Batman: The Junkyard Challenge is a romhack of Batman (NES). This is the hardest available romhack for this game.
This hack came about because of conversations with Batman speedrunner junkyard_dave wherein existing hacks of the game were lamented. This hack aims to rectify the situation by providing a new and difficult experience for anyone daring enough to attempt The Junkyard Challenge.
This hack features all new (and significantly more difficult) stages. Other changes that add to the challenge include enemy placements/health and boss AI. The item drop tables have also been changed.
TASing this game was fun and a refreshing experience for me, I liked this romhack so much and spent a lot of time with it, I play this romhack with savestates only.
So in this TAS you will see me doing a lot of damage boosts, you will also notice that Pause button is used at my sections, as far as I know Pausing has invincibility frames and that's why you can avoid damage when you need it the most, Pausing can also delay enemy actions (only recommend when enemies are unavoidable because each quick pause and unpause is 3 frames slower).
In level 1-1 I used a Pause (using a Pause means a quick Pause and Unpause) to avoid damage from the enemy and killed him, without Pause you will have to wait for the enemy which would even more slower so even though we lost 3 frames in one Pause it would still remain the fastest way to do this area.
Level 1-2 : This is the level from which this romhack starts to its true colors, in the middle section of this there is a pile of frame perfect platforming which must cleared in a row, if you fail at any point you fall all the way back and redo everything (I'm describing the hack here not criticising it).
First Boss: HP = 64 (this is 4 times the health of the 1st Boss in the original game)
RAM address = 05E0 , Room layout has also changed here so its really hard to move easily here in RTA, but in TAS we simply destroy the boss and head to the next level.
Level 2-1 : This is level from which phenomena of damage boost starts, in TAS you can only refill your health by getting a heart drop from killing the enemies but its worth noticing that ammo is also obtained by killing the enemies, by killing enemies you get 3 types of things: heart drop (very useful for TASing this hack), ammo drop and bonus point (useless for TAS), getting these things is simply controlled by global timer.
The RAM addresses I used are:
x-pixel (00D4)
x-subpixel (00D5)
y-pixel (00D1)
y-subpixel (00D2)
05E0 to 05E7 are addresses for HP of enemies and Bosses and it different components.
For this romhack I had 3 TASes before made in FCEUX, all were damage less and this one takes damage and aims to achieve the fastest time.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Replacing movie file with a newer improvements.
nymx: This TAS got me watching through it without taking a break. It was impressive to see you traverse through it so effortlessly. I know there was talk, in the discussion thread, that improvement can be made...but that's not a problem. This hack reminds me of how the hack Super Metroid Impossible was beefed up to be extremely hard. Perhaps you and
DreamYao could team up and find these cuts? I'm sure it will be quite the effort.
Great job and accepting to "Standard" for publication.
