Submission #9168: SuperSqank's DS Flushed Away in 13:58.01

General notes

• Uses Bizhawk 2.9.1
• Rerecord count - 4839
• Uses glitches and exploits to save time
• Note: my YouTube upload is an older version of the TAS which is nearly 2 seconds slower than the final TAS.

Introduction

General game notes

• I used the European version of the game for this TAS (specifically the UK version). The US and UK versions are identical, I just had the UK version available, hence why I used it. Other European versions have a language select at the beginning of the game which is not ideal to say the least. The Japanese Version (with its beautiful title: SIMPLE DS series Vol.17 The Nezumi no Action Game: Mouse-Town Roddy to Rita no Daibouken) is unfortunately slower. It has a title screen not present in the other versions and text transitions are slower than in English. It's a shame because I absolutely would have TASed the Japanese version if it wasn't slower.
• In this game, you can naturally walk, jump and attack. Both Roddy and Rita have a double jump. For basic movement, you often want to avoid jumping unless it is necessary. This is because your ground jump has quite a bit of windup where you stay still until you jump off the ground. Because of this, we often avoid jumping or we opt to walk off platforms to jump when we can as that avoids the jump startup.
  • Bizarrely, if you jump off of boxes, it skips the jump startup animation for some reason. This can be taken advantage of in a few areas.
• You have two types of attacks: a ground attack (Roddy points his sword forwards, Rita does a little kick) and an air attack (a butt stomp). The ground attack is only really used in bosses. The air attack makes you plummet down and you can bounce off enemies and boxes. This can be utilised in a handful of areas. The bounce you get is also quite high which can be useful in a few areas.
• Roddy has a dash move. Pressing the X button will make Roddy dash forwards where he amusingly yells "Tally Ho" (which is what I will be calling the dash from this point onwards). You can then press another button during the Tally Ho to cancel it into a roll which covers more distance, goes through enemies and breaks big boxes. Tally Hos make Roddy move a lot faster than when walking which is naturally very beneficial. The downside however is that once Roddy has ran far enough, he will get tired and he will completely stop for a while to catch his breath. This pretty much completely mitigates the timesave Tally Hos would otherwise have. Because of this, we have to carefully place Tally Hos in order to get the most distance out of them without getting tired (you can extend with a roll as late as 59 frames after inputting a Tally Ho which is heavily utilised). There are instances where Tally Hos can be cancelled which will be explained later.
• Instead of having a Tally Ho, Rita has a grappling hook to grab onto specific targets. We never use the grappling hook in the run.
• There are a couple of boat levels. The player can shoot a slow arching projectile or you can hold A to slow down. You can only slow down for a period of time but you can stall indefinitely be holding break and then every second, let go of break and press break again.

Main Exploits

• Running off an edge
• Hitting a cutscene trigger.

Level comments

Kensington

• This is a basic tutorial level. There are many dialogue boxes we can Tally Cancel into. There are also a few ledges we can run off of although momentum storage isn't super powerful in this level.
• There is one bug you have to get around. I had to jump over it. Ideally, you would Tally Ho under it but I believe the bug is on a set cycle. You specifically have to roll through the bug to damage it without slowing down but you don't have enough space to do so without getting tired.

The Toad's Lair

• This is the one level where we play as Rita. Rita is playable in Piccadilly but we don't play as her there in the run. Rita's movement is far more basic than Roddy's since she cannot Tally Ho.
• Early on, there is a crossroad where you can either go high or low. We go low as it requires less platforming and you can do a bunch of the jumps by running off edges, avoiding the slow jump startup.
• There is one area with a chunk of gaps right next to each other. With some carefully timed run off edge double jumps, we can get through this section without needing to do any grounded jumps.
• There is another crossroad at the end where we can either go high or low. We go high this time as it requires less jumps.

The Getaway

• This is our first boat level and it's just an auto scroller. There is nothing to say here. The music is good so that’s something at least.

Frozen Shut

• In this level, you have to use the stylus to buckle up chains within a time limit. In order to do this, you simply have to hold the stylus over the chains which is a bit strange but it works. In the run, I hold on to the chains for the minimum amount of time to get them all in place and then I do one last run through to fully lock any chains that got lose. This is pretty annoying to do in real time but with TAS precision, we can get through this in less than 3 seconds.

The Toad's Lair

• We can breeze through this entire level using Tally Hos and momentum storage. The level is simply a straight line with a bunch of jumps and we can pretty much keep our Tally speed for the entire level without slowing down.

Piccadilly (route)

• This is the most notable level in the run as there is a MAJOR sequence break. The rest of the game is linear but Piccadilly functions very differently. Piccadilly is a sizeable hub area where you can go to various locations to do missions, collect money and buy things. The intended route the game wants you to take goes as follows:
  • Do missions for characters to earn money
  • Find a map for The Water Plant
  • Buy a map to the Gaunlet from Charlie Wu. The map is not cheap so you need to have a good chunk of money on hand and Charlie Wu is a pretty long way away from the start of Piccadiily. You can also buy various upgrades from him.
  • Complete the Gaunlet (a lengthy boat level) to unlock the ability to jump in the boat
  • Complete the Water Plant to progress further.
• The game expects you to do a lot in Piccadilly but the thing is that you don't actually have to do all of the things I listed to actually complete the game. The only things you have to do are as follows:
  • Find a map for The Water Plant
  • Complete the Water Plant to progress further.
• This means that you don't have to collect any money, you don't have to complete various missions to get money, you don't have to go far out of your way to find Charlie Wu to buy the Gaunlet and you don't even have to play the Gaunlet, despite it giving you a jump ability for your boat. All we have to do in this run is to find the map for The Water Plant and then we can play the Water Plant and then the rest of the game.

Piccadilly (the levels)

• Throughout Piccadilly, momentum storage is used in various areas. I even go out of my way to set up momentum storage at points which still ended up being considerably faster than just walking.
• In Side Passage, you jump on a pipe and you are supposed to jump up to a higher pipe to reach Crossroads. However, I instead take a lower path and I bounce off a worm to go up a different Pipe to progress. While this does take longer than taking the intended route, it takes you to crossroads but it puts you much closer to where you need to go, making this route faster overall.
• In Pipe Climb, I bounce off a bunch of enemies to climb up faster.
• Once I collect the map, I pause the game to take me back to the Jammy Dodger. Weirdly you can move on the pause screen as soon as you pause but you can't select anything until the screen fully fades in which is strange. I play around here as I have the opportunity to do so.

The Water Plant

• The reason why you are supposed to have the jump is so you can jump over cans in this level which are otherwise unavoidable. It is easily possible to beat this level without the jump however.
• To take out Spike and Whitey, I naturally shoot my cannon at the edge of the screen to hit them as early as possible.
• Throughout this level, I am constantly exploiting the breaks to beat Spike and Whitey as quickly as possible. Spike and Whitey approach you much faster if you break which is why I am constantly staying in the break state (which I achieve by holding the break button and then letting go and re-pressing the button every second). You don't even need the breaks to beat Spike and Whitey without any upgrades although since the breaks are faster to use, they are naturally used here.

Enter Le Frog

• "Les Frogs" have no hitbox while they are jumping out so you can phase right past through them.
  • In my YouTube upload, I momentum jump at the end of the level rather than doing a Tally Ho, despite the latter being faster. I did this in order to set up the RNG against Le Frog. I did not have to do this in the final TAS where I instead perform a Tally Ho. The RNG I ended up getting in the fight was near perfect.
• Le Frog has this one attack pattern where he can jump in the background and throw balls at you. You cannot hit him while he does this and he stays back for a while. We want to avoid this pattern at all costs. Le Frog can also do two jumps into his ground attack which while not as bad, still loses a whole chunk of time.
• I deliberately delayed the third hit against Le Frog in order to get good RNG. If I hit him any earlier, he would have done a far less favourable pattern. This was the only hit I had to delay though and the delay was only around a couple of frames in the final TAS so the fight was extremely fast all in all.

The Toad Boss

• Against the Frog henchmen, I hit the first one by using my sword attack while standing as far away as possible while also inputting the attack as early as possible. The attack has a deceptively active hitbox so you can land it extremely late. For the other frogs, I mainly have to minimise the amount of distance I need to travel to take them out and at times (in the final TAS), I wait out a bit to manipulate their movement so I can take them out faster.
• The bombs are random as the Toad can drop either bombs or boxes. It doesn't really matter what he drops though, he moves out to the ring at a consistent time regardless of what you do and what he throws out.
• I move in a way so I can hit the Toad on the first possible frame he is vulnerable. This is fairly lenient if you know where the Toad is going to move. For the third hit in the final TAS, I delay the third hit by a couple of frames in order to get more favourable frog RNG.

Conclusion