- emulator used: fceu-0.98.16-luke
- Kills no enemies or any hazardous objects
- Aims for fastest time
- Uses warps
- Abuses programming errors
- Heavy luck manipulation
This is a 11 seconds and 43 frames improvement over my previous submission. The improvement comes from an extra "III" that I've found, and a little better cards manipulation. The run is exactly the same until the circus stage, and it's my final submission for this game. I've tried doing a non-pacifist run, but I couldn't manipulate the cards any better in the first stage, so I decided to go with the pacifist rule, which is really impressive in this game (it separates a TAS from a speedrun even more than the manipulation, I think). Pulling a pacifist run in this game in real time would be damn hard. On the other side, the game is too easy on a normal play through.The pacifist difficulty gets especially apparent at the outside factory stage at the a part where there's a really difficult jump over a green worm box that requires the use of the preserved momentum glitch. There was only one possible way to pass through that point. A simple 1 frame or pixel wrong would've meant certain death.
Warps / Whack'a Mole
The warps were only usefull when they were used to skip pizza contests. It was surprisingly faster to just finish the level if it had no pizza contest at it's end. So, the run uses 2 warps only, the one at the circus and the one at the haunted mansion (both with wack'a mole stages).
On the whack'a mole stages, I hit the moles too because they deduct 2 seconds from the time count, ending the level sooner :)
The bugs
The bug I exploit is to keep the extra horizontal speed of either the invincibility (capcom symbol!) or the black outfit powerups after they wear off. This is acomplished by not standing on the ground for longer than 1 frame (keep jumping, rabbit!).
Jumping or using magic as soon as the level starts is possible, even if the character is in mid-air.
After the movie ends, if the title screen passes, there should be a whack'a mole demo, but the game will crash (not sure why, but it must've been the way I played it, because other player's submissions didn't produce this effect. I suggest this to go in the AVI if the movie is published.
Manipulating the pizza battles
- The types of pizzas change every 64 level frames (that is every level seconds). But the enemy may choose these pizzas in 2 different ways, which happens every 32 frames, explained later.
- The hundreds and thousands of the score also affect the pizza cards set the enemy gets. I didn't check the ten thousands, but the tens doesn't affect it.
- So, with the same score and clock, the enemy will get always the same pizza cards set.
How the enemy picks the cards
- Each level second is divided into 2 parts of 32 frames. If the level finishes in the first one, he ALWAYS tries to get the 1st and 3rd column of his cards set. If the level finishes on the second set of 32 frames, then the enemy will ALWAYS try to get the 2nd and 4th column cards.
- The enemy shows an animation of the hand passing through all his cards once, and then he starts the real card picking at the top row, first chosen column (1st or 2nd, depending on the 32 frame rule). This is a slow animation, so picking the top row cards is much faster.
- When the enemy says "the area champion goes first" you have to press "A" to continue. This is how we can control which exact card he will get, by delaying the A button. Every 2 frames delay, he will pick the next card, and so on, untill repeating in 16 frames.
- The only way to make him pick the card that is not in the chosen columns, is by making him pick a card that has already been picked in the chosen column. This way he will skip to the directly next card on the next column.
This produces some weird waits during levels, but it's for the greater good, believe me. With a pacifist run being over 4 minutes faster than previous submissions on a game that is mostly "walking to the right" anyone will notice that the secret is in the pizza battles.
As mentioned previously, this is my last submission of the game, and I firmly believe it's very close to the best this game has to offer to this site. Possible improvements may be a little better luck manipulation on the cards, but not much else can be done.
mmbossman: This submission has been given another chance at publication. If you feel it should be published, instead of returning to the grue, please post WHY in the thread. Similarly, if you do NOT think this movie should be published, post WHY.
mmbossman: A lot more people seem to like this than two years ago. Either our standards have fallen, or we are easier to entertain. In any case, I think this was a good run of a very blah game, but I don't see any reason to not accept it. So, accepting for publication.
