we’re Robin Hood-style. I might add that swinging yourself and doing the little jump at the end of the animation gives you a speed greater than normal walking, but not greater than running. At the two flying blocks near the slope I also keep the speed up. Nothing else to mention.
13 frames saved.

4-2: Another difficult stage to optimize, but I think it turned out nicely in the end. Due to more optimized swinging many frames were saved. Also the climbing at the end used less shooting.
66 frames saved.

4-3: This is where the second biggest improvement of the run is found. Instead of doing the battle the intended way by stealing the bird’s eggs and launching them at her with the Robin Hood-suit, I do like the un-assisted run and use the magician suit (Zurreco originally found that this was faster). So I get two rounds instead of three. In the second round it is not possible to reach the bird to shoot him at the earliest possible frame when he’s coming down due to being knocked away.
209 frames saved.

5-1: Contrary from water levels, I love the ice ones, maybe because I like the winter. Hmm. Anyway when running down these slopes you reach a speed equal to the one in 1-1. Running on the ice blocks makes you lose speed, but they move faster than Mickey, so I stay on them. At one point I run for a bit on the ground, which makes me lose speed. This was because otherwise I couldn’t pass the spiong-obstacle (don’t ask…), the speed was too high!.
30 frames saved.

5-2: Near the end of the stage the screen can't keep up with Mickey, so I have to take a slower alternative. Too bad, eh?
8 frames saved.

5-3: Uh, it’s Pete on skates. I wonder why the ice doesn’t break... Much time is saved here because I don’t have to change into the wizard, I did that in 4-3 if you remember. The fight was also generally optimized.
117 frames saved.

6-1: Now we’re inside the castle. Not very creepy if I might say so. Major time is saved by keeping the speed when grabbing the block with an arrow on it.
63 frames saved.

6-2: The exact same strategy as nitsuja, though the hit made me travel a few pixels further.
2 frames saved.

6-3: Some time is saved by grabbing an earlier arrow-block. Nothing else to mention here.
6 frames saved.

6-4: Finally the end of the run, and his one was a hell to manipulate. At first I thought because I couldn’t get nitsuja’s manipulation, it would be slower. After a while of trying I gave up and used the one I had. It turned out to be much faster. Also I might add that the intro/credits screen is ridiculous. Goofy and Mickey are throwing to eachother while Donald is doing some kind of dance. What the hell is that? Seriously.
98 frames saved.

Now if you read through all that, we've arrived to the credits. I want to thank the people who have helped me, they are as follows.

Tompa – For always supporting me, reviewing WIPs, coming up with ideas, improvements and so on.

Nitsuja – For making the previous run and providing help when making it. Your submission was invaluable when making this, with strategies I could never have come up with.

Zurreco – For finding the new bird strategy.

Rob 'Mickey_Mage' Whitener – For finding the shortcut in 2-1.

With that said, enjoy!