Submission #6357: EZGames69 & nymx's SNES Disney's Bonkers in 13:56.61

Bonkers is SNES platformer for the SNES from Capcom based on the Disney cartoon featuring a Bobcat cop named Bonkers.

Comparisons: Stage #/Total Cuts/Stage Cuts

NYMX: I have to say, that the collaboration between myself and EZGames69 was one of high synergy. I didn't know this game as much as he did, so routing and use of various items was a big help from him.

Optimization was what I performed mostly, but the back and forward passing of our input files was challenged by each of us and pushed this TAS to being much faster than we expected it to be.

Every 10 cop badges you collect, your bomb count goes up by one, we need to get them up to 11 bombs because we use 4 of them in 6-1 and the final boss takes 7 bombs to beat.

Jumping after one frame of running causes you to move faster than just walking.

After jumping on an enemy, roughly 5 to 10 frames later...you can jump and get an extra boost that you normally wouldn't get.

One frame jumps (on landing) can be used to keep your speed moving forward.

RAM Watch was used to determine what movement strategies worked to advance Bonkers the most.

RNG manipulation on enemies to reduce lag. Jump timing and height to reduce lag.

Biggest time save was at frame 4248 where a one frame opportunity existed to jump and still maintain forward speed off of the food cart. This did two things, it got Bonkers on the table faster and allowed for us to throw a bomb without having to wait for the throwing animation to complete.

This is NOT level 1 music

As with all bosses in this game, there are similarities to Super Metroid's Phantoon RNG, where stepping into the room sets either good RNG to cause the boss cycles to go in our favor. This first boss was also further manipulated on each cycle by attacking at the right frame to cause the next cycle to occur as fast as possible. Lag reduction was also applied.

EZ had a slightly better route over Partyboy. At frame 10681, routing veered dramatically to avoid lag from animations up in the top of the room. This is where most of the cuts occur for this stage.

EZ was able to come up with an early grab of the "red potion" in the air. This kept Bonkers from having to wait on the ground to grab it. A frame rule was discovered on this level that manipulated an enemy at frame 12522. The RNG at this point cause the character to shoot left, where it normally shoots right. Previous TAS (due to not grabbing "red potion" in mid-air), wasn't able to manipulate this.

A slight delay in 2-2 was used before entering the boss area to affect the starting RNG. This is the only room we lost time, since the proper RNG would have required more delay and loosing more frames than we lost at this attempt.

Aside from lag reduction, the biggest savings came from the discovery of jumping off of the van and barely missing the back of the vehicle. This kept Bonkers moving at full speed and avoided extra lag from a second van, which appears in the previous TAS.

This stage was a struggle to get ahead. I ended up using a bomb to destroy one character that caused the most lag.

Saving time on this boss was due to allowing the flying caper to stay alive as long as possible. This caused the helicopter to start its next cycle early (discovery by EZ). The other time savers was trying to get the last bomb to destroy the Helicopter and the flying caper at the same time on the last bomb throw.

Mainly just lag reduction.

Manipulated the first elevator entrance to activate the cut-scenes early. This gave us the ability to affect the frame rule so that the penguin that was appearing at frame 29285, would spawn in another place. We had to figure this out, since the previous TAS was doing this. Second elevator was also manipulated to activate the cut scene early as well.

Nothing special...just more lag reduction.

Lag reduction from start of the stage to frame 34860. Found the right jumping pattern to land on the "Green fountains" to avoid being shifted up in the air longer. At frame 35914, special positioning was discovered to be able to edge out a jump at the bottom. I was able to start my jump a number of frames later, which allowed for me to skip the "goo" with two jumps rather than 3...which was much slower. The next step was to land on the edge (closest to the goo) so that I can avoid sliding down and also be able to jump after starting my dash. This allowed for me to clear the slippery goo going up...which causes Bonkers to slow down.

Staring at frame 37934, a new approach to optimizing the jumping pattern was researched. I did this in order to figure out how to skip the piston, which was the issue in the previous TAS and for RTA runners. By not jumping onto the characters, you can avoid the delay time in bouncing off them. This gave me enough time to squeeze by the piston at 38421. This made the biggest cut of the stage.

Affected RNG by entering in the room at the right frame...which caused the best pattern for us to deal with.

Tighter optimizations from the early part of this level, forced me to figure out how to catch the floating platform...since I was getting there too early to make use of my cuts in the beginning part of the stage. I ended up not using the "blue spring" and edged out a landing on the platform at 43900. This helped to maintain the early cuts up to that point.

We got the best pattern and EZ's discovery of ducking was used to eliminate most of the lag.

ThunderAxe31: Judging.

ThunderAxe31: Nothing much to say, this is a straight-forward improvement. Accepting for obsoleting the current publication.

feos: Pub.

feos: I found out we're not being consistent in naming Disney's games. Various approaches are being used semi-randomly, it looks like game cover art has been the main source most of the time, but the guidelines for game names have been detalized, and now we prefer the manual. And in the manual text, the game is called just Bonkers. So setting that for the time being.

feos: LOL sorry, I was looking at the Genesis manual. The SNES one has Disney's. Oh well.