(Link to video)
Bubble Gum Rossie is a game on the famous "Action 52" NES cartridge.
The story follows a blonde-haired girl in her adventure to reach the end of the game using only her bubblegum powers.
This game has a famous glitch where if you die in the second level twice, creating a game over scenario, the game will then attempt to load the first level using the second level's mechanics, creating a glitch scenario.
This level instantly kills you... or so was thought. Spending a fair amount of time navigating the level in TAStudio, it is possible to beat.
Not only this, I purposely trigger the load trigger to allow me to continue with the game normally.
Due to this glitch I discovered, it directly caused another glitch, wherein you can access level 4 through normal gameplay and complete it.

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Changing branch name to something that describes the run correctly. At this point, Glitched is the only category that I can see will fit this type of execution...whereas 110% was arbitrary and not describing the run as it truly is.
nymx: Updating submission with an improved movie file.
nymx: I'm setting this to "Needs More Info", because it is going to take me some time to figure out this glitch problem. I've talked with dwangoAC to figure out some details on if it can be console verified. Also, I'm going to attempt the manual steps to confirm.
nymx: I've thought on this a bit and I've taken in a lot of angles on what to do here. I think the most convincing argument goes back to the accuracy of NESHawk. If it is truly an emulation issue, then we'll take arguments in the future and look at another submission. Regardless of the frame count (within reason though), it will obviously obsolete this submission...mainly because we want true emulation of the NES console.
We all understand that Action 52 is a horrible package of rushed developed games. Many of them don't have a true ending, which leaves us to determining an ending point that meshes with our rules. In this case, it does appear that the game is so poorly designed and can be tricked into showing content that wasn't intended by the developers. This is sorta like the SMB Minus World runs, where broken coding generates wild and bizarre layouts to explore. Bubble Gum Rossie appears to be a similar case, although achieved much differently. Just note that because of broken code, there are always situations that can be generated that don't make sense. Even I have discovered things like this among recent TAS I've done. So it is not uncommon that breaks happen in this fashion.
I want to state that I have actually enjoyed seeing TASes of these games. As an RTA run, they don't provide much for analysis; however, TASing is certainly exposing mechanics and glitches that aren't necessarily capable human strats. So, its been a fun and interesting ride. I look forward to more.
Thanks to the following for your help over the past few weeks:
{I may have forgotten some that contributed to the talks. If I did, let me know and I will add you to this list}
Also wanted to point out GJTASer2018 for bringing up the possibility of emulation issues. Because this was a concern, we certainly didn't want to dismiss it. Our staff did think it was worth investigating.
Accepting.

feos: Since we're bypassing a dead end in a game without a proper ending, we support the farthest ending point to obsolete all the earlier ones, and that still counts as Fastestcompletion, be it a kill screen or looping back to level one. For that reason I don't think this movie needs a branch label.

despoa: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8494: OtakuTAS's NES Action 52: Bubblegum Rosie in 03:47.44
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Realized jumping delays the game by a frame and another timesave in level 1. Level 1 is currently being redone with shooting enemies instead of jumping over. However, this affected the results of the glitched level likely due to memory differences. Decided to continue submission and check within my 72 hour window if the glitch is still possible (likely is). Also not sure if I selected the wrong branch or what (hot mess TASer tonight), but you can drive the car faster into the pillars (but not too fast or you go through them LOL) to kill yourself faster.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023 My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
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383 frames saved: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638268067837152127 Level 1 is now impossible to be faster. Had a little less work cut out for me as you actually can't kill the blue guys. So I had to jump over them anyways. Nonetheless, the changes allowed to both minimize jumping to the minimum to save a few frames, and more importantly also removed the only moment in the run where I needed to let go of a control/stall. Now I'm holding right for the entire level so it's impossible to be faster. The only thing movable in this run for this level would be the jumping, but that's kept to the absolute minimum. It doesn't change your run speed, but again, it causes a frame of delay in the... err... "engine". These changes rearranged the RNG for the rest of the run so I ended up having to redo most of it in quick time. Turns out the enemy selection is just "throw a ton of enemies on the screen in this random RNG pattern and see what happens". Level 3 I was able to mostly reuse the same movement inputs, since ironically shooting doesn't slow you down, so I basically just was doing an on-rails-shooter of rearranging shot inputs to match the new RNG while keeping the same exact movement.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023 My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
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Added a new encode.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023 My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
LoganTheTASer
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it seems i’ve started an action 52 revolution here!
GJTASer2018
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Call me a party pooper if you want, but I think this submission should be console-verified to make absolutely sure that being able to access Level 4 in this case isn't due to an emulation error...
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
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GJTASer2018 wrote:
Call me a party pooper if you want, but I think this submission should be console-verified to make absolutely sure that being able to access Level 4 in this case isn't due to an emulation error...
I agree, although the majority of people have played this game on emulator compared to console, and I've never seen it go to level 4. I haven't yet worked on my normal TAS for this game, so I haven't confirmed that for some reason BizHawk just does it, but I doubt it. I think it's pretty simple, I believe playing the second level twice (or is it the first) increases the level counter in a way that allows for the 4th level to play. Definitely worth checking out though. Unfortunately RNG is so dumb in this game that it's not as simple as splicing out the two deaths and the glitched area. A casual playthrough would suffice, on BizHawk 2.9.0 which is the emulator used.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023 My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
nymx
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I'm going to think on this TAS another day. The fact that this "Level 4" exists, is most likely brought on by breaking the game. Action 52 isn't know for their rock solid coding skills; however, I'm willing to check out the possibility of emulation errors. If many of you are aware of these games, you'll know that the level counter is messed up in most of the games. The famous "Level 3" being repeated twice is an example, but yet it was another level. So, we'll look into it.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
nymx
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OtakuTAS, can you explain how you are calculating the percentage completion for this TAS? I can't see how 110% is derived. At this point, I am closer to thinking this should be classified a "Glitched" run instead.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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nymx wrote:
OtakuTAS, can you explain how you are calculating the percentage completion for this TAS? I can't see how 110% is derived. At this point, I am closer to thinking this should be classified a "Glitched" run instead.
It was moreso a word for just going "overboard" rather than actually being accurate. If you can think of something to accurately reflect the glitched level but also reflecting accessing level 4, that would be cool. Whatever works. From what I've read this is the first time a person has accessed level 4 through normal gameplay.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023 My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
nymx
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Even though I'm going to take a look at this, in more details...anybody is welcome to see if this is a result of emulation. I doubt that it is, but the concern was brought up and we need to at least address it.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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Me again from the Action 52 Fuzz Power TAS commentary with the level array analysis in order to provide some supporting evidence (although you'll probably still want to check that the glitch works on the hardware). Bubble Gum Rosie technically uses two different level arrays: one for platforming and one for driving. The counters are actually different, but the array used has the same pointer. This is the raw data from the US ROM for both of them (they're not stored next to each other):
03 FB C1
04 FB C1
03 C2 12 C2 21 C2 30 C2 
The first two lines are two different counters and array references, whereas the last line is the array itself as a series of two pointers. One of the arrays only has three, while the other has four. My guess is that the glitch has to somehow change the "mode", so to speak, from platforming to driving just before the check for the end of the game occurs... the same situation would explain switching between platforming and driving. See this post for info on this raw data (the bank ID I got with Bubble Gum Rosie is $60).
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. ---- [5517] NES Action 52: Bubblegum Rosie by OtakuTAS in 03:47.44