Hey,
I created a TAS for this game with the hardest difficulty.
The only differences in difficulty that I noticed are:
* Changing the difficulty costs time since I have to wait for the difficulty select screen to load
* More agressive enemies: Enemies attack faster when you are near them
* Tougher enemies: Some enemies must be hit more often to be killed (e.g. turtles)
* Under Water Boss has a lot more health (Easy: 6; Difficult: 14)
The under water boss health difference makes the fight over 30 seconds longer, while every hit looks the same and there's no difference in movement patterns.
It's an octopus which you hurt by throwing parts of stone pillars onto his head. You can see what the fight looks like here:
https://youtu.be/qxranumIJ00?t=14m33s
Of course the TAS hits him as soon as he can be hit again and doesn't let him move around.
Mainly because of this boss I'd like to ask whether it would be ok to run this game with the easiest difficulty?
Additionally there is one trick that I did in real time while testing possible shortcuts but I couldn't redo it ever since. It saves a lot of time in the second under water level.
I did that trick in VisualBoyAdvance-1.8.0-beta3, unfortunately I have no recording of it.
The trick is to jump onto a platform from below that wasn't intended to be reachable. The guys in the lets play tried that trick too but didn't succeed:
https://youtu.be/qxranumIJ00?t=11m44s
Here is what I found out so far:
* Your maximum jump height depends on the height of your last landing
* By swimming into a platform from the side you can stand on a lower point inside the platform than when just landing on top of it. The lowest point I could stand on the upper platform was at a height of 687. The top of my jump ends at 690 though, while the number indicates the distance of Pink Panther to the top edge of the level (smaller number = higher position).
* Jumping onto a fish does not seem to increase your landing height, it also didn't help to increase the height at the top of my jump
* There are invisible barriers inside the platform. I tried landing on them but didn't succeed.
The only things that I definitely remember are:
* I tried multiple times without reloading the save state, which means I jumped and landed multiple times before doing the trick.
* I swam sidewards at the end of my jump just before landing on the platform.
I uploaded my current TAS as well as the ram watch. Maybe someone can help me figuring out this trick.
* Ram watch:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/40234034165931938
* TAS (highest difficulty, complete game):
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/40234101517899658
* TAS (up to the point where you could do the trick):
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/40234258057359607
