Submission #9978: Puddings's DS Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service "all minigames" in 06:28.192

Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service is the exciting follow-up DS game to the original Postman Pat game released a year earlier in 2008. The game consists of 15 minigames in 5 different settings, Penncaster Station, Harbour Area, Ted's Garage, Countryside and Sorting Office. This TAS aims to complete all 15 minigames by any means possible as quickly as possible, even if we don't win.

It should be noted that I did technically waste 6 frames at the very start of the run to input the name TAS instead of just a single character for the file but I see that as negligible

Also, every menu interaction has a 17 frame cooldown before something can be selected. You cannot progress through menus any faster.

Pat needs to get to the Post Office and avoid barriers. You must use the pieces provided on the top screen to build a path to get there! In the TAS we simply tap out of bounds of the map on the first frame possible causing Pat to crash and fail immediately. The failed box takes a dreadfully long time to show up, but what do you expect from these DS games? Honestly I can't even beat this game normally so failing is just the best option. This game also behaves different when failing to every other game not allowing us to hit the Quit button until several frames after it appears on screen yet not playing the failure sound effect until after we've already left the minigame.

While Pat is moaning out his disapproval for your failure, Lauren Taylor needs help finding the inventory of packages by use of a word search! For this minigame there are 8 words to find and we can simply tap the first letter of the word on one frame and the last letter on the next and leave a one frame gap between each word find. This allows the minigame to be completed just moments after the screen even fades in!

We need to guess the secret word! The word rotates between a pool of 3-5 words but the only ones I've ever encountered are "ROADS" and "TRAIN". I initially believed it would be fastest to immediately type in the 5 correct letters as quickly as possible, however guessing the wrong letter 8 times ends up being about 30 frames faster thanks to the victory jingle taking so much longer to play out before letting the player progress.

We're off to the harbor for our next set of minigames! This one is very interesting. You can't actually tap on any of the cards until they've all loaded in which takes a strangely long amount of time. Additionally there is a lockout period between when you get a matching pair that does not allow you to tap any other cards. This lockout period is usually 48 frames except for after the first pair which let me tap new cards after just 47 frames. I'm gonna chalk this up to random licensed game jank and say it was Pat congratulating us for finding him first. This is officially the longest minigame to complete so far at a whopping 6.25 seconds!

This is our first 'autoscroller' of the run. Normally the game would want us to match the pictures briefly displayed on the top screen to their counterparts shown in an array of items on the bottom screen. However, actually interacting with the core objective of the game can result in completely random lag frames so the optimal strategy is to remain still and do nothing for 62 seconds until it ends. The four autoscroller minigames in this run account for just over 64% of the total runtime. A thrilling statistic!

Pat is out on his round and needs to avoid obstacles to deliver all the mail! However, we don't much care for the wellbeing of Pat and his truck in this run (as evidenced by the first minigame) and immediately place his truck at the highest possible coordinate on the screen on the first frame of the minigame so he crashes as soon as possible to offscreen into a 'conveniently placed wall' about 2 seconds in; ending the game immediately.

We're off to Ted's Garage for another thrilling autoscroller! This time we're tasked with matching vehicles shown on the top screen to an array of options on the bottom screen. Once again it is best to simply do nothing and wait for the game to end.

Back to back autoscrollers! This time we're trying to match the silhouettes of the characters on the top screen to those on the bottom screen. For risk of inducing unneeded lag frames we once again do nothing for the duration of the minigame. Delaying an input does not remove the chance of a lag frame by the way... The game just decides it's going to lag the next time you tap on the bottom screen and does so at will so we have to avoid it.

Ted Glen needs to fix his machine and apparently Sudoku is the way to fix it! This board requires 9 numbers to be placed which isn't the best I've ever seen however the amount of time it takes for whatever this game's RNG implementation to advance to generate a different board takes much longer. Each number requires 3 frames to place instead of two for most touchscreen actions in this game. Just a small quirk though.

Off to the countryside for spot the difference. This is a very simple minigame where we need to find 7 differences between the image on the top screen and bottom screen. Our allowance for wrong guesses is also 7 so it would take the exact same amount of time to finish the game if we guessed all wrong and all correct. However, since the time for the Quit option to appear is less when you lose a minigame it is faster to fail.

This minigames is very similar to both Wordsearch and Memory. You can't move any of the puzzle pieces until they've all appeared on screen and you can move all of them into place in just 2 frames each. It was a bit tricky finding the right coordinates and order to place them all in so I didn't completely obscure pieces and make them unmovable. The game takes an excessively long time to detect that I've won this minigame!

This is a very simple sliding puzzle and I ended up getting immaculate RNG; being given a board with just 4 moves required to solve! The timing on when you can move pieces was a little jank but it was very easy to complete the minigame as quickly as possible.

In this minigame we need to recreate the 5 character code shown on the top screen at the beginning of the minigame and submit it. Fortunately this game falls for the same trick that hangman did but even worse! It requires 11 touchscreen inputs to recreate the correct code and hit submit whereas it only takes 7 to just hit submit 7 times and fail the minigame. Additionally, the winning fanfare is longer making it even slower.

This minigame tasks you with sorting letters and finding out which of the five don't belong and selecting it. Unfortunately, we won't be doing that as we sit completely still for another 62 seconds waiting for the game to finish. Fortunately, this is the last of the four autoscrollers we have to sit through!

For our last minigame we must find the 5 objects listed on the top screen out of a large collection of items on the bottom screen. We of course are able to find all five items before the list even becomes fully visible.

The last meaningful input for TAS timing occurs when we hit the telescope on frame 22833. RTA timing (according to the rules on speedrun.com) dictates that timing does not end until we return to the main menu after the last minigame, hence the three extra menu navigation touchscreen hits after that.