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Skunny is a DOS game made in 1993 by Copysoft. It's a rather terrible platformer, infamous by all those who have played it for its catastrophically slippery controls and very fast gameplay that means you'll just slip and slide into pits. The company who made it, Copysoft, is also known for the famous travesty that is Skunny Kart, a game built of corporate espionage and terrible decisions. But we're not talking about that today. Today, it's time for the first Skunny game, Skunny: Back to the Forest!
This game was recently on the bad games tournament Kusogrande, run by Brossentia on twitch. I was in that match, and it was a high stakes match. Four people, the top three would move onto the next stage of the tournament, but the loser would go to a tie-breaker round where they'd have a chance to be knocked out! Every single person in that match absolutely despised this game, except me, who asked the question mid-race of "Does this game have runs? Or a TAS?" I won the match, by the way.
It did not. So, I picked it up to do a cursory TAS to explore what a speedrun of this game would even look like. It's short, ten levels. The object of the game is to go through each level, avoiding frogs and pits (you have health but it's barely an issue, toads kill you in one hit though). Once you reach the end of the level, there's a nut you pick up that lets you go into a totally not superman mode. You then fly back through the level and hit all the toads, freeing your friends from their evil clutches. Through exploration, I've created what I believe to be a rather good TAS showcasing the perfect route through each level. Hopefully I can actually put some of this into RTA but uh, I seriously doubt it.
WARNING: THERE IS A LOUD BEEP AT THE START OF THE VIDEO BECAUSE DOS EMULATION.

TAS Objectives

  • Aims to complete the game as fast as possible, while also being entertaining.
  • Play as Skunny's girlfriend, Rosie, because even though it loses me literally 3 frames or so, ladies are cooler so there. You DO miss a squirrel in a varsity jacket though.
  • Find effective strategies and tricks to get through the levels
  • No! No! Hitting Toads is a bad idea!

Strategies employed in the TAS

  • Running. Skunny (Or Rosie in this case) walks very slowly, for a short period of time, and then begins to pick up speed. If she runs too fast, she becomes literally uncontrollable. We want to be in this stage as often as possible, because obviously it's the fastest.
  • Jumping. Jumping conserves your momentum from when you were running, so if possible, we wait until we're running to jump. This is not always possible, but is employed whenever we possibly can. You can jump as soon as you touch the ground, and those jump inputs DO have a buffer window so it's possible to do frame perfect jumps relatively easily RTA.
  • Bouncing. The fastest movement possible is jumping from the fastest running speed and hitting an enemy. This will LAUNCH the squirrel far away. Whenever possible, we want to chain bounces. Sometimes this is impossible, and if there isn't a good reason to jump (AKA jumping over a pit), then jumping on an enemy to launch isn't worth it, for the amount of time it takes for Skunny to fall back down with gravity.
  • Mid-air directional changes. When Skunny is at the highest speed possible on the ground, if he lets go of the direction he's moving, or tries moving in the opposite direction, he slides for like a millionty billion frames (It's maybe a second long). You cannot jump when you're sliding, making sliding useless, and it will be the cause of almost all deaths RTA. So how do we change directions? Well, there's no sliding when in the air. In fact, there's no momentum change whatsoever. You can immediately change direction and keep all momentum, making for an easy way to bounce if enemies are nearby your descent, or an easy way to dodge obstacles in a tricky jump.
  • Sliding. Although Sliding is practically useless, it has one use: entering levels. When you're running and you hit a wall, Skunny is stunned for about half a second, wasting precious precious frames in your very exciting and important speed game. So, what is one to do? Well, if you let go and hold back to slide, but then let go of the back movement, Skunny will slide into the entrance to the level and not bonk.
  • Praying to God. It's really only appropriate when you interact with Skunny, though obviously, God cannot hear you. He's too busy being overwhelmed by that incredible tune. Yes, singular.
For the most part, gameplay is simple. Run and jump whenever you need to, bounce when you can, dodge obstacles. Level 9 and 10 are when things slow down tremendously, with platforms that have no way for you to keep momentum and you have to, gasp, wait for cycles! Scandalous!
Fun things to note is that Skunny moves every three frames, but your input is locked in after one frame of input, and that level 5's toad-killing nut section is literally impossible the first time around, which is why I faff around a bit. Basically, when you grab a super nut, time starts counting down EXTREMELY fast for some reason, and it gives you a specific amount of time to get all the toads. When you die it counts down as normal. The fast count down is impossible to do in level 5, extremely tight on level 2 (you can do no misses basically), and fine everywhere else.
Also, important note for those who wish to play back this video: You will need the image files (REDACTED by slamo: This linked to an image of the registered version, and I can't find any evidence this was released as freeware, so just to be safe let's remove the link. Refer to the jrsr file for the image contents). These are the FreeDOS image and the Skunny image (basically, roms for the operating system and the game respectively). To play this, simply put both images in the disklibrary folder, then put the freeDOS image in the Fda image slot and the Skunny image in the Hda image. Then, replace the Modules with simply "org.jpc.modules.SoundCard" and you're good to go! Just go to Snapshots>Load>Movie, and you're all set to go! Note that if you've never used JPC-RR before, there's no way to actually hear any sound. Also, for the youtube video I submitted, yes the quality is low, and the sound is broken in some spots. That's part emulation errors and part low quality dump. Not much I can do about either, DOS TASing is rough buddy (Though if you have suggestions hit me up, I wanna do a Return to Zork TAS next and if I can get it looking sparkly clean that'd ROCK!)

slamo: This is not a very good game, but the run is actually entertaining thanks to the quick movement and enemy chaining. Having some past experience with this game, it seems like you understand the mechanics quite well.
However, there were some optimization problems, which were mainly addressed in the forum thread. It's always recommended for inexperienced TASers to post WIPs and ask for feedback on the forums, as this would have caught certain errors such as increasing the hit bonus counter. Also, the rerecord count is an indicator that not a lot of different routes were tested (my WIP through level 5 had about 2100 rerecords); we encourage TASers to think outside the box and try everything that they can think of, even if you think it may not work. I hope the WIP I posted gives you some ideas, and I'd like to see you revisit this game.
That being said, this run does not meet our standards for optimization. Rejecting.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6449: Lizstar's DOS Skunny: Back to the Forest in 11:41.77
Pixiuchu
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No vote for playing as Rosie. (No, seriously, Skunny looks so much cooler.) On a serious note, I for the most part enjoyed the TAS visually. The music... It's a tad bit too repetitive, which sadly cuts down on the entertainment IMO. All things considered, I still enjoyed watching it, so that's a yes vote. (I think I left kusogrande Discord server not long ago lol.)
DrD2k9
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YAY! More DOS tasers! I had (and despised) this game as a kid (though I'm not sure where I got it). I had Skunny Kart too, actually. Didn't watch the whole thing...couldn't force myself too. But what I watched appeared ok from an optimization standpoint. Not very entertaining in my opinion.
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I find it hilarious how crappy this game is... and I note it was still popular enough to spawn half a dozen sequels, and some of the later ones turned out to be fairly decent platformers. Yes vote.
Active player (378)
Joined: 9/25/2011
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Nice job! I've got a couple questions: For level 5, would it make sense to maximize the damage you take on your way out to the super nut so you don't have to wait as long to die? Also, for all levels, would you be able to get lower hit bonuses to save a few frames at the end of the levels when they count them up?
Lizstar
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Joined: 7/2/2019
Posts: 5
Thank you eveyone for all the kind words about the TAS, I'm glad you enjoyed the silliness that is Skunny! Also I find it interesting that you don't think this is that entertaining, DrD2k9, cause I find this run VERY interesting after having actually played the game. I'd think it just looks okay if you don't know how god awful the game controls. To answer your questions, C-square, sadly that wouldn't work to negate the time to wait for death in level 5. As soon as you pick up the super nut, the timer automatically resets to a specific time. If it didn't, it'd just be easier to pick up some foo on the way to the supernut, since you just barely don't have enough time. As for the lower hit bonus idea, that idea holds a lot of water. But I'm not so sure if the few frames it would save at the end would negate the time I'd lose by just waiting around in an enemy for it to damage me. Maybe jumping over some food woul dlower it by a bit though, it's possible!
DrD2k9
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Please don't be offended by my not finding this very entertaining. Entertainment is a subjective evaluation. Different people just find different things entertaining. I do find the run interesting from a TASing perspective , just not entertaining to watch. Bottom line, I'm thrilled to have more people here willing to try TASing DOS games via JPC-rr. That alone gives you bonus points in my book.
Lizstar
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Oh gosh, don't think I found it offensive! I totally didn't, and I agree, entertainment is absolutely subjective. Also, c-square, I just think I fully realized what you meant. I posted at 3 in the morning last night and today I was playing it casually and realized that the hit score is things hit while in super form, NOT life left. So yeah, LOTS of time could be saved by not goofing around after getting the super nut and destroying things. Whoops!
Joined: 9/27/2011
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Well, it's a pretty absurd game and has that kind of "bad charm" for some time but it gets repetitive so can't in all honestly give this more than a meh for entertainment. I doubt anyone expected it either.
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Lizstar wrote:
Also, c-square, I just think I fully realized what you meant. I posted at 3 in the morning last night and today I was playing it casually and realized that the hit score is things hit while in super form, NOT life left. So yeah, LOTS of time could be saved by not goofing around after getting the super nut and destroying things. Whoops!
It looks like there might be opportunities on most levels to avoid hitting things after obtaining the super nut.
mklip2001
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Congrats for venturing into the TAS world, Lizstar! I've seen runs of yours in SGDQ and Femmes Fatales, so it's neat to see an offering here as well (albeit with less commentary track ;) ). Sort of like what other people have mentioned, there's some room to optimize this largely based on health and score management for the countdowns at the end of stages. I don't know how much that would require you to dodge everything in the superman sections though, which would really hurt the entertainment. (I liked this game enough to watch all 10 minutes of this.) On a side note, why does Rosie make a bullet sound when flying back through clouds in super form? ;-)
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.
Reviewer, Expert player (2438)
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Oh boy, Skunny. I actually tried TASing this game for April Fool's at some point. I thought it would be somewhat entertaining to watch thanks to the ridiculous boosts you get from jumping on enemies. I tried running it on Hard difficulty and ran into a major problem on level 5. The only difference in difficulty that I noticed was that it starts you off with a lower timer; this becomes a massive issue in level 5 because even with TAS-perfect movement, the level is impossible to beat before the timer runs out. Just another example of the Skunny games being low-effort trash. One quick optimization issue I noticed is that you were running into a lot of the scenery in the Super Rosie sections. While this doesn't slow your character down, each hit adds to the "Hit Bonus" counter at the end of the level, causing you to spend more time watching the score count up. I should post my WIP soon to see how the rest of the optimization holds up.
Lizstar
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Ooh, yes, please post your WIP! I'd love to see it! And yeah, the Super Rosie segments are slowing me down quite a bit. Of course, only a few seconds at most, but something to work on. For some reason it completely flew over my radar when doing this.
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It looks like Rosie is flying UNDER the radar if anything.
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I never thought this WIP would see the light of day, but here it is. This is after I resynced the run on easy difficulty, I got to the flying section of level 5, realized I would have to wait a while and die intentionally, and then I lost interest. Link to video My WIP, up until the part where I stopped, is about 33 seconds faster than this submission (ignoring the 10 seconds lost during startup, which isn't gameplay so we don't care). It's not just the hit score counter that's causing time losses. There are some more efficient enemy jumping combos that can be done, and momentum is stopped in situations where this could be avoided. Also, there are some strange movement choices, i.e. why do you jump off to the right to start level 5?
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om, nom, nom