- Emulator used: PCSX-rr-v013a
- BIOS: SCPH1001
- Abuses programming errors
- Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
- Gets the 100% ending, but does not collect any gobbos
Bet you thought this was just another April Fool's joke ;)
The primary glitch used in this run is what I dub the "Load Corruption Glitch". Activation is very simple with tools: while entering any well (either the stone ones in world 1 or the clay ones in world 3), pause and exit the level with the proper timing. This is far from guaranteed to work, and you can create various effects depending on your timing. I've managed to do similar things on console, but I couldn't get some of the useful effects without tool assistance.
Anyways, upon activating the glitch many weird things happen. First and most obviously, the graphics corrupt. Secondly, and not so obviously, you are actually still in the level! Interacting with any object in the level (or at least a crystal, I couldn't reach anything else blind like this) will crash the game. Finally, the game sets high values to many things - you get over 100 lives (appears as 98, the normal max, but when you die you stay at 98) and your gobbo value is set to a strange floor texture (consistent with over 100 gobbos from gobbo duplication).
Now here is the interesting part. Wait a bit and exit the level again. One of three things will happen. Usually, your game will freeze. However, if you do it while the game is in certain states (in this run, I selected one of the corrupted options on the menu to get a control-less fade out), you can return to the world menu (although still invisible). Here is the kicker: one of the "high values" set during the glitch appears to be your world map - you can actually select any level! The rapid noises you hear during the corrupted menus are actually me scrolling all the way over from 1-1 to 5-B, since the secret final boss is much faster to kill than the normal final boss. Finally, by playing around a bit more in the corrupted menus you can force the scene to reload, which lets you see as normal. This actually costs me about a second, but I think this TAS is pointless if you can't actually see me playing the final level. I believe this speed/entertainment tradeoff is worth it.
This run starts from SRAM to avoid a freeze upon reloading the world map. The SRAM is from the end of my recently submitted 100% TAS. Why this fixes the freeze I'm not sure, but then again there are a lot of things about this I don't fully understand.
This is actually the second iteration of this TAS, done more recently. The original was about a second slower and done back in December.
Dooty: Good audience feedback, accepted for publication. (I just wonder how you guys find such game breaking glitches...)