Objectives
- Ending 2
- Major skip glitch
- Genre: Adventure
About this run
I knew about this sequel to Survival Kids long ago. I never knew what was going on since I can't read Japanese. But when I watched some playthroughs on Youtube recently, I noticed there was an English fan translation patch so I checked it out more. I barely started exploring the jungle that my game crashed. I thought the translation patch was to blame but when I played the unpatched ROM, the same thing happened. Turned out there was a weird left+right / up+down glitch going on. Further playing with it, I saw my character getting displaced and being able to walk through boulders. Although I didn't understand the glitch much, I saw a lot of potential and even managed to make it all the way to the lighthouse in a two minute test video.
The problem was that I didn't know this game at all. Some small ending 1-5 notes I googled was all I had to go off of. It seemed, for the major three endings you need to go collect a bunch of items around the island. You could possibly reach ending 3 or 4 quickly (sleep 100 days), but I didn't manage to glitch the days counter like in Survival Kids 1.
I randomly explored the island and the lighthouse (top left on the map), then the warship (bottom right). It turned out the lifeboat, which is normally inaccessible in the early game, has a trigger than starts the ending 2 dialogue. The glitch can be used to easily access it, thus this run was born.
Tricks
The trigger skip from Survival Kids 1 doesn't work in this game, but it is not required or used in this run.
The only trick used is the left+right/up+down glitch: If you press such a combination, there is a chance the game crashes (Note that you have to keep moving after doing the glitch, or else the glitch always crashes the game). If it doesn't, usually 0xC1 is added to the X-position and 0x82 is added to the Y-position. You will stay in the map boundaries, but all the stuff and loading zones will be gone. If you do the glitch 4 times, the position will turn back the way it was before, thus all the stuff will become interactive again.
This glitch was used to bypass boulders and walls to quickly make it to the lifeboat and start ending 2.
There is a river which will be flooded. I assume, some story relevant stuff needs to be done to dry it. However, the glitch has the potential to dry the river for you. The memory address responsible for this is $C3AB (0x80 = full river, 0xC0 = dried river). I achieved this by doing the glitch and waiting 1 frame before moving on, unfortunately causing a little flickering lag.
When doing the glitch, saving/resting will be screwed and doesn't work anymore (except in extremely rare cases). Therefore, the game also doesn't save the fact that ending 2 was reached. The ending itself plays out normally, though (except for the fact that it is graphically glitched).
My opinion on this game
This game was released in Japan only. Although I don't know the specifics as to why that is, I can see this game failed in a few ways.
- The music is ok, but it feels like a downgrade from Survival Kids 1.
- The game is about two boys. I think players appreciated the setting from Survival Kids 1 more, which is about a boy and a girl (that find and fall in love with each other).
- The story is absolutely offending. The two boys get kidnapped by random strangers. Then one of the boys gets kicked off the flying helicopter and is presumed dead. In the English patch, one of the kidnappers tells to the jailed boy "your friend is probably dead, don't cry ok?". The endings don't seem to go into detail how the kidnappers are dealt with, so basicly there is no punishment for them.
- I think the monkey as a sidekick in Survival Kids 1 was more interesting than the parrot in Survival Kids 2.
- Some game mechanics are worse? If I didn't know better, the devs took Survival Kids 1 in an early dev state and made Survival Kids 2 out of it. For instance: When the character is pushed by an animal, there is no "bounce" sound effect. The limited field of vision at night doesn't hide items or objects in the room (in Survival Kids 1 it does).
- etc.
It is still nice that there was a sequel, and it's not like it fails too bad. It is a good game if you can accept its flaws.
Memory Addresses
For this run I watched these addresses (System Bus).
| Address | Note |
|---|---|
| $060F | X-Pos |
| $0610 | Y-Pos |
| $C3AB | River is filled if this value is 0x80, and is dried out if it is 0xC0. |
ThunderAxe31: Judging.
ThunderAxe31: As the author mentioned, the game doesn't record that the ending 2 has been unlocked, and the ending cutscene features graphical corruption. However, there is no problem since the ending cutscene has been displayed from start to end and then the game gets back to the main screen as supposed, so the game is considered as beaten.
Additionally, while it's not a requirement, the game still recorded the completion flag in the SRAM, so the ending 2 will result as unlocked after resetting the console.
Additionally, while it's not a requirement, the game still recorded the completion flag in the SRAM, so the ending 2 will result as unlocked after resetting the console.
Considering how little documentation is available for this game, this run is impressive. The audience reception for this submission was mixed, but it's clear to me that it's not much entertaining: it's hard to grasp what's going on all the time and similar movies have mediocre ratings. Accepting for Vault.
feos: Pub.
feos: There's not much statistics about speedrunning this game (for example aside from a single TAS, there's a single RTA record). While the glitch used here saves a ton of time, and also divides gameplay by zero, it's unclear if it becomes a standard technique for this game eventually. And it's Vault material, so there will likely be no TAS branch without this glitch. Finally, it's really tricky to clearly define by consequences and setup. Leaving the label blank for now.