Submission #5743: node1729 & Sonikkustar's Genesis McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure "Expert" in 22:52.22

McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure was created by Treasure Co., Ltd. It was their first game produced, although their first game released was Gunstar Heroes. The company is also known for making Dynamite Headdy, Mischief Makers, and Ikaruga.

In this game, Ronald finds a magical map, to lead him to treasure. He voyages with his friends where the map leads him. Each boss defeated gives Ronald another piece of the map. First they go through the Magical Forest, and they face a Giant Tomato boss. Next he travels through the Magical Train and into the Magical City, where he must defeat a goblin-like enemy in a spaceship. Ronald then goes to the Magical Sea, where he encounters Captain Lips, a pirate. Captain Lips possesses the final piece of the map, which then changes and points towards a moon. They meet up with a scientist who builds them a rocket to travel to the moon, they crash the ship, breaking it.

This is an improvement over the previous TAS by 6190 frames (1:43.16) due to movement optimization as well as a completely different strat on the final boss.

All other buttons are unused.

Scarf releases a Scarf in the upward direction, allowing Ronald to grab onto hooks, it also unintentionally allows Ronald to not take knockback damage.

Magic is the basic attack, It will continue off screen and hit an enemy if that enemy is loaded.

Jump height depends on how long C is pressed. C Also advances text, no matter what custom button mapping you choose in options.

When Ronald falls into a void, if he has a balloon he will use the balloon, allowing him to fly around the stage for a limited time.

Note that “X Speed” and “Screen X Speed” are not the same thing as ronald moves at a top speed of 256 pixels per frame in either direction, however the screen moves at double that speed (512) and can change depending on whether or not you are moving up or down a slope.

This starts off with changing the game to Japanese, then changing the difficulty from Beginner to Expert. The game is run on the US copy in Japanese due to the fact that taking damage in Expert on JP reduces Ronald's Magic Level, making his attacks less powerful.

This stage is pretty straightforward. Unlike the previous TAS, the damage along the first zipline in 1-1 is avoided as the health will be used for a damage boost in 1-2. We press down to get off the second zipline instead of letting go of ‘A’ at the end of the screen. This is because Ronald on a zipline is 1.5 times faster than walking, so it’s important that he stays on ziplines as long as possible.

We then do a damage boost from a wizard enemy in 1-2 which saves time from walking to the other end of the tree. An orange flower is manipulated from a fish enemy in 1-4 in order to restore our health completely and set us up for the series of damage boosts in 1-6.

Other improvements come from better management of speed across platforms, specifically in 1-3 and 1-7 as we are able to keep moving without having to slow down like in the previous TAS.

In order to damage each boss in the game, you have to let them suck a crystal from your health bar in order for them to become vulnerable. A much more aggressive attack is done here in order to do more hits before he goes to the next cycle. Unfortunately, the Tomato is one of two bosses that require more than one cycle to beat as we are only three hits shy of killing him in one cycle.

2-1, 2-2 and 2-7 are basic autoscrollers where we can gather balloons to use for later in the run. Entering the shop at the beginning of 2-2 and quickly exiting advances the screen by a few pixels to the right, saving 63 frames.

By taking a damage boost on the last clown in 2-4, we were able to maneuver Ronald past the acrobats in a way that better maintains our X Speed, saving 7 frames.

Some frames were saved on the mini boss in 2-8 (the train conductor rat) by attacking him on the last frame of Ronald’s jump rather than attacking at the first frame of a jump.

There are also some minor time saves with regards to lag reduction in 2-10 and 2-11 as well as optimizing the use of the scarf in 2-3 here.

There’s nothing too radically different about this boss compared to the previous TAS. It’s mainly optimizing each hit so that it lands sooner as well as not being in the air for as long while doing hits.

3-1 is another autoscroller. Two balloons were used here as you can reduce lag by being on the top of the screen during certain notes of the music playing.

We are all disappointed in Sonikkustar for the heinous endeavor that is harming the penguins on the boat in 3-2...despite the fact that this stage is in a tropical area and that penguins shouldn't even be here in the first place. Maybe they’re African penguins, who knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We managed to pick up a double crystal drop from one of the enemies near the end of 3-3. So we get to do another damage boost on the last enemy so that we can run down the slope which gives us more speed. Other than that, more careful speed management was done with regards to the platforming between the treetops.

A new strat was found in 3-5 which was created by node1729. It turns out that the hooks are lined up in such a way that you can directly climb straight up close to the top and not have to wait for any hook cycles. This makes the climb much more direct than in the previous TAS, saving roughly 6.5 seconds.

We start hitting Captain Lips from the left side instead of the right in order to start shooting magic sooner. Consecutive hits are also done much faster by utilizing jump-magic animation cancelling while on the conveyor.

Even if you get Lip’s health down below 100, you can’t technically kill him while he is in the air. You have to wait until he lands on the ground before he is considered dead. So we decide to attack from the right when he jumps up from the conveyor as that allows us to hit him fast enough to ensure us that he will die the moment he lands. Think of it as a bit of insurance. :P

All of this allowed us to save a jump cycle.

4-1 and 4-8 showcase a trick discovered by WhoaConstrictor called balloon boosting. Balloon boosts work by adding the speed of an object to Ronald's Velocity. Normally Ronald moves at a screen speed of 512, however this trick allows us reach speeds of up to 700-800. 4-8 specifically uses two massive balloon boosts that give us speeds of up to 812 and 856 respectively for both boosts.

In 4-10, you usually attack this tree miniboss by hitting the balls off of it before hitting it three times to destroy it. However, it was discovered by Sonikkustar that there are 5 frames where the health of the miniboss hovers around 1 before going back up to 4. By doing two frame perfect inputs, you can get the health to zero and instantly kill the miniboss. Doing this allows us to save 192 frames (3.2 seconds) over the previous TAS.

It was discovered by WhoaConstrictor that you are able to have a crystal sucked up by the boss and hit him while on the same floor as long as you are in the correct position when running into the boss. This removes the need to switch to another floor the moment you hit the boss. More importantly this trick also allows us to hit the boss on the top floor which is not normally possible. By doing this, we are able to hit the boss three times where it’s not supposed to be possible. The strategy has completely changed the boss so that we are now able to finish three cycles sooner.

Noxxa: Judging.

Noxxa: Good to see a proper improvement of the previous movie now. Good usage of new tricks and movement optimization. Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.

Fog: Processing.