GG Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble in 11:05.77 by Noxxa
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.5.2
- Plays on hardest difficulty
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses death to save time
- Manipulates luck
About the game
Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble is a Looney Tunes-based video game published by Sega in 1996 for Genesis and Game Gear, developed by Probe Entertainment and Climax Studios.
In the game's storyline, Bugs Bunny is having some wacky dream involving Yosemite Sam as a laboratory professor who tries to catch Bugs Bunny and take his brain. Bugs takes off, runs into a television-like machine, and finds that it transports him through various worlds (based on classic Looney Tunes episodes) where Bugs needs to go through various adventures.
The game looks quite interesting at a glance - Bugs can run pretty fast and the levels are pretty varied. Unfortunately, there are a lot of annoyances:
- It seems the music composer was short on time, because five out of seven worlds (and the credits, and the level select menu) use the same generic music theme. It gets old fast.
- The first world in the game is two stages of escort missions. Everyone loves those, right?
- Somehow, the UI graphics regularly clip and get hidden by the in-game level graphics.
- Movement physics in general are a bit wonky.
- The sprint meter mechanic, which is terribly implemented. First of all, though it's a "meter", it is not visible in any way, and can only be measured through RAM watching. Basically, if you sprint for longer than 1.5 seconds, Bugs gets exhausted and needs to stop and rest for a few seconds (automatically triggered from a standing or walking state). A lot of tricks in the TAS involve ways to get around this, finding ways to cancel the rest animation or reducing sprint bar usage. And sometimes there just are situations with no good way to cancel the rest animation, so Bugs just has to stop and pant now and then.
General tricks and mechanics
Sprint meter shenanigans
- Sprint meter goes up by 1 per frame by moving left or right while holding the sprint button.
- Releasing the sprint button will make it start going down by 1 per frame, but only if you release on the ground. If you release in mid-air, the sprint meter just gets stuck in place. Sometimes it's best to walk for a bit and let the sprint meter decrease on its own, typically when there is no other way to cancel the rest animation.
- If the sprint meter goes above 89, if the player lands on the ground or is in a standing or walking state (or any other grounded state except sprinting itself), it will reset to 0, and the player will lose control of Bugs while he does a resting animation for a second.
- If the player is sprinting or jumping, the sprint meter can go up indefinitely until either state ends. This means that for long running sections, it can be better to make the sprint meter rise up far beyond the 89 mark, even if there is no good way to cancel the rest animation afterwards.
- The sprint meter also resets when transitioning to a different area or world.
Sprint meter resetting tricks
- The only way to reset the sprint meter is to trigger the rest animation, or to go to a new area.. To prevent having to wait for this animation, there are ways to cancel it:
- Trigger the rest animation and then slide off a platform. This is the most common way to cancel the rest animation, as platforms that can be slid off are common in most areas, although not everywhere. Often times, it is also useful to jump upon a platform, then reverse direction and slide off backwards, then drift back on the platform again. This is useful in platforming sections where just sliding off a platform is not useful.
- Trigger the rest animation and then slide into a fire. This triggers a jumping motion. It does not work if Bugs is invincible (from taking damage or otherwise). Bugs must first trigger the animation and then get hit by the fire - just sprinting into the fire will trigger the animation after the jump instead.
With the right speed and some pixel positioning, it's possible to clip pretty deep into the side of a ledge or platform (about Bugs' width) before collision actually realizes it should stop Bugs from going in there. These sorts of clips are used in various platforming segments, where they usually can save several frames.
Stage notes
Duck! Rabbit, Duck!
"Elmer Fudd is out hunting for that 'Wascally wabbit.' It's up to Bugs to foil his plans!"
"Bugs must tease Daffy Duck into chasing him past the hunting signs. When Daffy passes a sign, it flips from Rabbit Season to Duck Season. Turn over all the signs so Elmer thinks it's Duck Season."
So we start the game, and immediately run into what is basically an escort mission. Daffy Duck is your enemy in this stage and the next, but the objective is to lure him across various hunting signs that need to be turned around by him. Why can't Bugs do it? Nobody knows.
The action button in these stages causes Bugs to do a taunt, which helps with directing Daffy towards Bugs. Beyond doing that at the first possible opportunity, there isn't that much to do here - mainly just making sure to stay ahead enough of Daffy that he will follow Bugs, but not too far so he doesn't get lost. Then there's also accounting for some random frames that can be lost here and there by Daffy for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, as well as good old lag frames, which I made sure to minimize as much as possible.
There are gluepot items scattered around the stages, which can help you with slowing down Daffy. (Why you would possibly even want to, I have no idea.) I play around a bit with throwing those, but it's relatively important not to actually hit Daffy with them.
I also have some fun with some of the vines. You can slide down vines but not climb them, although it's possible to jump off them and "climb" them that way. This is good for some playaround, and for nothing else.
Early on in Stage 2, there's a pair of speed shoes, which help Bugs to sprint without getting tired for a short while. This happens to be the one stage where that is completely useless. Thanks, game. To be fair, they last for so short an amount of time that they are not useful either way.
Near the end of the stage I pick up an invincibility item, simply because I have the time for it, and it saves on collision checks (and therefore lag).
Roman Legion-Hare
"Bugs jumps on the lion's back to launch sky-high and grab floating dynamite. Land the dynamite on the rabbit holes to blow their covers off."
"Once underground, cage the lions and collect the parts to make a lion trap. Return to the arena to build the trap."
There are five items that must be collected across four dungeons underneath the holes. The dynamite parts are really slow and boring, but at least the dungeon sections feature some actual platforming.
For the dynamite parts, vertical speed resets as soon as a dynamite is touched, so the main optimization is just making sure to get the lowest dynamites possible to reduce travel time.
As the dungeons proceed from left to right, they get increasingly bigger and more complicated. Routing these dungeons was an interesting challenge at times.
In the fourth dungeon, it's possible to jump up to a specific area on the top right of the stage and erroneously trigger the "stairs" trigger. This is faster to end the stage than to actually use the conventional stairs.
Knighty Knight Bugs
"Find the fabled Singing Sword, scale the battlements, and demolish the evil Black Knight and his fire-breathing pet Dragon!"
The castle has a very labyrinthine layout with dozens of doors leading to various different rooms and such. Mapping this out and routing it was a blast. In the end, around half of the rooms are skipped entirely.
Conveniently, because most of the stage consists of very short rooms, sprint management is made relatively easy, as it resets on every room transition. The room with the sword is more tricky, because it has long straight sections and no platform to cancel them. One of the knight enemies is used to cancel a rest at one point instead.
The boss battle on top of the castle is quite tricky. First, five series of fireballs rain from the sky and travel across the ground - these basically run on fixed timers. Then the dragon spawns on the right side of the screen, and after it is defeated the Black Knight comes into action. When he is defeated, the stage ends.
There's a quirky trick where swinging the sword immediately after dying will result in it doing triple damage. This is used to dispatch the Dragon (8HP) and Black Knight (10HP) in short order.
Hare-Abian Nights
"It's an Arabian caper on magic carpets! Joust with Vizier Yosemite Sam for the Genie's lamp. Collect all three lamps to free the Genie and earn a return trip to the castle!"
There are three stages in this world, each with a Genie boss at the end. The Genies have 5 HP - carrots and jumps do 1 damage, while explosive carrots do 2 damage. It is possible to stack carrot and jump damage if you hit both at around the same time, before invincibility time gets to properly activate. This way, the Genies in stages 1 and 2 can be defeated in 3 rounds. The stage 3 Genie is defeated with explosive carrots instead.
Stage 2 has a lot of long straight sections, which is good for sprinting - the rest animations are either cancelled on the platforms on the sides, or taking damage on the hot coal floors which trigger a jump.
In the third stage, I go slightly out of the way to collect a health pickup, because there are so many areas to take damage on, and the death animation would waste more time.
At the end of the third stage, after the boss fight, I fall and lose a life just before the fade-out, in order to have full health in the next stage.
Haunted Hare
"Work your way through the haunted castle to find the professor's laboratory. Throw the book at ghouls, bats and Witch Hazel!"
"Bounce on Gossamer to temporarily slow him down. Discover some shocking news and use weird reactions to defeat Gossamer. Finally, face the mad professor himself!"
The stages here are somewhat maze-like - you need to find a key, open a door to the next area, find another key, open another door, and so on. You can only hold one key at a time.
The first stage is pretty linear, with lots of running. Sometimes there are good opportunities to cancel rest, and other times there aren't. At one point some backtracking is required because only one key can be held at once.
The second stage has a lot of keys in the same general area, resulting in some repetition. It's annoying.
Third stage has keys in harder to access areas, although conveniently it's a lot faster if you get the jumps right.
The fourth stage consists of a boss battle. There are three switches that trigger shrink rays from the devices at the top of the screen - if one hits Gossamer, the device breaks, and Gosssamer shrinks. Once Gossamer shrinks 3 times, he disappears, and the Professor becomes the boss instead - he has 5 HP and just runs around. Annoyingly, the maximum jump height off an enemy is just short enough that Bugs can't bounce repeatedly, so short bounces followed by jumping immediately are required instead.
Mad as a Mars Hare
"Avoid speeding asteroids and Marvin and K9 in their space saucer!"
Two auto-scroller stages that are around 40 seconds each. Pretty boring. I mainly just shoot missiles at most things that move.
In stage 2, I noticed an exploit where if you reverse direction just as Bugs reaches the left edge boundary, he can clip inside for a bit, and this seems to mess with his collision model and make it possible to clip through various walls. This is exploited in various places.
Hare-Way to the Stars
"Find Marvin, rescue the Illudium Pew-36 Space Modulator and switch Marvin's lasers into reverse!"
Stage 1 is finding the Space Modulator. The area is pretty maze-like but it's mostly straightforward running. There are a lot of opportunities on platforms to reset sprint, too.
At the end of stage 1, during the fade-out I collect a health pickup to have full health for stage 2.
Stage 2 requires switching 4 lasers into reverse. Each is at a corner of the screen, and they can be done in any order. This stage is really mazelike and there were a few different possibilities for routes. Going down-left, then down-right, then up-left, then up-right ends up having the shortest travel time (up-right being hard to reach from below).
There's one weird platform directly below a slope, which can be clipped into. This saves some running time.
Once the final laser switch is activated, input ends.
Bugs wakes up, and...the end, I guess?
Screenshot:
Thanks for watching!
feos: Everything looks good. I personally think this run is borderline Vault, but feedback was a bit better than neutral, so let's send it to Moons. Accepted.
