The game
One of the earlier Konami games, released in 1983, the year in which MSX was introduced. A port of their own Arcade game from 1981.
TAS strategy
The trick in TASing this game is to find the most efficient routes to the destination points at the top. This may look easy, but it isn't! There are many different possibilities.
A particular trick I discovered is that the Frog can jump faster if the jump-key is alternated with some other key. That helped to jump as fast as it does now.
Goal
The run is only of the first five stages, because the game doesn't really change anymore after stage 5. You can check this video to see what I mean:
http://youtu.be/WtLlNNIMDfQ I'm posting this because at first I thought it repeated after stage 3 (hence a canceled entry for that), but I discovered I was wrong. More info below.
Stages
Stage 1 is fairly simple (and looks thus very optimized). Not much to comment. But in stage 2 there are more trucks on the road, making it a bit tougher to cross it efficiently (trucks are long and are thus easier blocking the way). In stage 3 it becomes even worse to optimize a crossing: there's a deadly snake in the middle part and there are crocodiles at the end. You can walk on the crocodiles, but not on their heads when the mouth is open. Stage 4 is kind of more of the same, but stage 5 is hell. It only features a single crocodile at the end of the crossing.
Notes on the run
You can really notice from stage 3 onwards that there are some pauses and there is some waiting. I've tried my utmost for alternative routes to reduce this waiting, but I couldn't get it more optimized than what I have now. This particular run shows some nice very close shaves and manages to distribute the waiting over several crossings, making it not too boring to watch. In an earlier attempt almost all waiting was in the last crossing, which looked bad and was in the end also not optimal (0.8 seconds slower). So, without having tried all permutations (there would be hundreds or thousands), I do think this is very hard (if not impossible, but I can't be 100% sure of course) to improve.
Stage 5 deserves an explanation. Obviously, in this stage I had to make sure to use the single crocodile as efficiently as possible. For the very last crossing you see that I just miss the last jump (I also tried other routes, but it's simply not possible to make the jump there). So, it looks extremely annoying, but I think this is really optimal. To compensate I do some funny moves for your entertainment before the croc is back at the last destination...
To conclude
The game has more features than visible in this video: there's a lady frog on one of the drifting trees (appears after a while). However, the game is played at such pace, that only for that very last crossing at the end of stage 5 the lady frog becomes visible. This particular port does not seem to feature the bonus fly and crocodile in the destinations.
Enjoy the run!
Noxxa: Accepting for the Vault. While the run does have a certain amount of entertainment value according to some viewers, it does not stand out enough to be worthy of any tier above the Vault.
Ilari: Processing....
