#6926: WarHippy, g0goTBC, Really_Tall, Samsara, The8bitbeast, Malleoz & TASPlasma's Uzebox Bugz "2 players" in 02:42.14

Bugz (circa 1977-1999) was a famous rap artist that starred in the group D12 (aka Dirty Dozen). After an intense water gun fight, Bugz was hit by an SUV. I don't know why someone brought an SUV to a water gun fight, but clearly there's no way you can lose by doing so, as long as you spraypaint "NERF Subocean Underwater Vehicle" on the side. 16 years later, ArtcFox decided to pay tribute to this tragedy and created Bugz for the Uzebox (of course exercising a few artistic liberties). You can re-live the rough and tumble lifestyle of this troubled man by squishing bugs (not Bugz, as he was already squished by the SUV) and collecting cookies throughout 21 unique levels.

This game was chosen for Dream Team Contest 9, and it is a 19100 frame improvement to #6064: EZGames69's SNES A Bug's Life in 07:59.73. Wait, uh,

Goals

2 players
Use death to save time
Genre: Platform

Controls

Left/Right - Move

Left+Right - Moonwalk to the right. Maintains current speed. Occasionally used for sub-pixel optimization when below max speed

Up/Down - Climb Ladders/Fall through platforms

B - Run while holding

A - Jump. Variable height

Select + Right Shoulder Button - Level Select - Not used in this run, but an identical effect happens when you collect all the cookies in each level

Notable Tricks

Death warping

Pressing any button after dying will cause you to respawn at your initial starting point. Conveniently enough, this is also where the final cookie spawns, so it's often faster for one character to die and spawn back at the beginning.

Partner boost

You can use your partner as an additional "enemy" to stomp to cross certain obstacles more efficiently. The vertical momentum of the stomped player gets carried to the stomper, which can allow for even bigger jumps.

Mid-air jumps

After walking off a ledge or ladder you have up to 6 frames to press the jump button. After jumping off an enemy you only have 4 frames to press the button.

Ledge Clip

Discovered by team 5. If (for example) the edge of a wall is at sub-pixel position 128 and you're at sub-pixel position 129, then you can rise vertically and clip into the wall by that 1 sub-pixel. Pressing any direction while in the wall will eject you back to the 128 position. BUT, if the wall you're clipping into is only 1 block high, and you're over halfway up, AND your vertical momentum is 0, then pressing any direction will eject you to the top of that block. This usually takes a couple frames to set up correctly, and your x-speed is 0 afterwards. It's only useful when you can't jump to a certain ledge normally.

Pressing B

Useless. Don't listen to the haters, Team 2.

Level times by DTC team, with the fastest time in bold.

Level	Team 1	Team 2	Team 3	Team 4	Team 5	Team 6
Menu	62	62	62	62	62	62
1	584	567	563	592	566	582
2	390	379	369	386	366	412
3	640	637	642	707	614	701
4	613	626	594	592	582	623
5	447	499	434	532	440	434
6	579	596	529	625	589	559
7	602	498	524	507	500	492
8	436	440	390	451	425	392
9	467	453	453	488	425	556
10	566	563	559	596	501	563
11	327	326	317	368	315	328
12	309	306	305	307	306	307
13	681	681	678	710	676	690
14	502	500	496	525	495	499
15	371	364	346	396	348	354
16	498	503	501	509	489	548
17	494	521	448	555	501	515
18	496	549	455	574	453	556
19	630	674	603	680	601	671
20	417	381	374	429	415	388
21	368	403	374	408	373	420
Total	10479	10528	10016	10999	10042	10652

Note: the levels were timed using a script that Dacicus made.

Here's the number of levels for which each team had the best time.

Team	Levels with best time
Team 1	21
Team 2	(None)
Team 3	1, 5, 6, 8, 12, 15, 17, 20
Team 4	(None)
Team 5	2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19
Team 6	5, 7

Since then, here's the time saves that have been found:

Level	Best DTC time	Final Submission	Frames Saved	Details
Menu	62	62	0	So far so good
1	563	561	2	Maintaining good sub-pixel positions while turning around is one of the trickiest things in this game due to momentum. Many improvements were the result of optimizing turns better
2	366	348	18	New routing with pink going up top along with blue
3	614	592	22	Pink and Blue swapped routes in the second half of the level
4	582	579	3	Better movement
5	434	429	5	Better movement. Better ladders. Apparently walking off the side of a ladder and then jumping is faster than directly jumping from the ladder
6	529	526	3	Ladders in this game allows you to climb into the walls which allowed the first and only use of a horizontal ledge clip.
7	492	489	3	Better movement
8	390	389	1	Something about this level is not perfectly symmetrical. It was 1 frame faster to swap the routes that pink and blue took
9	425	424	1	Better Movement
10	501	500	1	Better Ladder Movement
11	315	309	6	Introduced a sub-pixel-perfect partner boost at the end to have a quicker death warp
12	305	305	0	Team 3 too good to improve on
13	676	669	7	Clipped into the final ledge in order to jump on the grasshopper much earlier
14	495	495	1*	Saved a frame on the level transition by having less bugs on screen at the end of the level
15	346	346	0	Team 3 too good to improve on
16	489	488	1	Better movement
17	448	447	1	Better movement
18	453	453	0	Team 5 too good to improve on
19	601	579	22	Optimized movement at the beginning to just barely beat the ant cycle with both players
20	374	373	1	Better movement
21	368	368	0	Team 1 too good to improve on (Samsara: HAHA GET DESTROYED)
Total	9829	9731	98	Thanks to everyone for helping push this game to its limit!