Submission #5254: WarHippy's SNES The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends in 15:16.37

Super Nintendo Entertainment System
baseline
BizHawk 1.11.4
55073
60.0988138974405
25914
Unknown
Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, The (US).sfc
Submitted by WarHippy on 10/12/2016 10:56:20 PM
Submission Comments
Narrator: “Oh my. It’s Boris Badnov and Natasha Fatale! What are you two no- goodniks up to?”
Natasha: “Shall we tell him, darhling?”
Borris: “Tell Shmell, seeing is believing!”
Narrator: “And with that, Borris and Natasha disappeared from the gamescreen in a blinding flash-- and the priceless objects began to vanish one by one! The Picayune Pot, The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayam, and the Kirwood Derby! What will our heroes do n--“
Rocky: “Oh, no you don’t! Hold it right there! Say, Bullwinkle... doesn’t our Gameboy(TM) game start this way too?”
Bullwinkle: “Darned if it doesn’t Rock! Just what are you guys tryin’ to pull here?”
Narrator: “Uh... nothing. Nothing at all. This game is completely different. Just start playing and you’ll see!”

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.4
  • Aims for fastest real time
  • Takes a lot of damage to save a lot of time
  • Uses death to save time

Game Controls

L and R to move, D to crouch, A or B to jump, and x to throw berries/acorns. There can only be 1 thrown berry/acorn on the screen and up to 5 partial berries/acorns from when they explode after hitting the enemy. You play as Bullwinkle for the first 5 levels and then Rocky in the final 2 levels. If you do a full jump while moving at top speed, then you save 4 frames every time as compared to just walking forward. You save fewer frames the slower you're going when you jump or the smaller the jump is. You have to wait for 12 frames after Bullwinkle lands in order to get back to optimal jumping speed, but Rocky only needs 2 frames to get back to top speed. If you are standing still or on top of a moving object when jumping, then you will be unable to move (or turn) left or right for 6 frames.

Stage by stage comments

Stage 1 - Grimalaya Mountains / Whynchutaka Peak

I've never been mountain climbing, but I'm pretty sure this is how it works.

Stage 2 - Caverns of Upsidasium

This is the level where I learned that some platforms and other objects in the game can fail to load properly depending on what frame you approach them on. The final platform I jump onto right before the alien is the one that can sometimes not appear in this level. I die at the very end so that I'll have full health in the next level.

Stage 3 - Upsidasium Mine

Mostly an autoscroller. Getting from one cart to the next is the only thing that can really be optimized (and the boss fight). If you slow down before going off the edge, then you won't pop up as high so that you can jump out sooner. If you jump out too soon, then you will be falling for too long and the game will cause you to lose a life. Normally when you get into a cart it takes a while for it to get up to speed, but if you apply the brakes for one frame it quickly gets back up to top speed.
Each alien boss takes 5 berries to destroy. If you get hit, then you can get far enough into their hitbox so that the berries in your hand will be destroyed while you still have invincibility frames. This trick lets you throw berries nearly every other frame and is used in the final level. Since you never complete the throwing animation the game doesn't register that you've used a berry.
The game goes back to the opening screen to see if you'd like to play the minigames for a chance to earn extra lives.

Stage 4 - Maybe Dick

Another mostly autoscroller level. If you get significantly far enough ahead of the boat and move close to the water, then it will appear significantly faster for you which is why I don't spend a lot of my downtime exploring other parts of the level.

Stage 5 - Sunken Ghost Pirate Ship of Captain Horatio Hornswoggle

I hate this level with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. Some obstacles are on a global timer; some obstacles are on a local timer from when you begin the level; some obstacles are only triggered when you approach them; some obstacles fail to load; the rats are partially RNG-based; and finally this level is excessively long which makes route planning truly difficult. I'm pretty content with how it turned out, though. When entering the boss area, if you jump into the ceiling right away, the camera will fail to become fixed for the boss sequence. The boss will still appear, but you can walk right past him and to the door without even needing to collect the stolen treasure.
The game goes back to the opening screen for the final time to see if you'd like to play the minigames for a chance to earn extra lives.

Stage 6 - Downtown Pottsylvania

Quite the dangerous town for our hero Rocky. All of your leftover berries get converted to acorns.

Stage 7 - Skull Castle

Fairly straightforward level. I die so that I can get full health in the next area. In the boss area you see that Bullwinkle is locked in a haltingly descending cage. You have to hit the lock 5 times on the right side in order to break it open and free him. Unfortunately, the programmers did not prepare for the possibility of this being done before the cage reached the lower area. As soon as you break open the lock the camera stops all vertical movement and the Derby hat descends into the middle of the wall where you can't reach it, so you have to wait until the camera gets low enough before breaking the lock so that the hat descends to a point where you can reach it.

Other Comments

I really enjoyed the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and was pleasantly surprised to find that the SNES version hadn't been done, yet. I hope you all enjoy it!

Possible Improvements

The camera position dictates the timing of a substantial number of things throughout the game. It might be possible to have better camera manipulation for certain parts of the game. In the minecart level, during the first time I switch to a different cart, it turns out I didn't pull the brake for a frame before jumping. This would save about 30 frames, but all that time and more gets lost when trying to re-do the ghost ship level since the timings for everything changes. There is probably a better path through stage 6. There are flowers all over to heal yourself, so you can probably find a way to not slow down to avoid damage and just heal yourself later.

Suggested Screenshots

20355 or 37567

Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: Looks optimized and that is definitely how mountain climbing works, but the autoscrollers and long waits in the latter stages completely kill the momentum. Accepting to Vault.
fsvgm777: Processing.
Last Edited by adelikat on 10/19/2023 1:04 AM
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