#8549: somyeol's PSX Klaymen Gun-Hockey in 08:23.00

Klaymen Gun Hockey (クレイマンガンホッケー) is a game released in 1999 for the Sony PlayStation in Japan. It's an action/sports game released as a spin-off of The Neverhood. It was also the third and final game released in this series. The game can be played against computer players or with another player. You play as Klaymen, facing off against Willie, Hoborg, The Weasel, and even Klogg.

Game Objectives

Emulator used Bizhawk 2.8
BIOS used ps-30j.bin
Aims for fastest completion
Difficulty: Hard
Playaround
Heavy Luck Manipulation
Genre: Action

Game Description

Klaymen has suddenly decided that he needs to defeat all of the Neverhood's inhabitants in head-to-head gun hockey matches, a unique sport which plays basically as air hockey but with a mounted gun on each end that is used to shoot and push the puck in each direction.

Gameplay

The game is played from a first-person perspective from the end side of the table. You can play against other characters in single player mode or go against another player in Vs mode, and the game also includes arcade elements like power-ups, popping obstacles and special shoots.

Difficulty

8 opponents have to be defeated in order to reach the credits. By setting the difficulty to "difficult" the timer will be set to 40s for each match.

Easy difficulty: 90s timer, the AI is quite forgiving here. They will most of the time let the puck be shot in their goal without fighting back.

Normal difficulty: 60s timer, average AI. They often block shots and make good use of items.

Hard difficulty: 40s timer, difficult AI. They almost always block your shots and make good use of items. Opponents can use items just after 1 frame of being obtained, making it very hard to score goals if they were to pick up specific items.

Items

Orange Arrow pointing upwards: Powers up your shots and makes it sometimes more easy to score goals. (Duration ~6s)

Blue Arrow pointing downwards: The opposite of the orange arrow, decreases the power of your enemies shots for a specific time. (Duration ~6s, i didnt test it because i only used it once)

Green puck: Makes an additional 3 pucks appear on the battlefield, only 4 pucks can be present at any given time. Using this item makes 3 pucks appear near the main puck.

Purple puck: The same as the green puck, but instead of randomly going everywhere the pucks will act like a homing missile and go for the enemies goal. This is the main item to use in the TAS.

Yellow wall: Prevents pucks from getting into your goal, they can be broken by being hit multiple times by pucks or disappear after ~9s.

Blue/Red Stripe: I still do not know what this item does. When i used this item i could see no different in puck or AI behavior.

Luck Manipulation

Basically everything in this game is luck. The biggest RNG Factor is you shooting, which can sometimes cause the AI to forget how to block shots. Shooting randomly can also spawn different items. Items are held within cards which the puck has to travel through in order for them to be obtained. You also can't see the cards on the opponents side, this is mostly irrelevant to tas though.

No other RNG from what i have seen, the game has no lag frames so it is very easy to fix mistakes.

Other

There is no way around the 40s timer, you have to play through the 40s and then have more points than your opponent at the end of the match. I also thought of hacking myself the maximum amount of points, which is 99, to see if it would end the match, but no.

Tricks

Easy points can be obtained by having a green or purple puck in your inventory and a few frames before your main puck connects with the opponents goal, activate the item. This almost always ensures 2-4 points.

Bug

There is a very small space where you are unable to shoot the puck right in front of your goal. This can happen if you were to use a green or purple puck and they land just barely in front of your goal. Your gun will try to aim at the puck and its sprite will near vanish. After a few seconds of being unable to shoot the puck it will land in your goal because its on your side of the field and you "refused" to hit it, giving the opponent a goal.

Stage by stage comments:

1. Willie Trombone

Obstacles: None

Willie is basically the tutorial of the game, he is easy to defeat and even manages to own goal himself.

2. Green Weasel

Obstacles: Tree

Green Weasel is also an easy opponent. The tree in the middle was fun to tas with.

3. Hoborg

Obstacles: Gate

Somewhat average opponent. Lots of ricocheting off the gate.

4. Klogg

Obstacles: Pillars

I like to make the battle against Klogg as exciting as possible because he can be a difficult opponent, especially with the pillars on the field. His only reaction is towards the end.