Submission #9995: SuperSqank's GBA Totally Spies! 2: Undercover in 18:24.115

General notes

• Uses GBAHawk 2.1.3
• Documented rerecord count - 12342
• Takes intentional damage to save time.
• Uses glitches and exploits to save time

Introduction

General game notes

• I used the European version for this TAS as it was what I had on hand. The US version appeared to be identical from what I tested, the only difference is that the European version has more languages (although both versions have multiple languages with a language select at the start of the game). English is the fastest language and every other language is slower due to slightly longer loads.
• The game has 5 chapters and you always have two incomplete chapters unlocked at a time (until you finish 4 of the 5 chapters of course). Unlike the first game and the DS version, you only have to finish the last chapter to beat the game so we can skip one chapter. Chapter 2 is the longest chapter so it naturally gets cut out which sucks because it has the most meaningful Sam appearances.

Platforming

• You have two different single jumps: a static jump (jumping while standing still) and a moving jump (jumping while moving). A static jump grants more height but it has significantly longer startup. We generally want to use moving jumps whenever we can but there are also numerous situations where the extra height from static jumps is needed.
• Double jump is slightly faster than walking and you want to double jump late in order to maximise speed. There are times where walking is faster, particularly when ceilings, walls and ledges are involved but when you have the freedom to double jump, you double jump.
• Climbing up ledges is slow so we want to avoid grabbing ledges whenever possible, typically by performing well placed wall jumps or even just using static jumps.
• If you single jump down a ledge, you keep way more speed than if you run off the ledge which is especially relevant when turning around. Because of this, we mostly single jump down ledges.
• If you take damage while crouching/crawling, you will not go into a knockback animation when taking damage. This means that most times where we want to take damage, we want to make sure we get hit while crawling.
• For attacks, you can a punch/kick combo on the ground which brings you to a screeching halt. You can either do one punch or a full 3 hit combo. In the air, you have a karate kick which makes you bounce off enemies. We generally want to avoid attacking but the air kick deals more damage and it is used whenever we have to attack.

Pause buffering

Level comments

1-1. Find the truck

• This is basically a semi-auto-scroller. The truck appears at consistent intervals although it is up to the player to scan the truck. The car spawns are RNG and are pre-determined before you enter the level. The pre-determined RNG in this game cannot be simply manipulated, you pretty much have to work with whatever RNG you get.
• If you scan the truck from the bottom right corner as close as you can get, it scans the truck much faster so this is naturally used to scan the truck quickly.

1-2. Frazzle the lock

• Here, you have to connect traces. Ideally, you want to connect traces which are as close as possible.
• While the first trace is pre-determined RNG, the RNG for whatever the next trace will be changes every 5 frames. Because of this, I intentionally wait at times in order to get better patterns.

1-3. Destroy the Tornado

• This is basically an auto-scroller and a long one at that. You can only use the hair dryer behind the wall and the hair dryer charges at a set speed. The only thing that matters is that you use the hair dryer as early as possible whenever it charges (and that you don't miss a hair dryer charge at a wall which can happen).
• If you double jump as late as possible on a wide bench and land near the end, you will zip off the bench. This is neat but it doesn't actually save time since we have to wait for the hair dryer anyway.

1-4. Neutralize Geraldine

• All you have to do is mash A to blow the bubble and hit Geraldine. You can move left or right while charging the bubble. It is a super short and simple boss, way shorter than the previous boss.
• This level runs at 30 FPS and it is the only level in the game that is locked at 30 FPS for some reason. Just a fun little fact.

Confessionals

• You can just skip the confessionals. You don't need them to beat the game. The only one you need to complete is the final one. Because of this, you can just instantly quit out of the confessionals and continue the game.

3-1. The great seduction

• Now we are on chapter 3 the shortest chapter in the TAS and the most interesting.
• This is just a rhythm minigame and a weirdly short one at that. It is a true auto-scroller but a mercifully short one (which I can't say about the DS version of this level but that's another topic).

3-2. Explore the museum

• This is our first proper platforming level and very much a highlight of this TAS. There are quite a few things to go over.
• The guards have a massive detection radius in the direction they are looking and they have a sizeable one above them too. The guards do not move until you get in a designated box. If a guard catches you, you are sent all the way back to the beginning before the guard.
  • This is how you are meant to get past the guards; you get in a box - you wait for the guard to walk slightly forward - you wait in the box for the guard to walk a sizeable distance backwards - you wait for the guard to walk forwards again and only then can you wait in the box and get past them once you are ahead of them. The guards have long periods of time where they stand around between each phase. This takes forever and it is extremely tedious, very unfun and repetitive casually, especially since you have to do it all over again if they catch you. Luckily however, it is possible to skip every guard which I think saves around 10 seconds per guard.
• Against some guards, I get in the box, get out of the box and then I jump over them as they are about to turn around. If I do this correctly, I can make it past the guards, cutting out almost all waiting.
• After the first guard, the game wants you to get up to some higher platforms, get past some guards and then make your way to a computer to open a door. However, you can just jump straight from the tall box after the guard to the computer. I use a wall jump as it is faster but you don't even need the wall jump, it is really easy to get to that computer early.

• Normally when you go in a box, you not only walk slowly but you also jump slowly. However, if you do a single jump before entering the box (you just need your last instance of air time to be a single jump before getting in the box), you will move much faster while jumping. I have no idea why it works but it does and the speed increase is massive so we always want to activate turbo boxes whenever we need to stay in a box.

• If you are moving and then on the next frame, you do a neutral jump in the box, you will jump but the game will put you in a grounded state, allowing you to walk in the air and jump. This can naturally be chained infinitely, leading to infinite jumps. This is used to skip numerous guards who cannot be skipped any other way.

• I use infinite jumps (combined with turbo box) to skip a set of guards as well as to scale up to the next guard which was slightly faster than getting out of the box.
• For the last guard in section 1, you cannot jump over him as the ceiling is too low. Luckily however, you can get extremely close to him, wait for him to walk forward and then get out the box after he stops in order to get past him. This works as your hitbox is smaller outside the box than inside the box.
• In section 2, you can either go high or low. The high path only has one set of guards but they are unskippable. Because of this, we take the low path which has two sets of guards and you need to take a quick detour to open a door but you can skip all the guards.
• I naturally use turbo box and infinite jumps to skip the guards and to scale up the level quickly.
• I take multiple damage boosts through spotlights in section 2. For one of the spotlights, I can jump to get past it without taking damage as you stop for a bit while jumping. One more computer and box shenanigans and the level is done.

3-3. Find the combination

• Imagine Wordle but there are only 4 letters. That's basically this level. You have four symbols and you have to find the correct sequence of three in a set amount of guesses. The pattern is pre determined RNG. Why is this even a level? It is so ridiculously simple and short that it makes you question the skill of the developers. It is not even multiple patterns getting progressively harder, it's just the single pattern. This TAS finishes the level in 10 frames, that's how ridiculously short this level is.
  • A theoretical perfect pattern would be 3 frames faster.

3-4. Catch Kyle

• Normally, you have to go all the way to the right side of the stage, hack some computers to open a door on the left side of the level and then run all the way back to the door. However, we can skip all of that, skipping well over half the level.
  • There is a guard right by the door we need to get past. If you get hit by the guard and then perform a well timed neutral jump as you still have iframes and he attacks again, you can clip through the floor and then get back up past the door. In this TAS. I clip through the floor, I zip through the floor and then I air kick a guard to get back in bounds. This is a massive time save (being close to a minute at least) and I think it looks very cool, seems too cool to be in this game of all things.
• Normally, you have to go to the left to hack into a computer to open a door and then you have to hack into another computer to open the door to the end of the level. However, we can go straight to the door with the last computer, do a neutral jump with iframes and then get hit by the guard while in mid air. If done correctly, you can move to the right with precise timing and clip into the final room, skipping needing to use the last two computers. This saves 15+ seconds and when combined with the major skip from earlier, this TAS finishes the entire level in less than 25 seconds.
  • The elevator is higher than it is supposed to be when you enter the end of the level early which leads to wacky shenanigans.

4-1. The cornfields

• There are 10 photos to collect and I take a route where I get all the ones near the bottom first, I use a respawn bush to go back to the begin and then I go along the top to collect the rest.
  • There are two types of bushes. Ones that take you back to the start and ones which damage you. There is no indication in game of which one is which, you just gotta figure it out the hard way.
• After the 4th photo, I use pause buffers to go through some bushes instead of going around. This ended up only being a couple of seconds faster as you do move a lot slower while pause buffering. This works as inputs in this level are hold bufferable, allowing you to move right into a bush and then hold down before going in to change your direction in the bush.
• This level is insanely laggy. This is not the only level with lag but no other level comes even remotely close to this level. This level targets 60 FPS but it literally ends running at 30 FPS a majority of the time, making the whole level play at half the speed. I do take a route which minimises lag but it is still abysmal. Crazy how the level ended up in this state in the released game.
  • You can eliminate most of the lag by turning the music/sound off which in this level alone can save around a minute (I am not joking) but I opted to play with sound on because I don't think this game is entertaining enough to be worthwhile to watch in silence.

4-2. Vegetable cutting

• A true auto-scroller. The level is on a timer so you just gotta wait for the timer to end. All you have to do is to avoid lag which mainly occurs when taking damage.
  • I do take damage but what I do is that I hit the fruit on the same frame as the spies gets hit which allows me to shoot the fruit while also taking damage. I performed this at times where it did not cause any lag.

4-3. The barn

• I use the air kick to take out the first set of haybales.
• I take damage on top of the first enemy and then I kick the enemy which lets me destroy the next set of haybales while going inside them.
• You are supposed to climb the level on the right side and then go along to the top in order to open the door and get the boombox. However, I go straight left and to reach the boombox, I wall jump as high as I can while still having a double jump after the wall jump, I then use pause buffering to turn around without losing height and then I double jump, using pause buffers to turn around without moving as far to the right. This allows you to just barely reach the boombox.

4-4. Like father, like son

• I reset the level at the beginning to get a better pattern. I specifically time my reset in order to get the exact pattern I want. The level has pre-determined RNG but you can still use level resets to manipulate how the level plays out.
• You can position hay hits and taking damage in certain ways to manipulate the RNG.
• The hay is on a timer so you don't have to worry too much about how quickly you use it.
• You can use pause buffering to extend the hitbox of the hay and even hit the second and third guys multiple times but this is really slow so it is not used in the run.

5-1. Back to the craft

• Another auto-scroller. You mash A to gain height and all you have to do is make sure you are on the bottom right corner at the end of the first two sections.

5-2. Unplug it all

• The square platforms are really annoying and deceptive. There are many times where you think you can use moving jumps to get up them or wall jump on them but nope. You often gotta use static jumps.
• There is no way to quickly manipulate the button sequences when hacking objects so you just take what you are given.
• When jumping up to the fifth light, I not only use a well timed double jump to reach it faster but I also use pause buffers to grab the ledge to the left.
• For the last light and the last three speakers, there are a number of routes you can take. I tested a few potential routes and the route used was the fastest one I found.

5-3 - The space race

• After the boss hits a rock, if you get extremely close to him and then make him move vertically, you can make him hit the rock again. This level has pre-determined RNG but this double rock hit helped out significantly as without it, the next two rocks are so far away with the RNG I got that it would have flat out been faster to reset the game for better RNG.
  • I don't think it is possible to get the boss to hit a rock more than two times.

5-4 - The tease

• These developers really had the demented idea to make a 16 piece SLIDING PUZZLE the final level in their game for 7 YEAR OLD GIRLS! This is such a cruel joke, I can't believe somebody actually approved this. This level also has pre-determined RNG so if anyone actually wants to play this game, this run isn't going to help you with this level.
• I got an insanely lucky pattern in this run, only needing to do 8 moves. A vast majority of the time, you will get a way worse pattern, needing a minimum of 20+ or even 30+ moves.
• You can only move the pieces every 8 frames.

5-5 - Confessional

• You actually do have to complete this confessional in order to beat the game (and get every question right). Luckily, the questions in this confessional are quite simple unlike the ridiculously specific questions they ask in the other confessionals.
• You can perform multiple menu inputs at once in the confessionals which is not possible on most other menus.
• On the 4th page, we can press right, A and B on the same frame to answer the last question without turning the page, saving just under a second and a half.
• The game is over and you actually get to hear the main theme in the credits. A nice reward after having to endure this game.

Conclusion