- Emulator used: BizHawk_1.7.4
- Takes damage to save time
- 1 entertainment/speed tradeoff
- Uses Hard difficulty
Well after starting this game back in 2012, I finally decided to finish it. I honestly thought the game would be much shorter, but the last stage and an unskippable bonus stage added a great deal of time. I'll explain that more later.
So you play as George Jetson who has a vacuum that can pull enemies and blocks to you, and you can then shoot those to damage other enemies. You can also suction to walls and ceilings, creating a lot of skippable areas (mostly unintentional).
Using the hard difficulty in this game adds a great deal more enemies, specifically the dog that is running at you within the first few seconds of playing the game. How anyone would ever dodge it their first try is beyond me and it seems like a cheap place to put an enemy. However it doesn't matter in a TAS! Also, it makes some enemies require more hits to kill, such as the bats from stage 8.
Tricks/glitches
Block clipping
This game has some interesting mechanics when you crouch. If you crouch while standing inside (or under in some cases) a block, the game wants to eject you out of whichever direction you're closest to according to the block. Using this, positioning yourself under a block next to a wall you can wedge yourself into any wall. The places where this is actually useful based on level design is minimal though.
Duck jumping
Ducking one frame before jumping allows you to do an even shorter jump than pressing jump for one frame. This allows me to enter doors faster in the first world after hitting the switches.
Duck Room Exit
If you duck just before reaching the room's exit you can trigger the sequence a few frames faster. This is used on every room switch in the game.
Insta Boss Kill
This only works on the second boss, that I know of. I had originally beaten the second boss the intended way by shooting the blocks up into them. It wasn't until the 3rd stage boss that I found out you can suction to a ceiling and that for some odd reason damages enemies/bosses. I went back to the second boss thinking that might save a little bit of time. But lo and hehold the bosses just poofed, dying almost instantly. I'm still not sure why this boss dies instantly and none of the others, but I'll take it.
First frame Jumping
On stages that it starts you in the air, there is one frame where you can jump. I use this on stage 2 boss to position myself where I get hit, and use the block to cancel the hurt animation.
Ceiling Suction Jumping
If you position your ceiling suction just right you can jump around the corner of a ceiling. I use this is a couple of places, including the very first room of the first stage. This eliminates having to run to the wall on the right and then jumping over.
Suction Boosting
If you suction to the ceiling but cancel it and jump as soon as you cancel, you get a little minijump that allows me to extend a jump. This gets me across large gaps fairly quickly, since I don't have to stop to suction up the wall on the right side of the gap.
Now you have a basis for tricks used in this run, time to go more indepth into the game.
Stage 1
Room 1
The first room of this stage has blocks, so initially I was looking for a place to use the block clipping, but unfortunately the level goes mostly upwards. Clipping into any of these walls doesnt allow you to travel upwards that I have found.
Room 2
This room has a collapsing bridge that I spent a considerable amount of time trying to avoid. I tried the block clip glitch in the area before it, and tried to fall through the bridge in some way by landing on it. I also tried to suction a block on my head and use the block clipping glitch to go through the falling tiles. Unfortunately blocks fall right through the bridge pieces.
Room 3
Finally, a room where the block clip glitch is useful! I had originally tried to clip through the door area of the tube riding thing, but that always just triggered riding the tube, it wouldn't actually take me through to the other side like with most walls. So then I thought well there's a tiny wall down where the switch is, perhaps I could use that. I didn't think it would work because I didn't think I could get under the block in that tiny space. But after a little experimenting you can actually suction the block up from the hole while you're running and you'll fall through. The block stays on the ledge above but it still pushes you left when you duck! Success! Clips all the way through to the other side of the screen. I had to suction the other block into the same position on the second switch to be able to do that.
Room 4
Hooray another switch/block combo. Setting this up is much faster than the old way of waiting for the bird carrying the block so I could clip higher up the tube. Now I don't have to wait for anything I can just use the trick right there where the switch is. Boom right to the end of the room.
Boss
Back you dirty Ape, Back! So this guy usually takes 7 hits to kill, but for some reason, positioning of the last hit allows him to die in just 6 hits. I still haven't figured out why, but that's why the last hit might seem awkward to you.
Stage 2
Room 1
Not too much interesting about this room, not significant skips. The slowing down near the smashers is necessary so that the flying enemy next to it doesnt sink down and I can just run underneath him. It doesn't lose time running into the side of the smasher, because luckily this game retains your running speed as soon as you come off a wall.
Room 2
A vertical climb that becomes a little bit tricky with the awkwardly placed enemies. Getting hit by an enemy usually means falling all the way down to your death. I use the suction trick here to grab the enemies and shoot at just the right time so it doesn't decrease my movement speed.
Boss
Only 2 rooms for this stage for some reason. Here is the fun instakill boss! Read the insta boss kill trick above for more info. Also I position the blocks to where the stage complete animation gets caught in the air. This wastes 2 frames and is the only place I do an entertainment/speed tradeoff.
Stage 3
Room 1
In this first room there is a wall that crushes you from the right if you're not fast enough. You're supposed to use the switches to keep pushing the wall back, but you can make it all the way to the top with reasonable time to spare. The next room doesn't transition until the wall makes it all the way, so it's a good thing I don't have to reset it. The rest of the level is just running right and using the enemy grab trick to not lose time. Then I use the duck trick to trigger the next room faster, it even works through the ledge.
Room 2
Another room with awkward enemies. No problem for a TAS though. There are 2 routes for this level. The first route includes going to the right and running on these giant wheels for a considerably long time. I tested both routes and going what seems like the long way is actually faster, because you spend a looooong time running on those giant circular rooms. The falling blocks in this room actually hurt you and you can't move them around as you could a regular block, so no glitching here. In fact there's no use for the block clip anywhere in the 3rd stage.
Room 3
Not much interesting here.
Room 4
In this room you have to hit the switch with a block to turn the room around so that you can reach the right side of the screen. I actually used the block clip technique and glitching into the right side does indeed trigger the room transition, however it turned out to be quite a bit slower than just doing it normally.
Room 5
More awkward enemies. The little mishap at the bottom is actually intentional so that I can get a position to instakill that enemy. Getting hurt in this game only saves time in very few places because the hurt animation completely stops you and takes quite a while.
Room 6
Another room turner, this one being much simpler.
Room 7
Not much here just going down down down.
Boss
This boss is where I first discovered the vacuum damage glitch. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional seeing as you have to damage yourself to be on top of the boss. You can get a lot of hits in and saves so much time over waiting for the blocks to come up. When the boss is dead, I show off the ability to suction a block into oblivion. What actually happens is that the block goes slightly inside the wall. Whenever that happens it automatically teleports to any ledge above. In this case, off the top of the screen (I imagine).
Bonus stage
The first of the bonus stages occurs here, and I manipulate the black ball to fall to the left. That's the fastest way to end the stage.
Stage 4
Room 1
I manipulate all the enemies this guy summons to be the little green goblin thingies. They run much faster than the other 2 enemies, so having them exit the screen faster transitions the next part of the level faster. Rest of this room is just running right for the most part.
Room 2
Using the enemy grab trick again to maintain my speed up the slope. Unfortunately the second slope is too long to be able to go all the way up it so I inevitably lose some of my speed. I'm really confused about how they coded this armadillo, if he's barely even off the screen he won't roll down, which I'm sure was his purpose. /shrug. I also grab this suction powerup here since it's the easiest one to grab since I missed the one in stage 1 due to the glitching used.
Room 3/Boss
Using the generous hitboxes of the green bouncy enemies to run under most of them. This room also contains one of the most annoying bosses in the game as well. I manipulate him to appear on screen as much as possible. You can't manipulate individual appearances on the screen, only the whole cycle from when he starts flying at you. It's also something to take note I wanted to kill him as low on the screen as possible, so finding a cycle where he appears on screen quite a bit and ends up dying low on the screen was a bit difficult. This is because he can also be on a cycle where he flies under the level and above the level, not being able to be hit at all.
Bonus Stage
This bonus stage just requires me to reach a certain point of the very top platform.
Stage 5
This stage is essentially a boss stage. The first boss is 2 little blue dudes that you have to throw into electricity to damage. When the wall turns, the reason I throw the first blue guy into the switch on the right and not the left, is that the other blue guy will then be at the top because the room will turn to the right instead of the left. If he's up there it's actually longer to reach him to grab him than it would be to fire the first one into the switch on the right. I feel like that was a terrible explanation though. The second part of this room is a robot fight, and luckily there's a ceiling. You know what that means. Yup I don't have to wait for enemies to shoot into him I can just keep suctioning to damage him and being inside his head doesn't even damage me. The he just becomes a head which can be thrown against the side of the screen in rapid succession, and that ends stage 5.
Stage 6
Room 1
Yay a boring water level. Luckily there's finally a place for another block clip trick later on. For now there's not much to this level, just reach the right side. I use the whale suctioning to give me a slight boost near the end.
Room 2
This room has lots of underwater walking in it, hooray! For whatever reason the first enemy underwater spazzes out when I float over top of him. I don't think he enjoys this level either. Near the end I found one frame where I can damage myself right as I'm exiting the water and it doesn't cause the normal damage animation. That's good because normally getting hit you'd have to fall all the way until you hit a surface for the animation to end. This lets me right right through the enemy on the ledge above as well.
Room 3
Yay, block clipping! Using the teleporter isn't the normal route I had intended but once I saw that it teleported you to a place that's pretty close to the end of the level, and that there were blocks right next to it, I knew the glitch had to work. And it works pretty well, cutting off about 1000 frames.
Boss
Here's another boss with a ceiling, so you know what's coming. The weird grabbing of the blocks early on is to manipulate him out of hiding, about 100 or so frames earlier than normal. I found it impossible to kill him in one cycle, even if I had another heart to damage myself with, he'd already be hiding again. I have to kill him normally for the last 2 hits.
Bonus Stage
Yay a 60 second unskippable bonus stage! And it's nothing but flying points items, nothing to dodge! Feel free to fastforward this waste of 3600 frames. The first run into a wall is to show just how I feel about this bonus stage as a whole.
Stage 7
And after 60 seconds of boring bonus stage we get... An autoscroller. Perfect! It's not the worst autoscroller though. Getting caught on flat walls doesn't waste time as long as you continue to hold right. Your scooter will just catch up with the screen. Getting hit in this stage is inevitable in order to keep max speed.
Boss
The boss of this level is a guy on a scooter who will move forward any time to try to jump on him. He's rather annoying, but getting hit by him is unavoidable without slowing down. I stay next to him instead of jumping around, so that I can hit him when he falls or jumps.
Stage 8
Room 1
I actually like this stage from a TASing perspective. It has tons of enemies and lots of odd angles to skip certain portions. And some cool music. The first miniboss here is eliminated in one cycle. Like I said before the bats in this stage take 2 hits on the hard difficulty, but it's still faster to kill this first one than get hit by him. There's no way to avoid getting hit by him if I don't kill him.
Room 2
This room is a giant room where the ceiling falls and you have to hit switches to raise the ceiling. Unfortunately this stage is too long to be able to skip all the switches, but it's still pretty lenient I think.
Room 3
Yay, another opportunity for the block clip glitch. Used it to skip right next to the exit.
Room 4
This is an interesting room. I enjoyed TAS'ing this level, because there are a lot of neat jumps. I must get hit by this stupid bat up at the top because there is nothing to kill him with up there. And I neeeeed to use that ceiling suction shortcut, otherwise I'd have to run all the way to the right of the map and use a teleporter to get up there.
Bonus Stage
Reaching the right side of the screen ends this bonus stage. Which is how all bonus stages should be.
Final Stage
A large portion of this final stage is fighting three previous bosses (stage 4, stage 2, then stage 1 respectively). Yes you must fight the flying cat again... Also, the monkey now requires more hits to kill. The first fight with Zora, I was hoping to use the ceiling for that ceiling damage trick, but unfortunately you can't suction to the ceiling yet for whatever reason. So you have to damage her the old fashioned way. The second fight with her, I have to manipulate the summons to be favorable. Getting 3 green goblins and 2 flying enemies for instance is NOT favorable. Getting at least 2 blocks is necessary to be able to grab all the enemies to damage her. The last fight with her the orbs floating around her have some frame rule before you're able to grab them, I just damage myself to be able to grab them faster.
And that's the Jetsons! I hope you enjoyed watching.
Possible Improvements:
Better rng manipulation specifically on the Stage 4 boss. Or finding another completely different glitch that's useful.
Thanks to everyone who somewhat followed my progress on IRC, and encouraged me to finish it.
feos: Accepting as a weak moon and publishing...
