Submission #9110: Sam_Underscore's SNES Mr. Tuff "100%" in 32:47.39

Mr. Tuff is an unreleased SNES game, which has two recovered prototypes. One prototype is from 1994, and one is from 1995. The 1995 one is obviously the more finished version, so that is the one that I am making the TAS of. The game is almost completely finished and makes a great TAS.

The goal of the TAS is: Beat every level in Mr Tuff and collect all 36 coins. To do so, you have to collect one coin from every level through Ice Land and beat every bonus land level. In the bonus land, coins don’t add to your total coin count as shown in the results screen and there are tons of coins in every level, so these don’t count towards 100% completion. There are 7 lands including the bonus world.

The version this TAS is of is PAL, as there is no NTSC version of the original prototype

One of the main mechanics of the game is Mr. Tuff’s right arm. Across the run, a few arms are used. A big part of routing is thinking about what arms need to be used when, and where they can be collected with minimal time loss.

Every level has a certain amount of “targets” or walls, which have to be destroyed in order to leave.

In every level, I press L to remove the hud for viewing pleasure and to reduce lag

A fall stun cancel is a trick used to minimize the amount of time that Mr Tuff is stunned when landing from a high height. This is done by having an attack end the same frame that you land from a high height, which ends the fall animation prematurely. Mr Tuff’s speed is still reset by this however.

There’s a glitch where Mr Tuff can land on the bottom of a semisolid for one frame and get a jump off of it, or just have it reset your gravitational velocity.

When you jump on the first frame possible when loading into a level, Mr Tuff gets an absurd amount of height. You can technically do this pretty much anywhere by using the “save place” in the menu, dying, and activating the jump once you respawn. This even works when Mr Tuff’s starting position is in the air. This is generally avoided because you accelerate faster on the ground than in the air. It also doesn’t work if you ended the previous level underwater.

By using some attacks in the air, especially at the apex of Mr Tuff’s jump, you can stay in the air for longer. The longer the attack animation, the better.

With certain arms (most notably the jigsaw arm), you can gain control of Mr Tuff during his damaged animation by cutting the attack animation short via hitting an object and having that animation finish right as he gets damaged. Then when you land, you lose control and he goes back into the damaged animation. But! You can cancel this the same way as the initial damage, and run around/attack while the game thinks you’re stunned. You can do everything you can normally do at this time, except for jumping and opening the menu. Unfortunately, I was able to find no uses of this that save time, just thought I’d document it here.

The X Speed variable is stored in RAM as 00EB48. The max running speed goes between 2 and 3 every frame when moving positively across the X axis (AKA to the right), and between 254 and 253 on the X axis when moving negatively across the X axis (AKA to the left).

At the end of every level, it’s fastest to hold down A to make the results go faster.

All throughout the run, some movements or attack timings may seem a bit odd even if they don’t lose time. This is usually to reduce lag. It’s not always obvious what’s causing the lag, and usually just switching up the timing of the different actions or making other slight adjustments can reduce the number of lag frames.

It loses no time to select a different level than what is selected by default on the world map, which I do here to get the strong arm as quickly as possible (the strong arm gets explained soon). I have to slow down at the start to break the barrier because of how weak the default right arm is. However, right after I break this wall, I get what I’ll call the “strong arm.” (I don’t know what the official name is if there is one, because this game has little documentation.) This one shots most things, including breakable walls. After this, just to show off a fun glitch, I land on the very edge of the button that doubles as a trampoline. This clicks the button but negates the bounce. Does not gain nor lose time. After this, I make my way into the coin room. I can conserve the extra speed from the conveyor belt for a while by jumping off the conveyor belt. Then I get the coin and leave. A little while later, I have to wait for the crusher to open. I make sure to have max speed as the crusher opens and I go under. Most attacks slow down Mr. Tuff if he is standing. So instead, I always make sure to be in the air when I use it, like in the part with the small breakable blocks and the enemy. From there, just some tight platforming gets me to the end of the level.

No real obstacles here until the water, where I tap B for one frame then press and hold. I have to wait a little while on the swinging axes. The second pool of water can thankfully just be jumped over, and from there nothing else really needs explanation.

In this level, the game wants you to break the trash can and get the item inside (a flamethrower helmet) to help defeat the hordes of enemies. Because my arm has such limited range, navigating through the area full speed is difficult. But, with perfect enemy manipulation using jump height, you can make it through without stopping to break the trash can and without slowing down to avoid the enemies. There is also a wrecking ball later in the level. I avoid this because it moves significantly slower than Mr Tuff and there are 0 advantages to using it.

The first of many boss fights. These are all pretty simple with the strong arm. Just punch the boss X amount of times and it will lose a life. In this case, just hit it two times and it will go down.

The surfboard in this level gives a constant 3 speed, and the screen is locked in an auto scrolling state. The only optimization I can make is getting on the board as quickly as possible and being as far to the right as possible at the end of the level.

This level goes smoothly until the ramp. It wasn’t until far into development of the TAS that I realized how the ramps are actually stairs, and it is much faster to take small jumps up the stairs. After that, there’s an anti-gravity zone that has to be used to reach the coin. You get more upwards velocity the closer to the center of the zone you are. So, while staying relatively close to the middle of the zone, I also go to the right and then back left to have more velocity towards the coin. Then I have to get the saw arm, which is very important in some later levels.

Right at the start, I move to the left and use the secret passage to reach the coin. After that, I go through another secret passageway and make my way further. There’s another anti gravity section at the end, this time in the form of a fan. I stay in the middle of the wind for as long as I need to, then exit to the right.

In this auto scroller, I try to make it as entertaining as possible. As for timesaves, it is important how fast I am up to the second set of buckets because the faster I get there, the faster they load in. Also of course the section at the end after the buckets. Other than that, just straight shenanigans for the viewer.

For this boss, I have to wait an obnoxious amount of time to attack him when he gets up, as he simply doesn’t take damage for a while after getting back up. Also, the fight would be faster with the strong arm instead of the saw arm, but I need the saw arm in world 3 and there’s nowhere to get it in that land.

This stage has lots of spinning floors. If they are spinning left, I want to get off as soon as I can. If they’re spinning right, I want to stay on them as long as I can and conserve that speed in the air. After some basic platforming, I grab a jetpack powerup. This lets me get to the secret area where the coin is.

Just for fun, I use several glitched floors when it doesn’t slow anything down. Close to the end of the level, I use the first example of a fall stun cancel.

At the coin for this level, I have to break blocks to reveal the coin. This causes a lot of lag, but I tried a lot of different ways and this happened to be the least laggy.

After hitting the button, I make sure Mr Tuff has as much speed as possible when going past the wall. He is able to not take damage from the lazer because of his invincibility frames when entering a level. Then I take the first pipe, as it has the fastest route to the coin. Something interesting about these pipes is that they act like conveyor belts in the sense that you can run on them to increase/decrease speed from the speed that it applies to you. I jump past the moving platform to reach the second pipe. After exiting the pipe, a fall stun cancel is used before I collect the coin. One more fall stun cancel is used when I break the final wall. I use some glitched floors in the next section to speed up the switchbacks slightly, but the first real application on a glitched floor shows up here at the end. At the end of the last wire, I hit the edge to cancel my falling velocity as I turn around. Then, I use the glitched floor on the same platform, once again canceling my falling velocity. This enables me to reach a further platform at the bottom, where I have to use another fall stun cancel.

For the coin in this level, I have to punch down a barrel into the hole before breaking the first wall. This barrel will then be used as a platform to reach the coin. The added speed in this section can be conserved in a jump going into the coin room. This brings me to the barrel. I use the barrel as a platform, because using the item in the barrel to damage boost has no usage here.

The first boss fight that presents a real challenge to me as a TASer. Hits on this boss only count when the head is hit, and there is also no cooldown between when it can take damage. There is a 22 frame cooldown between punches with the saw arm. When the boss head shrinks, I have to jump higher and I get less hits on it at a time. I also make sure to jump as low as possible for the highest possible hits, so that I am as close to the ground as I can be for my next jump.

At the start, I break the barrel and jump down into the pit for the coin. There’s no way to speed up descending into the water, so I have to wait until I hit it. Then I press jump every other frame, and at the surface I do a large jump to get to the bounce pad. Before the swinging platforms, I have to do a fall stun cancel. Then we have the one of a kind submarine section. This moves at a constant speed of 2 when at max X speed. Moving up and down has no effect on the X speed. In the short tunnel section, I abuse the mechanic of how bumping into ceilings reverses speed. I use this to have max positive Y speed coming out of the tunnel. I’m able to navigate the rest with no slowdown.

The coin in this level is right above the start, but unfortunately the height gained from a frame one jump is too short of the platform, so I have to take the long intended way. A fall stun cancel is used after jumping off the chest.

Most of the timesave here comes from lag reduction, especially at the coin.

Here you can really see the pros and cons of the saw arm. It is able to one-shot walls like the strong arm, has longer range, and a larger hitbox. That being said, there’s also a 22 frame cooldown between attacks with it unlike the 13 frames of the strong arm. Also, when it comes to the breakable blocks, this arm causes much more lag. At the end it’s very necessary to have the saw arm for breaking the three walls without waiting on the moving platform.

Some parts of this level have very tight movement, both to conserve speed from the conveyor belts and to avoid enemies. The section with the two acid containers, for example, is extremely precise and took a while to get past without slowing down.

Here, I collect the strong arm for the boss fight. Then I activate the bus as soon as I can, and the rest is basically an autoscroller. So, I try to entertain as much as I can. At the end I jump off to hit the end level trigger a bit faster.

The boss here is quite simple. Once I’m in punching range, I attack every 13 frames to damage him as quickly as possible.

In this level, I finally figured out how the stairs work, and so with that knowledge I’m able to get up them much quicker. Right after climbing the stairs, I have to precisely dodge a turret while also taking it down to get the coin below. Later, I use the menu for the first time. The sparks you collect throughout all the levels can be used in the select menu, where you can spend them to do a few things. One of these is the “lucky dip.” It can give you nothing, a random amount of sparks, or “Party Time.” This is the only helpful one. It gives Mr Tuff a shield, spike balls, and the lazer arm (the only downside). This saves time due to not having to wait on several lazers. The RNG is determined in a simple way, it simply changes results every frame.

Because of the solid platform right above Mr Tuff, a frame one jump can’t be used here unfortunately. At the first bucket, I take damage to boost past the saw and take a shortcut. At the button, I press it twice because pressing it once activates a wall blocking off the saw arm, which I collect shortly after. Doing it twice turns it on, then off again. I take more damage two more times in the level in areas where you have to wait, which is to set up a skip later on in the world. I also collect the saw arm, as it best suits the rest of the world and has to be used to reach the coin in this level. In the coin section, I carefully move and use the jetpack to have the most speed I can have without hitting anything.

Another autoscroller. Nothing much to do once the screen locks except reduce lag and be as far to the right as I can at the end.

Right at the start here we have a massive, but simple shortcut. Using the saw arm, you can break the wall in one of the rooms, where you were supposed to go through a different room first and hit a button in there to make a platform appear. The rest is just going through certain doors to collect the coin and break walls.

Here’s a good one. The game wants you to play the whole stage in a wrecking ball. The wrecking ball is very slow however, and few advantages to the TAS. So, by doing a midair frame one jump, you can avoid getting in the wrecking ball completely. Not all is smooth sailing though, as the coin is located in a spot that only the wrecking ball is supposed to reach, Mr Tuff simply doesn’t have the jump height. But by using the “Save Place” option in the menu which sets your respawn point if you die in that level and then taking damage (which kills due to the damage taken in Mill), you can do a frame one jump when you spawn back in, which gets enough height to reach the coin.

A fairly straightforward stage, although I did have to do a lot in terms of lag reduction.

A weird boss. Damaging him (or at the start, it seems that being higher than him does the same thing) makes him walk backwards at a constant speed. If he walks back far enough, he falls into a pit and you win.

Same deal as the last Flats stage. Using a frame one jump, you can avoid boarding the slow vehicle. This level doesn’t require any fancy tricks to get the coin though. A lot of lag reduction is necessary though, because there get to be a crazy number of enemies at the end.

All goes smoothly until the drop with the moving platforms. Two of them are very close together, and if you try to go by them when they are that close, you’ll snap up to the top of one. So, you have to wait until they start moving up to cross. The jetpack that was collected earlier is able to be used to speed up the rest of the level.

This one is tricky. The ice physics speed up Mr Tuff’s movement to a constant 3 when on the ground. Using attacks as you jump can conserve this speed in the air, so that’s what I do for a lot of the level. After getting the coin, I’m able to use the massive speed boost in the air so get to the target quicker. I also have to wait a short while for the crusher to move. The timer for these crushers that makes them go up and down is not determined by when they’re loaded or when the level is selected, but is always going. I tried every order for this level to see if I could get one with 0 wait time, but this was the fastest one.

Another vertical stage. You can do a frame one jump at the start of this one. The moving platform is only moving when loaded, so I can’t reroute this world to have the platform in a more favorable position. I made a very stupid mistake later on by using the moving platform on the left that is further away from the bounce pad. Why I didn’t notice this I do not know, but it’s too late to change now. However, it might not have mattered much after all because of the spake balls that are in the way of the passageway. The jetpack speeds up the rest of the level greatly.

I’m pretty sure this is the longest level in the TAS. Early on, I collect the bowling ball arm, which has to be used to reach the coin in this level. It has a 24 frame cooldown, and has an above average gravitational reduction when used in the air. There’s a lot of moving platform sections in this level, where you simply have to wait. In these sections, I twitch, dance, and get dangerously close to dying. When exciting these platforms I make sure to conserve as much speed as I can from them. Once you get to the magnet section leading to the coin, it’s pure chaos. I throw 4 bowling balls and keep a precise distance from them to open up the entrance to the coin, break a wall, and hit the turret twice. That way the turret can be destroyed with only one set of attacks from the spike ball power up.

This level has a lot of mummies. These are invincible, but still can be knocked back. I have to use the lucky dip to get party time again so I can get past the mummies. Then I pick up the strong arm again. After getting the coin, I turn back around to get a rocket launcher that I can use to damage boost past the bats.

The final boss. After getting the jetpack and getting in range of the target, I simply attack every 13 frames. It's a lot harder this time though, because there are bullets coming from everywhere and I have to make sure I don’t get out of range of my targets when dodging them.

This is a tricky one. Throughout this level, I use a lot of attacks to reset my speed midair when negative speed is applied to me, and I try not to attack when I can help it if I have positive speed applied to me. There’s also a lot of damage boosting when items are available to do so. In the section with the saws going around the blocks, I narrowly avoid taking damage from a lot of them.

In one section with a rising platform, I take damage so I can damage boost through enemies after getting the bowling ball and jumping up to the higher platform. I then use an absurd amount of these bowling balls to break through the blocks and get to the bottom where the path continues. I tested a lot of different things in this section, and I’m sure there’s still a good bit of time to be saved there. In the blood pool section, I use the bowling balls to stay in the air longer in between jumps.

In this level I use the bowling balls to eliminate a lot of enemies and all manipulate the positions of some of them that are harder to kill. This is a lot less straightforward than most flats/car park levels, and I do have to slow down in some places to avoid taking damage or running into walls.

The final level. I take a detour at the start to break a wall, but mostly stay on one path that leads to the end. In the last room, I throw two bowling balls that break a wall offscreen. And just like that, after running to the exit, its over.

With better understanding of how the game loads sprites and such, better lag reduction is almost certainly possible.

Early on, in the first Ghost House and second Power Plant level, I didn’t understand how the stairs worked. A simple fix on the stair climbs here could likely save around 5 seconds.

With better understanding early on about how attacking midair resets velocity, small time saves could be made all throughout the TAS.

By understanding better what objects only are in action when loaded and which ones have an internal timer that is always going, I could more carefully route each world to minimize wait time with certain objects (such as the crushers)

In the first boss fight, 2 frames can be saved by going away from the boss when it explodes to reduce lag.

I’m very proud of how this turned out. It's not perfectly optimized, but it’s very cool, entertaining, and overall high quality. I think if I did a complete do over of the TAS, I could save, at max, 20 seconds or so. Perhaps at some point I’ll create an Any% TAS with the knowledge I have of the game. Thank you for watching my TAS! God bless.

nymx: Claiming for judging.