Submission #8844: Cephla's DS Postman Pat in 11:46.28

Postman Pat is your typical DS TV show video game released in 2008 and is unsurprisingly comprised of a series of Postman Pat-ified unoriginal minigames. This TAS aims to complete the story mode of this game by playing through all 10 minigames as fast as possible, even if the majority of the run is just waiting for the timer to run out

Julian has left packing his back to the last second so we need to do it with him. The game is simple: there's a list of items he needs to take into school and various items, including these items, will appear on the ABYX circle to the left. You either have to tap of press the right button as the item appears to gain a point and complete part of the list. The goal the game gives us is 8 points, however, it is fastest to try and complete the entire list as fast as possible as this ends the game before the timer gets to 0 so the aim of this game was trying to get the right items to appear as soon as possible.

Pat comes home from work and Jess has gone missing. Now we need to find him 12 times (for some reason) around the house hiding behing various objects. Alternatively, if the player finds Bonnie, she gets us 2 points instead which can easily save a bunch of time. I'm going to say this now just in case I get stuff wrong but it has been half a year since I've worked on this TAS seriously so if I forget the specific details while writing this, I apologise. I think, for Bonnie, I found that she doesn't always load in on the first frame the scene is loaded in on, resulting in having to wait for a bit on a couple of scenes.

Finally, you'll notice I discover Jess even after getting 12 points. This is because the garden only runs at 30fps which halves the speed at which the in game timer runs which loses so much time. The bedroom runs at the full 60 so as little time is lost.

Now we're processing letters on a conveyor belt. As they pass we need to frank the stamps in the corners by either tapping them with the stylus or pressing the right button. If they don't have a stamp, they need to be discarded from the belt by blowing into the microphone. This game is fairly simple and there are no apparent ways to speed it up.

A simple game of pairs. Nothing really to comment on this

Despite being an also simple game where you just need to fit oddly shaped parcels into the back of the van, this is probably my favourite game from a viewership perspective. I just can't get enough of extremely quick mouse or keyboard-type gameplay.

Oh no! Letters have gone flying from the back of the van. This minigame focuses on putting rubbish and letters flying around into either the bin or Pat's bag. The coloured letters give 3 points so ideally, we get as many of those to reach the score of 50 as soon as possible.

I know all of the previous levels have been borderline autoscrollers but we've finally got a full autoscroller. The only goal of this game is to avoid the obstacles while you drive at a constant speed to catch up to Ted.

While Pat's on the ground Ted is pointing out where letters have fallen from up in the sky with his helicopter backpack. This game was a bit difficult to deal with or even do quickly. It's probably the most jank out of all levels and I can't exactly say it works just how the devs intended. I'd explain what I mean by this but I found it so confusing what works and what doesn't I don't think I can unfortunately.

Amy has been tasked with feeding animals in their stalls who seem to get hungry every few seconds which is rather annoying. The goal we need to reach is 20 points which is tedious but that's basically what this entire game is.

At last we've got a game that can be properly optimised. My strategy was to hit all boosts I could which involved lagging behind at the start to get to the bottom and from there it's just being safely ahead the entire time. At the end, I attempted to end input as soon as possible which was after the final boost which still allowed us to win the race.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.

Darkman425: Admittedly, this is the kind of game I should've expected from Blast Entertainment.

Everything seems fine with considerations to make the timer run out faster when possible. The only possible idea to somehow get some more time saves is if there's a way to RNG manipulate "School Rush" to get the right items faster but that could potentially result in worse booster placement RNG in "Bike Race". That's probably a bit of a big ask considering that those are the first and last minigames, respectively.

Accepting to Standard.

despoa: Processing...