Introduction
Wonder Boy was 1986 arcade game developed by Escape, later renamed to Westone, and published by Sega. The game is basically Sega's answer to Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. but for the arcades on the Sega System 1 hardware. In it, Tom-Tom must save his girlfriend Tanya from kidnapper Drancon in a 32 stage journey. There are various power-ups such as the skateboard that increases movement speed but can't stop and a fairy that grants invincibility.
This SG-1000 port was released that same year about 4 months after the arcade version. However, the limitations of the hardware meant that a lot of cutbacks had to be made. A lot of items had to be cut for technical reasons. The stage count is reduced to a measly 5 areas, though the final stage is wholly unique to this port. As ambitious as the port is with pushing the limits of the SG-1000, this Wonder Boy port also shows the limitations of the system. Having tile based scrolling rather than smooth scrolling and having lots of lag throughout makes playing the game feel very janky but it's the closest the system got for a SMB type of platformer.
Due to its short length, it did make for a neat game to TAS in theory. The levels being unique in their own way means that there's at least some reason for someone to look at this port. My main beef with it is of course just how much lag there is.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
- SMSHawk core
- Takes stamina damage to save time
- If you're wondering, yes this graphics sort of tear like that on real hardware.
Techniques
Short hops
Releasing the run button on the same frame as jumping results in a shorter jump that doesn't lose speed. This is helpful for getting across platforms and obstacles in a way to avoid having to slow down if it can be done.
Avoiding pickups
For all areas except the last one, most items are avoided. While the tomahawk is obtained at the start of the game to attack enemies and the boss, the rest are avoided for two reasons. First, most items are stamina restoring items. Since the end of every area has to count down remaining stamina, keeping it as low as possible is a must. Second, some items also give an end of area bonus which takes extra time since the game shows off the item. These items are also avoided even if they wouldn't give stamina.
Lag
There's way too much of it. Because of how much the game's asking of the SG-1000, most actions that aren't just running forwards incurs a lot of lag at varying amounts and intervals. This makes trying to sync certain actions through sections a real pain to adjust since an earlier change in an action can result in a later input suddenly be in a lag frame.
Helpful RAM addresses
| RAM address | Byte size | Display type | Domain | Description |
|---|
01C4 | 1 byte | Unsigned | Main RAM | Tom-Tom's screen position |
00E0 | 1 byte | Unsigned | Main RAM | Level section counter. The boss arena is on screen when this equals 2. |
00DF | 1 byte | Unsigned | Main RAM | Level position, increments 00E0 when this rolls over back to 0. Goes up every time the screen tile scrolls to the right. |
011D | 1 byte | Unsigned | Main RAM | Boss HP |
Possible improvements
There are some sections where Tom-Tom has to wait or otherwise slow down to get past a section and there's likely some better movement that I didn't catch. There's also of course better lag management that could be done throughout which makes experimenting for better strats trickier to test.
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Couldn't find other speedruns of this game on google (English or Japanese), and this run looks good on its own. Accepting.
