Also known as "Cat Mario", Syobon Action is an extremely difficult mario-clone platformer that usually takes many tries to complete. In this run, we try to beat the secret "world 0", which adds crazy effects to the normal world 1 stages.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Hourglass r81
- Trying to beat the game as quickly as possible (while trying to be as entertaining as possible)
- No swords (which allows player to reach credits sometimes)
- Forbid “x2 speed” (spacebar)
- Do not use select-state key (number keys 1-4)
- Reaches the credits and get warped to the title screen
Comments
TAS environment system info:
- OS name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
- OS version: 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 build 2600
- BIOS version: MATBIO - 6040000
- System locale: ja
- System language: ja
If you want to watch the run in Hourglass, please set FPS to 60, System Time to 6000 (which is default for hourglass), App Locale to Force Japanese locale.
I have the System Time set to 6000, because I think with the default settings I could be more concerned with the run itself, not finding the optimal levels. The route I used here was the most optimized way, including the deaths.
Glitches/Tricks
Hitbox glitch
If an enemy that is 1-2 block(s) high is sandwiched between blocks above and below it, the hitbox will disappear. I abused this glitch in stage 0-3 after spawning at the first checkpoint.
Player block collision
If you are lucky and have maximum speed, you can skip the gap of 2 blocks without jumping. It is also possible to land on around 6 pixels before the block after jumping.
Stage by stage comments
0-1
First stage of world 0. It is impossible to complete this stage in this state because after you hit the flagpole and start walking, you fall down and die, but by changing the direction of the enemy at the end by hitting the "?" block with P-Switch inside, it is possible to bump into the enemy and avoid falling down. This saves a death.
0-2
I intentionally killed the player twice in the beginning of the level:
- The first death was forced by the enemy being inside the player, so I had killed the player in the first frame by pressing "O", which was 11 frames faster then waiting until the enemy kills the plyer.
- The second death was forced by the block blocking the pipe. Again, by pressing "O" I had killed the player which was 76 frames faster than normally falling to the void.
Shortly before the checkpoint, I bumped into the enemy that teleported to the left to add some entertaiment to my movie, however, this sadly lost about 3 frames.
0-3
Again, I intentionally killed the player after reaching the checkpoint because otherwise completing this stage was not possible due to poisonous mushrooms appearing under the flagpole.
0-4
Final stage of world 0. I bumped into the enemy at the end of the stage to make it a bit interesting at the end.
Other comments
Possible improvements
I could probably save more time on staircase of 0-2 by finding a way to decelerate faster.
Other stuff
This is the first TAS I'm publishing, so I'd appreciate it if you could take it with a grain of salt.
Movie playback directly filmed from iPhone:
Link to the original game: https://web.archive.org/web/20190331115830/http://www.geocities.jp/z_gundam_tanosii/home/syobon-action.zip
You can play world 0 by pressing 0 in the title screen.
Huge thanks to Randomno with helping me out for encoding AVI!
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Changed the branch to match RTA category naming.
feos: There was an argument that random mode is a cheat code, and it's debatable when you can manipulate the sword to spawn right away to end the game. But if you choose to forgo sword usage, the movie becomes warpless essentially, and manipulating quicker layout while also running through them is a perfectly legitimate task, since it's a separate level set.
I completed this move in real-time with and without a sword, and it's not true that the layouts are completely random and barely beatable. Level length seems fixed, as well as a most of the traps (with slight variations). The sword is really hard to use, because you get moved forward once you grab it, and most of the floor is just a bunch of gaps, so you die, or you get scrolled of-screen and also die.
Accepting, even though I'm not sure if we should put the sword into branch labels, or use warps/warpless in branch and tags.
I wanted to revisit #3288: jlun2's Windows Syobon Action "x2 Speed" in 00:56.87 and #3525: jlun2's Windows Syobon Action "Random Mode" in 00:08.28 but I was unable to sync them on WinXP or to even run in Hourglass on Win7.
despoa: Processing...