Submission #7879: The8bitbeast's GB Animaniacs in 17:12.97

Animaniacs on Gameboy is a port of the Genesis version. It has a few cuts such as the entire space level and shortening a few other levels, but still keeps most of the original game. The port is technically impressive, keeping many of the features. However, Gameboy Animaniacs introduces a few glitches that completely break the game, when compared to the very solid Genesis version.

Movement is pretty janky in this game. You just always move a set distance per frame and there’s no real concept of speed. As such, it’s pretty easy to optimize movement as you don’t need to worry about bonking on anything and losing speed.

Jumping should be minimised where possible, because you stop moving for one frame when you land.

Character swaps also lose time since it has an animation. I’ll often swap a character just before I am about to walk off a ledge (if I need to swap). This doubles up the landing from the swap with the landing from walking off the ledge, resulting in only losing 1 frame rather than 2 to landing.

This game only polls your inputs every 3 frames (so at 20fps). You can shift this polling window by character swapping, but that’s not usually too useful.

Jump heights are a bit weird and varied. Dot seems to jump slightly lower but can make up for this by kissing while jumping (returning it to a normal height). The attacks seem to have some influence on jumping, but the effect can vary.

Characters can be swapped by pressing select. This shifts you up slightly and swaps you into the next character. It’s important to note that this up shift ignores collision, so can be used for clipping (explained later).

You are also invincible for a couple of frames as you’re swapping into the new character. This can be useful for avoiding damage.

You can only swap characters while grounded. If you press swap in the air, then it will buffer it until you’re grounded again. This could be useful for setups in RTA.

If you press the swap button again while swapping you can cycle through two characters rather than 1. This saves a lot of time swapping from Yakko straight to Dot for example.

You can often swap characters on a screen transition. If you hit the button on the last frame, you’ll come into the screen with the other character. You can’t do a double swap with this though. Sometimes the swapping frame exists and other times it doesn’t. Sometimes if it doesn’t you can make it exist by buffering a swap in a jump.

This glitch is exclusive to the horror themed level (Scene 3). There’s an enemy that bounces you to the left if you land on it, and you can swap at the same time to get a glitchy effect. As far as I can tell, this results in having the abilities of one character but with the sprites/animations of another. This effect goes beyond visual only and can be used to save significant time. There are 6 different outcomes (3 starting characters each swapping to the two other characters). The biggest effect happens when you swap from Dot to Yakko, which is what I’ll focus on. This has dot’s kiss but with Yakko’s animations.

This messes with the sprites, but the real issue happens when you blow a kiss. The character chunks fly all over the screen, and as far as the game is concerned, your character is actually flying all over the screen. This messes with collision for objects, but not level collision as far as I can tell. You can use this to: - Collect items (e.g. stars) remotely. Just blow a kiss in the right spot and you’ll grab items on the other side of the screen. - Clip through any object. Just kiss up against it and while your character is flying around you can phase through objects. You can also get this super easily by jumping off an object then air kissing. You just fall straight through the object. - Get “air jumps”. As far as I can tell, this happens when your character is zipping around the screen with a kiss and happens to land on top of an object while flying around. Then even though you’re in the air, you can get another jump because you’re grounded for a second. This is used to skip the box pulling bit near the switch which opens the skull door. - Remotely hit warps. At the end of the section you need to push a box onto a switch to open the door at the end. You could clip through the door with the tech mentioned above. But if your character hits the end of the screen while they’re flying around with a kiss, then that counts and sends you to the next screen. In the TAS it looks like I randomly get sent to the next screen. I’ll go more into how these glitches come into play in the IL descriptions.

Another effect is swapping from Yakko to any other character. Pushing and pulling boxes in this form completely messes with the graphics data, often overwriting the screen with garbage.

Since swapping characters moves you up, you can often clip into roofs. Once in a wall or roof, swapping characters can be used to move upwards and jumping can eject you out of the wall depending on what direction that particular wall ejects you.

There are some really easy clips, like using the logs and just riding them into the wall in Scene 1 waterfall area. Other easy clips involve boxes in tight tunnels. Usually you can inch your way into a box by swapping characters while running into the box or object. Once in a box, you just need to swap characters which zips you up on top of the box and then you’re in the roof. You can clip partially into objects by jumping at the top of them, which has weaker collision, then it takes one or two swaps to get inside.

Taking damage puts you in a grounded state. This lets you pull off a character swap or another jump in mid-air.

I jump off the WB logo to start my downwards velocity and fall faster. After pushing the box I character swap off the bricks. This saves some time since I only land once rather than twice (once off the swap rather than once off the bricks and once off the swap).

This is the most tedious scene due to the autoscrollers.

I have to kiss the birds to get across the swings. I tried jumping up on the camera but it doesn’t seem to be possible. I use the swinging bird platforms to character swap. This is a bit faster than swapping on normal ground because you’re being pushed to the right anyway.

Unlike the Genesis version I couldn’t hold the button to get higher out of the cannon.

The spikey bit at the end requires the box to cross. I tried taking damage to get across, but nothing worked out.

Autoscroller. Lots of chance for playaround.

I have to reach the bottom of the waterfall, hit the switch, then it opens the door up further. You can partially clip into the walls by riding the falling log platforms into them, but this wasn’t useful in skipping the door.

When climbing up the falling logs, you can sometimes skip a step by jumping from a middle log up to the next middle log. This is a bit inconsistent, but can usually be made possible by varying jump timing. Depending how the middle logs spawn in this may or may not be possible each time.

I ride the seesaw up and have to get on the rock. I get onto the rock by swapping up onto it, using the i-frames from swapping to achieve this. You have to be careful on this rock because there’s a hidden slot machine minigame up near the roof of this area.

I ride the rest of the seesaws up to finish the section. Quite often I will hold A off the seesaws to get a higher bounce. The bounce itself doesn’t matter but it allows you to gain movement sooner, usually saving a frame or two.

I tried some clipping to skip the boulder falling puzzle but wasn’t successful.

Towards the end of this section is two switches used to open the door at the end. On the Genesis version, the left switch is a trap and the right one actually opens the door. On the GB version the left switch is a trap but you have to still hit the left and also the right switch to open the door. This would make this section look suboptimal if you’re only familiar with the Genesis version.

I was so happy with this boss skip – using a cheeky combination of damage jumping and swap clipping. When you hit the boss, rocks fall from the ceiling. I take damage on these under the hat and that makes you grounded for a frame. Swapping on this frame zips me up into the ceiling just enough to grab the hat. The only other thing to be sure of is that you don’t take damage after grabbing the hat. If you do then the level never ends and you’re softlocked. But if you land in a spot where you avoid damage, this hat grab skips the entire boss and the climbing section up to the hat after the boss. Definitely one of the hugest timesaving glitches in this run.

We’re jumping straight into the western scene. The Genesis version had a Star Wars / Space themed level, but that is strangely absent in the GB version.

Unlike the Genesis version which is on a timer, you just have to hit Ralph a bunch of times to unlock the screen.

I tried a box clip to climb quicker than pulling it out, but this was slower overall.

You can damage boost across the spikes in the Genesis version, but not here. Even if I could I would likely have saved that health for the flame damage boost instead.

You still have to bring this bridge down. No skip here.

I have to slow down for a frame to dodge Ralph’s water shooting, but this is much faster than swapping to Yakko to hit him.

Falling lights are pretty dangerous here. I use some tight jumps and i-frames from swaps to deal with them.

The barrels are really hard to deal with on the GB version. Luckily one lines up just under a platform saving a bit of time jumping up to it.

At the end of this screen, I tried to hit the switch late enough to ride the barrel down, but it wasn’t possible.

I tried damage boosting across both pits, but in the end the one I used was about 7 frames faster than damage boosting on the other.

This screen has a lot of potential for some kind of upzip clipping to save time, but I couldn’t find anything even with a bunch of testing.

You have to hit Ralph with the coins. Where he is also depends on how you scroll the camera, so I carefully balanced it to make sure my post movement lined him up to the coin. I also made sure to end the fight towards the right so I could run to the next section sooner.

In the Genesis version, this is on a timer, but on GB you just have to knock him off 5 times. You can knock him off by hammering him when he’s on the train or by speeding the train up just as he is trying to jump on it. Doing the latter is quite a bit faster, so is generally preferred. Unfortunately the train can only be made faster by hitting the rock into the top of it, and this can only be done when the top is open. Sometimes it didn’t line up that the top was open, so I had to boost the train forward then gradually let it drift back to Ralph. I made sure that his jumps were as early as possible, while also being late enough that the top was open to boost away from him.

This section makes heavy use of the Glitch swap (see above).

The intended method through this is to hit the bouncy thing to trigger it, get knocked back through the level, then come back to the bouncy thing and try to jump over it. But to jump over it you need the height from a box, so you need to do the box puzzle to bring it over. This TAS does the box puzzle first up then activates the glitch swap. Unfortunately you can’t get the glitch swap without using the box, so glitch swap doesn’t save as much time as it potentially could without the box.

The box puzzle can be skipped using a box clip and pulling it out from the other side. This is the same speed as doing the box puzzle normally but way cooler.

After getting glitch swap I run to the right. I would normally need to pull the box to the bouncy thing to make it over, but getting over it is trivial with glitch swap. I could clip through it by jumping and kissing, but I ended up going for an air jump instead to get over it. Air jump was a tad faster.

After the bouncy thing I come to the box pulling section to get past the skull gate area. Normally I would have to swap out to Yakko to pull the box, then jump up. This would pull me out of the glitch swap state, and if I did that then getting glitch swap would probably be slower overall.

Luckily the air jump comes to the rescue and I can make it up. This is very tricky to pull off but I made it up eventually. You can also get an air jump closer to the ledge, but that was slower.

Now that I’m past the box section with glitch swap, that allows me to skip the door at the end of the level. Skipping this door and the box pull is the key to making glitch swap faster overall, so I am really glad that both were possible without swapping back to a normal character.

Go right.

You need to kiss the boss thing to get past, then pull the box to jump up. I’m able to skip this by damage jumping up instead. This is pretty precise because once you kiss the boss the fireball won’t spawn, so you have to kiss it late and use that same jump to hit the fireball.

Then there’s the bit with the statue and box pull. I tried for ages to jump up without the boxes and got pretty close, but had no luck in the end.

After this, Pinky and the Brain use their sucker device to pull bottles and plates at you. The screen locks here, so there is no way to skip it but I was hoping to get up on the top of the cabinet early. In theory you could get this with a damage jump off the bottle, but you are still being pulled back by the sucker during this. Even though you get more than enough height to hit the top of the cabinet, you cant make it to the right in time. Instead I use a damage jump to hang out on top of the section while it’s going, which is not where you’re supposed to be. When Pinky and Brain blow up, I was able to get a visual glitch where they were, but it was a frame slower so I took it out.

After this you have to do the shape puzzle correctly. In the Genesis version you have to do it wrong first, but here you just have to do it right. I looked for a long time for a way to skip this section but had no luck.

I can clip over the box at the end of the screen rather than pushing it down, but it’s slower.

The water kills you instantly, but I was almost able to skip it. The kill happens if you are in the water and fall too far. I think it’s triggered by your falling speed. If your falling speed is too high in the water, then you’ll die.

I was able to get into the water and live by doing a very precise fall onto a box that was falling into the water. This resets your falling speed when you fall on top of the box, which lets you get slightly into the water. The way to get fully into the water is to pair this with the damage taken from the falling water from the roof. This got me down to the middle section underwater, but I wasn’t able to get down to the bottom from here.

That means I need to do this room normally. I skip the box push over the log by doing a tight jump off the plunger. This also works on the Genesis version.

I then drain the water and complete the rest of the level puzzles as intended. It’s possible to get back up to the starting area after draining the water by damage jumping off the falling water and you can use the box from the top rather than from the left to reach the end of the level. Unfortunately this is slower.

This behaves a bit differently to the Genesis version. The boss seemed to go up, down, up, down. Not much to optimize here apart from making sure I hit the switches in time for the boss to fall down without waiting.

I was hoping for a clip to skip these boxes but it didn’t work.

On the see-saws that take you up, I position myself to clip a bit into the walls. As long as you don’t hold into the wall you can stay clipped and squeeze out some position optimisations. I hold jump on the see-saws to make it higher too.

There’s a box puzzle in this section but it can literally just be skipped by walking on the box past the gas platforms which have broken collision underneath. This clip is as easy as it looks

You have to outrun the flames on this screen. Rather than pushing the box all the way to the right, I clip over the top of it to save some time.

This plays a bit differently to Genesis. There is only one phase and it throws bombs much more frequently. I couldn’t kiss pinky before the first bomb was thrown, so that had to go as normal, but after that the bottleneck in this fight is just making sure that pinky gets kissed as soon as possible, so that he throws the bombs sooner. Then as long as you can blow up each one on the boss, you get the optimal fight.

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.

ThunderAxe31: Very optimized stuff. Accepting.

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