This run aims to complete MoHawk & Headphone Jack as fast as possible without using warps.
Game objectives
- Complete the game as fast as possible
- Use glitches to save time
- Avoid using warps to skip levels
MoHawk & Headphone Jack is a very strange game for the Super Nintendo. It has a rotational mechanic, which rotates the camera throughout the game based on what direction Mohawk is being pulled in by gravity. The game is notorious for being quite confusing and sickness-inducing due to this mechanic, along with the clunky gameplay and confusing level layouts. The gravity mechanic is kind of like Super Mario Galaxy, where entering a certain area in a level can change the gravity to pull you upward, or to the left, etc. This makes the levels pretty annoying to navigate, since the rotation messes with how you can visualize the level. Fortunately, you can press Select at anytime and this allows you to move the camera around and get a map of the entire level! The objective is to collect enough of the small CD-ROMs scattered throughout the levels in order to open the path to the next level, with the requirement getting higher as you progress. The second level of each world is a boss level, which you have to navigate to the boss room. Once you defeat the boss, the warp to the next world opens. Throughout the game, Mohawk blares his rock music in the background of the entire game (except for boss fights). You can change the soundtrack by collecting large CDs scattered throughout the levels, and once you collect a track you can switch between the ones you have collected on the pause screen. Health is measured by the small spinning triangles on the bottom of the screen. You can hold up to 5 of these at a time, and you can usually find these scattered throughout the levels. If Mohawk loses all his health and takes one more hit, it will use a life and send you back to the last checkpoint.
Mohawk has two moves that he can use: His main move is rolling. You can roll by holding down Y, and it is your main attack against enemies. You can also block some attacks when you're rolling, however this is not always the case. Rolling can also allow you to skip collecting items, like CDs and hit points. However you cannot roll forever, as after holding Y for a certain amount of time, Mohawk will automatically unroll and you will have to repress Y to get him to roll again. He also has a screen-wide explosion move that you can perform by pressing X, provided you have enough charges which are shown as miniature Mohawks in the top left of the screen. This destroys all enemies on screen, but it has a very long animation and should be avoided wherever possible. It can also be used to attack bosses, however it only will count 3 hits for the entire animation. Mohawk can also perform a small jump by pressing A, and a high jump by pressing B.
Mohawk has a plethora of morphs- sorry, MORFS, that you can find and use throughout the game, however I will only talk about the ones actually used in the run. These only last for a small amount of time.
- Burn Rubber
- Collecting the wheel morf allows Mohawk to go faster and also jump higher. This also makes him even more floaty when holding jump. as if he needs to be floatier :v
- Flying
- Collecting the wings allows Mohawk to be able to fly throughout the level. Mohawk also goes extremely fast and is pretty difficult to control in this form, although this is not as big of a problem for TAS as for real-time runners.
- Inflate-o-Morf
- This one works similarly to the P-Balloon from Super Mario World, where Mohawk will inflate like a balloon and be able to slowly float around. You can control what direction Mohawk can go with the d-pad, or you can cancel the floating by rolling.
- Creature from Ooze Lagoon
- This allows Mohawk to swim much faster, and allows for underwater breathing.
There are two more morfs, a spring powerup and a suction cup powerup, however they are not as useful as the other three and are actively avoided throughout the run.
This game does not have very many tricks or glitches, but there are still some that are quite useful throughout the run.
Wall Hugging
When ascending or descending, if you keep moving against a wall as you go up or down, your vertical movement is greatly increased. This can save quite a bit of time, especially in 2-1. Doing it after jumping can allow you to reach some platforms that you would have to use two jumps to reach normally.
Clipping
It's possible to clip into a floor with correct positioning when approaching a ledge. If you manage to avoid landing on the floor by being low enough when Mohawk starts descending, you can clip through the floor and reach other areas that you would have to take a different path to get to otherwise.
Lag Reduction
In some cases, initiating a roll can actually reduce lag significantly, or change what frames the game decides to lag on. Because of lag, getting levels to resync after updating inputs is very difficult. But in most other cases, lag is because of the amount of stuff on screen and cannot be avoided by rolling.
Screen Tilting
It's possible to slightly tilt the screen by pressing the L or R shoulder buttons. This doesn't seem very useful at first (cough), however sometimes tilting the screen and jumping allows you to jump either lower so you avoid hitting a gravity plane if, say, you're trying to avoid hitting an enemy, or you can jump even higher than without tilting the screen so you can, for example, reach a gravity field that you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise.
Flying without wings
Holding the jump button as you are falling into a gravity field and heading "down" an angled surface can allow you to keep floating in the air for a short amount of time. This saves you having to land on the ground and lose all your speed, and it also can speed up segments of a level where you need to fall down past several gravity fields.
Skipping Big CDs
Collecting the big CDs to change the soundtrack causes the game to pause for about half a second. In this run, I avoid collecting them to showcase what the run would sound (and look) like without collecting them, however collecting these would count as a speed/entertainment tradeoff. Gotta save those frames :')
Quick Flying
When you have the wing powerup, you can hit B or A to fly in the air. Rolling after pressing A or B to fly skips the wing flapping animation and instead plays the roll/unroll animation, allowing you to flap your wings 10 frames faster than normal.
Quick Floating
After cancelling a roll while in the air with the Balloon powerup, you move left and right much quicker than normal.
Score Tally
The score tally shows up at the end of every level (except the final boss) and takes one frame to count up the % of CDs collected, enemies killed, and secrets discovered. You want to always collect the exact amount of CDs needed to beat the level, avoid entering unnecessary secret areas and not kill more enemies than necessary. You also want to avoid collecting CDs altogether in the second stage of every world, as none are needed to beat the level.
1-1
The first level has the first showcase of the wall hugging trick explained earlier. It also shows lag-reduction using rolling, however it is not very noticeable just by watching the run itself. I avoid the big CD and at the big descent I hug the wall, allowing me to fall much quicker. After exiting the secret area, I jump and hug the wall, which allows me to reach a platform that I couldn't reach with one jump otherwise. This level requires 100 CDs to open the warp to next level.
1-2
This level shows off a case of "flying without wings." After the first teleporter, I use the floaty physics to avoid landing on a ledge, while avoiding collecting the CDs along the way. After going through a tube, I end up in the boss room. The first boss is a little bouncy ball on a pair of legs, which tries to shoot you with little orange orbs that cannot be blocked with rolling. I quickly defeat the boss and jump into the warp to world 2.
2-1
This level is the first in which we see the wheelie morf and the wing morf in action. The wheelie powerup allows us to jump to platforms that are much higher up that we couldn't reach before. This also showcases the quick flight technique once I collect the wings. At the long descent, the CDs are too far from the wall to be able to just hold left and do the quick fall while collecting all the CDs, so I have to press right on the correct frames to collect all the CDs as I fall down. This is still much faster than not hugging the wall. This level requires 200 CDs to open the warp to the next level.
2-2
Nothing notable happens until the boss. The boss has several attacks that he can switch between, like flying around and spraying green fairy dust underneath him. When he lands on the ground, I opt to use an explosion move to avoid the beams that he shoots which cannot be blocked by rolling.
3-1
This level has an underwater segment that you have to traverse to get the CDs required to beat the level. You can swim faster by spamming A and B simultaneously, which also allows you to quickly change your trajectory towards a different direction. Spending too long underwater will cause you to drown, so don't take a bunch of time to enjoy the swimming animation. This level requires 250 CDs to open the warp to the next level.
3-2
Nothing notable happens until the boss. I pick up the diving powerup, which allows Mohawk to breathe underwater during the boss fight. The boss fight consists of a squid, which I manipulate to not spew ink at me, which cannot be blocked by rolling.
4-1
A floor clip is used in one part of the level to access a room that would normally have to be entered using a teleporter. It requires 250 CDs to open the warp to the next level.
4-2
This level shows off the quick flight technique a lot more than 2-1. Nothing else notable happens in the level until we get to the boss. The boss starts out on a minecart, and after five hits, the cart shatters and the wheels begin bouncing around the room. The boss then begins shooting lasers at you, which CAN be blocked by rolling.
5-1
This level is the first in which the Balloon powerup is used, which is required in order to be able to progress up in the level. Nothing else notable happens in the level. It requires 300 CDs to open the warp to the next level.
5-2
Nothing notable happens until the boss. This boss is a skeleton with two heads, and you need to hit the body in order to be able to do damage. Hitting the heads only stuns them for a short while, and other than that it's an easy boss fight.
6-1
This level has one-hit-kill fire barriers that we are supposed to find the correct valves in order to get rid of them. Instead of that, damage boosts are used to go through the fire barriers, allowing us to access parts of the levels that we shouldn't be able to. We also use two deaths to be able to get back to certain points much quicker. At one part, we need to lure a worm to be able to damage boost through the barrier and hit a switch. In the RTA world record run, we are supposed to use the worm to damage boost through the barriers 4 times, however I found a way to skip two of those boosts. By flying into the bottom corner of the curved ledge, the game allows us to just clip right through it. The first time around, we can use this to hit the switch and get back underneath the area where the switch is much quicker. For some reason, if done correctly, this allows us to open a "path" to the area underneath where the fire barrier is. This saves us time over having to lure the worm over to the barrier and damage boosting through. We can use this same clip the second time through, being able to fly through the ceiling on the other side and skipping the other fire barrier. This level is the longest, as it requires 350 to open the warp to the next level, and there is only 355 in the entire level.
6-2
Nothing notable happens until the boss. Using the balloon powerup, we can easily kill the boss by floating in front of it, staying rolled in a ball, avoiding the flame on top of his head and holding B. We do need to fly outside of his hitbox on occasion to reset our roll timer, but otherwise the boss is very easy.
7-1
This level has orbs that repel you away from them that also block the path forward. You are supposed to find valves to turn that will deactivate the correct orbs for you to progress, however they also reactivate some inactive ones. But by tilting the camera and doing frame perfect jumps, we can jump straight through these orbs. This is much easier to do with the wheel powerup. This level requires 350 CDs to open the warp to the next level.
7-2
This level is pretty unforgiving, as choosing the wrong path can lead you to an immediate death. Since there are no checkpoints in the level, every death means you have to do the level all over again. The boss requires you to bounce back the triangles that he throws at you in order to release the brain from the case. After the case breaks, the brain starts flying around and shoots little green lines out. This boss is pretty simple after you shatter the case its in.
The Final Fight
The final fight in this run is literally just the first boss of the game lol quite an anticlimactic ending
I want to thank PJ for his AGDQ run which helped me to route this TAS, and
his map viewer that helped me keep my bearings while doing the levels and also provided information about the game! I also want to thank EZGames for his work-in-progress run. This game was actually fun and I still like Voodoo Puppets 1 even after listening to it for this long
There are probably a few places that this could be improved, but I don't want to trudge through 6-1 again :v
- Emulator Used: BizHawk 2.9.1 (sadly no headphone jack to accompany it :( )
- ROM Checksum: SHA1: 524bc88a5daff3435149ad079a593295e22740b0
Darkman425: Claiming for judging this motion sickness game.
Darkman425: I usually don't get motion sick from games but this still was a bit hard to totally follow without some eye strain. That being said, this looks well routed and executed through these labyrinthine levels. Shoutouts to PJ's map viewer for also assisting in how these levels are laid out and what the warps even are for this game. Nicely done TAS overall!
Accepting to Standard, though this game will definitely need a motion sickness warning for its publication.
