This movie improves the previously published movie ([1865] NES A Boy and His Blob by Kyman, SilentSlayers & Aglar in 01:41.73) by 1358 frames thanks to 2 route changes with both old and new tricks.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.2.2
  • Uses heavy glitches
  • Aims for shortest input

"New" tricks

This movie's route first created by Zephyrz, who later improved it furthermore.
Later, MESHUGGAH tried to optimize it to death, recreated the same strategy with properly controlling speed from the start and used the OoB much cooler.
Even later, Aglar saw his trick was missing (which was used in his solo ABAHB submission but the previously published):
- which is a 8 frame save by throwing (feeding blob) a jellybean at the beginning on the very first frame and then throwing your desired (root beer for rocket) jellybean to change blob's transformation.
This trick leads to another potential as
  • throwing OR feeding a random jellybean
  • feeding OR throwing (you can switch the order of this) ketchup to desired location to teleport blob
  • throwing a desired jellybean (for example punch)
Which can be used to teleport blob and transform to trampoline earlier, but you only start with 6 ketchup jellybeans. This means only the already existing strategy could be replaced with "jellybean combining" as long as feeding the blob (going to him and waiting to throw the bean) is faster than just simply teleporting him and then feeding him.

Other tricks

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.

The route of this TAS

Few things to know:
  • You can't feed blob with a jellybean which is the same as the last jellybean effect
  • You need to recall blob to continue progress when he left on another screen
  • You need to wait jellybeans landing on the ground before recalling (B) blob
  • You need to wait blob to be ready to eat a jellybean, and it's always faster if he jumps at least a few pixels.

Screen 1

  • throw a jellybean right after pressing the start button (to feed blob)
  • select root beer jellybean and throw it (this will transform blob into root bear instead of first thrown jellybean)
  • this TAS throws a third jellybean for no reason (minimal entertainment value)

Screen 2

  • recall blob and feed him a jellybean
  • throw a ketchup jellybean to OoB
  • recall after OoB
  • throw ketchup jellybean for next screen

Screen 3

  • feed blob with tangerine (trampoline)
  • recall blob and feed him with a jellybean
  • throw ketchup jellybean to the left side (blob will teleport from the cage to the left side)
  • throw tangerine (trampoline) jellybean so blob transforms
  • after exiting/reentering, recall blob and throw ketchup jellybean
  • feed blob with tangerine (trampoline)
  • recall blob

Screen 4

  • throw ketchup jellybean and feed blob with punch (hole) jellybean
  • recall blob

Screen 5

  • run left and throw ketchup jellybean for next screen (at the edge of the screen)

Screen 6

  • throw apple jellybean and face to the right side (and blob facing to the left side. IIRC it's impossible to trigger the ending while blob faces to the right)

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 ===
Aglar: I watched the run and saw that my old trick was missing - that's all.
MESHUGGAH: See you until my next TAS =)

feos: Accepting to Moons and an improvement to the existing run.
sheela901: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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MESHUGGAH
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I will write down the route and add it to submission text once someone makes an encode. edit: thanks solarplex =) Also jellybean scrolling synced to blob animation and then music (order of priorities).
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
..once someone makes an encode.
Link to video
mklip2001
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Good job! I find it sort of funny that just like the last time this got published, Aglar joins the author list because people don't incorporate some trick he had before. Is this trick so difficult to pull off that somehow only Aglar thought of it or can do it properly? It just seems like a fairly unusual situation; I'm not trying to suggest that Aglar doesn't belong or anything.
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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Aglar's trick in his solo submission was throwing the jellybean on the first frame and change the transformation by throwing another jellybean at next occasion. edit: well, it's not a trivial trick/exploit. I've compared the possible routes and I found out that using this trick on a few other spots in this new route saves 8 (the beginning) + 136 frames in total. Since Aglar PM'd me once I submitted the movie, I think it was fair to credit him and rework the TAS with the new knowledge.
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Patashu
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The new movie is so good. Love it!
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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That item switching made my evening! Totally Yes vote.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Alright, this was a LOT better. It didn't seem so epileptic... it went with the music and worked well. The fact everything is described in detail in the original post also made it easier to digest for someone seeing it for the first time. [My Wife came downstairs as I queued it up and watched along with me. The info in the post made it all come to life and answered her questions.. outside of "How the hell do people find this stuff?!" Definite Yes Vote! Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
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Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
"How the hell do people find this stuff?!"
My general strategy is trying to understand how the developers coded the game.
    1. I always start with creating a HUD lua script that shows object positions,states,timers etc and then try every input (to see effects of reset, how does input polling works, u+d+l+r etc). 2. After that I document the physics/rules of the game, divide it into smaller chunks/parts and figure out how to meet the required conditions to finish the levels. 3. If everything done right, I could start a pretty solid 1st level TAS which is very useful since games tends to desync. And 80% of the time I have to restart a TAS and rebuild it if a new trick or idea discovered. 4. Once I know the possible ways of manipulating those values that might reduce the time of the speedrun (RNG based on timer? Enemy subpos depends on previous objects? Level ID based on SRAM init? Resetting increases a debug counter?), I will reach a point where I can't make further tests to try to beat my own TAS.
TL;DR: I make assumptions (how does the game works) and make tests regarding what I think and see from lua script output (HUD) up to a point that I can't come up with anything else to try.
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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. ---- [2692] NES A Boy and His Blob by MESHUGGAH, Zephyrz & Aglar in 01:19.14
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Did the name change because that's the formal catalog name in the Library of Congress? Like "Archer Maclean's Mercury" or "American McGee's Alice"?
"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
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Excuse me, but isn't this movie uses a major skip glitch?
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
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Kurabupengin wrote:
Excuse me, but isn't this movie uses a major skip glitch?
I'm pretty sure it isn't. It goes out of bounds, and all the rest is the result of that. Watch how gradually the time was going slightly shorter throughout the publication history, it's not like the game took 10 minutes normally, then suddenly it took 1. It's a heavy glitch abuse, non-major skip glitch.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I have verified this iteration of the run verifies on console, if DPCM bug is worked around: in other words: input is not exactly as it would be from controller. This was true of the original movie as well. That said, if a button mashing robot tied to buttons played this back it would also very likely sync. Video will come when all the others do, in a couple weeks.
true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried