Submission #8708: EvaTheWingdale's Genesis Doraemon: Yume Dorobou to 7-Nin no Gozans in 11:32.02

Uh oh! Doraemon's friends (and others, for that matter) have been turned to stone by a Dream Thief, who hides himself in his big spherical world of 7 (really 8) lands! It's up to Doraemon to stop him and return peace to his town! How? To put it simply, becoming just like a cat - flexible and fast.

If you run on the first few frames you're on an enemy you've shot (shooting regular enemies, excluding the Floaters that first appear in Stage 3), you can run on them before you start falling and grab the enemy. Because you grab the enemy first and then fall, you can initiate a running jump to gain more height than if you were on the ground. This is very useful for strats used in multiple stages throughout.

If you press the left and right D-pad buttons together while on the air, you can slow down to a stop much slower than if you held the opposite D-pad button, or even no button at all. This is a contrast to if you press the buttons together while on the ground, where Doraemon's sprite changes to face the left, Doraemon moves to the right and his speed acts normal.

By shooting Doraemon's gun when there are chickens on the screen, you can make them jump without having to jump yourself. This can be used strategically in some areas to avoid deaths throughout the run, saving time throughout the process.

To get past the section before the 2-treadmill section with the green enemies, I slowed down and shoot Doraemon's gun at strategic moments so that I would not only get enough space to not slow down during the jump, but also so that the chicken is at the perfect location to do an enemy jump. Shooting the gun strategically to manipulate enemies is also done at the end, where it is done so as to not hit the chickens (colliding with any enemy with an active hurtbox kills Doraemon, restarting the whole stage over at the beginning.

Stage 2 includes sliding slopes, which gives you a speed boost mid-air if Doraemon slides off. Another enemy jump is done at the beginning, to get from the Super Star container to the spring platform. This stage also includes a sort of maze-like section, filled with enemies. I had to get creative on when to shoot the gun, where to throw the enemies at, and where to slow down in order to jump.

At the beginning, an enemy jump is performed to get past the big cliff without needing to hold down for a super-jump. The Floaters that float down make this a little bit more difficult to perform, as there is less wiggle room on the jump, but I do it with no worries. The section with the 6 chickens in interweaving rows of 2 is tedious to get around as fast as possible, but it can be done by using gun manipulation to carefully align the chickens out of your pathway. I also juggled around the Pencil Chargers for a bit of entertainment. The cave section requires a bit of strategic slow downs to not die, as well as not sliding off the wet surface when heading towards both dorayaki (since sliding will send you front-first into them, which will trigger a ~2.5 second cutscene where Doraemon will pick up the dorayaki).

The first section (many white boxes with minimal floors) is done Takecopter-less, due to how it not only causes the item-pickup cutscene, but also changes your speed so that it always is the walking speed.) Nevertheless, I had to get creative on where to slow down and where to jump on. If Doraemon rams into an enemy a few moments after its sprite changes, then Doraemon will die. But if the enemy is shot and its sprite changes during a pause, then the hitbox will disable during or after the pause. This is why I pause right after the Takecopter section; due to how the level is layed out, you can't get hit without slowing down. The most convoluted piece of this TAS is using TWO enemies to get pass the elevator section quicker than if you took the elevator the entire way through. I start by doing an enemy jump at the lower enemy. Then I throw the enemy, shoot it instantly afterwards to freeze it, shoot the higher enemy, jump on the lower enemy to get onto the higher enemy, and then jump from the higher enemy onto the white box, then it's a hop skip and a jump to the remainder of the level! Afterwards, two more enemy jumps are used, the first for entertainment and the second as a time-saving method.

Elevators that move right are stood on as much as possible to move farther than you can usually go with only running speed. Because you can walljump on the white boxes, the section where you jump onto those boxes is done quicker with walljumps than with jumping onto the boxes themselves. Another enemy jump is performed to get from the first long elevator section to multiple elevator section, and while it's much easier than the 2-enemy mini-skip in Stage 4, it's still very tight to do due to the presence of a higher-up enemy heading your way.

This stage is the first stage to include electric shockers, which can turn on and off in the same interval at the same time. They can kill you at first touch, so I slowed down whenever they were on, and only started to go full steam ahead when it was almost time to turn it off. The earlier electrical cycle is almost humanly impossible to do, mostly because of how tight you need your jumps to be, as well as how I use L+R to slow down much more consistently for me to reach the early cycle. An enemy jump is performed in order to skip grabbing the Hustler Key, which would also trigger the item-pickup cutscene.

This stage is the second stage to include electric shockers. One of the sections (the one with the Copy Robot, Pink Star enemy, Anywhere Door, and electrical shocker) was a pain for me to get as fast as possible through; you can't just run across, since the gap is too wide to go across smoothly, you can't jump across, since there's a ceiling literally right above you, and you can't go through the gap underneath, since that's where the (very much on) electrical shocker was. I had to go through the upper section, which is harder to do than it looks.

The last stage is just a rocky field carried over from Stage 7 with multiple enemies... ...Perfect for entertainment! Multiple instances of juggling is used, as well as an oversight where you can still move enemies around after going through the door to the boss.

You essentially just play rock-paper-scissors with the final boss to defeat them and get their Power Orbs back. No questions.

The final boss battles is just musicial chairs. Unlike the other bosses, though, you control the player! This fact is shown by Doraemon messing around with the bosses (and the now big Dream Thief) like they were toys. ...You can't kill them, though.

I suggest frame 16201 to be featured.

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: Wow...what a neat little game! I had fun watching this one...especially the musical chair ending. :)

In terms of optimization, I couldn't find anything...because it seems you have exploited mechanics that I just don't fully understand, in terms of execution. First, there is nothing to the "Menuing", since lag frames show up and give you the perfect place to focus for when to press the next input. For the run though, I saw multiple places where you land and delay for a short period of time. I thought these were mistakes, but I quickly found out that you are prepping for a big speed increase. The rest is not obvious to see, as you continuing plowing through enemies as top speed. The adventure through all the stages was a fun little trip, but I really liked it when you got to the end to play musical chairs will all the characters.

I'm disappointed that no one comments on this, it certainly deserves attention. But...all I can say from my review, is great job on this!

Accepting.

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