Kingsley's Adventure is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Psygnosis. You play as Kingsley as he tries to stop the evil wizard Bad Custard from taking over the Fruit Kingdom.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- Rom Hash (SHA1): 728FEA7E54A7447A8C4F4B170379476627E5A881
- Bring Kingsley closer to his ultimate dream of becoming a True Knight
Glitches and Tricks
In the tutorial, there are multiple text boxes that will stop Kingsley if a flag is enabled. This flag is the same one that, if you press triangle, skips dialogue with an NPC if you've already talked to them. If you press triangle as the last text box fades out, it will trigger the flag, so the text boxes don't stop your movement. Activating the flag also lets Kingsley move 10 frames earlier when leaving dialogue.
Upwarps are a very common glitch throughout the entire run. The collision detection for walls breaks if you're heading into the corner where 2 walls meet. This means you can get Kingsley a lot farther into the wall than expected, and when you're far enough inside you can jump to the top of the wall. They're useful throughout the entire run, letting you skip huge parts of dungeons or lead a boss OOB.
For < 90 degree corners (acute/sharp angles):
1. Run into the corner and jump
2. Run into the corner, turn around, and make sure you can hold sidestep without popping out of the corner. Then backflip or jump. Required for certain corners that need finer control of your angle.
For 90 degree corners:
These require you to use an enemy to give you the speed needed to enter the wall (currently, no 90 degree wall has been able to get an upwarp without an enemy). I've made an image to show off the setup (the arrows are facing direction). If you make Kingsley run straight into Wall A, you will need to sidestep into Wall B to get upwarped. If you make Kingsley run into the corner of A and B, then you won't need to sidestep. The enemy needs to attack Kingsley towards the corner to correctly be upwarped.
In both cases, make Kingsley jump before getting hit. It'll make Kingsley upwarp as soon as he's far enough into the corner. If he's still on the ground, he'll be pushed out of the wall. There are also certain spots with geometry close enough to a wall that it'll let you upwarp with little effort, like with chests placed too close to a wall.
Tutorial (Castle)
We start with Kingsley getting his shield from Aunt Adeline, then heading to Old Wrinkle to start the True Knight test. After Old Wrinkle's dialogue we set the text flag, so the text boxes don't make Kingsley stop moving. We then get our weapons, and are expected to fight the Seargent, but we can skip weapon training by upwarping to the statue and running to the next room.
Grabbing boxes at certain angles lets you move them without running to the other side of it. Before most cutscenes I'll make Kingsley jump, it lets him move forward during the cutscene. With training done, we go on the King's quests and must find the True Knight items, to become a True Knight of course. Our first quest is to head to Sea Town through the Castle Basement's foxhole and stop Gallagher.
In the Castle Basement, we're supposed to collect the green key and use it to open a door. However, the fence is low enough that Kingsley can jump into it and be upwarped. This lets us save the green key for use later.
Sea Town
We talk to Briny Jim and told to head to Cutlass Isle, where we can find Gallagher. This is where the first dungeon in the game is. The first 2 rooms we just run through, and in the 3rd we upwarp towards the door. And we continue until the portal.
We're supposed to run down the mountain and onto the raft, but because door triggers extend infinitely upward, we can jump to it from the top. We jump to the next raft as well, and head to Gallagher, our first boss fight.
Gallagher will only let you get one or two attacks on him before jumping away. The amount of cannonballs he fires is RNG, but you can easily manipulate it by moving around. All bosses are affected by double/triple hits, where the collision from Kingsley's sword is applied multiple times. It's easiest to do this when you attack while turning to the left/right. I try to do it as much as possible in fights.
After defeating Gallagher we return Briny Jim's galleon, and get armor and an axe as a reward. Sadly we'll have to head to Carrot Castle after every dungeon as it's the only way to progress, there currently isn't a way to get past the gates without talking to the King/Queen. There's hardly time for congratulations from the King, as we're given our next quest: Help Poorluck village from Snuff the Dragon. This time we head to the foxhole in the Carrot Castle Grounds.
Poorluck
After Kingsley's done being racist against a swordfish, we learn that Snuff the Dragon has been raiding Poorluck's food, leaving none for the citizens. We head to his dungeon, the entrance of which is a huge bib, with him holding a knife and fork.
We step on the switches to open required doors, and then step on the floor tiles in a certain order to get a key. We save this key for later as well, by upwarping above the door and heading to the portal. In the "Slime" room, we ignore having to slide on the slime, instead upwarping straight to the portal, and we upwarp again to skip grabbing another green key. After upwarping a few more times, and using a key we saved earlier, we head to Snuff.
Snuff the Dragon is the first boss we aren't required to "fight" at all. We upwarp and lower a door, that we lead Snuff to. When he's on the door we raise it so he's on the wall with us. Then we get him into a position where he'll try and jump to us, but fall OOB and kill himself.
After his defeat, we learn from Nando that "Snuff become so fat and lazy that he had a machine built to bring the food directly to his cave." We have to reverse the machine so it starts sending food back to the Poorluck villagers. After this, we jump in a certain way to skip Lucy's dialogue, which also lets us skip Tartrazine's dialogue. We turn Snuff's knife and fork into a heavy sword, which is made light by our True Knight gloves. Afterwards we report again to the King/Queen. Our next quest is to go to Rosary Village, the town of Beermonks.
Rosary Village
We learn that the root-beer has been poisoned, which is making everyone incredibly tired. Luckily Hera's coffee is keeping some of the residents sane. We get a cup on the house, which we give to Tufnutt to give us access to the Mayor's office. We talk to him, who gives us the password to the Abbey. In the Abbey, Abbot Harry tells us to make an antidote we'll have to collect three herbs that grow in the catacombs, which is the 3rd dungeon.
We upwarp to grab the first herb, and kill a few spiders for the second. The third has us do a puzzle, and after we collect them all we head straight to our next boss fight.
Clarence the Bat... sorry, Clarence Darklord Junior, Apprentice Demon is actually Brother Tim, who was trying to become a True Demon. Similar to Snuff, we upwarp and drown him OOB.
We give the three herbs to Abbot Harry and he mixes them into the root-beer, which will heal the villagers in no time. Our reward for taking out Clarence Darklord Jr. are magic boots and a crossbow. With the magic boots, we can cross a previously inaccessible area in Poorluck village to take out Judas, who I think was working with Snuff.
Judas will run to any of the 4 points of a square, before doing an attack that causes rubble to fall down on Kingsley. We have to wait until this animation plays before we can attack him. We basically ride Judas, by staying on his collision he pushes us with him to a corner. Anyway, we defeat him and learn that Judas is actually Sir Rufus, who was put under Bad Custard's magic spell. We head back to the King/Queen to discuss our findings. Just like before, we're hardly congratulated before our next quest: Cornflour, the master wizard of the Fruit Kingdom, had his magic robe stolen, so we head to Aphasia to help him.
Aphasia + Rosary Village, Again
Cornflour tells us he say the thief run into Reggie's Castle, which is the 4th dungeon. We upwarp to skip 2 seconds of walking downwards to the door. The next room is fairly straightforward, and the third room has us upwarp with the assistance of a chest. We upwarp again in the next, and the next 2 rooms we use keys we've saved from earlier. Another upwarp before shooting a bat holding an arrow, which raises the ground. The next room is cycle based, and the one after that has another upwarp. Another cycle-based room, where we head into another cycle room, with giant rolling pins. We collect 4 keys and use them all in this room, and upwarp in the next 2 rooms before heading to Reggie the Rat.
Reggie is super easy. After almost every attack he will try and teleport away from you, but you can stun him before he actually teleports, which I abuse to take half his health bar before his first teleport. Then I just kept wailing on him until he went down. After he's defeated, Kingsley meets Bad Custard for the first time, who tells us that his dark knights will utterly crush him (spoilers: they don't).
Anyway, we run to Cornflour and give them their magic robe. Our reward is a Magic GEMSTONE for our shield, which will help us reach the Dark Night's castle. Instead of running back to the King/Queen just yet, we can barely hop our way over the next island, and enter Gustav's cave.
Gustav is similar to Reggie, because after a few attacks he'll jump away. And just like Reggie, we can stun him and get multiple hits on him before he does so. Gustav is Sir Orson, another knight under Bad Custard's curse. When running back, we take damage in a certain part of the river to crossover again, and enter the foxhole to Rosary Village, where we can now use our magic GEMSTONE that creates GEMSTONES for us to jump over, and reach dark knight Oscar.
Oscar picks up eggs from his nest and tries to drop them on Kingsley. Luckily, these eggs have collision, which we use to upwarp to his nest. He is completely stunlocked as we repeatedly attack him, and return him to Sir Gawain. We then go back to the castle, and learn the GEMSTONE Cornflour gave us was our last item needed to become a True Knight. We head back to Sea Town where we can use our True Knight gloves to raise Rex's anchor, and enter his domain.
Rex + Bad Custard
Rex the Ruthless is super easy, because we can stunlock him from teleporting as well. We break Bad Custard's curse and Sir William gives us his thanks. We run back to the King/Queen and now having freed all True Knights, we get our final quest: Go to Skull Island through the foxhole, defeat Bad Custard, and reclaim Queen Angelica's magic book. In Skull Island, by falling in a certain area of lava, it warps us in front of Bad Custard's custard pot.
Bad Custard says his iconic line before the fight: "Feel my wrath and taste my custard, Kingsley!"
He has two phases. In the first you wail on him, and the second phase starts after his first health bar is gone. He'll run around the arena, throwing fire spells at Kingsley to make him take damage. After Bad Custard is injured enough, he'll run right in front of his custard pot, and Kingsley uses this opportunity to push him in and boil him alive. We get back Queen Angelica's magic book, and return to Carrot Castle, where the knights hold a big Jamboree for Kingsley.
The end, and Happy Easter!
Special Thanks
The Kingsley's Adventure speedrunning discord for support and suggestions.
Suggested screenshots
5341, 10620, 12412, 25358, 31322, 48644, 48712, 63627, 69895, 103841, 121639/121808, 126946, 134718, 138538, 139423
Darkman425: Input file replaced with one having a fixed cycle count.
Darkman425: Love a funny little guy committing TAS crimes. The upwarps and key management is on point. The non-glitched gameplay is also strong with tight movement and quick boss fights. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.