Submission #9415: dekutony's Flash Paper Mario World in 01:46.46

Ok, now we're cooking... with paper- nevermind...

Ok now I'm actually TASing Flash games, no more joking around. Not too long ago, I've recieved a brand new Gaming PC. I've been wishing for this for so many years, after dealing with very underpowered laptops and all-in-ones from the early 2010s, I can finally play games in an acceptable manner, and being able to use libTAS at long last is one of the many benefits. I'm very grateful for this opportunity, so to celebrate, I'm starting by TASing an old Flash game from my childhood. I first tried Luigi's Revenge Interactive, but that was a bust... So instead, here's this game.

Paper Mario World is a platforming fan game made by Lesjuh released in December of 2007, a few months after Super Paper Mario's release on Wii. This is the first of a two-part series, with this one having Mario facing off against the big, mean Doomba. This game is really short, but can be rather unforgiving due to its wonky physics and high damaging obstacles.

Here's where I explain the strange quirks with this game. First of all, the game runs at 35 FPS.

Mario jumps by pressing the Up key. The jump is set to a specific height, so no matter how long you press Up, Mario's jump height will be the same, even when pressing for one frame. Mario's jump height is deceptively short, so there's quite a few instances where you can see me not being able to reach certain platforms and the like. If you see Mario having to wait to land on the ground or jump again just to reach an upper platform or floor, that's why it looks unoptimal at a glance. You can keep holding the jump key for as long as you want and Mario will keep jumping around, jumping on the first possible frame he lands in fact.

Mario swings his hammer by pressing Space. By pressing jump and hammer at the same frame, you can jumping hammer swing. You can hold Space while on the ground and running to keep swinging. You can swing your hammer while in a falling state, but only when running or standing, not while in a jumping state.

Mario doesn't really have invincibility frames while taking damage, so large obstacles like rolling balls, fireballs and Bullet Bills completely tear down through Mario's health bar. If you lose all your health, you Game Over, and have to start at the beginning of the game.

Because of this, managing your health is super important in this game. Mushrooms restore your health like you expect. Collecting coins fills up a blue meter at the top of the screen. When that blue bar is full (it fills after collecting 10 coins), some of your health will be restored. Routing your health management was a little tricky.

Goombas are the only regular enemies in the game. They have a weird property where they're basically small moving walls with hitboxes that damage you. You can kill them by jumping on them, as per usual, but most of the time there's a slight delay in your movement when you do so. You can kill them using the hammer as well and they have the same wall property after you move.

As for the run itself, it's pretty straightforward, so I'll highlight a few areas of note.

The mushroom block room has you hit the question block in order to raise the block so you can reach the top. Hitting it wth your hammer is faster than jumping on top of it because of the hammer's slightly farther reach.

In the cave section, I decided to avoid getting hit by the Bullet Bill and instead tank the damage from the giant fireballs in the next room. The fireball room has a large Bob-Omb that I have to destroy by pressing a switch. I barely survive with just a little HP and heal with a mushroom for the next section.

The black and white silhouette room has you avoiding the Goombas falling from the sky. I don't actually do this and I just take the hits, barely surviving once again.

As for the boss fight against the Doomba, it's rather simple. He does a bunch of attacks in a rather scripted pattern. After moving and jumping around, he gets in a vulnerable state, giving Mario an opportunity to attack. With my hammer, I hit him 3 times.

After beating the boss, I have to retrieve his mask in one last cave section. In the first room I have to jump on some falling platforms with an extremely tight frame window (which is made much easier thanks to the holding Up strategy), and the second room consisting of hitting a switch to temporarily raise the platforms and reach the exit to the final room (this is where the fixed jump height is very apparent). I retrieve the mask, open the large star door and finish the game.

Please let me know if this syncs for you. I'm still very new to using libTAS so I'm still trying to get used to it. Also sorry for the crappy encode with no sound. I couldn't figure out how to encode this properly (perhaps I'm missing something?), so I had to record this using OBS.

Despite this, I'm very happy I'm finally able to do this, it's been a long wait for me and I'm looking forward to do more. Thanks for watching and reading, and Happy Holidays!