I premiered this run for an event we call Jet Force July. The run featuring commentary by myself and a few other Jet Force Gemini Speedrunners can be found here.

This run was done on BizHawk 2.9.1 with mostly default settings. The video plugin was changed to Angrylion as all of the other video plugins have a graphical issue with a couple levels and the Sniper Rifle. In several areas on Tawfret and at the beginning of Ichor there is a sort of overlay of blue streaks that fall on the screen to simulate rain. All of the other video plugins result in a black / flashing screen but Angrylion displays it correctly. The same effect happens with the Snipe Rifle when aiming with it and the game puts a similar overlay to simulate looking through the scope.

I entered Japan v1.0 as the version since there is only one released Japanese version of the game. There are some build strings left in the game though if it needs to be changed to be more accurate.

I also entered the name as Jet Force Gemini. This run is performed on the Japanese version which was localized under the name of Star Twins (スターツインズ) in Japan. The reason why is described later in the comments.

The first complete full game tool-assisted speedrun of Jet Force Gemini. I actually made a run of this last year but it was very much on a whim. As such it didn't have much planning and I only gave myself less than a two month time window to get it all done. I also didn't have any tools set up so in a sense I mostly played it blind. Needless to say it wasn't that great. It also ended up missing one of the Tribals and I didn't notice until near the end of the game (around ~90% completion) so the movie wouldn't actually complete the game. I did decide to make a splice and use RAM editing to finish it out to see what kind of time it would have gotten had I not made this mistake. 3:09:23 is what it ended up finishing with.

This run, however, got a lot more planning and work put into it and I'm happy with the results. Not including time I spent setting up tools to see various game data I spent around four and a half months on the gameplay. This run uses the Japanese version of the game, known as Star Twins, which has various changes to it though most of them are just cosmetic. One of the changes is a quality of life feature that the developers decided to add into this version which was released last so no other versions of the game have it. When a level is selected from the pause menu map screen either the A or Start button can be used to skip the landing cutscene for that level. Over the course of the run this saves over ten minutes of time that would otherwise be spent watching cutscenes.

Shipparts

The main goal of this game is to collect 12 shipparts that can be used to reach the end level of the game. Some of these shipparts are just hidden on a level while others are held by NPCs that have some condition that needs to be met to receive the part. One of these shipparts requires that all 282 of the Tribals be rescued in the game.

Tribals and Regions

The way that the Tribals work is that each level in the game is broken down into what the game calls regions. These regions all have specific names, however on the Japanese version the names were dropped and instead are just called ゾーンX (Zone), where X is a number. e.g. ゾーン1.

Each region has a set amount of Tribals in it and they must all be rescued in one playthrough of it. If any die either by the player or an enemy killing them then the region must be reset and start over from the beginning of it again. Many regions are intentionally set up that on initial playthrough the Tribals cannot be all rescued. Several levels have more than one region on them and in these cases there are green and red lights placed near certain entrances. Green means the that this leads to a new region and red indicates that a region ends here. The mechanics of regions I would describe as a bit quriky and confused me on my first playthrough of this game. It is not enough to simply touch and rescue all the Tribals in a region for them to count. Nor is it enough to pause the game and press the Z button to save your game. After they have all been rescued you must use a region exit as this is when the game saves the region progress.

When a region exit is used there's a special screen that is shown with some of the stats and the time it took to complete. In the run these are skipped by pressing the A button on the first frame possible to immediately dismiss them. To help understand how the saving here works I wrote a little bit of code to explain it:

local bestRegions = {
	[1] = { rescuedTribals, killedTribals, totalKills, frameCount },
	[2] = { rescuedTribals, killedTribals, totalKills, frameCount },
	...
};
local currentRegion = { id, rescuedTribals, killedTribals, remainingTribals, frameCount };
function regionExit()
	if ((currentRegion.rescuedTribals > bestRegions[currentRegion.id].rescuedTribals) or
		(currentRegion.rescuedTribals == bestRegions[currentRegion.id].rescuedTribals and currentRegion.frameCount < bestRegions[currentRegion.id].frameCount)) then
		updateBest(currentRegion);
	end
end

Please note that this is not the actual game code and is very simplified.

Floyd

On the Tawfret level it is eventually forced to collect three robot components and repair Floyd. After which he becomes our companion and flies along side the character currently being played. Using a 2^nd controller he can be activated and shoot bullets. This run makes use of this as he has unlimited ammo and shoots 2 bullets at once allowing him to plow through some enemies easily. I believe Floyd could be used much more and potentially allow for some more weapon skips but I chose to not do this. In my own personal opinion using him constantly gets stale and isn't as interesting as using some of the main weapons in the game. Also I didn't set up or use any tools to control him so trying to use him while also shooting with the main character in some cases were difficult to preform. Typically my approach to this was shooting with the main character or Floyd first and figuring out where to aim and when to shoot. Then load a state to go back and figure out where to shoot with the other, and then finally combine the two. This, however, did not always work as shooting bullets does make use of the games random number generation (RNG). So doing each one in isolation would result in them working once I figured them out, but combining them can result in one or neither working anymore.

Strafe Running and Strafe Flying

Like many other games combining normal running with strafing results in a faster movement. This is used a lot over the course of the whole run as it saves minutes. The same thing also applies while airborne and can be maintained while flying with the Jet Pack. The one exception is Lupus as he cannot strafe fly. As soon as he goes airborne the strafing effect is canceled.

Pressure Boosting

When the character overlaps with NPCs or enemies the game doesn't like this collision and as a result will try to push the player out. This can result in high speeds which can be taken advantage of to quickly move in a desired direction.

Pressure Jumping

In some places it is possible to get the character wedged into a corner and then lay down and begin crawling. With certain angles the game does not like the player being in this position and will try to eject the player upwards to get them out. This can result in high velocities. Due to the way jumping is programmed in this game this can be abused to get a really big jump. In Jet Force Gemini when jumping the game takes the player's current Y axis velocity and then adds an amount onto it rather than setting it to a hardcoded value. This means that in combination with the ejection from one of these locations pressing the jump button will add even more velocity. With jumping working this way also has some side effects that I would argue may have been unintended even in casual play. For example if the player is running up a slope the vertical velocity will be higher than 0 and thus jumping will yield a higher jump than if they were on flat ground. This also means that if the player is running down a slope and jumps the velocity will be below 0 since they are moving downwards in 3D space and thus will get a small jump.

Spawn Jumping

Some spawn positions actually start in the air. Most of the time the character will fall to ground already before the fade in finishes so it usually isn't seen. It is possible to input a jump on the first frame possible out of a load resulting in a jump. Simply jumping isn't enough though as the downwards velocity will result in the jump gaining little to no height at all. However by holding either C-Left or C-Right to strafe and preforming the jump results in a normal jump as if the player were just standing on solid ground.

Sniper Aim Clipping

If I'm being completely honest I don't really understand how this works. After wedging Lupus into a location that could be used for a pressure jump you can begin aiming with the Sniper Rifle and use C-Up + C-Left or C-Up + C-Right while also aiming downwards. Then R can be released to stop aiming and Lupus will eventually start moving forward angled to the left or right depending on which C buttons are being used. It is also important to not angle and turn the camera to far left or right as it will result in the game teleporting Lupus back to his intended position which is where the clipping would have started. This trick is used twice in this run. Since I don't fully understand it I don't believe my performance of it is optimal in either case. I simply did it numerous times and then finally used the fastest version I got of both.

Life Force Door Skip

Throughout the game there are doors that are locked and require certain enemies in the area to be killed to open. These are called Life Force Doors. In a lot of cases in the game not all enemies need to actually be killed to open them meaning many can just be ignored. It is possible to get out of bounds (typically with Lupus since he has a hover ability) and use the exit without having to kill any enemies. This is referred to as a Life Force Door Skip. There are several cases where killing the enemies can actually be done faster than to skip them. With good ammo management killing the enemies won't really affect the routing.

Gem Quarry Generator

On the Gem Quarry level there is a sort of "minigame". Personally I wouldn't really call it a minigame though since minigames are suppose to be fun and this really isn't but I digress. There is a Tribal (that can't be rescued) that retrieves gems from a mine and carts them out with a wheelbarrow and dumps them off four at a time. The generator is basically a giant vacuum (the internal name of it in the game is HooverTank). The gems must be shot to the front of it where it will suck them in powering it up. The generator has 2 timers that it uses for powering up. The goal is to power it up fully which triggers a load out to a cutscene where the generator destroys some asteroids coming towards the level. After completion of this a shippart can be collected. Below I've written a simplified version of code to show how it's working.

local fuelLevel, powerLevel = 0, 0;
while true do
	if (powerLevel < fuelLevel) then
		powerLevel = powerLevel + 8;
	elseif (powerLevel > 0) then
		powerLevel = powerLevel - 2;
	end
	-- once (fuelLevel >= 6000) it will no longer decrease,
	-- allowing the power level to continuously rise to 6000 also.
	if (fuelLevel > 0 and fuelLevel < 6000) then
		fuelLevel = fuelLevel - 2;
	end
	if (powerLevel >= 6000) then
		win();
	end
end

Each gem that the generator sucks in adds 600 to the fuel. This means that each set of 4 gems can add 2,400 to the fuel. The caveat here is that the Tribal takes time to get more gems and during that time the fuel will be decreasing. The gems themselves have a 40 second timer and then they will disappear. So the strategy here becomes the following:

At this point the timing of the 2^nd set going in doesn't matter as long as they go in before they expire since we now are going to have to wait on the 3^rd set to be brought out. Since one set of gems adds 2,400 and our goal is to reach 6,000 the question becomes is it possible to complete this with three sets of gems? Obviously there is the ability to lose 1,200 units before that becomes impossible. Prior to this run the best completion has always been four sets of gems as completing it in three always seemed to be just out of reach. And even when originally trying to complete this I just barely missed it by only a handful of frames... which was disappointing. This however lead me to attempt not just shooting the 3^rd set of gems once each but instead multiple times as each time one is shot it can get an initial fast boost of movement that slows down over time. By shooting them more than just once I was able to get them to the generator quicker and thus closed the gap. This run features the first ever three Cycle on this generator!

Beginning

Right away after booting up the game I advance through the menu and create a file then immediately reset the console. This is done to skip the game's lengthy intro cutscene by abusing a sort of programming error. Some games will use a flag to determine if the intro cutscene was watched and set the flag after it has been seen. Jet Force Gemini doesn't do this. Part of the file select screen's code is hardcoded that when creating a file it will load out to the intro cutscene. However when loading a file that already exists it instead goes to the character select screen. Once a character is selected it then loads the character's current location from the save data. This location is initialized for all characters in the save data and for Juno it is the landing sequence for Goldwood.

Goldwood

There are various NPCs throughout the game. Some of them need to be spoken with as they give an item needed to complete the game or something that is faster to collect than skip. Some instances, however, they just talk to you to provide info and steer you in the right direction so these ones can be skipped. Right away after landing I make use of a Pressure Boost. By jumping onto or running into NPC or enemy the character overlaps with them. The game doesn't like this and tries to project the player out from that position and can result in a significant speed boost. This will be used just about everywhere possible over the course of the whole run. NPCs do have a talk range around them and if you go near them and enter it they will automatically stop you and begin talking to you. This can be avoided by shooting them which disables the auto talk allowing them to be ran passed without worrying about them stopping you. There are various instances in the game where you will go down a long path to get something at the end of it and then need to backtrack to the start of it again. In these cases it is much faster to preform a deathwarp which will respawn you back at the beginning of the area. I use this right away in the cave after collecting the last few Tribals and the Yellow Key hidden in side of the one box.

We meet up with Magnus again but this time we actually need to speak with him as he gives the Red Key. On the way back to head up the hill to get the Machine Gun in the cave it is actually possible to pressure jump over the wall. Unfortunately it turned out to be slower. A pressure jump up the hill though is much quicker than climbing the hill normally. The rest of the level is pretty straightforward. In the very last room it is technically possible to get a quick kill on one of the flying Stealth Drones and have it result in immediately causing the rest to explode and disappear. This has only ever been done twice before by Caneras during RTA run attempts. I tried lots of different shots with both the Pistol and Machine Gun but couldn't get it to happen so I decided to just kill them all and move on.

SS Anubis

The first room with enemies went extremely better than I imagined. I was able to not only do a pressure boost off the one Soldier Drones but I was also able to manipulate the Stag Drone into shooting the last 2 Soldier Drones for me. The Stag Drone shoots more powerful shots than I can and they immediately cause the Soldier Drones to explode which is better than if Drones were to fall on the ground and slowly die off. Life Force Doors don't open until all the enemies are considered dead and a Drone lying on the ground slowly fading away is not counted dead until it's actually gone. If they explode into body parts and splatter then they are already considered dead. I also shot the Stag Drone before hand to get him down to a low enough health such that shooting one of the explosive barrels near him would also cause him to explode thus allowing the door to immediately open. Throughout this level there are cell panels on walls that need to be destroyed. Each panel unlocks a jail cell door at the end of the level each of which has a Tribal in it to save and one that has Vela in it.

Sekhmet

After the discovery of the cutscene skipping in the Japanese version and switching over to it eventually it was also realized that the landing cutscene for this level can be skipped. Normally progressing with Juno all the way to Mizar's Palace was done. Then a pause can be used to access the map screen and switch to Vela then select this level. Technically this means Tawfret landing cutscene could also be skipped by using Vela immediately after SS Anubis and then using the map screen to switch back to Juno. I decided to properly time these 2 cutscenes to see which one is actually longer. Turns out the Tawfret cutscene is longer by roughly 5 seconds. So this is the reason I come to Sekhmet first before Tawfret. After collecting the Machine Gun with Vela normally a pause is preformed and re-selecting the level will warp you back to the beginning again but instead I can just switch over to Juno again without losing any time. I want to to continue with Juno as collecting Floyd is a priority so that I can make use of him in Vela's remaining levels.

Tawfret

This is the level where we acquire the Tri-Rocket Launcher, the best weapon in the game. We love blowing stuff up. Unfortunately the Nintendo 64 doesn't really like that since it can cause a lot of lag. At the lake area where there is an island with a big tree in the middle there are a pair of pants that need to be collected. These are given to Gimlet in the next area and in return he gives a Crowbar that opens a few trap doors in the game to allow access to Tribals. Under this tree is Gimlet again where he gives a shippart: The Cargo Bay Key. Normally you are meant to return to this level later with Vela and make use of her ability to swim underwater. An underwater entrance here is meant to prevent Juno or Lupus from accessing it. By preforming a somewhat precise jump out of the tree enough velocity can be built up with Juno to make it deep enough in the water to enter. This saves a huge amount of time as it completely eliminates Vela's need to come to Tawfret later on at all.

In the Ruined Town area three robot components need to be collected to repair Floyd. One of these is outside on a stone wall while the other two are in the basement area of the Town Hall which can only be accessed by entering the chimney. In the basement is where I make use of Spawn Jumping. The spawn point is fairly high up and by jumping immediately it is possible to get on top of the collision. This allows me to make my way back into a side area without having to crawl through a tunnel which is a slow method of movement. I then preform a deathwarp to reload the area and spawn jump again. This time I make use of it to get the remaining Tribals and the last two robot components. One of these is on another side of a wall that is not suppose to be accessible here. You are intended to exit outside and make your way around and come down through the house Floyd is on top of. However by being in the water and preforming a precise jump as I rise I can collect the second robot component without going back inbounds. The water here is very shallow and not meant to be swam in and because of the swimming state it causes some weird interaction with the wall collision. This allows me to swim right through the wall and jump into the other side and snag the Tribal here and last robot component. Then I can exit from this side which puts me right where I need to be.

At the beginning of the Castle region there are several flying drones and two Cyborg Drones up on the walls. None of these need to be killed as the Life Force Door only requires the Rhino Drones on the wall above the drawbridge. With good aiming some Tri-Rockets can be fired right away and they will take out all of them as they spawn up on the wall behind where the Life Force Door symbol is. Inside the castle is where I first make use of shooting enemies with Floyd and the main character both at the same time while running through the area. Don't blink or you might miss some of the shots! After passing the water area I chose not to do a deathwarp after collecting the second Tribal here. I timed it to be very slightly slower due to how long you have to wait before triggering the load out after death as well as the load screen taking awhile.

We encounter the first boss here who is called Fet-Bubb. This boss is not difficult at all there are just four fangs to destroy then shoot his face. The mechanics of bosses in this game though is that certain parts of them will be invulnerable for some time. They will eventually flash solid white when they become vulnerable. Normally Tri-Rockets are used exclusively for this boss but I tested using Floyd instead and using him lost no time. This was good because part of my route planning to try and optimize their order hinged on saving as many Tri-Rockets here to make sure I had enough for later.

Sekhmet (2)

Here I immediately collect Grenades that are right behind the spawn point. Normally Grenades are never collected because they aren't very useful, but we'll get to them later. Next we preform the Green Key skip. The design of this level is more or less a giant circle. At the end of it we get the Green Key and then we are right back at the beginning were we can use the door here to go to the end. By crawling underneath the lock symbol and standing up we get the character in a position of where they sort of become stuck. From here we can use aiming and some camera manipulation to get the game to project the character out of this position. Although the Green Key is being skipped now it will be required later by Vela and this level is the only place it can be found. There is a shortcut to get to the end of this level faster so on the return trip it will be used to get the Green Key very quickly. While in this state wall collision doesn't happen anymore and since the exit is very close it is possible to touch it and thus skip needing the Green Key to get through the door. This last room is just a giant spiral where the exit door is at the top. A new form of pressure jumping was found that allows for skipping up levels of this spiral. Unfortunately I was already progressed several levels passed this point when this was discovered and I decided I did not want to lose all the progress to go back to include it. So there is somewhere around a one minute time save here if a future run is done that could make use of it.

Cerulean

This is where the grenades come in handy. The Deflector Drones at the beginning have their shields to block bullets. Shooting near the top corner can allow hits on them but because Floyd is positioned on our left he can't really get them. So I use Grenades to take them out quickly. This is not the reason why I got them though. At the end of the big open area is a locked door that requires the Tri-Rocket Launcher to be collected. It is possible to get passed this door and skip the weapon. The utility of the Tri-Rocket Launcher far out weighs skipping it however so it is collected. To acquire it three gold bars must be collected. One of which is all the way across the big field. So what's a quick way back to the other side to buy the Tri-Rocket Launcher from Fishface? A deathwarp of course. This is what the Grenades are for as collecting them for this deathwarp is faster than skipping them and having to run all the way back.

In the tunnels because of the shape of the walls some gaps exist at the sides of the gates. The last one is not big enough to get through but it is big enough to squeeze into and get the same effect as the what was used for the Green Key skip. In this instance the exit can't be touched so instead somewhat of precise movement needs to be done. It is possible to end up being stuck floating in the air if not done properly and the only way out would be to pause and restart the level. If done correctly though we touch some of the sloped wall collision on the other side which returns back to normal state of play and movement. Now that we're on the other side we can just run to the end.

Ichor

This is the first level where the game ramps up the difficulty a bit. All of the Soldier Drones here have shields. The ones with small shields are called Deflector Drones and the bigger full body shields are called Barricade Drones. There are also a few Cyborg Drones here as well which are one of the strongest enemies in the game. Rockets make quick work of them though. There are a few platforming rooms here. The first one has moving walls that try to push you off. Jumping as they are about to push the player off makes it possible to land back on the ledge without falling down. Then in the following room there is meant to be a sort of puzzle where colored switches to move platforms of the matching color can be used to make it to the other side. Because of strafe running and strafe jumping though it is possible to just position two of these, the yellow and purple, and then cross the room diagonally.

We encounter the second boss here named Lurg. Not a lot to talk about here the fight is pretty straightforward. Unfortunately a quick kill here didn't seem possible. Right near the end I shoot two quick Tri-Rockets. Although it may appear that the second one didn't work it actually did. The first takes out the last two arms and the second damages and kills the head. Immediately after the arms are destroyed the head is still in a sort of invincible state. Despite its state it can still be damaged. The time at which it becomes vulnerable is random. So I did various movements until I got a good result that was significantly faster than any other.

After the boss Lupus becomes an available character to play as. Normally running to the ship to complete the level would be done as this would unlock the level Mizar's Palace for Vela. Because of Sniper Aim Clipping we can skip this and immediately pause and switch over to Lupus. This means that Vela doesn't actually get the Mizar's Palace level available to her. Technically this can be a problem because on the map screen if a level is missing between two others it will lock off levels from be selected due to the gap. Fortunately later on in the game when all the characters converge at Mizar's Palace the game unlocks levels for other characters. It does this by taking all three of the characters levels and combining them together. Since Juno, and Lupus will as well, has Mizar's Palace unlocked it will also give it to Vela. If you've played Jet Force Gemini before you might be wondering how will I advance the game though? Vela, just like Juno and Lupus, needs to put be into the Pyramid on Mizar's Palace to progress the game don't they? I'll talk about that later when we get to it.

Spawnship

Not really much to talk about here. The level is designed to just be a loop to get the Red Key to progress to the end. The Sniper Rifle is then collected and exit the level to the next one.

Rith Essa

Again not much to talk about here. We collect the Homing Missile Launcher and Tri-Rocket Launcher here and rush the exit. At the beginning I get up to the side alcove a bit quicker by jumping up the wall. In some locations where walls form acute angles it is possible when jumping at them to land on ground and do another jump.

Eschebone

This level has an interesting premise. Within a few rooms we encounter a giant worm. We have to enter its mouth and the rest of the level besides the boss fight at the end takes place within it. The largest region here called Thorax needs to be completed with Vela due to a water section so she'll have to come here later. Since Lupus can fly it's possible to enter the mouth of the worm quickly by just flying into it. For Vela to enter she would need to actually blast the mouth and wait for its tongue to drop to walk across. So to save time here I blast the mouth with Lupus but then enter on the first frame possible after the permanent flag for this is set. This saves time later since Vela can just run straight in.

Again like other levels before this one it becomes a big loop to get a Key to unlock the door to reach the end. In this case it's the Magenta Key. Lupus does not actually need this key anywhere else in the run so I skip it. Through the use of Sniper Aim Clipping it's possible to get Lupus out of bounds and just use the exit and go straight to the boss.

It's here that we encounter the third boss the Mechantids. Again pretty straightforward just shoot the difference body parts as they become vulnerable and eventually end with the heads.

Mizar's Palace

With Lupus in the very first room it is possible to do a Life Force Door Skip. Unfortunately it is slower than killing all of the enemies due to Lupus not being able to strafe fly. There's a decent amount of hovering Lupus has to do to skip the door. In the next room are the Night Vision Goggles and they are needed to open the next door otherwise they would be skipped as this is the only location in the whole game that they are used. The rest of this level with Lupus is pretty straightforward. There is a Robot Mission to complete that activates the Pyramid that the characters can enter into. This is where Sniper Aim Clipping comes into play again. By going up the edge of the Pyramid it is possible to use this again. With proper positioning preforming this glitch into a wall of collision Lupus will receive a lot of vertical velocity. This allows Lupus to then use his hover ability to enter the Pyramid in place of Vela. The developers tied each characters cutscene of entering to each respective door. These doors are then locked and will only open for the correct character. Since Lupus is used out of bounds here the door is bypassed. The cutscene that then plays is Vela's cutscene however it has Lupus in it. It looks pretty funny because the character animations are not synced between them all. As a result Lupus trying to preform Vela's actions has him doing his death spin and fall over animation multiple times. At the end of this cutscene a flag gets set that Vela has entered and thus disables her from character select. So upon returning to the character select screen both Juno and Lupus are available so Lupus is selected again. Then Lupus is put into the Pyramid. This saves a decent amount of time because although the section of Mizar's Palace that Vela would go through does have Tribals that must be rescued it is the shortest one to complete. Later on in the game coming back to the Pyramid is required so Vela is the quickest option to return with. This means Vela's section would normally be done twice. Although her section is short it's still faster overall to skip one of them entirely since it also allows her to skipping running to the ship at the end of Ichor also.

Juno's section of Mizar's Palace is definitely the longest. It also has the most difficult section to get through for a tool-assisted run as well. There are a few Tribals collected in the upper section then there is a hole to jump into and leads to an underground maze with Tribals scattered throughout it. This maze area unfortunately causes a lot of desyncs. Compared to just about anywhere else in the game this area is one of the most painstaking areas since it needs to be rigorously tested to make sure what is being done actually syncs. After entering the Pyramid is a long series of cutscenes that lead to the first encounter with Mizar. I did some luck manipulation when entering. Mizar has three possible attacks that he can do. The best one to quickly defeat him is the Laser Eyes attack. Surprisingly the luck manipulation I did worked first try in this instance which was nice. As soon as the fight starts Tri-Rockets are used to defeat him instantly which leads... to another... long series of cutscenes... After all the cutscenes are done all of the levels are given to each character so that they can all now go anywhere as well as a Jet Pack upgrade. Before leaving Mizar's Palace though there is a racing minigame that gives one of the Shipparts needed to reach the end of the game. Juno's spawn location is closest to its location so he is selected and then used to go and complete it.

It is now at this point that previous levels need to be returned to. Many of the levels have areas that on initial playthrough couldn't be reached or are designed for one of the other characters. Some of these are even designed with further restrictions as a certain key is needed to open doors to access all of the Tribals. This in turn means that some levels do need to be completed in a certain order to prevent even more backtracking.

Sekhemet

Nothing to significant happens here. In the lava room I abuse the way jumping works with slope velocity to get a much higher jump than intended. Which allows for reaching the top area with two Tribals much quicker. In the pathing room shortly after with the moving elevators I managed to get a really big chained boost off a few of the Soldier Drones. This meant that I could have gotten away with a little less Jet Fuel as I was able to make a much better cycle on one of the elevators. Getting the Drones to cooperate though is a whole another ordeal. Unfortunately I couldn't get them to give me the boost I needed to make the cycle with less fuel so ended up going with what I got originally.

Tawfret

Normally in an RTA run we will get the Homing Missile Launcher before coming here. This is because it makes taking out the Zombie Drones that need to be killed here to unlock a door very trivial. Originally for this run I did plan to get them but during the completion of Sekhmet I really thought about it and came to the conclusion that I shouldn't actually need them anywhere in this run. So I decided to do some testing as this level was the only place that could really be a problem. And using Tri-Rockets here ended up working out pretty well. One of the far Stag Zombie Drones didn't want to die but I eventually got it to work. It required me to not turn and run towards the door too quickly. I think getting to far away and turning the camera away maybe started to cull some of the rockets which would result in it not dying.

In the catacombs section came up with a few new routes compared to how I did it in run from last year. I decided to just take points front of each of the cells and then did a basically distance calculation on them. One of the routes was significantly less than what the others were so I ended up using it. One of the problems here is that the Zombie Drones are not actually just spawned in behind the doors. They don't appear until the player gets close to the door. I don't believe the door has to be actually opened but with how close it is needed to be there is no reason to not open the door to just get direct shots on them. It would have been nice to just go to the cells with Tribals in them and blast the doors of all the others but I guess the developers thought of this and decided to prevent it.

SS Anubis

Again nothing to far out of the norm with this level. The Passageway region is just a long path in and because of how the Tribal saving is programmed to work requires running all the way back out. Another Shippart is collected here from Midge. In the Depository region there is a big maze to run though. This for the most part is skipped by using Pressure Jumping and getting up on top the walls and then running as straight across as possible. The backroom here with some Tribals and a Ninja Drone was another spot that liked to desync a lot. I'm not really sure why as there isn't much going on in here. In the last room with the ship there are just a lot of baby Tribals. The route I use makes use of some luck manipulation. Some of the babies can see you and start running to you which means you don't need to go as far to get them. In last years run I actually got one to see me that I didn't even think was possible to happen. Unfortunately I did not get it again in this one. Because of the placement of another Tribal however having it not see and run to me is a very small time loss. Maybe only a second or less so I decided to not worry about it. The main one that matters is the one just off to the left as soon as the room loads. The sooner this one "sees" you the better as it will start coming over while I grab the few on the right. I collect this one as a come back in front of the ship and it's near the door where you spawn. Immediately after this one I go to the boxes in the back corner to collect two more. The one that is on the ground is the other one that can see you and in last years run it had run out in front of the boxes nearer to the ship. But since the one up on the boxes doesn't move this is why it doesn't result in much of a time loss. The only difference here is that don't immediately turn around and run to the last one I have to drop down and grab it quickly before going to the last one.

Walkway

Pretty straightforward. Skipping the Homing Missile Launcher here is a pretty decent time save. In the beginning of the basement section the four Barricade Drones wanted to give me problems. I finally got them all to die quickly by looking up and shooting the ceiling. It is low enough that shooting it causes the splash damage to finish them off. The little dance I did on the elevator on the way down was invent by myself. The other long time runner of this game, Caneras, likes to say he invented it but he DID NOT!

Rith Essa

Normally Rith Essa is a level that would be completed by Vela but I'm doing it as Juno. This is the reason why I grabbed the Blue Key with Juno on Sekhmet otherwise he wouldn't even need it at all. Lupus can technically get the Tribals in the Bluff region but due to how he has to fly around a bit on the walls and out of bounds it just ends up being slower overall. Regardless getting into the Ascent region without the key is also much slower. But this finally brings us to the Mine region. This is the reason why Vela would normally do this level. The door into the mine is locked. The key is held by one of the Mole Brothers who wants the Specialist Magazine in exchange for it. The magazine is only accessible by Vela on Eschebone in a water section of that level. Lupus can also technically get in the mine by using his hover ability. Unfortunately some of the Tribals are only accessible via the Jet Pack so he can't get them on initial play of this level. Luckily there is a place to Pressure Jump and this allows Juno to enter and complete the mine. Due to the design of this area it is possible to finish out the region while remaining a Tribal. Whenever the player transforms there is a door that gets locked to prevent the player from leaving the area. In the case of this area however the locked door is outside of the Mine region. So I complete the region while in Tribal form then use the map to leave which turns Juno back to his normal form afterwards.

Juno's post Mizar 1 section is pretty long as he does the most. Vela's and Lupus' are pretty short. Due to constraints Vela's level order is somewhat important. Eschebone has the Magenta Key which is needed to open a shortcut on Sekhmet. Sekhmet has the Green Key which is needed for the Tribals on the Spawnship. There are a few stops along the way but the other important level for her is Goldwood. Goldwood could be done at anytime but since it is one of the more difficult areas in the game it is done last to be as fully stocked up on ammo as possible.

Eschebone

Nothing to significant here until the brain in the Cortex region is reached. This room has a bunch of moving platforms and it is designed that at the top you are intended to ride a one all the way around the room to reach a Shippart. With fairly precise timing it is possible to reach the platform with the part by jumping off the brain. However by being quick enough it is possible to has the upper platform positioned that it can be used to make it even easier to reach the part. The rest of this level is just running and gunning down all the enemies in the way. I tried to pull off some cool shots where I could.

Just before entering the water there are some flying Drones that spawn in from the ceiling. I shot the first few then go after the Rhino Drones. Shooting only the first few was not enough to kill them initially. I planned to go back afterwards to kill the rest but some how by bringing the camera down to shoot the Rhino Drones resulted in the explosion from the first few hitting the ceiling killing all the rest. I'm not one to complain to much when something good happens though since it didn't happen very often through the making of this run. At the end of the loop I grab the Magenta Key and the last two Tribals then make my way to the ship. I take some intentional damage on the lava to being to prepare for a deathwarp that I will want to do on the Spawnship.

Water Ruin

Located underwater and underneath the castle is a Shippart, the Nitrogen Tank, that only Vela can reach. This is the only reason she is brought here.

Sekhmet

Vela finally returns to Sekhmet but this time instead of skipping the whole level we need to reach the end of the big loop as the Green Key is located there. Near the shortcut that can be taken with the Magenta Key is Fishface. I grab the Red Key from him while I'm here since I will need it also on the Spawnship. It's intended to get this earlier and be required to even be able to complete Sekhmet in the first place.

Spawnship

Spawnship has Tribals that only Vela can rescue as some are locked behind a water entrance. Nothing really notable happens here other than at the end when grabbing the last few Tribals there is a Ninja Drone that will try to kill them. I'm far to quick to let him accomplish his task though.

Ichor

Normally Vela would need to do Tawfret to get the Cargo Bay Key Shippart. But if you remember way back near the beginning of the run when going through the level with Juno I got the Shippart early. So Vela doesn't need to go there at all. What is nice about Tawfret is that it has a full Tri-Rocket Launcher ammo crate which is nice for the following level. Since Vela doesn't need to go there though the next best place to refill is here on Ichor as there is a full ammo crate just a few steps away from the spawn point. So the only reason I come here is purely just to refill the Tri-Rockets so I'm ready to plow through all the enemies on Goldwood.

Goldwood

Goldwood Lodge. The time has come. This region is one of the hardest ones in the whole game. It's packed full of some of the most difficult enemies with lots of health. They are no match for precise Tri-Rocket shots though! Don't blink or you might miss some of the carnage to be had here. Along with the Tribals there is a Shippart that is collected as well. At the end a new level is locked which is called UFO in the Japanese version and Spacetation on the North American version.

Spacestation / UFO

This level is fairly boring. None of the enemies need to be killed. I go two floors deep into the level to get all the Tribals then head back out. I did however find a new trick here. With a precise jump off the Totem Pole and a really sharp turn in the flying it is barely possible to get Lupus to tip to the side enough to have the higher tread touch the upper level. This saves a decent amount of time as you otherwise need to circle around to use an elevator to get up.

Goldwood

Goldwood Rim is another extremely difficult region. I guess the developers really wanted the first level of the game to end up actually being the hardest. Even worse than Lodge though many of the Tribals here are intentionally put in bad places so that they can die very easily. With precision and grace I snag them all safely! I threw in a few close calls just to keep the viewer on their toes though...

Gem Quarry

For anyone that has played this game and made it to this level they probably remember it. This is the level that has a generator to power up. I talked about this earlier in the comments.

SS Anubis

Besides the two Robot Missions in the game that must be completed immediately to advance this level has the one other Robot Mission that needs to eventually be done to advance. By getting a gold rank on it I earn the Ear Plugs which I can use to get a Shippart on Water Ruin by trading them to a bear named Ivana that wants some peace and quiet. To earn gold requires collecting 6 of the 8 circuit boards, destroying the three cell panels, destroying the reactor hub, and finishing in under one minute. The game itself doesn't clearly define this and unfortunately various guides online for years have convinced people that they more or less need to get an expert rank. Which isn't much different than gold but does make it more difficult. This wasn't even realized until after several years of running the game RTA and then someone at some point missed one of the circuit boards but still won the Ear Plugs anyway which caused me to look into how that was possible.

Edit: Some time after I premiered this run on my twitch.tv channel it was discovered that the Sniper Aim Clipping can be used here. In the room with the gap and the circling platform by going to the right the cell panel on the wall can be used to begin the clipping. With proper movement enough vertical velocity can be achieved to jump up to the top and go straight to the Robot Mission and avoid circling around.

Ichor

This level features a new route that has never before been used! This route will now even be used in RTA runs. When I land on this level I'm placed into the Military Base region but we are also here to complete the Perimeter region as well. Lupus is not normally suppose to be able to get into Perimeter though because it is locked behind the Blue Key which is the one and only key he is not able to get. Technically he can get it on Eschebone via Sniper Aim Clipping however this is slow and not worth it. Luckily there is a different method of skipping the Blue Key here that is much faster. I don't know for certain that this is how this works but it is my best guess. By taking Lupus underneath the Blue Key lock symbol, which is a loaded actor, and then jumping upwards into it with a stationary jump to get a higher upwards velocity Lupus will get pushed to the side of the symbol so that he does not go into it. The door blocking the entrance, which is also a loaded actor, is right next to it and with proper positioning the push from the symbol actually clips me into the door. Then I simply move forward to touch the load out trigger.

Since it is required to go pretty deep into Military Base to rescue all of the Tribals it has always just been considered to be faster to do Perimeter immediately then complete Military Base. Turns out this is not the case. While I was going though Ichor with Vela on her initial playthrough I thought of this route idea so I put it into my notes for later when I got here with Lupus. After all the of the Tribals are rescued there are four more rooms to go though to reach the ship at the end to trigger the region exit. But entering into Perimeter also triggers a region exit so I tested getting all the Tribals and then backtracking to the start. It ended up being roughly fifteen seconds faster with my RTA, but using savestates to correct errors, play so I knew once I actually TAS'd it that it would be even faster than that. So that's what I ended up doing here. One of the more important things to note here is in the last room of Military Base that has Tribals there is also a Ninja Drone. Ninja Drones have two tasks that they want to complete. The first is to kill all Tribals they can find. If there are no Tribals then they will try to kill you. I intentionally kept it alive because on my way back across the room I wanted to be able to do a pressure boost off of it.

Water Ruin

This level follows a pretty standardized route. The only significant things here were getting a quicker death after trading the Ear Plugs to Ivana for the Power Cell Shippart. Then after the death and respawning at the ship this time I took a better around clockwise around the ship where in the previous run I went counter-clockwise. I actually had to intentionally delay touching the ship to trigger the region exit here by eight frames! This is because when you touch a Tribal to rescue it there is a small amount of time where it sort of fades away. The Tribal does not count until this has completed and with this newer route it was possible to hit the ship to early causing the region to finish with only seven of the eight rescued.

Spawnship

So now we're back to Juno again. I actually could have done this level before switching to Vela but I chose to put it off. I tested if switching early would lose any time and it doesn't. The reason why I put it off is because on this level there are four Tri-Rocket capacity crates. I wasn't positive that fifteen would be enough for the final Mizar fight. So I delayed in the interest of losing as little progress as possible in the event that I would need to come back and collect one here. Aside from that this level doesn't have much to it for Juno. There is simply a Shippart for him to collect at the end of the lava section.

Mizar's Palace

Finally Vela makes it to Mizar's Palace! As mentioned earlier normally Vela would have to come through here to enter the Pyramid to progress the game but Lupus was entered in the pyramid in her place. But there are Tribals here so she does need to rescue them. With all the other eleven Shipparts collected and all of the Tribals now rescued King Jeff, who is in the Pyramid, will give the final Shippart and we're off to the final level!

Asteroid

The Asteroid is a pretty short level in comparison to most others. There is also only one Life Force Door in the whole level so that means almost none of the enemies need to be killed either. And thanks to Mortis I didn't even have to kill the enemies for the Life Force Door as they found a jump that skips half the level which contains that part. About halfway through there is a gap that is crossed by jumping across some platforms. On the higher ledges there is a jet fuel pad to fly across which is used to reach the end. Due to some of the collision there is a fairly precise spot that can be jumped onto then jumped off to make it up to the top.

Shortly after the final boss of the game is an encounter which as you could have guessed is Mizar yet again. This time he isn't messing around though. There are two phases to this fight. The first one has a pattern of the following:

He does 2 and 3 from the list three times then moves to 4. After 4 is complete he loops back to 2 and repeats this until enough damage has been dealt to cause him to land back on the ground then loop back to 1. Of the random attacks of 4 only one is really a problem which is what I call the electric fingers. This attack can deal a lot of damage quickly so even with maxed out health he can kill you very quickly. This attack can make the fight very difficult for anyone playing the game in real time. On the third time where enough damage is dealt his flying apparatus breaks and he falls to the ground entering phase two. Phase two is basically a repeat of the first encounter with him on Mizar's Palace but this time his arms can actually be destroyed until only his head is left which slowly limits the attacks he can do. Each arm being destroyed however has a cutscene associated with it so I don't want that as that is slow. Fortunatly I can just shoot him in the face to end the fight and skip the arms.

So now that you know how the fight works lets talk about what I do. I of course abuse the Tri-Rockets! Something the developers probably didn't think about here is that when Mizar is flying forward at you to do the slam attack on the ground he actually moves pretty fast. This allows for shooting him in the chest with Tri-Rockets and when they explode Mizar moves forward putting his flying apparatus into their hitbox causing it to be damaged. On each of the three parts where this happens the health is set to 10,000 for his wings. With some well placed and manipulated Tri-Rockets this can be taken out easily. I didn't look into the code here but I'm pretty sure there is some overlapping here as well as maybe lag playing a part in this working. On the first set the first two Tri-Rockets fired in quick succession take out 7,165 of this leaving him at 2,835 left. You'd think that one more shot would easily do the trick but it took me quite awhile to get a third one to finish off the rest of that. On the second set I couldn't get only three to work so I ended up using four. I knew this wasn't a problem though because for phase two I only needed four at most to finish him so this meant I had at least four for the third set. I managed to get the third set in three which gave me an extra. I then also managed to complete phase two with only three so I ended with two extra.

So that's it right? With the final boss dead the game is now over isn't it? Well not quite. After a cutscene where it is revealed that Mizar was just King Jeff's brother, Barry, the whole time I get one last Robot Mission to complete with Floyd. This one is very short again like the Mizar's Palace one except this one doesn't even have any collectables. Just fly to the end and you are done. Due to how Floyd coasts a bit after releasing A I was able to end the run a little sooner than you might expect since timing here ends on the last input. Nomrally in a real time run it is better to just hold A the whole time but for this I released it just early enough so that Floyd slowly comes in an crosses the finsih line! And that's it!

Timing Methods

I know some people like to see other timings of how this run turned out so I'll list these here.

Region Best Times

The game keeps track of how long it takes to complete a region. Below is a table of all the times for each region where I rescued all of the Tribals in them.

Weapon Stats

The game tracks some weapon statistics during play of a region. This data is reset at the beginning of each new region. I wrote a lua script that tracked these over the course of the whole run and added them all together these are the final results.

Notes: The game does not seem to track accuracy for Grenades. Some Grenade kills come from shooting one out of the hand of an enemy that pulled one.

Surprisingly the Tri-Rocket Launcher does not have the highest accuracy. Of all the weapons it is the only one that can exceed a 100% accuracy. This is because one shot can result in three hits if each of the three rockets hit an enemy. (3 hits / 1 shot) * 100 means it can have a maximum accuracy of 300%.

Spreadsheet

I put together a spreadsheet that I used to track my progress as I worked on this run. In the route tab it compares to the run I made last year. In the comparison tab the run is compared to the Caneras' best RTA segments. He currently holds all of the record times for every main category for Jet Force Gemini.

If anyone is interested we have a Community Discord Server that any fellow Jet Forcers are welcome to join.

Enjoy the run everyone!

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: There is a lot going on in this TAS, and honestly...too much for me to analyze. The first area was making some significant cuts over the WR run, but when it got to Floyd, I was a bit confused. Your submission text talks about your choices in this particular area and shows that you did things with a purpose, even though it didn't pull away from the human effort as I expected. Routing was completely different as well; however, it doesn't matter. Most of this TAS was a clear run-away, and looks sharp and to the point. I congratulate you on this effort, as it showcases a good a great time of 30 minutes over the WR. It was surely a good watch.

For those waiting the past two decade, you finally have the long awaited run...Accepting to Standard!

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