Super Karoshi is the fifth and last opus of the Karoshi series, in which you have to kill the character in every level. In this opus, the salaryman can in some levels transform into Super Karoshi, which gives him infinite in-air jumps. As usual, a lot of levels require out-of-the-box thinking, such as pressing the right key hinted in the level or performing some specific action like clicking on a link.
The game can be played
here and is very quick to complete (15-30 minutes).
TW: suicide, blood
Emulation
- libtas v1.4.7
- ruffle fa9c6627bd86511de1b710dcf42708dc55c44e3e 2025-09-22 (ruffle-nightly-2025-09-22)
- 506c402a344be6592f3d93120f167a3f 497593_SuperKaroshi_final_notSL.swf
- https://uploads.ungrounded.net/497000/497593_SuperKaroshi_final_notSL.swf
- FPS: 70
- You can add "--open-url-mode deny" to the command line options to avoid having ruffle ask whether you want to open a link in level 44 — this does not save or lose any frame. I suggest not adding it, as it makes it clearer what's happening in that level.
- Run ruffle with the --no-gui option
I added subtitles in the youtube video!
Tricks & Glitches
- you can be pushed to the side when jumping towards a ceiling in the same direction. I don't think this actually saved frame in any place I used it, because it also reduces momentum accordingly.
- when dying at the same time as another character prevents the dying animation from being displayed. This is purely cosmetic and does not save time. This is done in level 18.
- you can jump before the level is fully loaded. This is used in a lot of levels.
- you can jump midair once when falling from a platform, with decreasing efficiency as you do it longer away (in other words, you won't be able to jump further away). This is mostly useful to avoid obstacles.
Framerule?
While polishing the TAS, I noticed that saving a few frames in the end of level 45 did not save frames overall, as the next level then takes longer to load and starts at the same frame. There seems to be a "bus stop" framerule similar to SMB1.
The goddamn level 35
Ironically enough, the most painful level to TAS in this game is a level in which you normally don't have to do anything. There is a bumper, and you have to wait for the character to hit the ceiling a 'certain number' of times. That number was initially unclear as both
a walkthrough video and
a RTA run do it in 25 jumps, but in Ruffle, it takes more than 90 (!).
The RTA run is clearer regarding how it reaches that number: "At 4:21 I zoom out to make the game smaller. This allows me to break the ceiling in the next level in 25 head-bumps instead of 49 (janky Flash game programming I guess)". As it turns out, this player is exploiting the specifics of resolutions in old flash players, better detailed in submission
#9590: GGG502, Dado & raflikk's Flash The World's Hardest Game "no enemy clipping" in 05:10.633 by GGG502, Dado & raflikk: "Another side effect of hit detection being based on rendering, is that it will in turn be affected by running the game on a different resolution. This is a lot more impactful than you’d think. The majority of levels have different times depending on what resolution you play on. Certain enemy clips become possible, certain walls allow for deeper clips, there’s quite a lot of variance, both minor and major. [...] On ruffle, changing the resolution does not appear to affect collision detection in any way."
As a consequence, I had to dig deeper and understand how to lower that number of jumps.
There is a counter in RAM that breaks the ceiling once it reaches 50. I guess abusing collision detection with lower resolution in older flash players made it possible to increase that counter twice per jump. In Ruffle, the counter is increased ruffle 2/3 of the times when using the bumper normally. Changing resolution or moving the character in-air does not help. I managed to increase it (almost) every single time by delaying every bumper jump by one frame, precisely navigating the character in-air on every jump. This allowed me to break the ceiling in 52 jumps (first one does not work, and I could not get a subsequent jump to increase the counter, however long I would delay the jump).
I save 1044 frames this way (14.9s).
The still makes this level a whopping 10s slower than the RTA run, due to emulation differences.
- lvl7: You can't go left in this stage. Jumping in midair to avoid the last jump on the right does not save time
- lvl17: the last jump, taking advantage of the fact you can jump when falling, is almost frame-perfect (2 frames)
- lvl18: turns out if the two characters die at the same time, exploding splash does not appear for the player (this does not save time)
- lvl21: I can't kill both characters at once here because using the bumper will prevent the other guy from getting bumped. As I have time to lose here, I have fun exploring the character's cave for no particular reason
- lvl23: you have to press K
- lvl25: you have to go back and forth in the middle for this one
- lvl31: you have to press shift to move the level
- lvl34: since we have time to waste, we decide to join the crowd in collective suicide
- lvl35: see above
- lvl37: the ceiling in the beginning pushes us to the right, but this does not save time
- lvl39: somehow, jumping towards the apple does not save any frame. Still leaving for style.
- lvl40: destroying the box with the player instead of killing it on the spikes saves a few frames
- lvl41: we have to wait a little bit before releasing the left character, otherwise both characters are not in sync to be killed by the box
- lvl42: same, we can't release both at the very beginning
- lvl44: for this level, you have to click on the karoshigame.com button
- lvl46: once again, jumping is just for style, it does not save any frame
- lvl48: jumping is just for style.
- lvl49: jumping at the right moment saves 3 frames
- lvl52: Lot of time to waste here, I'm showcasing frame-perfect midair jumps.
- lvl54: This time, timing of jump matters. Even better to use the slope on the right for extra initial height. Also, if we time it correctly, we can get a bit higher on the slope from the momentum
- lvl55: enjoy the very realistic hitbox!
- lvl56: you have to press caps lock
- lvl57: you have to reload the level for the bumper to appear
- lvl59: "escape" is written in white-on-white on the board and is reveal when highlighting it with the mouse. This is what you have to press to lower the spikes.
Potential screenshots:
Room for improvement
- If in the future Ruffle better emulate Adobe Flash quirks, it will make it possible to save several seconds on level 35 by abusing collision issues with different movie resolutions in the same way the RTA run does.
- There miiiight still be 1 or 2 frames to save in level 52. Quite unclear how to find the optimal path to go down as the platform is moving and the bump changes things; but many tests found current solution to be the optimal frame.
Note on category
As there's no secret in this game, any% and 100% is the same.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I’ve thought about it and can definitely recognize your “Level 35” issue from some of my own TASes. At first, I wasn’t sure how that could’ve been missed, but I realized quickly from the submission that it certainly was a problem.
As for the frame rule, that’s totally understandable and actually quite common. The comparison against the WR clearly shows a noticeable improvement, especially on the harder levels.
Overall, this is a very solid TAS with great effort behind it. It’s just unfortunate about Level 35. :(
Accepting to Standard.
nymx: Uploading an improvement file by the author.
