Submission #7995: DrD2k9's SNES Mario Paint "Gnat Attack" in 02:33.83

Mario Paint:Gnat Attack

EPILEPSY WARNING!!!

Gameplay

• While Mario Paint is itself not an optimizable "game" per se, it does have a built in mini-game to test/challenge one's mousing skils. This mini-game does present a TASing challenge.
• The SNES mouse is used to move a hand holding a flyswatter and swat the invading critters.
• There are three increasingly difficult levels; difficulty increases are from having more enemies on screen and they move faster as well.
  • In each level, the player is tasked with whacking 100 bugs.
  • Once this is accomplished, a giant mecha-bug named King Watinga (according to the manual) appears.
    • He requires 20 swats to eliminate.

Endgame

• Once all three levels have been beaten, the game loops endlessly back to level 1 and places an icon in the upper left corner of the screen to indicate how many loops have been beaten (up through 15).
  
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  • According to this wiki, each loop has a slight difficulty increase, but it doesn't specify how the difficulty increases.
• As this game is endless all new content must be exhausted for an endpoint; which in my opinion, requires only one loop of the 3 unique levels.
  • I don't feel the various loop icons alone are enough to justify as new content.

TAS Tech

• Moving the flyswatter fast enough can allow for killing multiple insects in a single swat even if they are on complete opposite sides of the board. This is used extensively.
• Other than this trick, theres really nothing done beyond whacking bugs.

Potential Improvements

• I wont say this is perfectly optimal, but it's the best I've been able to accomplish in the time I've spent working on the game.
• I was unable to find any ways of manipulating bug timing/placement. If a way could be found, it would be useful to position the bugs closer to the bottom of the screen. This would save time as it would shorten the falling animation time and yield newer bugs faster.
• There may also be some minor improvement possiblities with the boss fights in regards to delayed swats from dodging his attacks. It may be possible to dodge more efficiently and thus swat sooner, but I was unable to better this submission.

Other

• I blame Samsara for my becoming interested in doing this submission.