Ghost Manor for the Atari 2600 was developed by Xonox, a company famous for making double sided cartridges in an effort to sell two games for the price of one. In this game, we must brave many deadly creatures and traps to save the boy captured by Dracula which only takes around 22 seconds.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.8
- Aims for fastest time
- Uses hardest difficulty
- I ain't afraid of no sleep. I ain't afraid of no bed.
Comments
Ghost Manor has 5 stages and the ultimate goal is to trap Dracula and free the boy. The "game select" doesn't do anything in this game, but flipping both difficulty switches makes everything faster and has other limitations like only getting 10 spears in level one instead of 25, and rendering the maze section invisible, only to be illuminated by periodic lightning strikes. More details below.
Stage by stage comments
Stage 1
A skeleton runs around the graveyard and we must touch him while he is in front of a gravestone (these hitboxes are pretty questionable) to earn a spear. Once a spear is earned there is a 16 frame lockout period before you can earn another one. Once we get 10 spears it's on to stage 2 to use them.
Stage 2
There are numerous baddies moving back and forth at various heights as well as a mummy trying to chop you. If you interact with his hurtbox at all while the sword is "down" it's game over. You don't have to actually be chopped. There is a 24 frame delay between when you can shoot the next spear, and they are movable mid flight. Naturally we dance with the mummy and shoot everything as fast as possible, which lets us kill the mummy (he is invincible until everything else is killed) and move on to stages 3 and 4
Stage 3 and 4
Stages 3 and 4 are small mazes enveloped in darkness with coffins strewn about. Random coffins contain a cross, which we need to repel Dracula in stage 5. However, the game gives us one cross for free upon getting there, so we can navigate the darkness as quickly as possible. Bumping a wall slows you down for a coule frames, and touching the moving bar from the opposite of the direction it's moving kills you. We make a beeline for the exit.
Stage 5
The final "battle" with Dracula sees us using the cross (by holding the action button) to repel him back upward. The goal is to get him trapped into one of the cells to free the boy, so we do some stutter stepping to make sure he's constantly moving toward the goal and that we can control his X/Y more optimally. Once he triggers the cell, the boy is released and we must meet up with him at the stairs to win the game.
Edit: YouTube encode updated to show shortened run.
Samsara: File replaced with DrD2k9's 73 frame improvement.
slamo: Judging!
slamo: DrD2k9 made this pretty easy for me, optimization has been looked over pretty thoroughly and the ROM usage is fine since there aren't more viable NTSC options. Accepting!
EZGames69: Processing...