Submission #780: Highness's Genesis Legend of Toki - Going ape spit in 28:25.37

Sega Genesis
(Submitted: Legend of Toki - Going ape spit)
baseline
Gens 9c
102322
60
4145
Unknown
Legend of Toki - Going Ape Spit, The (UE) [c][!].bin
Submitted by Highness on 8/9/2005 5:32:26 PM
Submission Comments
One of the hardest games ever made! This is a fact. When I was a kid I once rented this game in the local video store. 5min before I was supposed to return the game I finished it. My dad was very irritated as I woulden't stop playing. I also loved to play this game in the arcades. It was diffrent though. Diffrent levels etc. As it was many years ago I coulden't remember the game was this hard. Well.. At that point I probably didn't play at hardest level.
During the past month (started 10th of july) I've been working secretly on this run with assistance from Frenom, who originally made a run up to level 7 before he stopped. However that run was not frame perfect. I present to you The Legend of Toki - Going ape spit, in frame perfect version (as ,far as I can tell). Note that I will compare my times against Frenoms previous times to get a wider perspective to the new movie.
Taken from the FAQ at www.gamefaqs.com, written by DJ Tigresa and MC Pantera I here will paste the plot.
"You are an ape named Toki, but you haven’t always been. As a young man born and raised in the wild, you find Wanda, abandoned and sick, and nurse her back to health. You both fall in love and live happily ever after. Not much of a game plot eh? OK, let’s throw in a bad guy, named Dr. Andrew Stark. He’s a genetic engineer who has escaped his kidnappers and is blaming his imprisonment on you. First, he kidnaps Wanda, then turns you into a monkey. You must Save Wanda!
As Toki, you’ll battle through stage after stage of fiendish enemies and tricky obstacles. Each stage has three parts, and if you lose a life before reaching the end of a part, you have to start all over at the beginning of that part. Your only weapon is spit, but you can power it up for various patterns. These include the triple-shot, super blast, looping fireballs, and bouncing spitballs.
Along the way are extra lives, invincibility, and power sneakers. An options
menu allows you to begin with up to nine lives and seven continues, which decreases the challenge a little bit. Nonetheless, there’s enough challenge to entertain even skilled players."
With that story I'm moving on to a bit more detailed information section.
I choose to use Legend of Toki - Going Ape Spit, The (UE) [c][!].bin instead of the japanese version JuJu Densetsu (J).bin because not everybody will understand japanese. I'm one of those and there is no changes in the game as far as I know. I recorded the movie using Gens_movie_test9c.
Movie involves the following categories:
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Luck manipulation
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Takes no damage
Ok.. Let's take some further looks at the most irritating game in the world.
Toki moves slow as hell, and he jumps as good as a donkey. Through out the game this is EXTREAMLY frustrating. Also, Toki stops everytime he spits which forces me to jump forward to still move towards the exit. At some points it's unavoidable though, as with most other games that this is a fact. Actually, toki can move just a tiny bit between his fires. This can be noticed at some bosses among everything.
You are going to see alot of jumping and evading enemies rather than smoking everything there is as this would be VERY slow. This can be judged by watching Frenom's video and comparing it to mine. Frenom kills too many enemies in his early attempt at this game. As I hit the exit in Level 1-2 for example I'm 17,5 seconds faster than Frenom. I've been working very delicate to crunch frames. More details about this will follow below.
I suggest you watch the movie before reading below as there might be spoilers.
Difficulty is set to hardest. Keyboard is warmed up as well as my trigger happy fingers. Here we go..
Level 1-1:
It started out just as a test as I wanted to know how hard this game was to make. After 6 hours I could close down Gens and get som rest after knowing that it was possible to do it rather fast. This level was soo frustrating due to all monsters that I almost pulled all my hair out. I thought that if this level ain't possible to make then no level following will be.
There is one moment where I kind of stop my forward progress and jumps a couple of times. This is because the blue devil that flies around was obligated to kill me if I moved any further before killing what I had before me. You'll see what I mean. This was somewhat unavoidable unless I had stopped earlier and killed the enemies. But this would cost more time than the small stop there. Nothing much to say about this level I think. It played out good with alot of show off's.
I was 10,65 seconds faster than Frenom in this level alone!
Level 1-2:
This level was a bit easier to make. Took only a couple of hours. The hardest thing in this level is to jump over all the spikes. The first try I made at this level the last spike wasn't jumpable. Then I reconed Frenom not killing that last spike. So I went back and reviewd both our runs to find the answer. Frenom bounced on the flower in the end because he got a diffrent spawn compared to me. So I went back and remade the part from the crockodile, which I, in my first attempt, ignored and bounced over instead of killing. This time the flower appeared as I wanted and everything went fine. The "flower bounce" shaved off 36 frames compared to killing the flower and the spike. Once again, alot of credits to Frenom. I woulden't have made this run without him helping me out and his previous movie to compare and take experience from. 6,85 seconds faster than Frenom in this level.
Level 1-3:
The worst thing there is in a time attack is waiting. And as I advanced from the empty beginning of this stage I suddenly realised I had to kill two spikes and wait alot of frames for the damn falling spike to move out of the way. I tried a gizillion times to jump it and to move close to the second spike while shooting it and avoid being hit by the falling one. Nothing possible it seems. So I had to wait. This level was the easiest one so far. Crunched 2,76 seconds from Frenom's version. This means I am 20,26 seconds faster so far.
BOSS: Stark's machine
Yay! First boss. I never thought I would made it this far when I first started the movie. Hehe. :) Nothing hard here it seems. Crunched 0.72 seconds here.
Level 2-1:
Alot of jumping as this is a vertical stage where you need to climb upwards. A couple of annoying insects were disturbing my way to crunch some further frames. Exact timed jumps allowed Toki to warp through moving blocks. Abit like the zipping in the mega man games. I have tried a place where it looked possible in this stage to perform a longer zipping, unfortunatley it didn't work though. Also an annoying lizard was in my way. I think you will see which one it was. The scenario was like this. I can't walk left because then I will release the pirhana. I can't jump because I will get killed by the bug. And when I jump towards the lizard it would send it's thongue to kill me. I almost had it, but at the very last frame he sends out his thongue as I kill him. The thongue then continues to expand and kill Toki. A bit of time loss there but on the whole I was 11,85 seconds faster in this level than Frenom. So I'm happy anyways.
Level 2-2:
Still going upwards, this level is harder. Blue devils made it hard at some points and those other bigger flying demons are just a real pain in the rear. Luckily there was a flame thrower avalible to Toki. While some elavators wasn't possible to time better at all, I took the courtesy to play around some and perform some minor stunts to provide some more entertainment. This level was hard to improve however and I must say that Frenom did a great job with that early tool he used to create his movie. I only menaged to shave off 0.6 seconds here.
Level 2-3:
One of the flying demons that appears in the beginning appeared to be invincible, unless they heal? While some of them only stand for two shots, others seem to take ALOT more! This level feels somewhat short, which is good. Improved this level by 7,53 seconds!
Boss: Primeval
Err... First boss was ALOT harder than this. Even the first enemy you see in the game is harder. What is the purpose of this boss? Annoyingly easy. Menaged to shave off another 22 frames from Frenom's version.
Level 3-1:
I generally hate water levels. But this was piece of cake. Not much improvability here. Shaved about 78 frames.
Level 3-2:
Great.. More water. Invincibility enhancement and a shortcut made this level go fast though. I think the greatest diffrence between mine and Frenom's version in this level is that Frenom waits at the dropping spikes in the end, while I swim under them towards the exit. He also choose another rout. This among other things in this level shaved 5,63 seconds.
Level 3-3:
Weee!! More water!! YAY!! I LOVE TO SWIM!! Have you ever seen a monkey swim this much? Those annoying fishes in the beginning got to taste ape spit. Can't understand why Frenom didn't kill those in his version as this increased progress speed alot. A couple of bloopers along the way in this level as I was making the movie made me redo it a couple of times. First time I went in the wrong corridor. Second time I thought "Hey! Let's skip the offtrack 4 seconds to get the 3-way shoot" as I thought that Boomer would be as easy with normal shot. Had to redo a bit so that I could grab it. Anyways.. Everything turned out very well and I managed to shave off 14,94 seconds from this level compared to Frenom!
Boss: Boomer
The 3-way shot is essential at this boss unless you want trouble. As I mentioned earlier I tried to smoke him with the regular spit. Was not a good idea I can tell ya! 3-way shot takes the time down with atleast 20-30 seconds. I never bothered to do the entire battle with the regular spit as I went over the time limit. If you don't smoke him fast enough he will go berzerk and drive around and just flood with torpedos. As he go berzerk he's invincible and nothing can harm him (as far as I can tell atleast). The battle as you can tell now was a success though and much to my surprise I shaved off 2,16 seconds from Frenom's.
Level 4-1
These kinds of stages I like. Falling down is more my way of traveling. Nothing's hard in this level it seems. The most disappointing stop in this level is the spike right before the exit. But this didn't stop me from shaving off another 4,34 seconds.
Level 4-2
A bit harder this time. Food grinders and big white demons in my way costs seconds. Unfortunatley the bat in the end would be a wonderful help in order for me to bounce over the spikes. Just too bad that the spikes is heading back to the roof and impale me. If it had been on the ground for like 10 frames more I would be very glad. Thats not the case. But I'm happy to have shaved 1,5 seconds anyways. The clock so far is at 08:40:57 for me, and 09:52:09 for Frenom.
Level 4-3
A simple made level. Perhaps most due to the great shortcut found in Frenom's video. The monkeys at the shortcut was a bit troublesome and thus I was forced to jump down to the floor and "re-enter" the shortcut. I spent some frames in the end of the level to kill a monkey in order to get a better weapon which will help me smoke Eyesore (the boss) faster. Oh.. And I improved this level by 1.7 seconds!
Boss: Eyesore
A boss I once again doesn't understand so much. Shoulden't difficulty increase the longer in the game you get? The first time I defeated it I improved the time by 3,67 seconds. But this wasn't good enough. After some more refining I crunched another 48 frames. Yet some more testing and crunched 4 frames. Nothing much but it seems it's coming down to it's right. Ha! After the last test I managed to take away another 5 frames. Not bad I must say. This is 3 frames from a whole second improvement from my first test. .) 4,62 seconds improvement in total on this boss in other words.
Level 5-1
Funny level. No enemies, atleast what I could see. :D Just falling downwards as fast as possible. I thought I was not going to see any optimizations in this level. Turned out that I was 2,61 seconds faster. YAY! :D
Level 5-2
This level was HARD to make. Firebirds spewing fire which makes me stop at some moments in order to not get killed. There is also a bird which carries a weapon. This can be manipulated depending on what frame you shoot it at, and probably some more things I didn't investigate. I decided to grab the bouncy balls however. I'm disappointed that I only could shave off 1,97 seconds from Frenom's version. But on the big I'm glad that I made it through this level. :)
Level 5-3
A rather useless wall omission in the beginning of this level just to spice things up. I tried to get a lower bounce from the 16T weight in order to move forward faster and not go all the way up. But it wasn't possible so I just carried on as normal. The rest of this level was very hard as well. Firebirds, devils, spikes and fire spitting salamanders. Thankfully I could take advantage from this and find a new shortcut. This helped me crunch 14 seconds of this level from Frenom's version! Not bad at all!
Boss: Belcher
Belcher is a tricky dude. He's throwing horrible letters at you spelling B-U-R-P as he's slinging his arm at you. The thing with Belcher is that he's some times invurnurable, so one have to time every single frame to make it look good. First attempt resulted in 1,27 seconds improvement. After that some more crunching followed which lead to 72 frames improvement. Yet I was not satisfied, there were more to crunch. 16 frames crunched. After this I came up with another new strategy which helped me improve another 30 frames. A little jump helped me to take down 5 frames. My goal with Belcher is reached and I will move on to the Ice levels. I think there's nothing else I can improve there anyways. And I did after all crunch seconds which I first thought was impossible. I crunched totaly 123 frames which I thought didn't excisted. :D The new time was improved by 3,32 seconds compared to Frenom's version!
Level 6-1
Ice ice baby.. Well.. It ain't that cool here, although it's cold alright! This is hard and frustrating. Even with frame advance. Toki is skidding around which makes him very hard to control. In some places you need to think the other way around. Ok.. Enought with complaints in this level.. Besides monkeys, flowers, insects and pits, which all are there for the challange. Duh. :D I found a super nice shortcut right in the beginning of this level, which Frenom mysteriously seems to have missed. I thought that it would cut down a second or two. But on the whole level I seem to have cut down 9,78 seconds! So that shortcut did indeed improve more than just one or two seconds. :D I was very satisfied when I discoverd the results. I also found some optimizers in the end where I'm falling down. To get a better rightward speed when landing. That saved a couple of frames.
Level 6-2
Ok.. This level was HARD! Frenom got it down very good back when he did it. I only improved this level by 12 frames!
Level 6-3
Hardest of all the ice levels. No doubt about that. Slippery and tricky elavators/moving platforms. Flying demons, fire spitting spiders, and the cute croc's and the silly beatles are somewhat HARD obstacles this time. There is no where I can use them to my advantage really. Some good weapons spread out on this level makes it a bit easier. This was also a level which I first though I was not able to improve a bit. My mouth was <--> that big when I saw I was 17,47 second faster in this level than Frenom.
Boss: Crystal Mammoth
He melted away, what more can I say? The flying tusks were no match. His jump was very scarry. I don't know what to say really. Improved it by 4,73 seconds.
Level 7-1
This is as far as Frenom got in his video. So this means I cannot compare any longer. Nor do I have the opportunity to see what shortcuts there is. Frenom's video was excellent as a referense. Watch and improve. Hopefully you will get some good entertainment up ahead as well. Frenom's video stops at 19:09:30 as he miss a shortcut. I just wanna thank Frenom again for his version of the movie. I would not be making this otherwise. :) With all this said it's time to move on to the details. Frenom warned me like two weeks ago that I would pull my hair making this level. I actually pulled all my hair on my entire body. Damn this level was hard and frustrating. The flying demons that is with me the entire level. One is hard, two of them is almost impossible. I somewhat understand why Frenom stoped doing this game because of this level. :D My completion time for this level landed on 17:05:53 anyways, which means it didn't even take a minute to run through it. But it took about 2-3 hours to make or so. :D
Level 7-2
First level completly on my own.. I gotta admit that this is about as hard as level 7-1, allthough it's not the same monsters. But it's a much harder layout and one need to think before doing anything. The flying fish in the end was annoying, but if I would have jumped down a bit earlier I would land on the fish instead, well, it would kill him, but I couldn't take advantage of the block over my head to get faster down to the exit. Besides I would have to break an extra block on my way down which of course would have taken longer. 18:16:17 is the completion time for this level with some improvements here and there.
Level 7-3
When I thought it wasn't getting any harder. Haha. :D Some nice shortcuts thanks to enemies I could bounce on. Had to take a break on a vine to kill off a spider. Completion time: 18:59:29. Not bad eh? =)
Boss: Bashtar
The rest of his parts died. :) His hands and feets (and probably his heart) equals danger. He stomps, he bash, and he walks forward. At some points though his body parts are bouncable. It didn't take long to get the hang of this boss. He is tricky but easy. Completion time: 19:16:08
Level 8-1
Oh no!! A dark cave with jello! I thought this was going to be my worst experience so far through the game. But this level turned out very easy! Much thanks to the sprint shoes which allows me to take a kick-ass shortcut. I first thought that this level must be hell since it right away spawns a flying devil, and shortly after, another one! Those guys never were in my way though, which also lead to the superb time of 19:34:47!
Level 8-2
The level starts where you have to jump up and through jello, nothing serious. Then I encounter a flying demon. I walk past it and find another one. Then I find another one. And all of a sudden I realize that this is a level with ONLY flying demons, which are my favorite enemy in this game (as you've read before)... NOT!! Damn. Forget everything I said about how hard all other levels were. It's easier to survive 3 world wars and 7 atom bombs at the same time than it is to finish this level! Geez! Oh.. And almost in the end of this level there are one of those large fluffy guys with a walkman, and they shoot large balls. But they don't seem to harm me. Took me like half an hour to get past that elavator. Further to the end of this level you will see me navigating Toki back and forth rather often. This is to keep the demons away from me. I end this level with a time of 21:07:39, which I hope is good. I actually think it's good, since normally one would stand still and kill all of those enemies which would accumulate up to minutes.
Level 8-3
Still dark but not nearly as hard as previous levels. A bit tricky perhaps. Birds spitting fires, spikes comes out of the ground and blocks my way for some time, beatles, flame throwers. I found a good shortcut in bouncing on that 16t weight, instead of continuing left and grab an elavator which would help me over the gap to the right, I manipulate that fire spitting bird so that I can bounce on the fire instead. This probably shaved atleast 20 seconds or so. The thing that annoyed me the most in this level was the fire spitting croc in the end of this stage. For once his fire is leathal! :D
Boss: Stark
Stark is a bitch if you don't use save states, frame advance and re-records I can tell you. But he's not match to frame advance. That rocks. He is very easy to manipulate after the first spawn he makes. Thats why he always spawns in ground level so I don't need to jump all over the place. The last spawn I didn't bother to manipulate as he only needed one shoot to get killed. I did think that his fire should be harder to manipulate, but this was really a piece of cake. Stark get's killed on 22:38:32.
Level 9-1
Once again a VERY hard leveln with loads of flying demons and a brand new jumping monkey head which has a built-in flamethrower mouth. :D Hardest part in this level was at the three spikes and to jump the shooting walkman guy. But it turned out really good and I got a time of 23:29:11 which means that I made this level under one minute. Not bad eh?
Level 9-2
Wee!! Skateboards!! Or what ever it is. Funny level to make. Funny level to play. :D There ain't much to say really. Nothing hard. Tried to optimize as much as possible by jumping early and active the next board faster. Time: 24:09:41
Level 9-3
Final level! And it's HARD!! :D Flying demons all over the place. I thought I got rid of those guys. :( Basicly this is somewhat as hard as 8-2. But then the programmers threw in alot of bouncing spikes. This forces me to keep the flying demons away from me as much as possible. I use the same tactic as in 8-2 by moving back and forth to lure the demons over me and up in the skies again. Completion time of this level lands on 25:38:21.
Boss: Stark
Ok. Stark is back. This time with more health. As easy as last time though. Completed Stark at 26:15:18. The game now fades right over to the very last boss.
Boss: Membrane
Tough bastard. Atleast thats what I thought before I came up with the idea of standing right under him and blast away as fast as possible. Funny. Because in my practice runs against him he would launch his head to kill me. But then when I used frame advance it just never happend. :) Not that I complain. It's just strange. The hands do put up a bit of a challange. At 26:38:49 Membrane dies. Poor him. /me comforts Membrane. A pretty crappy ending for this big challange. You'll see. ;)
Uncorrectable misstakes:
It's a couple of frames faster to duck into the exits of every level possible. However, when I tried to hexedit this, the movie would desync and I found no way to fix this. Therfor I will submit this unedited copy!

Truncated: This movie is... weird. The monkey moves so slow, yet it's mysteriously entertaining. And as noted in the comments, it cheats death several times per level. Votes have been good too, so I think it's a good idea to accept this submission.
(To whoever will be encoding this: The ROM says UE, but Gens autodefaults to Japan NTSC, and that is what this movie is made with. Any other country will desynch.)
Bisqwit: Processing.
Last Edited by on 1/1/2022 6:13 PM
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