Game objectives
- Emulator used: FCEUX 2.6.5
- Aims for fastest time (not in-game time)
- Uses hardest difficulty
While this movie doesn't sync on NesHawk as is, I believe it is relatively easy to resync.
The re-record count is small, because I made individual movies for each stages and concatenated them (this game is relatively friendly to hex-editing)
Moyou_Jo contributed to improve this run from the first version. Thanks very much!
About the game
"Arctic" is the only ARPG (Active Rail Playing Game) in the world. It puts a heavy strain on your brain.
This game is developed by Artdink, and it resembles a bit the company's famous train simulator game, "A-ressha de ikou".
This game was never released outside Japan.
The game objective is putting all the yellow/blue balls into corresponding colored seats.
When a stage starts, all the balls are shot. In stages, there are many railway switch points, and you can switch all the yellow/blue points at once. And, you can shoot all the balls in yellow/blue seats at once.
However, if a yellow/blue ball collides with a red ball, it results in a failure.
This game has 29 stages (from stage 0 to stage 28). When you beat the stage 28, the stage 0 starts.
I play from the stage 0.
Comments
You can change the game speed in the config screen. I set the game speed to 3 (fastest).
I set the movie endpoint to the input to skip the last winning screen, making it easy for viewers to recognize the game loops to the stage 0.
In this movie, I often sacrificed in-game time to save frames. (In-game time is measured from when you shoot balls for the first time)
Especially, sometimes you can save frames by deliberately beating a stage a bit slower. I guess it is related with the music fadeout process.
Sometimes you can delay beating a stage by switching points. But it seems that this manipulation can only be done in laggy stages.
Generally, to achieve the fastest rapid fire input, you have to insert blank frames in between button presses. But, in this game, you can skip these blank frames by pressing unrelated buttons simultaneously. For example, (A, A+Up) is considered as two successive A input.
Stage by stage comments
Stage 9
The red point in this stage is actually a blue point.
You can save in-game time by accelerating the white ball further, but it wastes frames.
In this stage, it seems that you cannot delay beating the stage by switching points.
Stage 10
This stage has a display bug. Initially, the yellow point in the middle right appears to be horizontal, but it is actually diagonal.
Stage 21
I think this is the hardest stage in the game. This part might be improvable.
Stage 24
This stage has a display bug. The yellow point at the entrance of the blue seat in the bottom left is actually a blue point.
Memory map
| Address | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| $60 | u8 | in-game time (frame) |
| $61 | u8 | in-game time (second) |
| $62 | u8 | in-game time (minute) |
| $63 | u8 | in-game time (hour) |
| $0400 | u8[32*25] | map of current stage |
| $0720 | u8[12] | ball color (0xFF terminated) |
| $072C | u8[12] | ball state (bit0:seat color, bit1:in seat, bit2:?) |
| $0738 | u8[12] | ball speed |
| $0744 | u8[12] | ball direction |
| $0750 | u8[12] | ball "subtile" (when it reaches "subtile max", tile under ball is updated) |
| $075C | u8[12] | ball "subtile max" |
| $0768 | u8[12] | ball tile x |
| $0774 | u8[12] | ball tile y |
| $078C | u8[12] | tile under ball |
| $0798 | u8[12] | ball pixel x |
| $07A4 | u8[12] | ball pixel y |
Possible improvements
This run is optimized only by my hand. Theoretically, it could potentially be improved using botting or other methods.
References
- Famicom shogakko (Japanese): This website has a great walkthrough. I referred this site for stages 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 14, 19, 22, 24, 26.
Darkman425: Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: Replaced input file with a 589 frame improvement.
Darkman425: Incredible work finding these fast solutions by hand for such a complex and inscrutable game. Accepting to Standard.
despoa: Processing...