Game description
The good Mecha Santa plans to spread happiness and cheer all over the world. Princess Pitch, previously just a sidekick in Garden Gnome Carnage, sets out to put an end to those silly plans.
This time around Princess Pitch decides to take on Mecha Santa and his army of robot elves on a difficulty harder than the hardest since it's too easy otherwise.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Hourglass -r81
- Game version: 1.3
- Hardest difficulty, "Reallyjoel's Mom"
- Aims for fastest time
- No damage taken
Emulator Configuration
Set "Multithreading and Wait Sync" to Wrap. Set FPS to 40
WARNING! STABILITY ISSUE!
If you try to playback this game on Windows 8.1, DO NOT USE SAVESTATES since that crashed my Windows and I had to reboot my computer. It could be playbacked on Windows 7 as well, though savestates doesn't seem to work. Not as terrible as on Windows 8.1 at least.
Windows XP works flawlessly with this game, which is also the operating system I used to record this game.
Note to Encoders
The submitted file finishes the game as quickly as possible, skipping both the ending credits and stats screens. Here's an
alternate file which includes these two as they'll make the run more enjoyable to watch.
Explanation of the difficulty
Reallyjoel's Mom is a hidden difficulty which you unlock by holding right for 10 seconds in the difficulty screen. Basically, it's a joke difficulty based on the fact it was in no way meant to be winnable.
A lot more enemies spawn in every room and they have a much higher rate of fire. Now even the robot elves shoot at you, and they're one of the most abundant enemy you'll meet. Of course the bosses themselves are notched up quite a bit as well, but interestingly all enemies still have normal health. (Bosses still have their desperation mode of course)
All powerups are disabled and you can't summon your mother, so you'll have to survive all this with just 8 worth of ammo for your Ice and Rainbow weapons as well as no extra lives. Although you'll still get an extra life for finishing a stage.
Just in comparison, surviving the first room is quite hard, surviving the second room is close to impossible and surviving the third room after the first two is impossible.
Trick used:
This is an ability you can activate by pressing either up, down, left, right, or up, down, right, left. When you activate it you'll become almost perfectly invulnerable, being able to block anything except for the bosses themselves. What this also does is if any enemy (except for bosses) touch you during this time, you'll immediately grab and piledrive them, effectively destroying any non-boss enemy and dealing 8 damage to surrounding enemies where you land. Yes, even large trains, walkers, mini-bosses and turrets.
While in the air you can also throw the grabbed target in order to reach enemies farther away. Granted it'll take a little longer to land again, but it's useful whenever you'd hit more enemies by throwing your target at them.
The piledrive will activate the same frame you input the last movement and will last for 30 frames. When you grab an enemy, it'll take 40 frames before you land again, and up to 64 frames depending on when you throw them. If you throw them on the first possible frame, it'll take just as long as a normal piledrive.
The exact frame you land on you'll be able to initiate a new piledrive. It just so happens that this frame and the next one are invulnerability frames where you won't take any damage. You become vulnerable again on the third frame, and invulnerable again on the fourth frame as you finish the next piledrive. This means there's a one frame window you have to make sure not to get hit while making consecutive piledrives... which is much harder than it sounds like.
If you throw an enemy you won't have these two invulnerability frames, so it depends on the enemy where you can use them.
If you fail to grab an enemy you'll become vulnerable on the same frame it ends, and you won't be able to initiate a new piledrive until the second frame. This means you'll have four vulnerable frames between two piledrives, since the fifth frame makes you invulnerable again.
If you've fired recently, you must wait one frame before you can initiate a piledrive.
Weapons used:
The standard weapon in the game. It fires a brick in a straight line every four frames which does 1 damage per hit. That's 0.25 damage/frame.
One of the two side weapons you can use. It fires a short range fan of ice bits in quick succession. One shot on the first two frames. Then two shots on the next three frames, dealing 0.5 damage per hit. That's 0.3 damage/frame.
The second of the two side weapons you can use. It fires one projectile every ten frames in a straight line which can bounce off the wall twice before it either dissapears or hits and enemy, dealing 3 damage. That's 0.3 damage/frame.
About the run
Piledrives, piledrives, piledrives! That trick is the only reason this run is possible, so expect to see a lot of them throughout the run. Of course there's a lot of action which doesn't involve piledrives, like seeing how nasty certain rooms and enemies will behave on this difficulty and how I'm able to handle them. It's a mix between destroying all enemies just as I approach the door to the next room and finding that one spot in which I'll survive before initiating the next piledrive.Then of course there's the bosses who all tries to kill me with a passion worthy of praise, which I reward by shooting bricks into their faces.
If you enjoy fast-paced arcade action games, then you'll surely enjoy one with a difficulty that was never meant to be beatable.
Last shot against Mecha Santa at frame 37060.
Last input at frame 37619.
Stages:
I'm quickly introduced to the difficulty as I enter the complex by being shot at by 68 elves instead of 20 rushing me (which is the enemy count on Goddess of Explosion difficulty), but all enemies are quickly dispatched as I advance through the rooms. The path I've taken through the stage is the fastest since I have to avoid rooms with the toy trains. 3,4 times more enemies (not sure if this value is constant throughout the run though) in rooms where they can only spawn at a fixed, slow rate are rooms I have to avoid at all cost. They are normally also quite boring to watch too.
The first boss is defeated fast enough as long as I made sure all shots hit and avoid every projectile he fires back at me. It's actually possible to kill the elf on top of the sleigh before he hides behind the cannon, but what's the fun in making it easier for you?
Same as on Stage 1 I have to avoid rooms with toy trains and make sure I'm as close to the next room as possible when I defeat the last enemy. Unfortunately I'll have to fight another type of slow-spawning enemy in the first room, the sweeper bots. No idea what its official name is, so I'll just name them what I think they look like. Thankfully I can make use of their slow speed to play around before it's time to move on. On a side note, I'll only grab presents if I won't lose any time by doing so, which is why I sometimes skip them and sometimes get them. I also destroy the explosive barrels in the room before the boss just for entertainment. The few enemies I could kill with them are insignificant since enemies will continually spawn for 25 seconds in that room, which would've been killed by my piledrives anyway.
The second boss has a field of spiked balls which protects him as long as the turrets are alive. As soon as they're destroyed, you can begin killing him. Interestingly you can piledrive the turrets as they're falling down, and you can also make us of this to throw one of them on the boss, dealing 8 damage to him. If you grab the turret as far down as possible, as you land there'll be a narrow 4 frame window where you can hit the boss by tossing the turret at him. Thanks to Truncated for suggesting this might be possible! Apart from that I just make sure every shot hit as he does his final attack.
On this stage I just try to plow through each room as fast as possible while avoiding paths that lead to toy trains and the goo balls. I do get to meet the Ufo though, and he certainly doesn't like me. But by twitching around on the same spot just below him he'll get indecisive and let me fire a few more shots before the sleigh brigade arrives. Also some more fun with sweeper bots.
This boss gives me a lot more problem since the green and black shots can both block my attacks, so I had to dance around quite a bit in order to always keep a constant rate of fire. Also the green spikey shots he fires when his final attack begins can also block my shots, so I have to use my piledrive to block them.
In order to reach the secret level to get the best ending, I have to piledrive the laser when he fires it. That'll both open the secret passage and deal 30 damage to the boss. Shame I only got time to counter it once though.
The secret stage of the game. Here I unfortunately have to fight the toy trains in one room, so I picked the one which takes the least amount of time. Bonus it's also the least boring one as well. I also get to meet the eyes on legs too, an enemy so weak both my Brick and Rainbow blasts through several of them per shot. They also make the game perform a bit slower when I'm piledriving too many of them at once. This doesn't seem to generate any lag frames oddly enough, must just be my laptop that's slow.
No bosses on this level, only the Goddess of Explosions who gives me the Galactic Princess Buster.
Final stage of the game. Since the rooms loop around everywhere, I really had to test the various paths to find the best one. Apart from that, I just go through the rooms and eliminate any resistance I come across.
The last boss, Mecha Santa. He. Is. NASTY on this difficulty, and it doesn't get easier since all of his shots as well as his big hands both block my attacks. This means I have to try to both get some hits on him in between his barrages and enough space to dodge his attacks at the same time. Of course you can reflect the Giga Bomb Breaker back at him and deal a nice chunk of damage. Then there's his Aurora Force... I have to piledrive as much as I did during the Arctic Thunder. His cycles are timed just enough to catch up to me had I not walked down as much as I could as I activate a new piledrive. Then I just need to dodge the Deep Freeze and fire on.
Possible improvements:
Since so many enemies appear in every room, I'm sure there'll always be a possibility to optimize a few more kills here and there to make everything a teeny bit faster.
Due to an earlier claim that Mecha Santa was impossible to beat without more extra lives, I made an early descision to save up on my Rainbow ammo for the final fight just in case it would turn into a death race of who beats who first. Otherwise I could've used it more for other hard to reach enemies, like the four three turrets on the second boss. Although I don't know how much time that would've saved compared to using them all on Mecha Santa... or if it would save time at all since they do help me get some trick shots on Santa which Bricks wouldn't be able to hit.
During the black screens after I defeat each boss, before the !!!Stage Clear!!! screen, the framerate is lowered to 20. Since Hourglass forces 40 frames per second even during these black screens, it'll thus count two frames for each frame that passes. Thankfully these won't last for too long, so it's not too many extra frames.
Truncated: This has had very good viewer response. Tight action and Swenglish voice acting, and 7 enemies killed per second. All this in a difficulty level which is supposed to be impossible. Easily accepted.
