Submission Text Full Submission Page
Edit: cancelled the movie because of new improvements based on Aglar's trick.
This movie improves the previously published movie ([1865] NES A Boy and His Blob by Kyman, SilentSlayers & Aglar in 01:41.73) by 1212 frames thanks to 2 route changes and new tricks to improve furthermore.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.2.2
  • Uses heavy glitches

Tricks used/optimized

This movie's route first created by Zephyrz, who later improved it furthermore. Later, MESHUGGAH optimized it to death, recreated the same strategy with properly controlling speed from the start and used the OoB much cooler.
Blob Out of Bounds with jellybean
Use Punch jellybean on the right side of the screen with at least 235 X pos for blob and 234 X pos for boy and hold left once an additional jellybean goes offscreen (triggering the camera to go to the next scene on the right) while the boy falls down to the hole (blob).
Blob Out of Bounds without jellybean
The same setup but with 245 X pos for blob, press right once you fall down the hole and then left. This way you also get a higher starting speed (32) instead of the previous one (24).
X Speed
To reach fastest speed as fast as possible, you press R*8, empty, R*7, empty, R*3, empty, R. Subpixels alters your speed timer.
Trampoline Y speed
Checks U button every 3rd frame, stops when pressing B. The optimal length is pressing B as soon as possible and minimizing the length of U's.

Possible improvements / the route

I've tried different routes (rocket to left, run right, oob, run right from "credits" to "game end" screen and try spamming apples), but there doesn't seems to be a faster way than what this TAS currently does:
  • root beer jellybean to travel to left over the house
  • ketchup jellybean to throw blob to the right side of the screen 245 X pos
  • punch jellybean for hole then gotta go fast left throwing ketchup jellybean to cage (151 X pos)
  • ketchup jellybean in mid air and punch jellybean to escape the room and reinitalize the screen (go out and in for rat king)
  • ketchup jellybean, punch jellybean, move to next screen
  • ketchup jellybean, punch jellybean to 245 X pos right side of the next screen
  • final run for ketchup jellybean, apple jellybean ending.

Authors' comment

Zephyrz: This was the first game I ever speedran in real time, so I thought it would be appropriate for it to be the first game I complete a TAS of. With the new OoB glitch I really wanted to see how much time it saved on the TAS level, and thought I did well with my initial run; however, that's when MESHUGGAH got a hold of it. He came along and cut it down with optimizations to what you see here today and I honestly couldn't be happier.
I wanna give a huge thanks to MESHUGGAH for teaching me a couple of things about the game and optimizing it passed the point I thought was possible. Also for giving me the opportunity to be a coauthor.
Also shoutouts to the Blob community for pushing the real time run down to pretty close to the TAS and keeping the game at least a little alive.
Blob is love.
=== GAME OVER ===
MESHUGGAH: See you until my next TAS =)

feos: Judging...

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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4437: MESHUGGAH & Zephyrz's NES A Boy and His Blob in 01:21.57
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jlun2 wrote:
A comparison encode would be nice. :)
Well... I won't make a comparison encode
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Sure this is faster and all... but the constant scrolling of Jellybeans totally took away from the entertainment factor and made it annoying to watch. Congrats on the improvement and all, but... meh. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
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Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
Sure this is faster and all... but the constant scrolling of Jellybeans totally took away from the entertainment factor and made it annoying to watch. Congrats on the improvement and all, but... meh. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
But no meh vote?
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Seeing this game destroyed and optimized to death is always amusing. I've tried to understand this new route and utterly failed, but it's good to see it works. Yes!
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.
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I don't appreciate the spamming of the jellybeans scrolling. It obfuscates what's going on for in an uninteresting reason (like seeing a character spaz around the screen to pass time is entertaining, making a bunch of text change rapidly doesn't show off anything cool about the game. It would be like if a Twilight Princess TAS toggled the map on and off CONSTANTLY because it doesn't cost any time to do it) Faster is faster, though! I hope for the final super-optimized run you refrain from doing this is all :)
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As you can see, I've added details of the route in the submission text. " but the constant scrolling of Jellybeans totally took away from the entertainment factor and made it annoying to watch." I think I just copied this from Zephyrz's or the previously published movie. Well, I don't see it would worth to make another edit without this scrolling... "(like seeing a character spaz around the screen to pass time is entertaining, making a bunch of text change rapidly) doesn't show off anything cool about the game." Since the only thing I can do is moving without altering my actions and I'm totally against standing in one place for more than 60 frames, I had to do something.
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It's not a deal breaker, no, but when the next TAS is made the constant scrolling should be limited only to the first part of the TAS (until after landing the rocket) IMO
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Personally, I would've chosen my spots with the text scrolling (perhaps sync them to the blob's jumping when you feed him). However, it wasn't too much of a distraction for me. I like watching your runs, MESHUGGAH. I think you've just about mastered the art of optimizing frames. Look forward to seeing your Ninja Gaiden pacifist run!
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Boohoo, everyone keep crying about it. But one legitimate concern I have with the scrolling is that because DPCM bug doesn't seem to be emulated (or at least it doesn't match console), and because of the type of controller handling this game has, this specific movie may be console unverifiable. I'll try later, but will editing out the scrolling still sync?
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Why not scrolling it to the background music? Sick improvement, congrats to the authors!
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I can go through and remove the bean scrolling if it's a nuisance. It wouldn't take that long, but I don't know how to keep the rerecord count when I do.
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Finally another improvement to the weirdest TAS on the site! I love it! I'm not a big fan of the jellybean scrolling either, but the TAS itself looks solid.
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Zephyrz wrote:
I can go through and remove the bean scrolling if it's a nuisance. It wouldn't take that long, but I don't know how to keep the rerecord count when I do.
You can wait a bit with that one. I think I'm allowed to say that Aglar found an improvement which is actually missing from the previous one and found out by Aglar, throwing a jellybean later to transform blob earlier to the desired state for example at the beginning. edit: So I'm going to reimplement it to this TAS, add Aglar as coauthor and everything will be fine. Soon. edit2: User movie #17473282652744118 8 frames improved by using Aglar's trick from his old ABAHB submission (and Aglar will be added as co author) Zephyrz, would you expand this (the userfile linked above) movie file with jellybean scrolling that "people should like"? And then I ask feos about either resubmit the fucking movie again or just replace it.
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Will do later tonight when I get home from work.
Just doing my Blob.
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I'm apparently the only one who likes the jelly bean scrolling
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Messed around with trying to sync with the audio and don't really see it being that entertaining personally. It just changes the text, no sound, no other visual change, just meh. I say submit v6 and done and done. Also nice trick from Aglar that I'll be using in my RTA runs. I reset quite often because I throw the wrong bean but now I know that it can be salvaged.
Just doing my Blob.
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I will fiddle with what others mentioned regarding jellybean scrolling (sync it to sound for example). Blob animation runs at 4 fps so the scrolling speed would be halved for animations, what I doubt people will enjoy it more (scrolling all the time (2fps) or just every 4frames (4fps)) feos: so, 8 frames improved in the beginning, got new coathor and entertainment will be redone... Cancel the movie and resubmit it, right?
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
I'm currently finishing the game in 4932 frames without a few new founds I discovered by randomly mashing buttons (and watching lua script) and speed controlling is a bit slow progress. So I'm going to make a new movie file and of course upload the 4932 frame long for this publication if you want to publish the movie until I complete the TAS from the beginning...
So, are you working on a new movie of this game or would you say this TAS is optimized to the best of your ability?
MESHUGGAH wrote:
so, 8 frames improved in the beginning, got new coathor and entertainment will be redone... Cancel the movie and resubmit it, right?
After looking at this poll's result, I don't think a new submission is necessary. Eight frames of improvement and the changes to entertainment wouldn't make a significant difference in the outcome of a hypothetical new poll. By the way, I think the screenshot for this improvement's movie entry should feature the credits, but I guess that's not happening... :(
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I'd assume this is the new movie, given it's 38 frames faster than the one in that post.
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Zeupar wrote:
So, are you working on a new movie of this game or would you say this TAS is optimized to the best of your ability?
As long as nobody comes up with a new trick or a route, it is optimized my best ability.
zeupar wrote:
Eight frames of improvement and the changes to entertainment wouldn't make a significant difference in the outcome of a hypothetical new poll.
I nearly rewrote the full movie, so one could argue that the movie is already looks much differently then the previous one (and I used to asking movie replace only for minimal changes, not entire input change).
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Resubmit, new stuff, new encode, new votes. Can you encode it?
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feos wrote:
Resubmit, new stuff, new encode, new votes. Can you encode it?
Ok, I will add the animation/entertainment and ask Aglar's comment in PM and cancel this movie. I will let the ninja encoders to do their stuff.
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I will try to verify whatever, but if there's a spam of input, it very likely won't verify.
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