Overview
LEGO Island 2: The Brickster's revenge was a 2001 game released across four consoles, and is a sequel to LEGO Island, a PC exclusive. You play as Pepper, a pizza delivery guy, who is on a mission to take down the escaped convict Brickster. This TAS is of the Gameboy color version. The goal is to reach the credits, which happens after defeating the Brickster in Space. Due this this game's surprising lack of glitches and exploits however, the path to the end is surprisingly straightforward. Also, every other frame of gameplay is a lag frame, so the game essentially runs at 30 fps.
Text
The TAS is mostly made up of text and movement. For the text, English is (surprisingly) the fastest language. For text mashing, A is the only button that can progress through text. So, I press A before the first character in the text box appears, then A again 4 frames later to go to the text box.
Movement
Pepper's skateboard is the fastest way to move in most places, because it starts slow but quickly accelerates to high speeds. However, there are some actions that cannot be done while on a skateboard, most notably shooting a pizza, which is Pepper's only method of combat. Also, when putting away the skateboard, Pepper slows down to a stop before walking.
Glitches
I only found one glitch in my creation of this TAS, and it softlocked the game.
Rundown
After the menu, the game begins with a cutscene, which ends when Pepper gets his pizza that he has to deliver to the Brickster. So, on the skateboard, while taking turns as tightly as possible without slowing down, I make my way to the Brickster.
After the cutscene plays out, you basically just have the leave the way you came, but exit the pier area to the left. After talking the the cop and getting the pizza gun, I have to go around to the left, as all NPCs have active hitboxes (this comes up later). Then, the frame before the Brickster starts talking, I input down right to have Pepper shift over to the right more when slowing down, and this favors the movement in the next room. At the end of that room, it may look like I go to the left, but it's actually just a visual glitch that doesn't have any effect on your position in the next room.
The next section is basically just talking to NPCs to progress the story. Nothing interesting happens until the dungeon section. Unlike the wide open areas of the overworld, this section is tight and tricky. The first two rooms rely on pressing buttons to open the doors. In the second room, the buttons are far enough away that the skeleton enemy goes into it's crumbled state, and can't get to Pepper when he comes back. Then in the next room, I have to grab a key. This can't be done while on the skateboard, and because of the small distance to the door, which also has to be unlocked while not on the skateboard, it's best to walk over there and open it before putting the skateboard back on. I have to get off the skateboard again to unlock another door, and then throw a pizza at a skeleton that has to stay of the button for the door to stay open. In the next room, I unfortunately have to do some evasive maneuvers that lose some time, but I tried many things and this seems to be the fastest way. Then I make my way to the end, where a boss fights awaits me. The boss has RNG that determines two things: There his bricks land, and where he lands after jumping. The RNG value can be changed by waiting before entering the room. The RNG dealt without waiting has it so that the player is able to hit the boss the first frame possible for each attack. However, he also ends to the left, which means Pepper has a further distance to walk after defeating him. But while there are sets of RNG are closer to the middle, you lose time for waiting for them, and the bricks that fall from the ceiling keep Pepper from being able to get frame one hits on the boss.
After exiting the dungeon, I navigate to the boat to progress to the next section. The boat controls are quite simple. At the end, there's a split path. It's best to go left because of the NPC that's in the way on the right.
Here, we get to have a little fun. You have to talk to an NPC, who then runs away to tell the guards about you (I have no idea why he wants Pepper in jail). But by taking away the skateboard and keeping Pepper in the right position, you can get quite the push from the NPC. After this push, Pepper skateboards to his new location and gets thrown in jail.
With perfect execution, you can just barely make it past one of the guards. For the last guard you have to make him charge at you and then hit the wall giving Pepper a way to escape.
The next section is quite simple, just ignore the blowdarts and progress to the cutscene. This leads to the medieval section. On the way to the king, I have to go through the hedge maze while avoiding guards. To get past the guards as quick as possible, I get in their line of sight to make them charge at me, then turn around quicker. Then after talking to the King, it's time for an escort mission! Yay!
The NPC moves in a straight line to Pepper (unless he comes in contact with a wall) at a speed slower than Pepper walks. If he is too far off screen, he stops moving. I try and give him the most straight path to the end. At the end, I go ahead, and leave as soon as I can without leaving the NPC behind. If I had exited that room a frame earlier, I would have failed the mission.
Then, after talking to more NPCs to progress the story, I head to the forest. When talking to the Wizard, it may seem like a good idea to get a push from him, but it's actually best not to because the cutscene doesn't progress until the Wizard is off screen, and the screen follows Pepper. After this, I avoid some enemies and get to the boss.
The bull boss fight ends when the bull hits the wall 10 times. This only counts if he doesn't hit Pepper. So, I make sure to activate his charge of the first possible frame every time. Keep in minds, because of the limited distance, he can't hit the same wall two times in a row. After activating the last hit, I position Pepper to be close to the end place he walks to at the end cutscene.
After a long cutscene plays out, I make my way through the level and to the space ship, avoiding enemies along the way. Once in space, I take the fastest paths possible and lure enemies when I can.
The 1st Brickster boss fight is quite simple. The spots he jumps to after each hit actually is the same every time, not RNG based. Just hit him with a pizza as soon as you can each time.
The 2nd Brickster fight, not so simple. If the door opens up on the opposite side of Pepper, you can't be there right when it opens. So, I have to do some RNG manipulation. Every time one of the enemies die, it calls a random function to see where it reappears. When this function is called, it changes what the next door opened will be, also a random function. So, with what I found to be the best RNG that can be gotten without slowing down too much that the time save is cancelled out, you are able to only have one door open up on the opposite end. Also, if the last door is the one on the bottom, Pepper has less distance to walk in the cutscene that follows. Unfortunately, I was unable to find an RNG result that had one time of the opposite door opening and had the last door as the bottom one. If somebody wants to try and find a better way to do this fight, be my guest.
And there you have it! Thanks for your time, and God bless.
DrD2k9: Claiming for judging.
DrD2k9: Nothing that I can see as obviously sub-optimal here. This version of the game is significantly different than the GBA version. Removing branch name as it's unnecessary. Accepting as baseline for the GBC version.
despoa: Processing...
DrD2k9: Updated move file with file having correct cycle count.