This is an improvement of 2325 frames over the current publication.

The current run of Whomp 'Em was done in 2006, I was browsing potential NES games, and looking at the speedruns. I wasn't seeing much differences but I noticed you could cancel the cloud and recast it immediately. This was the main source of improvement for the run, but there are lots of other various improvements as well.

I didn't really find anything in the way of glitches. This seems to be one of the most well coded games I've come across lately. Just barely managed to scrape below 11 minutes, thanks to a trick in the space floating section found just before submitting.

Before I start talking about all the tech and improvements, I'll first talk about the game's power-ups, called Totems in the manual. In this game level order does have an impact as you collect various totems after each stage. Some are more impactful than others, while the freeze is mostly useless. Pressing Start advances to the next weapon in your arsenal. The stage name that these can be acquired are in parentheses.

This attack is basically just twirling your spear in front of you, which repels things and damages enemies. Interestingly it does 4 damage to the boss of the First Test stage, for whatever reason. Normally you'd have to collect a spear upgrade to do that much damage to bosses.

Does what you'd think, hold B to shoot a flame out of the end of your spear. It takes 6 frames before it can actually damage enemies. It can also melt ice blocks in Water Test and the final stage, and kill certain enemies that other weapons won't.

This is the greatest item in the game as it allows you to travel vertically by chaining them together. Pressing start also cancels the cloud, so in effect we can jump from the cloud and cancel it immediately to throw it again. This basically allows for jumping infinitely in mid-air and is generally faster than using the Dart as you have to overjump that to land on it. Also the cloud is annoying to use in real time as often times it actively AVOIDS you like it doesn't want you to land on it. The cloud's movement is camera based rather than based on the characters relative position. That's why sometimes when jumping the cloud doesn't follow you because the actual camera isn't moving, it only moves up when the camera does.

Quite possibly the most useless item in the game, for a speedrun at least. It freezes enemies in place and creates a platform out of them that you can jump on. You can also use the fire wand to destroy them after they're frozen. The only way this would have been useful is if you could have webbed them afterwards and thrown them, in which case you might be able to land on top of them and ride them. No such trick was found, stingy coding.

This item can pull certain enemies to you as long as you hold B. Letting go of B launches the enemy forward until they're offscreen. Can not change weapons until that enemy is off-screen, so it almost seems useless. However, if you press Start the very frame after letting go, the enemy simply vanishes and you can change weapons again. Useful for clearing some laggy enemies quickly.

The second most useful item in the game, a long range projectile. The spear can become lodged into solid terrain as well, creating a platform to jump on. If chaining them on the wall, you have to overjump them to land on them, which is slightly slower than using the cloud in general. They are still used where I can't switch to the cloud quickly enough.

This weapon can only be acquired on the final stage after the initial 6 stages are completed. It fires a projectile that 1 shots any enemy, at the cost of an entire heart of your own health. Sounds really bad, but it's actually useful as it's a long range weapon, as long as you can sufficiently farm health pickups from enemies. Can be fired for free if your hp is refilling, either from a pickup or from an expended 1-up potion.

Now let's talk about item drops, which are completely RNG based, but do have uses if you can manage to get them reasonably. Some of them are not random and are located in various places by pressing either A or B. (whether you jump or not, you can still spawn the item in the air if you are close enough and press A). Thanks to WhiteHat94 who had a nice guide on speedrun.com here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BAkLdMWclQ

This pickup doubles your spear's base damage from 2 to 4. It only lasts 4 hits, so you have to avoid using your spear if you've picked it up for the boss (your up and down spears also count no matter what weapon you have equipped). Trackable in RAM at 009B. These are the main priority pickups as it means you can do 4 damage to bosses despite what weapon you may have.

This item decreases the damage you take. TODO: add more info

Makes you invincible for 5 seconds. It may seem like a short invincibility but it's actually useful in a couple of spots it's possible to farm it, as some bosses are annoying to avoid damage on. Also, health counter adds time at the end of the level.

Extra life, or a 1-UP as you may know it. These refill your hp should you run out, so you don't reset the level or anything unless you're out of potions AND hearts. There are a couple hidden ones you can collect without any time loss. You need decent hp for the final boss because the dragon attack hurts you.

Heals you for 3 hp (1 heart)

Fully heals you.

Increases your spear length. Doesn't really have any use in the run, it just extends your spear. It seems like it would be useful for hitting distant objects but there's never a point where you need it, as you can generally just hug bosses.

Collecting the number of these on the pause screen (select) will increase your maximum HP. Doing so also increases boss hp, so you definitely don't want to do this.

Movement speed comes in 3 variables. If your speed value is 1, you move at 1, 0, 1, 0 pixels. If your speed value is 2 you move at 1, 1, 1, 1 pixels. If your speed value is 3, you move at 1, 2, 1, 2 pixels. Knowing what is slowing you down is helpful to avoid speed loss.

Pressing start to change weapons while you have a cloud out will immediately cancel the cloud. You can chain these together for jumps in mid-air. It's slower the more weapons you've collected as it takes longer to menu back to it afterwards. This is still the most useful for vertical sections.

All of your movement is based on a global frame rule. On the ground it checks every 2 frames for directional presses. In the air, it checks every 8 frames. For this reason sometimes delaying before entry can get you a better movement cycle for cutting corners, in particular vertical sections. But also for this reason you can turn around for 7 frames without losing any speed. This is good for killing enemies behind you without actually slowing down.

After completing a stage, any missing hp will count up before the next stage will load. Each heart represents 3 hp, for a total of 12. Since we never collect enough gourds to increase our health we have 12 hp for the entire game. Each missing hp will take 5 frames to count up at the end of the stage, so it's important to have full hp when defeating bosses, if possible.

Every single boss in this game has 18 hp. Some bosses take different damage amounts from various weapons, with 4 being the max damage you can deal to any boss. For example the water test boss takes 3 damage from the Dart weapon, meaning I can get an early hit in before he even lands. Figuring out which weapons deal damage to bosses is key, so that you don't waste time farming a spear head when you don't need to.

When you climb a ladder, if you are pressing A you come off of it with 3 speed.

In the one room that has weird physics where you are floating in space, you can actually trick the game to giving you 3 speed by using a cloud and cancelling it while you are touching the ground. The game thinks you should be running on the ground now and sets your speed according to running instead of whatever physics this is which normally sets your speed to 2.

Your spear can naturally block things that are trying to hit you from the front. This is seen in a couple of places in Sacred Woods (the falling bamboo for instance).

Normally whenever you throw a spear you can't change weapon until it has impacted a wall or flies off screen. However, if your spear happens to kill an enemy, it can be cancelled. This is useful in a couple of situations.

Normally whenever you use the web attack on an enemy you have to let go of B to throw it and weapons can not be changed until the enemy flies off the screen or impacts another enemy. However, if you press Start the very frame after releasing the enemy, it just deletes that enemy instead. The only downside is you can't get drops from enemies this way, but it helps for quickly removing enemies off screen, especially when it might generate lag.

Now that all the useful information is out of the way, it's time for stage by stage commentary. I also included a brief summarization of these notes in the subtitle comments on the submitted BK2.

Not much to say about this, just run to the right. I kill as many enemies as possible, and generally throughout the run, for entertainment mostly.

The first vertical room of many. The previous TAS used 2 pogo jumps on enemies to the right but taking damage on this hand is 9 frames faster. We however have to take 2 hits here, and the health still counts up at the end of the stage even though it's only the intro stage.

Not much to say about this room also, kill enemies for fun. There's also a small health pickup that's hidden on one of the ledges. It costs 0 frames to grab and is the reason why we're able to take the extra damage boost in the previous room. We're still -1 hp at the end which will cost 5 frames, but since we saved 9 we're still ahead by 4. There's really no good place to farm any other health pickups mainly because of our limited weaponry.

Another vertical section but we're going down instead. The route in the previous TAS was good, and requires perfect timing on the global timer for your movement to match up it's actually kind of precise.

The last room in the intro stage. There's a hidden 1-UP here that the previous TAS picked up, but it would require slight backtracking to grab (~40 frames).

First downwards vertical section of the stage, which is a recurring theme here. This stage is picked first because we need the cloud weapon which allows us to skip ladders and move faster upwards in general. Again, the route here in the previous TAS was good, mostly followed it. It just happened to line up with the same movement cycle, landing precisely on the final breakable platform is hard to line up. Saved a couple frames killing the gatekeeper enemy here by being a few pixels further right

This is just a transition room. But it's good because I need to delay by exactly 1 frame to line up the RNG and movement cycle in the next room.

Another downwards vertical room. Getting the invincibility pickup was actually discovered by pure luck. Previous versions of this room the drop did not happen. I believe one of the enemies killed on the way down and it screen wrapped below, and is in a good spot to pick it up. This means I can just drop through many enemies, except for the hands because they act as platforms. I was able to avoid all but 1 hand, I tried to figure out how they spawn but I would always seem to get one that was unavoidable.

This room is the only viable place to farm your spear head damage upgrade, unless it was possible to get it from the last mask in the previous room. I tried, but was never successful, as lining both of the drops up seemed impossible. There's also a hidden 1-UP that's free to grab here, but I have to take damage to get to it and to kill the enemies quicker, which all hang below the platforms. It's still worth the 5 frames from having -1 hp as the enemies take forever to come above the semisolid platforms

This room starts out as a final vertical drop. The boss won't spawn until you reach the very bottom level of ground. He is invulnerable until he fully forms, and also he spawns in the ground at the start so there are no early hits here. The boss (and all bosses in fact) has 18 HP. Because we farmed the double damage spear we can now do 16 damage in 4 hits, leaving just a regular 2 damage spear to finish him off. This acquires the most useful item in the game, the cloud.

Can kill these dragons which take 3 spear hits, because of the lenient frame rule for air movement. Turning around and killing them is basically just for entertainment as most kills are, they don't really generate lag and take too long to kill for any reasonable drops. I take 2 intentional hits here because I need to set up a "death" just before the boss. All of these hits are avoidable in this room. The way the 1-UP potions work is if you run out of hp they refill you back to max and one of your potions on the HUD goes away. They do not restart the level until you are out of both.

Another upwards vertical stage, and our first chance to see why the cloud pickup was so important. Using the ceilings of ledges to cut your jump short to land in the cloud saves a little bit of time. You can also cut your jump short by grabbing a ladder. If you grab a ladder and just let go your speed will start at 0. But if you're holding A when you let go it will start at max speed (3) for some reason. It's sometimes useful when your speed is on a bad cycle and taking a while to reach 3. I did get a few excess lag frames near the end. RNG and frame rules completely ignore lag as it's hard lag in this game, so if you're ever able to remove them you'll 100% save that much time, and the rest of the game *should* sync. That is if your movement to remove the lag frames didnt change too much. Also I acquired the spear damage powerup on the last possible robot so that I could reliably kill the previous ones without losing time.

This room is just a long run to the left. For whatever reason certain terrain in this stage acts almost like ice physics where your speed takes forever to reach 3, and in these cases it's actually faster to jump to reach max speed faster. There's a green shield guy who is incredibly tanky (8 hp) and I use him to take a third intentional damage boost. In fact since the spear powerup was acquired in the previous room I can't hit him with the spear or I'll lose one of my four double damage hits. That's the only way to bypass him with the weapons we currently have anyway.

Another vertical section, going up. Really abusing the cloud here, and landing on one of the green platforms for better positioning so that I can get to the ledge at the optimal time. That's because getting in the cloud at max height requires moving in one direction the entire time.

This is the damage boost section of the run. The room is nothing but a giant row of spikes with some moving platforms occasionally. Damage boosting is the way to go, and it's set up to be just enough to force an HP refill just before the boss room. One of the damage boosts actually allows me to be able to land on a platform that's moving me in the same direction, giving a slight boost. There's also a free hidden Magic Potion (1-UP) just before the boss room that costs no time to grab and negates the health refill I just took.

This boss is annoying as he just keeps bouncing around. It's just barely possible to get max hits on him, by using the cloud in a specific way I can get high enough to get the third hit in. When he exits this form is completely based on frame rules, so unfortunately he exits it in the air, when preferably he'd do it closer to the ground. It only really costs 9 extra frames for it to hit the ground, so it's not too bad. Even delaying entry into the boss room would cost more than that to get a better pattern so it's not really worth it.

Nothing too interesting about this room. Using the throwing spear to kill some enemies. Your spear acts as a natural shield against certain projectiles, as seen at the end of this room it reflects a falling piece of bamboo.

Another falling vertical section, which requires some frame rule lining up. I took damage on the spikes which was slightly faster than the old route going along the left side, mainly because there was an enemy in the way which slowed you down a lot. Luckily I can heal this damage with the snakes in the next room so it's not a problem.

This is the room that's good for farming the spear upgrade. We don't really need to spear anything else after this point anyway, so we farm it here. The snakes take 2 arrows to kill or 1 spear hit. It's better if you can kill the snakes from a distance to lessen the time waiting on the pickup to drop. Again, if a spear kills a snake I can cancel it immediately by changing weapons.

Another upwards vertical section. This one was a bit tricky to optimize. Originally I went to the left and used the hidden invincibility item to bypass those annoying enemies. However, it's possible to ricochet the second one with your natural spear shield, meaning I can take a more optimal direct line to the right side of the wall. I have to use spears at the very end because throwing out clouds there's not enough space to jump back and forth to cycle through them.

A room with just 2 enemies which take a ton of hits to kill, so I don't bother. I do hit them with throwing spears as many times as possible, for no reason other than I can.

This boss is pretty standard and pretty much always has the same pattern so maximizing hits isn't too difficult. This stage gives us the spear whirlwind attack, which is useful in the next stage because it deals 4 damage to that boss by itself. That means I don't need to farm a spear damage upgrade on Fire Test.

The first enemy in this room was difficult to kill, I had to maximize weapon management to be sure to get enough hits in to kill him. Completely unnecessary but I like to kill as many as possible. The lava rocks that fall in this stage can only be destroyed by the spear whirlwind. The flaming birds can be destroyed by the spear whirlwind in 1 hit, but it's not the only thing that damages them. Thrown spears also do damage but not enough to 1 shot. I took damage on one of the fire birds in order to reduce lag, as killing him would create too many sprites on screen since they split up into smaller flames when killed.

Another vertical section where we get to abuse the cloud. Also there are more ladders here so we can use them whenever it's possible. Same with bonking on ceilings to cut our jump shorter to land in the cloud earlier. This room is fairly simple, had to kill one of the falling lava rocks in order to land on a ledge.

One of the lava rocks was unavoidable so I took damage in the lava instead. It doesn't matter as there's a full HP refill at the end of this room anyway. I shoot the last golden mushroom in this room in order to drop an invincibility pickup. It generates 3 lag frames from having the thrown spear on screen, but it means I can avoid damage on the boss, which saves more from the health count up at the end of the stage. For some reason this stage only has 3 rooms before the boss, I don't know why.

This boss is very erratic and quick making avoiding damage almost impossible. That's why the invincibility was so important for the first few hits. You can kind of manipulate him a little bit by jumping so that his pattern will be above ground. It's entirely possible for him to become vulnerable while completely underground and unhittable, so I need to manipulate him to be above ground. Since the spear whirlwind does 4 damage per hit to this boss I didn't need to farm a spear damage upgrade. Hitting him 4 times does 16 damage with spear whirlwind, then just a regular 2 damage spear hit is enough to kill him. This stage gives us the flame weapon, which melts ice blocks and kills certain enemies in 1 hit which is actually kind of useful because I need to wasting spear powerups. Hitting enemies with the flame does not deplete your spear powerup uses.

In this room I just try to kill as many enemies as possible in interesting ways. The throwing spear is actually useful here to make new platforms to avoid bonking on a wall in a few places. I take damage on a flower projectile for the same reason. Luckily there's a hidden large heart in this stage to refill hp.

Downwards vertical section. These snails die in 1 hit to the flame, so I can turn around and kill them all without time loss. Shooting the walls behind me at the start does nothing, I was just bored.

Going left. This stage has the hidden large heart that can be acquired without wasting even a single frame. I initially didn't notice it was here until checking WhiteHat94's guide. It saved the health refill after the boss. The poison swamp in this stage is solid just like in Fire Test. The rolled up armadillo can not be hit until he comes out of his rolled up form so there's nothing that can be done about him.

Upwards section. The leaves in this stage act as a spring which grants you a much higher jump. However if you jump on the first frame of landing on them you only get a normal jump height so you have to wait a bit before launching. Just trying to maximize uses of clouds and leaves, and even one of the conveniently placed floating flowers.

This is a good place to farm the spear head upgrade. Also I got lucky and got an invincibility item from the second enemy. It is useful and makes getting hits on the boss easier.

It's possible to get an early hit on the boss by jumping into the cloud immediately and then throwing a spear at him. Luckily the thrown spear does the same damage as a regular spear so it actually did save time. The best pattern to get is where his first descent is above a ledge. That cuts his ascent back up shorter meaning he'll emerge for the last time a little bit quicker. Also, it's good to have the final spawn above the lowest point of terrain for spawning the end stage item. Luckily such a pattern exists. This stage gives us the Web Powerup which has some minor uses later, but nothing major.

It's important not to drop into the water here. Being 2 tiles under the water will set your max horizontal speed to 2 instead of 3. Some of these platforms automatically sink so it's best to not drop too low or you'll lose speed. There's also a free hidden 1-UP on one of these ledges so might as well grab it. A thrown spear is necessary for the last jump or it's impossible to make the gap. We can go ahead and farm the spear damage upgrade here because these enemies die in 1 hit to a thrown spear so you can farm it from a distance.

Downwards section. Just jump over ledges when possible. I also start to show off the web deletion trick, where you can instantly erase any enemy. The only downside is they don't drop pickups, but we've already farmed what we need. I also avoided damage by spear pogoing off an enemy. It doesn't really matter because there's a full hp pickup later but I can afford to use a spear because of how this boss works.

This section forces us underwater and there's no known way to avoid the slowdown. Therefore I have to just jump as late as possible when entering and as early as possible when exiting. The bubbles at the end of the underwater section actually heal you and you continuously take damage while being underwater over time. There's just enough time to exit the water while keeping the full hp, by using a thrown spear to create a platform

Upwards vertical section, so it's time to bring the cloud back out. In this stage there are falling snowdrifts that if they touch you they will start dragging you. If you are in the air and you touch them you can not escape them. The only way to escape is when it's dragging you along the ground and you can jump out of it. There's one at the very top that for some reason if you land on it just as it's moving left it will turn to the right for whatever reason. This gives a small boost before leaving the stage (it moves you in pixels of 4,3,4,3).

Going right. I try to burn some of the ice blocks for entertainment. If you press L+R while walking on ice blocks you will face left and your speed will never drop below 3.

You can get an early thrown spear hit on the boss as he's falling. Thrown spears deal 3 damage to this boss, so you actually only need 3 hits from the upgraded spear to kill him. (3*4) = 12 and then 2*3=6 for a total of 18. With that in mind, I can waste a singular spear hit somewhere in the stage before hand, which I did. This stage gives us the Freeze powerup which is arguably useless. I'd love for there to be a trick involving this weapon. I tried to combine it with the web throw hoping I could ride frozen enemies but the web doesn't work on frozen enemies unfortunately.

This stage grants us an additional weapon, a dragon attack that's very powerful. It kills enemies in 1 hit at the cost of an entire heart of hp (3 hp). In this room, I just kill these initial enemies normally. Luckily the web trick works on these guys. It does NOT work on the fat enemies (that look like the boss of Secret Cliff). In order to get over the first ledge early I throw a spear into the wall and then use an upward spear attack on that enemy in order to cut my jump short. The walls in this room can be broken only with the Spear Whirlwind. You can break them all instantly without losing any time, but sometimes getting to them is annoying.

Up we go. Also as a note you jump off clouds much higher than normal. Therefore the natural clouds supercede your weaponized cloud whenever possible. They also pull you up onto them a bit when landing. Taking damage was necessary to reach the final ledge as early as possible.

The tiled ice blocks can be destroyed with the flame weapon. The cocoon looking enemies which look like the boss from Magic Forest can be killed in a number of ways. Fire kills them, web works on them, or the dragon attack can be used. I do use the dragon powerup later into the room, because it's possible to manipulate a large heart drop which negates any health loss. You can fire the dragon attack for free if your hp is counting up, whether from a health pickup or from a depleted life refilling your hp.

Up we go again. Not much to say about this room, pretty similar to the other one. Landing on the clouds in this one was faster than using the cloud weapon for the most part, until I need to move right to reach the ledge.

This room has some interesting physics. You can only get 3 speed by walking on the ground which is why the first float is at max speed. But pressing B while facing left or right will set your speed back down to 2. You will continuously float in a direction unless you press B and a direction or hit a wall or ceiling. Initially I found out that you can jump out of a cloud at regular speed, which cut some of the upwards travelling short. This saved very small amount of time, but I also noticed that if you cancelled the cloud here while floating you would just walk on air. However you didn't get 3 speed even when walking on air which made me think I needed to be on actual terrain for that to happen. I didn't expect it to work but cancelling the cloud while close enough to the ground will actually walk as normal and increase your speed to 3. There are a couple points where I did this, and at the end I even show off that you can just walk on air. This saved an incredible amount of time (~200 frames) and was the last discovered trick which took the time below 11 minutes.

Another upwards section. Not much to say, using clouds, took damage to get to the left faster.

The last room of this stage. I use the dragon attack here as long as I can farm health pickups. The final boss is not that tight on hp anyway, but it was more entertaining this way I think. I shoot one of the final fire guys with lots of thrown spears just to show how tanky they are if you dont 1 shot them with the dragon attack.

The final boss. The first phase starts off with him just spawning random enemies, some of which can be killed with the flame weapon saving you some hp for your dragon attacks. The second phase was a bit more interesting. Getting hit by those blue orbs will cause the boss to end his invincibility animation and start to disappear to reappear somewhere else. But because his invincibility timer gets reset you can get a quick hit on him before he disappears by taking damage at the same time as the dragon attack is overlapping his hitbox. The boss has a larger hitbox in the middle, and a smaller horizontal hitbox on the bottom. Also as a note your dragon attack disappears much quicker when it reaches the left side of the screen as opposed to the right, for whatever reason. The final hit is timed to cast the dragon attack just before a blue orb damages me. If you take damage from the actual boss you will not get a quick second hit.

eien86: Claiming for judging.

eien86: Amazing sub-11 min improvement over [688] NES Whomp ‛Em by adelikat in 11:39.45.

Accepting to Standard

fsvgm777: Processing.