(Link to video)

Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun in 19:30.83 by Noxxa

Response to my Tintin in Tibet run was actually more positive than I initially expected. So I decided I should run the other Tintin game as well.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk v1.5.3
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Plays on hardest difficulty
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Goes through even more autoscrollers than the other Tintin run
Note: like Tintin in Tibet, this game is only released in Europe, so an European ROM is used.

About the game

Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun (also known in ROM names as either its French name, "Tintin: Le Temple du Soleil" or "Adventures of Tintin, The - Prisoners of the Sun", and also known as just "Prisoners of the Sun") is the other licensed game based on the Tintin comic series. The game Prisoners of the Sun adapts the two-part story of the comic albums The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun.

Gameplay notes

  • See the notes on Tintin in Tibet. Gameplay is mostly the same, but with a few differences.
  • Tintin's controls are slightly different from Tibet: B doubles as a crouch button when not holding an item, and it's possible to jump out of a crouch or picking up an item.
  • On Hard difficulty, Tintin has only 3 hit points compared to Tibet's 4.
  • Falling from large heights does a maximum of 2 damage points. This is used a few times for shortcuts.
  • Hitboxes are still terrible.

Stage by stage comments

Stage 1 - Museum

  • The first stage is already long and boring.
  • There's a little Z-axis movement in this stage: pressing up or down to switch movement planes in order to get past some obstacles.
  • It's possible to corner boost when switching movement planes. This gains a few pixels here and there.
  • It's impossible to jump over the people walking around without taking damage. Their hitbox extends vertically to way past jump height.

Stage 2 - Fireball

Stage 3 - Garden

  • This is the definitive Run Right For Justice: The Stage. It's long and completely flat.
  • This stage also introduces a new form of movement (which isn't in Tibet): climbing ledges by standing under them and pressing up. Often times in later stages, I need to carry a crate or rock or something somewhere in order to be able to climb ledges this way.
  • The bullets from the right side of the screen are spawned based on position.

Stage 4 - Car

  • The first minigame of sorts in this game.
  • Horizontal position does not matter for time or speed purposes, which gives me something to play around with - driving around as recklessly as possible.

Stage 5 - Docks

  • We finally reach a stage with some actual platforming.
  • Level design in this game is not as foolproof as in Tibet: it's possible to use a really precise jump at the start of the stage to prevent having to drag the vertical pillar of goods down. There are more little sequence breaks like this later on.

Stage 6 - Docks chase

  • First real autoscroller in this game. Relatively straightforward.

Stage 7 - Ship

  • This stage has several switches, which either open certain doors or move up certain boxes, allowing further progress.
  • The jumps to get over the sailors are really precise. Their hitboxes are bigger than they appear.

Stage 8 - Town

  • By running, briefly crouching and then jumping, I barely manage to get under one of the falling vases without taking damage.

Stage 9 - Mountain

  • I sequence break a lot of this stage:
    • Early on (when getting the health pickup) the player is supposed to use another route to go down safely, but by using pixel perfect positioning next to the spikes on a platform, and then landing high enough on the next platform, it's possible to go down without taking fall damage. It's also possible to just go down and take damage, but that would hinder further sequence breaks.
    • The people with llamas follow Tintin along the horizontal axis and move faster than him, which means it's not possible to avoid taking damage from them unless you grab a rock and put it in front of them to block their path. Early on this is trivial because the rock is right there, but later on the rocks are far away from them and it takes a lot of time to go out of the way, pick them up, and return them. Fortunately, it's also possible to pass them taking just 1 point of damage.
    • There's a big and really precise jump (the jump has to be frame-perfect with maximum velocity), followed by another big jump, which allows skipping to the end part of the stage with the final llama guy. I just take damage to get past him, and the end of the stage is there.

Stage 10 - Vulture Descent

  • Get used to seeing autoscrollers here for about four minutes, as there are three of them in a row here.
  • Another gameplay change, and basically a vertical autoscroller. Even holding down the whole time, it's still slow.
  • It's just barely impossible to skip the second clock item. Time will run out and the stage will end even though the floor is in sight.

Stage 11 - Avalanche

  • Another autoscroller, this time with Tintin facing the screen.
  • At least the music in this stage is good.

Stage 12 - River

  • And now we're in a canoe. The stage is now a horizontal autoscroller.
  • Movement speed as well as scroll speed are way too slow.
  • I play a game of whack-a-crocodile here in an attempt to make it any interesting.

Stage 13 - Waterfall

  • Finally, another platform stage.
  • I do some more sequence-breaking jumps here

Stage 14 - Cave

  • There are a lot of doors here that lead to all kinds of other doors. It can get confusing very fast. It's also subtly divided in four 'sections'.
  • A precise jump in the first section allows me to get to the area with the rock without having to take a detour and enter a few doors.
  • You're also supposed to push a tall rock down to land safely, but who cares about safety? The rock is enough to reach the needed exit anyway.
  • Another sequence break in the second section skips having to move around the tall rock at all. Oddly, falling off the platform with the health pickup makes it impossible to reach the ledge, but jumping off it (or jumping off the rock) works fine. Falling off the top ledge also works (and is faster), but causes taking fall damage, which is still needed for later on.
  • There's another "rocks fall" section after moving down the second tall rock in the third section, but by careful camera positioning it's possible to avoid triggering it.
  • Defying safety again in the fourth section. Normally, to go down there, you're supposed to enter multiple doors and go through another "rocks fall" section, but just falling down there works just as well.
  • Midway through the fourth section (a bit after the damage fall), I do another precise jump to avoid having to get the rock up ahead.

Stage 15 - Newspaper

  • Just like Tibet, the semifinal stage is a puzzle. Unlike Tibet though, this is just one puzzle. It's a 15-puzzle.
  • Solving the puzzle optimally involved luck manipulation for an optimal pattern, analyzing the patterns (which was only feasible using some memory digging and lua displays) and using external tools to solve it as fast as possible.

Stage 16 - Escape

  • Another autoscroller. Pretty basic, aside from the spear-wielding enemies with really tall hitboxes.

Other comments:

Recommended screenshot:

TODO (suggestions?)
Thanks for reading this, and thanks for watching!

feos: Accepting for Moons.
Ilari: Processing, if I can make anything sane out of this dump (or convert to lsmv and do a proper dump).

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4175: Noxxa's GBC Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun in 19:30.83
Editor, Experienced player (607)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
Nice run, Mothrayas. I enjoyed the antics in the autoscroller stages (reckless driving, walking right behind enemies in the last stage) and the platforming of course. Also nice to see all the little sequence breaks that can be done in this game that weren't in the other one. I was entertained, yes vote!
mklip2001
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This was pretty good. Certainly there's run-right-for-justice stuff, but the box moving added variety, especially when you had sequence breaks. As a fan of the books, I was pretty amused to see which parts made it into the game, like starting at the butterfly museum. The most fun part for me was probably seeing the horrible collision detection in the car autoscroller. I'd say this gets a weak Yes in entertainment. Nice job!
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Post subject: Re: #4175: Mothrayas's GBC Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun in 19:30.83
Editor, Expert player (2457)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Mothrayas wrote:
I decided I should run the other Tintin game as well.
Thank you. The result was good. While you're at it, would you mind doing the Genesis or SNES version of Tintin in Tibet?
NitroGenesis
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Man that car autoscroller was a snooze, but aside from that it looks OK. Gets a yes from me.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Post subject: Re: #4175: Mothrayas's GBC Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun in 19:30.83
Noxxa
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Aqfaq wrote:
Thank you. The result was good. While you're at it, would you mind doing the Genesis or SNES version of Tintin in Tibet?
I don't have any interest in doing either of the games on either console, unfortunately. The console games look slower, messier, longer, and their soundtracks are not nearly as good as their Gameboy chiptune versions. It would feel like creating the same runs again, only worse. I don't feel like doing that.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2522] GBC Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun by Noxxa in 19:30.83
Joined: 2/21/2008
Posts: 255
I never knew there was such a large demand for boxes full of spikes.
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26