Bonk's Revenge is the sequel to Bonk's Adventure. It features far more diverse level design and mechanics than the first game, as well as generally being more wacky.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.5.2
- Takes damage to save time
Memory: I knew the previous run of Bonk's Revenge was improvable so I started looking into it not long after I finished Ninja Five-O. I was initially working on Super Bonk 2 but randomly decided I wanted to also improve Revenge. Super 2 might still happen maybe.
Mechanics and tricks
Memory: One can press the attack button in the air every 6 frames to reduce fall speed and hover.
Speed is a lot more complicated than in the Bonk's Adventure/Bonk 3 engine. There is a larger amount of speed values. Common caps are as follows:
- Normal walking: 384
- 1 or 2 meats but no invincibility: 512
- Invincibility: 640
- Walking on ice unless it is an uphill slope: 640
If you are above the speed cap for your current form, pressing the direction you are moving will push your speed down to it's proper cap. If one lets go of the dpad or does one of several other methods of maintaining speed, the cap will be ignored.
These methods of maintaining speed include:
- Landing on the ground will keep your speed stable for a couple frames (pressing a horizontal direction one frame before landing allows you to keep it longer)
- Jumping will also prevent your speed from being modified until you actually start the jump. This can be combined with the above to allow for bunny hopping.
- Attacking in the air will prevent your horizontal speed from being modified for the length of the animation. This means that if you need to slow down while hovering, one might need to do it either before starting or space out hover inputs.
There's also some things that set your speed to a specific value:
- Landing on ice on your head causes you to start moving at 512. If one exits that state, they keep that speed and can go up to the usual 640 on ice.
- Wall jumping sets your speed to 448. If one holds directions this can easily be overwritten by the usual caps but it's useful to take advantage of when no meats are available.
- Jumping off a conveyor belt moving in the same direction as Bonk sets his speed to current + 256. With bunny hopping one can repeat this process to gain a theoretically unlimited amount of speed. Note that a conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction will reduce bonk's speed by 256, meaning you desperately need to avoid these.
There's also a couple of unusual circumstances that allows one to gain speed at or above the cap up to a limited amount:
- Swimming while at 512 speed will allow one to go up to a max of 572 speed. If you go above that cap, your speed is forced back down to 320.
- Powering down from 1 meat to no meat will cause one to accelerate. It was previously believed the max you could get out of this was 632, however I (Memory) found a way to get 636 speed from this at the end of Round 7. We did not go back and incorporate this.
As I mentioned before starting to jump will keep your horizontal speed. This was known with bunny hopping. However, I discovered that it also keeps your vertical speed until you actually start jumping at which the normal jump speed applies. By hovering into a slope, one can clip into it. This leads to Bonk being given enough vertical speed to be ejected from the slope (how much depends on how embedded you are into it). By performing a bunny hop in this, this vertical speed is frozen during the "preparing to jump" animation. This can allow for extra height off jumps. I call this bunny ascension.
Subpixel carryover is definitely a thing.
RNG can easily be manipulated by performing inputs that have 0 impact on the game for example the jump button while in midair and the attack button within 5 frames of an air spin. Select can also impact rng but it's not as consistent. Blocks have their drop determined by the RNG value 1 frame prior to it disappearing. Not all blocks give drops however.
1-1
Memory: I did all the inputs here. I ended up redoing this segment when I found bunny ascension which saved a fair chunk of time.
1-2
Not much has changed in this stage other than collecting the meat at an earlier time than before.
1-3
Memory: I came up with a new strategy where I take the lower path and rng manipulate a meat drop and carefully maintained this speed for the rest of the stage.
1-4:
Memory: Colin did most of the beginning up to the wall jump part, however, I tweaked the very start delaying the jump so that bonk builds up to full speed faster.
I came up with this new strategy at the wall jump segment where you wait at the second rising platform to jump and perform the wall bounce rather than the last.
1-Boss
Memory: Subpixels were manipulated to be as high as possible when the fight ends so Bonk walks offscreen as soon as possible.
2-1
Memory: I aimed to get water speed much earlier here. Unfortunately this means that I ended up not falling through a log. Oh well.
The climbing up the side of a wall mechanic is actually RNG dependent. Each frame you can either go up at 256 speed or down at 256 speed. It's manipulated to be up as much as possible.
2-2
Memory: Colin did a lot of the start, however I still found some things here and there. When hitting a block from below and wanting to perform another jump or a wall jump, you should aim to have your vertical position as low as possible while hitting the block such that bonk doesn't need to fall very far in order to jump again.
2-3
Memory: I kinda proposed the skip used here in the previous submission notes. Colin figured out it was possible via freezing the enemy with the 1 meat special ability, however I found that to be completely unnecessary.
2-Boss
Memory: By bringing a meat into the fight the boss takes increased damage per hit and dies faster. Conveniently, the meat also manages to last into the start of the next stage allowing for a power down speed boost.
3-1
This level changed dramatically because of our power down boost, it turns out that collecting the meat in this stage actually loses time regardless so we skip it. As soon as we get to the ice in this level we dont have to keep bunny hopping as walking on ice will give you max speed.
3-2
Memory: The original strategy used here was by colin, however I tweaked it so that after taking a damage boost, one immediately goes back up to 512 by landing headfirst on ice.
3-3
Memory: After getting the meat, I land headfirst on ice to build up speed faster.
One wants to land on the platforms moving to the left as late as possible in order to minimize the distance they try to force you to the left.
3-Boss
Memory: Mostly similar to the publication fight.
4-1
A slight change in boss attack here saving a few extra frames. Power down meat also happens slightly earlier than before to gain a few more frames too.
4-2
Memory: We don't have meat here, so I perform a wall jump as soon as I was able in order to get slightly above walking speed.
4-3
Memory: Similar tricks were applied here.
4-4
Memory: I maintained a single meat entering the boss and timed when I took damage to optimize the power down boost at the start of 5-1
4-Boss
We were worried that this boss in order to do fast would require the damage boost to get up on its head in the 2nd phase and we'd lose our meat powerup, but luckily with just the right positioning you can bounce up to it without the need to take damage.
5-1
Memory: the power down boost allows for skipping the meat at the very start as well as avoiding taking some damage and just starting the level at a much faster speed.
5-2
Memory: I saved a frame or something on the level end iirc?
5-3
Memory: I opted to try a lot of new stuff on this stage and ended up saving a good amount of time.
6-1
One small change that was made was at the beginning where we dive into the water to get that same speed boost you saw in 2-1, saves a couple more frames this way.
6-2
Memory: There's a meat here but it ended up slower to grab.
6-3
Memory: Better understanding of turnarounds and a new shortcut involving a damage boost allowed for a decent time save.
6-Boss
I start attacking the boss slightly earlier.
7 Hub-1
Simple movement
Ambush Tunnel
This stage saw a huge improvement simply due to the wall kick, not only because we move faster, but we move fast enough to completely skip the elephant feet which halted our movement in the previous TAS.
Boss Rematch 1
better positioning for doing early damage
7 Hub-2
Memory: I make sure to build up to max speed before landing on the set of steps leading up left.
Conveyor Tunnel
Memory: I slowed down at parts in order to land on conveyor belts additional times. Additionally, I delayed meat grabs until the very end of box segments to try and maximize the amount of time spent at conveyor speed.
Boss Rematch 2
Memory: the strategy used here is similar to the publication but I manage to end the fight closer to the ground, minimizing time spent falling after the post boss jump.
7-Hub-3
Memory: More simple movement
Aquatic Tunnel
Memory: Getting hit out of the crab form completely resets the meat timer to max so I skip getting crushed once.
Navigating the blocks as regular bonk is very tricky.
I get hit at the very end to be able to move downwards faster.
Boss rematch 3
Memory: I intentionally get hit during the fight to setup for powerdown boost in Spook Tunnel.
7 hub-4
Memory: didn't lose time to FuzZerd this time!
Spook Tunnel
Memory: Here I finally discovered the way to get 636 speed out of power down boost.
Boss rematch 4
Originally when this first got submitted, this boss lost 2 frames on this boss, but I was determined to save them so I looked into doing the same exact trick to save those 2 frames, what ended up happening however was I accidentially found a 99 frame improvement because I figured out how to do damage really fast.
So bonk can also attack enemies from below if you jump under them, as well as head butting downward, that is basically what is happening here is both attacks happening in quick succession.
7 hub 5
Memory: Colin initially did a bonk on the ground at the elevator but it's much faster to just hold jump for less time.
7 Rematch 5
For this rematch, we don’t spawn on the ground like in the other fight, but instead we drop down. We actually have control of our bonky boo and can hover in order to do our attacks extremely early. This also sets us up for the final boss fight against king drool.
King Drool
Memory: I came up with the strategy (Colin: CORRECTION, I came up with the idea of hitting drool early by using the rockets, however Memory came up with this strategy she’s describing) of hovering down to king drool after the end of the previous fight and taking a damage boost to get enough height to be able to attack drool. This completely negates the need to wait for King Drool to attack to get up to him. Colin improved on the actual damage dealing though.
Memory: Special thanks to all you Bonk kids.
ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a 107 frames improvement, and judging.
