Smart Ball is one of those games that you encounter that is fun, but somehow due to some misunderstanding somewhere down the line, the game ends up totally messed up and nonsensical. The makers of this game decided that the best way to translate this game to English, was to delete everything. Apparently in the Japanese version of this game, you visit towns in between levels which advances the plot. This is not the case in the U version.
You star as a blue gelatinous blob who can absorb balls and kill enemies while stretching. Enemies include numerous angry birds, mice, and lunar rabbits. The aim of the game is to kill some wizard dude. anyways...
- Uses snes9x 1.43 + v9
- Abuses programming errors
- Takes damage to save time
- Aims for fastest time
- Uses luck manipulation
- What up G?
Glitches and other tricks
- Pressing up (or down) every other frame increases your speed above normal. I'm not quite sure how I discovered this. It also increases your rate of acceleration. because you are constantly stretching every other frame, you can kill 50% of all enemies side on
- Gliding can be done by pressing up for three frames while doing the above trick. It allows you to kill all enemies side on, and also makes you unable to stick to walls. It also means you can accelerate instantly up to the highest speed in some cases (if you were gliding at speed 0). You can't use this to accelerate faster from a cold start.
- Stretching upwards makes you fall faster.
- Stretching upwards during a jump at a specific time gives you extra height/distance
Individual level comments
1-A: The jump onto the bird from the pink dude thing is awesome, but hard. The dude sometimes jumps the other way making it impossible.
1-B: First boss! Nothing much to say about the level, but pause at frame 3217 and tell me that isn't funny. for a two year old. That was purely accidental.
2-A The only route change here is that I jump from the second last platform near the pipe at the end, the old run jumps from the last platform.
2-B There is a major improvement here. I make the jump over the spiked pit with the red bird without getting hurt, which means I can take damage later in the level. That probably saved about four seconds. The boss fight was executed more efficiently as well.
3-A There were quite a few things I did differently, first off, I jump to the clouds earlier, then in the first small room, I jump straight from the entry to the exit of the level, instead of jumping on an intermediate platform. I take damage at a different place than the other run, and overall slow down less.
3-B I jump off the flower and collect the jump power up at the same time. which means I don't have to jump on any slow sand. The jump that the other guy had trouble with I found relatively easy to execute. probably because of the speed glitch. I take a different quicker route through the clouds. I also use a different strategy for the boss. Each ball you collect loses you one frame, so i collect a minimum. Collecting two balls on the same frame only loses one frame, so I don't lose any more time.
4-A The most boring level in the game, and possibly the source of a semi low rerecord count. I take damage here and I admit, it looks really bad, but it saves a few frames. you travel at 1 pixel per frame just normally, but if you get hurt, during the hurt animation, your speed doubles. obviously traveling on backwards moving enemies wastes time, so I jump on the last possible frame without getting hurt if I encounter an enemy.
4-B I didn't get the iron ball, so I had to defeat the boss purely by stretching. I get hurt so I can do two attacks with only one jump at one point. Seriously though. Getting attacked by a constellation?
5-A Apart from jumping on a third bird at the beginning of the level, and general optimisation, there are no real improvements here.
5-B Yet another angry bird. nuff said
6-A I make this ridiculously hard jump in this level. It was amazingly improbable. but then again, isn't that what TASing is for?
6-B I don't know what to say about this level. pretty standard, like penguins on ice for example. where the belong. All the other levels; mice, rabbits on the moon, naked guys on the north pole. who knows?
7-A I choose a different strategy to scale the mountain, which is awesome.
7-B Now that you have gone up the mountain, the only logical way to progress is to go down. The boss is a giant fish, which is dead after four hits, but it takes a while for it to realise that. I stay still to show you how easily this boss can be defeated. (It actually took many many tries to find that exact spot where he wouldn't get hit. I'm not just slacking off)
8-A I did a few different minor changes that ultimately meant I was in a better position for all moving objects, so the speed gains started piling up. For the boss: I fight a larger version of me, which then goes off in a huff.
8-B The final level! A few small things here and there changed made this level faster by quite a bit. As for the boss fight, sigh, I think they took the whole dramatic sound effects a bit too far. Half of my run was spent waiting for that "overture" to finish. anyway, I improved on the boss battle by ejecting my jump powerup to hit him the last time.
This movie is about 90 seconds faster than the previous submission.
The movie ends when I release the power up (final blow), any input (apart from pressing start) will give you the credits.
Thanks, and enjoy the run.
For a screenshot, could I use frame 40769? I think that basically sums up the entire movie. The kid holding a baloon in the background is a nice touch.
mmbossman: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
Raiscan: Processing.