(Link to video)
Solomon's Club is a puzzle game released in 1991 for the Gameboy. It differs in a few ways from the more well-known 1986 Solomon's Key on the NES. Notably: The stages are smaller in size; Dana (the player character) can visit shops to buy upgrades; there are no warps.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.6.1
  • Aims for fastest possible completion of all levels and achieves the best ending

Comments

Solomon's Club allows you to choose the order in which you play the levels. I opted to play them in order for simplicity.
The "jump after falling" glitch from the NES version does not work here. The quick recovery from accurate jumps onto blocks also does not work.
The shoes upgrade gives faster movement and more horizontal jump distance, so it is the first shop purchase. The hat upgrade lets Dana smash breakable blocks using only one smack of the head rather than two, so it is the second shop purchase. After that, the shops are mostly avoided because they are an enormous time sink. The exceptions are two visits to stock up on fireballs used to save time in key levels, and then a final shop visit to get 3 water guns used on flames in the Solomon levels.

Memory: Judging
Memory: Updating with 18 frame improvement.
Memory: Replacing file with 1 frame truncated file that also uses GBA bios and setting emulator version to 2.6.2.
Optimization looked fairly good.
This TAS was surprisingly mesmerizing to watch. The puzzle solving and platforming was fairly interesting and the audience largely enjoyed it too.
Accepting to Moons.
EZGames69: Processing

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7147: ninespaces's GB Solomon's Club in 22:28.02
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I've resynced this movie to use the official GB BIOS. Encode: Link to video I've also resynced this movie for the GBA BIOS, which can be used for console verification. If the author wishes, this movie can be used for this submission instead of the GB one. Encode for GBA resync: Link to video EDIT: Cycle count is missing for the submission so the time is wrong, the resyncs here correctly have the cycle count.
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
If the author wishes, this movie can be used for this submission instead of the GB one.
Thank you for doing that. And sure, happy to use whichever is best/most appropriate.
mklip2001
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Solid movie. I find this a lot easier to understand than the original NES game, though the difficulty seems a bit too easy for most of it. The music in this one is more annoying, in my opinion. Everything gets more interesting in the Solomon levels though. I'm somewhere between Meh and Yes for this one.
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.
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In level 2 room 7, wouldn't be faster to create a block under the key, so that you don't have to climb to the door twice?
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
In level 2 room 7, wouldn't be faster to create a block under the key, so that you don't have to climb to the door twice?
Yes! 18 frames faster. Thanks :) I've uploaded the improvement: User movie #72334593864426571
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You're welcome! By the way, wouldn't be possible to skip the shop of level 4 room 10 by buying the necessary stuff in the shop of level 3 room 8?
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
You're welcome! By the way, wouldn't be possible to skip the shop of level 4 room 10 by buying the necessary stuff in the shop of level 3 room 8?
Unfortunately not. The shop sells, at most, 3 fireballs (i.e., If Dana already has 1 fireball in inventory, the shop will only sell 2).
Memory
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Because I'm unsure from the previous posts, would you prefer the published file be done with GBA bios or as is? TASVideos itself does not care but the console verification community uses GBA bios. I don't think it is exactly necessary for it to be the publication file however, but I'd like to know your preference.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Memory wrote:
Because I'm unsure from the previous posts, would you prefer the published file be done with GBA bios or as is? TASVideos itself does not care but the console verification community uses GBA bios. I don't think it is exactly necessary for it to be the publication file however, but I'd like to know your preference.
I suppose GBA bios if that's easy enough to do? (I have no idea... sorry.) Otherwise "as is" is fine - no real preference. Thank you.
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ninespaces wrote:
Memory wrote:
Because I'm unsure from the previous posts, would you prefer the published file be done with GBA bios or as is? TASVideos itself does not care but the console verification community uses GBA bios. I don't think it is exactly necessary for it to be the publication file however, but I'd like to know your preference.
I suppose GBA bios if that's easy enough to do? (I have no idea... sorry.) Otherwise "as is" is fine - no real preference. Thank you.
The GBA BIOS is very easy to do, the game appears to be super sync friendly so just adding in the frames it takes for the BIOS to run will just have the rest of the TAS syncing. Anyways here's a resync to the GBA BIOS with the new improvement: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/72472735744598841 And if you want the GB version anyways, here it is resynced with the GB BIOS: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/72472755284576123 (note, the submission has a blank input at the end, so you might as well just replace it with one of these resyncs)
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mklip2001 wrote:
Solid movie. I find this a lot easier to understand than the original NES game, though the difficulty seems a bit too easy for most of it.
Oh, this game is much harder than Ninespaces makes it look. Many of those jumps and especially jump/wand/wand combos are just not feasible in realtime conditions, and many levels are frustratingly complex to do otherwise. I used to play this for hours as a kid and it was very challenging. Yes vote.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4481] GB Solomon's Club by ninespaces in 22:28.02
TiKevin83
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This TAS has been console verified! Link to video
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TiKevin83 wrote:
This TAS has been console verified! Link to video
That's so cool - thank you for doing that!