The Pac is Back
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.10
- Heavy luck manipulation
Comments
This is the GBA port of Pacman Arrangement that comes with the Pac-Man collection on the GBA. This seems to be the most common version that RTA uses, most likely because it's a bit easier to RNG manipulate. Plus it's nostalgic for me (EZGames69) since I used to play this collection all the time as a kid.
Anyways here's some general notes:
General Notes
Pac-Man can cut corners on turns pretty smoothly, but you have to do it with single frame inputs rather than holding the button down to get the most optimal corner cuts. This also allows some delaying of frames on each turn if I need to manipulate RNG at all, like in the first stage where we subtly don't turn right away to get a specific ghost pattern.
The Dash levels are weird, if Pacman is in a dashing motion and turns a corner on the first possible frame, he will start slowing down. but delaying that by a frame will preserve his speed. My theory is that if he is moving in a diagonal path when cutting a corner, that will slow down his speed. You basically want to avoid moving diagonally when dashing to preserve speed.
I eat ghosts to gain a pill item. In rounds 1-10, the color pill that spawns is based on the color of the fourth ghost you eat, while in rounds 11-22 it's the 2nd ghost you eat that determines it. Red pill will make you move faster, Blue pill will spawn a mirrored ghost pacman, purple pill will place all the ghosts back in the center for a short time, and orange pill will make it so you don't slow down when eating large pellets. For this run we are only interested in the blue pill as it allows us to clear each level very fast.
Ocasionally I will try to eat 1 single pellet as I move somewhere, like in the final boss. this just allows it so I don't need to do as much backtracking or to save a couple of frames from finishing off levels.
Final Boss is tricky as while it is possible to clear out the stage faster, it's really dependent on enemy RNG, especially for the last phase of the robot ghost. I did the best I could do with that.
Other comments
Quick shout outs:
Spikestuff: for their previous WIPs for this game that helped with general routing as well as analyzing my input for any mistakes I might have made.
Joester98: for their GDQ run explaining some of the tech as well as giving advice in the Discord in terms of routing.
Everyone else in the Pac-Man community who's routes have proven useful to getting this game cleared very quickly.
That's all I have for you today, bye.
Darkman425: I thought this game was the arcade bootleg Hyper Pacman at first glance. Anyways, claiming for judging.
Darkman425: The routing through the stages to get the most out of the blue pill's mirror ability looks well done. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
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