Tobu Tobu Girl is a homebrew Gameboy game released in 2017. It is available for free from the Developers itch.io page. https://tangramgames.itch.io/tobutobugirl
Tobu Tobu Girl stands out as a homebrew title due to its rock solid presentation. With its cute graphics, tight gameplay, catchy chiptunes, and professional menus it would hold up as a solid entry in the Gameboy library even when compared with professionally developed titles of the platforms heyday. It certainly conveys a sense of speed rarely seen on the Gameboy. (Probably due to the original console's blurry screen.) On the other hand it is rather short, with only three main levels and a single bonus level. The game is difficult enough to alleviate this somewhat in real time play, but here I use Tobu Girl's fast movement options to complete all four levels in under three minutes.
In-Game Times & Scores
| TIME | SCORE | RANK | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LV1 | PLAINS | 0:09 | 14100 | S |
| LV2 | CLOUDS | 0:13 | 13000 | S |
| LV3 | SPACE | 0:17 | 14100 | S |
| LV4 | DREAM | 0:22 | 12600 | S |
Compared with my last Submission:
| FRAMES SAVED | |
|---|---|
| LV1 | 46 |
| LV2 | 47 |
| LV3 | 79 |
| ENDING | 164 |
| LV4 | 96 |
| TOTAL | 432 |
Special Thanks to ThunderAxe31 for LV1
This game seemed like a good candidate for my fist run due to its shortness, simple controls, ease of emulation, and great disparity between unassisted play and TAS due to how quickly actions can be entered. Also I wanted to see a speedrun of it and was disappointed that as far as I could tell no one had attempted it yet. Though it is a Homebrew game, I feel the quality of the game makes up for it, and it's such a short run, with quick fun to watch movements that it doesn't overstay its welcome, even though the gameplay strategy isn't that complex.
Movement
Tobu Girl has three main ways to move (other than falling due to gravity.) Bouncing, Dashing, and Flying.
Bouncing: When bouncing off an enemy Tobu Girl is propelled upwards. The speed is 3 for all enemies except Jellyfish which give a speed of 2 unless stomped. Tobu girl is teleported to the top of the enemy sprite at the beginning of a bounce, a maximum distance of 16. Jellyfish have 1 less pixel available to horizontally dash into for a max of 15. There is a bug with Jellyfish and ghosts where regardless of the height you hit them at they will occasionally teleport you up 10. This is useful when they aren't close enough to hit near the bottom, but usually costs distance when compared with the 13-16 in ideal situations.
After a low jellyfish bounce, a dash or flight should be input immediately.
Dashing: Tobu Girl can dash in all 8 directions, 3 times before she needs to bounce again. The remaining dashes are indicated above her head. This is Tobu Girl's burst movement option and the primary navigation tool for most of the game. A Dash can interrupt most of Tobu Girl's other actions including a previous dash. Dashing in one of the 3 upward directions will move her at a y speed of 3, dashing downward will move her at a y speed of -4 Note that Tobu Girl cannot drift left or right during a dash. The end also must be canceled into another action to prevent a slow animation before she starts to fall.
Flying: Flying propels Tobu Girl upwards based on her momentum. Flying upwards out of a dash accelerates from 0 up to 3, flying out of a bounce maintains the previous speed, and accelerates up to 3.
Stomping: By Dashing Downwards, Tobu girl can stomp. This destroys the enemy, gets a regular height bounce out of a jellyfish, and restores some of her flight meter. In this run only one enemy is stomped in this run due to a bug causing a horizontal dash to be slightly worse in terms of speed.
Enemies
- Bats: Hang in place and do nothing.
- Birds: Move slowly left and right, turning around at the edge of the screen.
- Jellyfish: Hang in place and do nothing. Bounce at a speed of 2.
- Ghosts: Zigzag left and right quickly. Disappear even after a normal bounce.
- Spikes: Hang in place and do nothing. Can't be bounced off of.
- Blades: Move slowly left and right, turning around at the edge of the screen. Can't be bounced off of.
Enemy Generation:
Enemies are spawned in a set order at set locations. Birds, Ghosts and Blades are Affected by the Global Timer
Enemy RNG is set at the title screen.
ThunderAxe31: You can change RNG only by delaying the moment when you press Start at the intro cutscene and the moment when you press Start at the title screen. From then, all subsequent RNG changes will be completely unaffected by following inputs, both during gameplay and in between levels.
Strategy:
Keep upwards momentum as much as possible. Hit as many enemies as possible. Maintain upwards speed of 3 as much as possible.
The horizontal dash takes advantage of the fact that the game is more lenient about what counts as a bounce instead of being killed during a horizontal dash, provided you start far enough away. Also it terminates Tobu Girl's vertical speed, so we can get to the next bounce as quick as possible. Hitting an enemy lower gives a bigger boost. Ideally the horizontal dash should last for 1 frame, for 1 frame of 0 y speed, followed by the bounce teleport of 13-16 upwards.
Alternating A and Start is used to advance the menus. Curiously, the High score table can only be closed with Start, so the correct button to start on must be picked.
Thanks to ThunderAxe31 for the 3x1 frame save by pressing Right and A on the same frame to select the next level.
Note:
As the ending sequence plays after level 3, I choose to stop at the high score table for level 4. Pressing start here just sends you back to the main menu.
Memory: claiming for judging because CUTE
Memory: Optimization seems great. The goal of the game is essentially to go "up" and this TAS essentially is constantly moving up.
Personally I loved this game because it was adorable and I want to hug it and kiss it and tuck it into bed at night. On the TAS itself, I enjoyed the spastic movement to take advantage of various enemies to refresh cooldowns and to just move more quickly upwards. There wasn't very much audience response here but the audience response it did receive was mostly positive.
Accepting to Moons.
Spikestuff: Publishing.