Zapper: One Wicked Cricket is a platform game for the Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance and PC. The game was developed by Blitz Games and published by Infogrames. Zapper was released in North America in November 2002.
In this game, the player's aim is to traverse over 20 levels as Zapper the cricket in an effort to save Zapper's brother from an evil foe. Along the way you must collect 6 eggs in each level. The concept behind Zapper's gameplay is similar to the classic game Frogger.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Dolphin 4.0-6052 (config : [dead link removed])
- Use glitches to save time
- Luck Manipulation
- Expert difficulty
- Genre: Platform
This TAS was done in 2 months working on it little by little. It could have been done much faster were it not for our collective laziness and studies. We started TASing this game in May after I had done the first levels many times in Dolphin. The emulator was a pain in the ass to work with but eventually we figured out the best settings and version and everything went fine from there.
The TAS was done in Expert mode so that way there is no bonus level after every main level, which would have been a waste of time.
Glitches / Tricks
To be honest, what we define as glitches can be very debatable, because it’s very simple to execute / not very impressive. With that said:
Fast jumping
This is a really crappy name, sorry. This trick is performed by pressing jump and shortly after pressing the direction you want to go to. It is done frame perfectly on every jump in this TAS, although it still works on a bunch of frames which is why it can still save time in RTA. It is the most used trick in the game by far, because we use it to move almost 100% of the time.
Other jump (no name)
By pressing a direction and jumping right after it, you can jump sideways without rotating. This can be chained with a fast jump for more speed.
Jumping through enemies
This is something you probably have experienced even in a casual play, but i feel it should be noted that you can jump through most of the enemies.
This is where most of the “crazy” tricks were born. The game is based on tiles, but moving platforms can be in more than one tile at once. Knowing that, we can jump further, where we’re not supposed to be going, and it can have some weird behaviors, like the camera shitting itself sometimes.
Clipping
Using moving platforms, we can be inside solid tiles, and the game tries to push us away. This can be used to clip past 1 layer thick obstacles to go faster.
Cutscene skips
There are a variety of cutscenes, 2 of which can be skipped. The first one is explained in detail in the canopy heights section, the second one in chain reactor just consists in jumping over the trigger.
Overgrown Undergrowth
Jumping on and off the other crickets without triggering the animation of them being stomped is frame perfect.
Half Acre Wood
This one was really weird to TAS because frames would skip or duplicate, this is the only level where it happened. It didn’t affect the level though.
White Knuckle Water
This is where moving platforms kick in and we can clip through wooden spikes to save time.
Canopy Heights
The first and only really tricky cutscene skip which is really only viable in TAS. The triggers at the end can be “pseudo-activated” by jumping over them without touching them. What we do is trigger all of them except the last one, which gets pseudo activated. Following this we make a frame perfect jump on it so it doesn’t trigger the cutscene (I suspect it is because our position doesn’t get updated properly).
Cutting Edge Inc.
The camera reacts by vomiting on us when we play a bit with rotating platforms. Small clip at the beginning to save some time.
Raptor Cavern
Right after the skeleton mouth, we get an unintended camera, which is not important but i figured i should point it out because it’s cool. :)
Spook Ville
The cowboys were done in 3 cycles. This requires absolute frame perfect inputs for about 100 frames, we’re really lucky that it’s even possible.
Voodoo Choo Choo
To jump on high platforms we have to jump normally, wait a frame, and then fast jump.
Rockface Chase
Had fun with the waiting times :)
Laser Maze
Having a helmet would save so much time, but there is no way right now to get one without breaking a steel box, which requires super zap, which requires orbs.
Pipewerx
We only managed to tie the RTA WR, this level is incredibly weird because you can get speed on random places. Sorry for the headache!
Chain Reactor
The only level where you have to actively collect orbs, making it one of the longer ones.
Hasta La Vista Magpie
We manipulated the behavior of magpie so that she targets us faster. Last input is the final blow.
As a reference, here is the RTA Any% WR, in 20:29 : [dead link removed] (french warning)
As a whole there are probably 10 seconds to be saved at best, this run is hard to optimise further given the few strats that exist.
Suggested screenshot : [dead link removed]
