Submission #5379: qqwref's GBC Baby Felix Halloween in 13:18.14

Baby Felix Halloween is an action platformer released for the Game Boy Color in Europe in 2001. Felix's friends have been captured inside of a haunted house, and Baby Felix and Kitty must rescue them by traversing through five themed worlds. The best part of the game is the incredible soundtrack by Alberto Jose González, one of the kings of Game Boy music.

If seeing the words "baby" and "Felix" together remind you of anything, then you know why this TAS exists; SiIvaGunner, and the Puzzle Room incident. This rip in particular is the reason I even know this game exists, and has a great soundtrack to boot! I tried running the game real-time for the meme, but was terrible at it, but I thought it had some TAS potential.

I did a testrun/V1 TAS which was the base of this. I thoroughly double-checked all the movement, tried some different routes, improved boss strats/RNG, optimized subpixels, etc. to end up saving 601 frames. You can see his V1 here (in a slightly odd format): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv_vS-coct8

For the most part, you want to just hold right, and defeat enemies as you go. You have a close-range hat and a long-range slingshot at your disposal, and both attacks can be charged to deal more damage. Neither waste any frames to use at all. Jumping is to be minimized; there's one frame when you land where you don't move forward, unless you land on a trapdoor or just right on a slope (like the mushrooms in stage 2). There's also ledge-grabbing, much like the critically acclaimed game 7 GRAND DAD for the NES.

I optimized subpixels as much as I could entering loading zones, doors, climbing trees, etc. When I get hit in boss fights, it's to make my subpixel an odd number so I can max it out at 15. (Your x speed only hits even numbers from directional input... Which probably means 14 is the same as 15 in most cases, but, I wanted to max it out anyway, just in case.) It's a pretty simple game so I don't know what else there is to say. Here's our watch file (made by qqwref): http://pastebin.com/H8gzG6dp

The difference between the difficulties is how much damage you deal/take. Here's how much you deal:

Easy was chosen because it's faster and looks nicer, as almost every enemy can be killed without losing time. For some enemies, Hard would be more interesting, stringing multiple hits together to kill them without losing time, but for most enemies, you'd just need to wait in place or take a hit because there's no good way to kill them fast with the extremely weaker damage, and it's impossible to jump over them. (Vertical hitboxes are NOT on your side.) Bosses would also take at least 3 times as long, and have some slow phases/periods of invulnerability. It'd all look a lot less TASsy. So, me and qq both agreed Easy is better than Hard in this case.

The main reasons for saved frames are a lot of subpixel optimizing, less ledgegrabs thanks to a different route through the level, and better enemy/boss dodging/hitting. Overall, I probably put way too much effort into this meme.

I dunno. 9445. sure

Shoutouts to Simpleflips

feos: This game wasn't as simplistic as I expected, it also has cool music and nice visuals, and got good feedback, so accepting to Moons.

feos: Updated the movie with the one that's a bit more entertaining (and has the same length), per author's request.

Spikestuff: Publishing