Panekit (パネキット) is a Japan-exclusive construction and simulation game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 1. It was released on August 5, 1999
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.8
- BIOS used: psj-30.bin
- Heavy luck manipulation
- Aims for fastest time
- Contains Speed/Entertainment tradeoff
- Uses suboptimal vehicles
- Genre: Adventure/Sandbox
Game Overview
The purpose of Panekit is to complete every single mini-game using vehicles built from your own imagination. The player basically drive around in their own custom made vehicle in colorful landscapes, playing the mini-games and then unlocking more terrains and mini-games to play and travel to.
In the beginning, the game gives three vehicles in the player's inventory to choose from. So basically, the player drive around looking for parts and other equipment scattered around the terrain. Most of those parts are located in hard-to-reach places like on top of trees, on the summit of a high cliff, on an island right in the middle of the ocean, or even on top of a suspension bridge.
Those parts the player collect are then added to the inventory so they can be used to build new self-designed vehicles. Vehicles can be obtained by completing minigames and collecting boxes, which sometimes contain vehicles or parts.
How i got to making a Tas of Panekit
I believe i started tasing this game around the middle of 2024. In my ever lasting search for the best PS1 games nobody has ever heard of, i found Panekit. What made me tas this game was the sheer openness this game offered. You could create any sort of vehicle and roam the world with it, play almost every minigame with it, or just have fun experimenting with different vehicles.
That's what i thought at first, then i remembered that i wasn't a creative person at all. The game developers gave you reward vehicles after completing minigames or collecting boxes, so i luckily did not have to create new vehicles myself (that would have been a disaster...).
As we all know, 3-D racing games are difficult to tas and Panekit is no exception. It is only made worse by the fact that the game is in japanese, so most of the time you are just hoping you are doing the correct things. You could play this game without even knowing japanese, its simple in most aspects.
The islands and route
Panekit has a total of 5 different islands, all containing mostly hidden boxes and minigames that have to be played in order to get all the vehicles.
1st Island: Starter Island
Very basic island with a few minigames and boxes.
2nd Island: Race Island
Not really sure how to call this island because it does not have any distinct features. Much bigger than the Starter Island with lots of races.
3rd Island: Tropical Island
Smaller than the previous island but more variety in minigames. Boxes are also more hidden.
4th Island: Snow Island
Roughly the same size as Race Island, about 75% of the island is covered in snow.
5th Island: Desert Island
The biggest island with the most difficult flying races to optimize.
There is no complete view of all the islands within the game, so i had to look through youtube videos to find a picture.
Now we get to the route.
How do you actually route this game?
Before we make a route, we need to set our goal first, which for me is 100%. 100% to me means getting all the vehicles. Getting all the vehicles means collecting every single box in the game and completing all the minigames.
I don't think there could be another category aside from that, maybe a NG+ where you fly from the 1st island to the last island but that was already done in the tas twice in less than 3 minutes.
Now that we know our goal, we need to route this game, which is actually very difficult. Before i could make any inputs in my tas, i would have to play most of the islands and minigames beforehand myself, so that i know where the hidden boxes are and where the minigames end. It's important to know where minigames end, so that you can collect boxes while
the minigame itself ends, which lasts somewhere around 5-6s.
Basic stuff and "tricks" i used in the tas
To be honest there aren't a lot of tricks in this tas. The only noteworthy trick would be the warps. If you go near a sign or wall with a minigame, it will unlock in the menu, where you can later conveniently warp to it. This saves a lot of time and optimization. You don't have to be incredibly close to the minigame sign to have it unlocked, sometimes just being in the vicinity is enough for it to be warped to.
Minigames can be started by going near a sign or wall that can be found throughout the islands. The signs explain what you have to do in the minigame and give you tips on which vehicle is best to use. There is also a "Qualify" timer, where you have to complete the
minigame in a specific time or collect a lot of points. Each minigame has 2 variants, with the 2nd variant being much more strict or difficult.
The minigames i play in the tas are chosen in a specific order, so that i can collect boxes at the end of the minigame because i have lots of seconds to spare anyway, so why not collect something?
Contains Speed/Entertainment tradeoff
As with all of my tases, i tend to focus more on showing off the game than actually squeezing out every last frame (impossible because of lag). That does not mean that the races and other parts are suboptimal or anything. The races are quite optimized with the skips i found, i even had to redo a race for a week because of a minor mistake i made at the beginning of it. For the showing off part, i chose to show off most vehicles
i got as rewards and from the boxes, even though some of them were not as good as the previous one i had used.
Wouldn't you agree that showing off different vehicles and their movement would be more interesting than playing through the game with the same 3-4 vehicles? This is Panekit: Infinitive Crafting Toy Case after all.
Lag
Bane of my existence. The game creates lag depending on whats in your field of view and the vehicle you have. The more parts your vehicle consists of, the more lag will generate. This makes it impossible to make a super optimized tas of Panekit.
If your vehicle consists of lots of parts, the menu will also be a few frames slower. If you finish a minigame and get your reward vehicle and depending on the vehicle you currently have, the game will only register inputs every 3rd frame instead of 2. This lead to a minor instance of me losing time in the early game because i did not actually know about this.
There is another problem i do not actually have an explanation for.
Sometimes when you press start and try to go back into the menu, the game will take a few more seconds to load. This must be somehow related to whats in your field of view. In the very first menu i had made an 1-frame input mistake already and when i tried to do the input 1 frame earlier, the tas would still sync miraculously, but only up to the box on the beach on the 1st island. Very odd...
What's important in the menu:
1. The main menu
Only the first 3 menus are important for the tas:
1. Back to the overworld
2. Vehicle customization and choosing your vehicles (and loading your custom vehicles)
3. Map
2. When selecting 2. Vehicle customization etc.
Only the first and 4th menus are important for the tas:
1. Vehicle customization
4. Reward vehicles
(5th menu shows you your current progress of the game)
3. When selecting 4. Reward Vehicles
Reward vehicles are split into 3 categories at first, with the Appearance Vehicles category unlocked on the Starter island and the Flying Vehicles category unlocked on the Snow Island
1. Car vehicles
2. Flying Vehicles
3. Function Vehicles (these primarily consist of technical and impressive vehicles you can use to clear minigames with)
4. Animal Vehicles
5. Appearance Vehicles (you will see me showcasing them at the end of the tas)
Camera
Not a whole lot to say about the camera. You can select between 3 different camera modes when pressing start:
1. Core - the default camera mode where the camera stays behind the vehicle
2. Auto - much better camera mode than Core, especially for flying vehicles when you want things to be stable, the camera is more zoomed out and won't shake as much
3. Fixed - only used at the end of the tas to showcase some vehicles, camera stays in place
Overall approach to the tas
With all being said and done, lets go back to the routing. The routing looks like this:
When arriving on a new island:
1. Go through the whole island and find every box and minigame location.
2. Play through minigames and look where they end so that you can get boxes that are in the minigames vicinity.
3. Use a vehicle that is both good at the minigame, the potential terrain after, and the box that you could collect.
4. Do not look at which vehicles are actually obtained from the boxes and minigames, otherwise you lose incentive in tasing this game.
That is just me being honest, because i always wanted to have a surprise waiting for me at the end. Again, it does not mean that the tas is unoptimized in any way. Every box i have gotten in this tas made the most sense to me most of the time.
Just remember that the tas contains lots of speed and entertainment tradeoff. It would be way out of my league to make a fully optimized tas of this game, you dont even want to know what comes at the end.
Island 1: Starter Island
The first thing we do is switch the basic starter vehicle to the bird vehicle, its much faster.
Box 1
The 1st box is located on the top left on the hill, so instead of going straight through the tutorial signs we immediately climb left. It is important to have a good starting point and do as little inputs as possible when climbing up, otherwise we lose speed.
This is the first box we collect in the game. This box contains panels which we can use to make our vehicle bigger.
Box 2
Now coming down from the hill and going through the sand, we collect another box with panels.
Box 3
The next box contains a vehicle! A tricycle!
Minigame 1
Tag, you are it.
Simple game, just touch the enemy vehicle and you win. What we can do here is touch the vehicle and have it spin us around so that we can get back to the sign and select the game faster. You can also face a little towards the direction the game tries to put you in, saving a few frames.
Reward Vehicle 1
It's the vehicle we start with, but slightly bigger.
Minigame 2
Tag, you are it.
This time we need to touch the enemy vehicle and collect 800 points. How do we collect 800 points you may ask? You need to be as close to the enemy vehicle as possible after tagging it. If you are far away from the vehicle while it is trying to tag you then you obviously will get less points, because its unfair to play safe.
The game rewards you for playing risky.
For this game i chose to make the enemy vehicle get stuck in the next minigames sign. Im showing off the weird collision by pressing the select button, which you can use if you ever get stuck with your vehicle (to prevent softlocks im assuming).
Box 4
This box is located down in the sand. It contains a tire.
Reward Vehicle 2
A very good vehicle for the next minigame, its fast and has good handling.
Minigame 3
Obstacle course.
We have 1 minute to clear this minigame. You are not allowed to touch any of the pylons, otherwise the game is lost. Repositioning at the end so we can both select the minigame and have the minigame hold our vehicle for too long.
Reward Vehicle 3
Cockroach. Not optimal for this minigame but we will use it later.
Minigame 4
Obstacle course 2.
This time we only have 30s to clear the course which is actually very difficult. This course could be optimized by 1-2 frames and i decided to tie my previous time.
Reward Vehicle 4
Turtle. We can't use this vehicle yet because we don't have enough parts.
Now that we have done all the minigames on this island, we can cross over to the 2nd island. You can cross to the next island at any time if you have a good enough vehicle, its just that i decided to clear all the minigames first. We select the cockroach vehicle now.
Crossing over to the next island isn't always as easy as here, just a bridge without railings. Once we cross over to the next island, we get a lot of parts as a reward, making it possible to play with more custom and reward vehicles.
We can expand the cockroach's wings to gain a little more speed and balance. They can also be used to collect this box with this vehicle:
Island 2: Race Island
Box 5
Small and fast vehicle.
Minigame 5
Normal racing course and not difficult. The qualify timer for the 1st race is 1:30 so you have plenty of time. One thing to note about this race is that you can knock over the pylons with the wings of the cockroach vehicle so that you can take potential better turns on the 2nd lap.
Reward Vehicle 5
"Parachute"
This vehicle is very fast and allows you to shoot balls and lasers by pressing triangle and circle. These projectiles can destroy rocks and other things. Parachute is a lightweight vehicle which makes it easy to accidentally flip over.
Minigame 6
Qualify timer now is 50s, so you have to use the parachute vehicle to clear this race. The developers put in another vehicle in this race as a sort of guide. If you are not faster than that vehicle, then you won't qualify.
Box 6
This box is close to the one with the frog in it, it contains a tire.
Box 7
"Frog"
This vehicle is obtained from the box on the small land in the middle of the pond. It lets you cross water sections.
Reward Vehicle 6
A very fast racing vehicle. It's the fastest of our vehicles so far. We don't have enough parts for it yet.
After we finish the race we can collect both the boxes located on the small land in the middle of the water. Since we only just arrived on this new island, we need to continue with the Parachute for now until we get to the next minigame sign. The next minigame sign we get to is not far away and we can collect two more boxes after passing the sign on the hill.
Box 8
You can shoot balls from the front and back of the vehicle at the same time if you press circle, very good vehicle for playaround minigames.
Box 9
The part we got here is a shooter part, used for shooting balls and lasers. The box was attached to a balloon.
Minigame 7
For this minigame you have to destroy the Beachballs, Soccerballs etc. that fall from the sky randomly with a vehicle that can either shoot balls or lasers. You can push the falling balls with your vehicle out of the arena for extra points, but difficult. I chose the vehicle that lets you fire from the front and back at the same time.
30 points needed for the first qualifier.
Reward Vehicle 7
Just a tall vehicle, nothing too special about it. We don't use it.
Once we finish the minigame, we go close to the next minigame sign after driving down the hill, get the reward vehicle, and make our way to the next minigame sign.
Minigame 8
Drag Race. I chose to stick with the vehicle we currently have because the qualify time is 16s, enough time for us. We can shoot the rocks that block the entrance to the bridge with balls. Then we can cross over to the next island to get additional parts.
Reward Vehicle 8
"Walker". It's kind of creepy.
Since we crossed over to the next island, we got additional parts which means the reward vehicles we get from the 2nd island we couldn't use before, can now we used.
Now that we can use the fast racing vehicle, i decided to change its color from blue to black. Just a personal preference. You will see me recoloring a few of the vehicles i get throughout the tas.
Changing color is done in the Vehicle Customization Menu and by pressing select first, then pressing L1 or R1 to get to the color faster.
Minigame 9
We are doing the Drag Race again with the fast racing vehicle, this time the qualifier is at just 6 seconds. An enemy vehicle is present again to show you how fast you need to be, it is also the reward vehicle we are going to get.
Reward Vehicle 9
Let's just call it the long vehicle. Just like the racing vehicle we have, this vehicle uses thrusters or "boosts" to get very high speeds. It can shoot balls from the back. Very good vehicle for racing.
Minigame 10
A somewhat long race that goes through half of the island. 2:10 is the qualify timer. We are using the long vehicle in yellow color for it. This vehicle is amazing at both road and offroad driving and taking sharp turns.
Before a race starts, i recommend timing the acceleration because sometimes its possible to get a little more speed out of it. It only works with specific vehicles. You need to go through the checkpoints so there is no cheesing in this race.
I still found a few tricks to do in this race. The first trick is to jump over the water section where you would have to make sharp turns. Since the vehicle is long and lightweight, i can just jump over by letting go of accelerate for 1 frame for the first jump (this works without letting go of accelerate but its finnicky). We go near the minigame sign to get it unlocked.
I wasn't sure if i would actually need to trigger it now, since i needed to do this section 3 more times with this vehicle and another one.
The second trick is to jump between the checkpoint and the hill. A very good jump and angle is needed for the checkpoint to trigger and have my vehicle go up the hill. I can shoot balls backwards to go up a little faster. Once ontop, we can reset the vehicle with select which is 1-2 frames faster than awkwardly getting over the ledge.
Box 10
Contains panels.
Reward Vehicle 10
It doesn't look too different from the basic vehicles. You can accelerate by holding either x or circle and you can go backwards by using either square or triangle.
Minigame 11
Throwing boulders off the cliff. We have to finish the minigame in 2 minutes with a strong vehicle.
This is one of the 3 starter vehicles. It's a kicker. We can kick by pressing circle.
The top part of the vehicle is folded in like a u-shape, pressing circle allows it to straighten out. Simple games like these always turn out to be very difficult to optimize. As it turns out, this isn't even a good vehicle to play the minigame with. A much better vehicle is unlocked later on in this island... oh well.
Despite this, i still managed to find a way to throw the boulders off quickly by going in from the side and giving them a push. The last 3 boulders aren't close to the cliff initially, so i just group them together and then kick them off.
Reward Vehicle 11
Scorpion. Can shoot balls by either pressing circle or triangle (triangle isn't shown in the menu but it works)
Minigame 12
Let's do it again since we are already at it. The qualifier is 30 seconds this time, still enough time. Rather than let this game break my mind, i decide to tie the previous attempt again. I position my vehicle in front of the bridge so i can shoot down the box thats on top of it.
Reward Vehicle 12
It's a phone! We dont have enough panels to use it yet. I lost 9 frames here because the phone was lagging the game so much.
Box 11
This box is located on top of the bridge. This is where the scorpion comes in handy. If we position ourselves right below the box and shoot twice, we can knock the box off and later collect it with a fast vehicle when it drops into the water. The first shot knocks over the scorpion and the second shot actually hits the box.
You have to time the menu frame perfectly so that the balls you shot with the scorpion go past the next vehicle we selected. Midair.
I believe you are supposed to get this box with a flying vehicle, but i like finding solutions for difficult boxes.
The box contained an x-joint, there are also y and z joints.
Minigame 13
Popping balloons. Balloons rise from the water, which need to be popped with either a laser or a fast travelling ball. We use the parachute vehicle again, 15 points are needed. We gather points quickly and use the remainder of the game playing around.
Lasers can be bounced off of the water surface, which will be useful for a game later.
For the parachute vehicle, there are 3 different ball speeds at which you can shoot at.
Circle = slowest
Triangle = medium speed
R1 = fastest speed
I only ever really used circle, not sure if shooting with triangle or R1 would have made a difference in some games since they were all playround focused.
Reward Vehicle 13
Don't know the exact name the of this vehicle, but its one of those cabin cars. Not used.
Minigame 14
The same game again, this time with 30 points. Nothing changed in difficulty.
Reward Vehicle 14
This vehicle kinda looks like a spider, its very fast. The L1 and R1 buttons let you control the vehicle much smoother compared to holding left or right.
Pressing triangle blocks the booster with a panel, reducing the vehicles speed.
Minigame 15
Now we pick the spider vehicle and race through almost all of the island. Just like with the long vehicle, the spider vehicle manages to cross both water sections, but not as gracefully.
Instead of going around the track, we can go up here. It's slow, but still faster than going around. We also get the box that is located on top of another minigames sign by having the spider vehicle float towards it. Yea, its weird how this float works. Must have been the slope.
Box 12
Y-Joint.
Reward Vehicle 15
It looks like the vehicle we currently have, just bigger. But it's slower because it doesn't have a booster.
Minigame 16
Bowling. 20 points are needed and we are using the kicker vehicle again. There is a much better vehicle for this, but oh well.
Reward Vehicle 16
This vehicle is supposed to represent a man doing push-ups, it can also jump forward. Very cool.
Minigame 17
Bowling again. Now we need to score 90 points which is very difficult. You need atleast 4 strikes.
Box 13
Now this is the vehicle we wanted for the boulder game and bowling. This vehicle lets you pick up objects with ease and throw them very far thanks to movable panels in the middle.
Reward Vehicle 17
Police car, moderate speed.
Minigame 18
We are picking our newly acquired vehicle for this minigame, 100 points are needed. At the end we position our vehicle for the next game, but backwards. It does not lose time actually.
Reward Vehicle 18
GPX, one of the fastest vehicles in the game.
Minigame 19
The 2nd version of the halfway island race is played with GPX, 1:40 is the qualify timer. There is not really much to say about the GPX, its just fast and completes the race very easily. For turns specifically, you can press square for one frame to drift around corners. For the water sections in the middle of the game, i went through the first one and instantly fell into the water.
Even though i knew that going around would save me time, i still went for it because it just looks better to me. Not done on the 2nd water part because there is no slope.
It's important to take specific lines and check your speed on every frame, because bumps in the road can sometimes lose you 5kpm/h. I made a small improvement at the end where you can just drive through the grass and finish the game 0.2-0.3s faster. Too late to implement it for the long vehicle...
Reward Vehicle 19
Vacuum cleaner. Not enough parts for it yet, its not that fast anyway and only meant to be shown off.
Minigame 20
The long island race with a 2:10 qualifier, we pick the long vehicle in red for this. This time we go over the 2nd water section by jumping over it and using the barricade to readjust the vehicle. We can't do the skip we did previously this time, but we can do something else.
If we manage to get the long vehicle on its side, we can make it fly. I dont know how, but it just works. We can get the next box and the box that comes after much easier. This is so much better than just going around.
Box 14
It looks like a walker old people use.
Since the long vehicle is on its side, we can turn it on its head and have the thruster push it infinitely. The last box on this island is on top of the hill in a temple.
Box 15
Z-joint.
After acquiring the box, we fly and hit the checkpoint on the side and it luckily counts.
Reward Vehicle 20
This is a catapult. You can place a ball in the middle and have it spin. Lay down with R2 and suck the ball in with x, then press square to push it out. I think this is actually the vehicle you are supposed to play the bowling game with.
We are done with everything on this island, we can warp to a checkpoint on the 3rd island "Tropical Island", lets go.
Island 3: Tropical Island
I switched to the vehicle that shoots balls from the front and back for the next minigame, we get our first box on this island.
Box 16
Its hard for me to say what this kind of vehicle is. It's not listed under the animal vehicles tab. It jumps like a frog.
Minigame 21
Avoid the balls and shoot them with your own balls or lasers, if you get hit by them you lose the game. 20 points for the qualification. We get a somewhat hidden box at the end of the game.
Box 17
Contains a panel.
Reward Vehicle 21
It's a small truck. You can open the doors and even lift the back of it. It can shoot balls quickly aswell.
Minigame 22
We are doing the same game again but with the Parachute vehicle. I initially wanted to pick the truck vehicle we just won, but it doesnt have the best handling and can only shoot backwards. We need 60 points for this game so i picked a better vehicle for this.
Even better: The Parachute was needed for the game that comes after, so it was a good choice.
Reward Vehicle 22
It's a bike and i would have wished to have used it in the tas, but even tas cannot control it. Its so difficult to use.
I dont even remember why im here at the turned over kayaks, i thought i had some amazing playaround with the ball i brought here for no reason. I just turn around and make my way to the next minigame...
Surely i wont miss anything important, right?
Minigame 23
Shoot the target with a laser and gather points. Need 24 points for the first round. This game is simple and yet hard. The first thing we do is bounce off of the minigames sign and position the Parachute near the water so that we have a better angle with our laser shots.
Shooting with this vehicle consistently is annoying because each time you shoot a laser, the vehicle moves around, so you have to reposition the vehicle everytime. Not only that, shooting the laser can work every 35 frames or 37 frames, it all depends on lag. Very annoying minigame to optimize for sure.
Looks like the parachute fell into the wat- oh we got a new vehicle.
Reward Vehicle 23
Its a racecar equipped with balls that can shoot backwards and a booster, good.
Minigame 24
This might be the most difficult minigame in Panekit. We need 50 points to qualify for the 2nd round, which means hitting the bullseye 5 out of 6 times. It gets even worse, now the target moves from side to side. You could also hit the target for 8/6/4 points and then hit 5 bullseyes.
I would not be surprised if many people that played this game never actually finished this one. before finishing the game, we switch the camera to core, otherwise the camera will keep shaking around in the water and i need to have a better view of my vehicle with Core.
The next box is hidden between a few huts.
Box 18
Y-joint is inside that box.
Reward Vehicle 24
Our first flying vehicle, sadly we cannot use it yet because we dont have enough parts. Just a quick note: Even if you were to collect all the parts on the 3 islands we played, you would not be able to use the vehicle. Will be important later.
Minigame 25
Island race. 2 minutes to cross the whole island and the vehicle we choose for this is the red racecar we unlocked on the target level. You need to press circle and x at the same time to get to the top speed with this vehicle, circle is for the boost.
This race is very different compared to the ones on the race island, because there is almost no flat ground. So many bumps in the track make it really difficult to keep track of the most optimal driving pattern. You always want to have a good initial angle instead of making small
frame optimization when taking turns or trying straight. It's also faster to go somewhat at an angle to enable "drifting" where the vehicle cant decide whether or not to go straight or go at a slightly left or right angle.
Even if i wanted to, i could not reliably recreate these drifting patterns, they are so hard to make work. Most of the bumps in the road are avoided with the race car, but it still slows down a few times.
This race has a skip that you can do here by driving up the hill instead of going around. Once ontop of the hill, there is a box surrounded by rocks, which you would have to break with balls or lasers.
Box 19
Has an x-joint in it. Instead of destroying the rocks, we can just jump over them and collect the box midair. So difficult to do.
After acquiring the box, we need to cross the checkpoint ahead of us first, then turn around and continue the race as usual.
Box 20
We come across another box in this race, which has a fully functional tank.
Those boxes are the most important to get for now, lets finish the race.
Reward Vehicle 25
This one is called a flat runner.
For the next game we will play the tank we just got, but we need to get to the minigame first by driving down a hill. Since the front of the tank will come in contact with the ground should we go down, we will aim it to the left.
Minigame 26
Shoot your ball as far as you can. 180 pm is the required distance. I picked the tank specifically for this game since it lets me shoot the ball quite far, easily winning the game. There is not much to do for the rest of the game other than waiting, so i added a little bit of playaround.
The barrel getting launched into the air under the pressure of the tank is funny.
Reward Vehicle 26
This vehicle can extend its body forward. It can push objects.
I could do this game again but the required 400 pm is impossible to get with the tank. The area in which you can perform shots from in this game isn't too big, but it lets you be creative with angles.
Increase the distance of your shots:
1. Shooting sideways increases your distance by around 50%.
2. Go to edge of the minigames allowed shooting area and shoot from there.
3. The ball can bounce on land 1-2 times, increasing the distance.
With all these tricks i managed to get a final distance of 320 pm, still 80 pm short. Trust me when i say that i tried everything to win this game. I even customized the tanks barrel to be at a different angle to get a wider shot, but that won't work.
The sign on the right gives you a tip that reads something along the lines of "with a running start you can shoot much further". This does not work with the tank if you think about it.
The logical conclusion would be to do this minigame with a different vehicle, so for the first time i could not finish all the minigames on an island before continuing. We are postponing the 2nd race around the island, because the qualify timer is very low and can only be done with a flying vehicle, which we cant use yet.
Let's cross over to the next island, but before we do that we need to check for boxes we can still get.
We are changing to the long vehicle and color it white for the next few boxes.
Box 21
After warping to where we warped earlier with the tank, we can turn around and make this bullozer vehicle ours.
Before we make our way to the next 2 boxes, we need to make sure that we trigger the next minigames hitbox on top of the mountain, so that we can warp to it in a bit.
Box 22
This z-joint is attached to a balloon.
Box 23
This one is a waterstrider with its long legs. It can make itself taller.
Minigame 27
Cross over to the next island or "Gliding". For this game we need to jump over the huge watergap to the next island, 300 pm is the required distance. What you aren't allowed to use on this game is boosters. Thats the reason why i picked the long vehicle
in the first place, it doesnt need boosters to cross big gaps with its lightweight design. If the jump itself is too difficult for you, you can jump over the gap with boosters at first and fail the minigame, acquire parts from crossing to the next island, then
play the game with the flying vehicle we got earlier.
A little difficult to figure out, the developers most likely wanted you to build a custom flying vehicle for this minigame.
Reward Vehicle 27
Its a wind turbine.
Minigame 28
Let's do the minigame again but with the flying vehicle finally. 700 pm is the required distance now. This 2nd version of the minigame is very hard to optimize, because no one will tell you what the perfect starting angle will be. Once the minigame starts, we need to turn off the boosters and do readjustments midair to keep as much speed as possible.
This minigame might be too hard for rta speedrunners, so a vehicle we get on the last island would be much better for this.
Reward Vehicle 28
Its a locomotive.
Island 4: Snow Island
Minigame 29
Climb up the mountain in 2:15. The game was cheesed with the flying vehicle. Who wouldve thought to continue with a flying vehicle after crossing the island?
Box 24
Its a car equipped with a sled.
Reward Vehicle 29
Boosters on this low-laying vehicle make it perfect for traversing the snow island.
We continue to fly with our vehicle across the island for now.
Box 25
Panel on top of the island.
Before we get to the next two boxes, we trigger the minigame warp to the bottom left.
Box 26
Found on the path, it contains an x-joint.
Box 27
Between boulders. Contains a motor.
Now we can warp to the minigame warp we just triggered, but theres a box on the side of the hill which is hard to get normally, so i keep the flying vehicle for it.
Box 28
Torpedo vehicle. Goes extremely fast in this terrain with the booster.
You probably noticed the vehicle transformation now. Turns out its faster to get the box this way because the loading screen that comes after appears faster.
We go to the menu and use the vehicle right away for the minigame here.
Minigame 30
Go down the hill as fast as possible without using a booster. 100kpm/h is the required speed to cross the finish line. This minigame looks harmless at first. Just let the vehicle slide down the hill right?
Well an optimization you can do here is to drive on specific tiles on the ground to gain more speed. I checked every frame for the most optimal speed, only to realize that you can use the side of the hill to potentially
go even faster (only realized this after the 2nd version of this minigame which comes much later).
Still, if you do this strategy you can save 7 frames, wow.
Reward Vehicle 30
This flying vehicle unlocks the flying vehicle category in the menu, this vehicle naturally stays afloat with its boosters. The boosters can be turned of by pressing circle and pressing x lets you gain speed.
Minigame 31
For this game you need to race down the mountain as fast as possible. Since we already have the torpedo equipped, we use it for this minigame. We need to have 200 points at the end. Crossing the finish line awards you with
additional points depending on how fast you cleared the game. Most of the flag checkpoints can be skipped because of this and we can collect a box thats here.
Box 29
Its a rocket, but its not really designed to go fast. It can't reliably be used in minigame since all it can do is go up and down with its boosters. Maybe im doing something wrong?
Reward Vehicle 31
Just an ordinary black car, not really fast.
Minigame 32
Put the snowball ontop and create a snowman. We use the vehicle with the movable panels in the middle, we need to carry the snowball with it. 40 points are required for the 1st version of this game. Because only 40 points are required, you can just load the snowball
in the vehicle and carry it to the other one, creating a snowman that fell on its face.
Reward Vehicle 32
Its a very fast vehicle that is impossible to use even in tas. Its way too light and quickly flips over even without taking turns.
Minigame 33
Lets do it again, this time with a 90 points qualifier. The address 0D9DEC is the value for the points. It saves a little bit of time once i throw the snowball on top of the other snowball.
The 2nd version of this game is quite strict and you have to place the snowball perfectly.
Carrying the snowball is the hardest thing to optimize, because the vehicle and snowball itself keep shaking around so much, i just lose so much speed. I spent a lot of time looking for the best outcome. Turns out
that sometimes pressing circle to bounce the snowball up and down helps.
Reward Vehicle 33
Its a fire engine. Creates lots of lag.
Minigame 34
Touch the pylons and make them your color. 9 points are needed and an enemy vehicle will also try to touch the pylons making it their color. I use the vehicle that can extend its body forward for the most playaround. Every vehicle gets
a chance to be shown in the tas, well, almost every vehicle.
Near the end i get the enemy vehicle stuck in the minigame sign, similar to the early minigame in the tas.
Box 30
Im not exactly sure about this vehicle, i think its a vehicle you use for the mountain climbing minigame. The vehicle is very hard to make fall over thanks to the boosters pushing it towards the ground.
Reward Vehicle 34
This vehicle shoots a loooooot of projectiles, useful for later.
Minigame 35
Mountain climbing part 2 with a qualify timer of 1 minute. Still, we are using the flying vehicle again we got on the tropical island for this. Its possible to improve this minigame by ~0.15s, but i didnt like the ending of the minigame. It didnt look optimized.
The difference to the previous version of this minigame is that rocks are falling near the finish line.
Reward Vehicle 35
Wait, we got another but bigger tank?? Maybe we can use this vehicle for that one minigame i couldnt finish ear- (shoot your ball as far as you can)
No the tanks barrel cannot be pointed upwards. I dont think it wouldve shot further anyway.
Box 31
Very hidden box, contains a shooter.
Minigame 36
We are going back to the matching pylons color minigame, now we need to match all 16 pylons to our vehicle. What i did not know about this game before starting it is that once you match all the pylons, the game ends. Im not sure if this was the case for the
1st version of this minigame, but i probably wouldnt have re-tased it anyway. I prefer the playaround.
A little bit of playaround is found here (this might even be optimal who knows), but why am i using a flying vehicle? You need to think ahead before tasing a minigame, because theres a box floating in the water next to this island which only a flying vehicle can get.
Box 32
Contains a shooter again.
Minigame 37
Now that we've cleared a majority of this island and postponing this particular game for too long, its time to get to it. Since the qualifier for this minigame is 340kpm/h, i needed a fast vehicle without the use of boosters.
The maximum speed a vehicle can achieve on flat ground is 324kpm/h but when going downhill, it can go beyond that.
Ive mentioned in the previous version of this minigame that we can use the side of the hill to go even faster. Again, you need to think what comes after the minigame. Theres a box at the end of the hill thats stuck on a wall. We can make the long vehicle fly in the air and catch it this way.
Box 33
Tire.
Reward Vehicle 37
Its a hand with fully functioning fingers.
I want to make the long vehicle fly as much as possible because it slows down a lot in the snow.
Box 34
This submarine can be used in water and can shoot lasers.
Minigame 38
The race down the mountain minigame it is, now with GPX. I wanted to use the vehicle we got in the snowman minigame, but it flips over way too easily. The submarine was also a choice, but it was kinda slow. We need 270 points for this minigame so we cant miss any of the
flag checkpoints. Even GPX is barely enough for it. Using the torpedo was a no-go because of what comes after the minigame.
GPX isn't the best on snowtracks. For the turn at the 1st flag checkpoints i let it jump into the air, rather than have it stay on the ground and lose speed during the turn.
Reward Vehicle 38
Its a drill-saurus. Very impressive vehicle
There is only one more game on this island and it is located at the end of it. Overworld movement is always difficult to optimize. GPX can drift without using the square button, but the angles required to get them to activate always look unoptimized. I made
a comparison between non-drifting movement and drifting movement just to see who gets to the last minigame the fastest. It is the drifting movement that wins, but only because it had a faster turn around the mountain which had semi-low drifting movement.
It's so hard to replicate and im lucky i sometimes get these drifts accidentally.
The 2 boxes at the edge of the island are skipped for now, i need a vehicle that can shoot projectiles. We will do it later, lets play the last minigame. We are getting close to the minigame sign and switch the vehicle while we are at it.
Minigame 39
Ice race with the torpedo vehicle. 50s qualifier. The torpedo is perfect for this game. You need to do 3 laps in this minigame. Rather than going around the pylons and getting the checkpoints, we can go inbetween them and potentially knock them over when we go past. This lets us
take more advantageous turns on the 2nd and 3rd laps.
Reward Vehicle 39
Finally, after playing so many minigames we get the vehicle that we need for the "shoot your ball as far as you can" minigame. Its a batter which can throw projectiles insanely far.
So you know what we are going to do next. Thats right, backtracking.
Minigame 40
Shoot your ball far game. Not really much to say since ive already explained the game before. The tip sign makes sense for the batter vehicle, not the tank vehicle.
I changed the perspective at the end to reduce lag and zoom in on the batter so you can see how it looks like.
Reward Vehicle 40
This racecar looks like the one we got from tropical island and GPX combined. 4WD.
Minigame 41
The race around tropical island is done with the flying vehicle we obtained here. This is my most dreaded minigame because flying races are very difficult to optimize and look good. It is only when i was tasing minigames on the snow island that i realized that changing the camera
perspective to "Auto" is much better for viewing experince. This makes it so when i do barrel rolls with the flying vehicle it wont shake the camera around. The qualify timer is 1:05, 10s faster than my 1:15 with the race car. We need to get 4 boxes we were leaving behind on this island.
The barrel rolls are not for entertainment by the way, its a way to lower my vehicle.
Box 35
Spider vehicle but it can shoot lots of balls while spinning around.
Box 36
The box on the palm tree contains a tire.
We can do the same skip with the hill, but faster.
Reward Vehicle 41
Its called mosquito. Its good for offroad driving and it can jump.
Box 37
This box hidden near the lighthouse has a tire in it. I was looking for a solution on how to get this box quickly for a while.
Box 38
There is a box ontop of this bridge which has a motor.
We are almost done with backtracking. We are still missing 1 box on the very first island. Im switching to the vehicle from the pylon color matching game which can shoot lots of projectiles.
Box 39
Hidden on the 1st island between rocks. It contains a y-joint. Getting this box by just ramming into it is boring, so i balanced my vehicle ontop of the boulders and get the box without touching the ground.
We are going back to the snow island and get some of the last boxes there. We pick the low laying vehicle with boosters on it, its very fast in snowy terrain.
Box 40
Getting up here with the vehicle is possible by getting bounced off of one of the trees. A panel is inside. After collecting the panel, we go along the mountain. Much more fun that driving straight through the snow.
Box 41
Not a vehicle. Its a cassete stove. It will be shown later in the tas.
The scorpion vehicle comes in use again for the next 2 boxes. I maxed out the ball projectile speed on both shooters, making them lasers.
Box 42
Man on a surfboard. Not useful to me but looks cool.
Box 43
If we shoot the ice block with a laser instead of balls, it breaks instantly. The box contains a Z-joint.
Minigame 42
The last game of the snow island is the ice race again, the qualifier is 32 seconds. For this minigame i pick the fast spider vehicle from the race island. Instead of using left inputs, i use L1 to make turning corners much more balanced.
I dont think i optimized the game to 100%, but i tried everything i could when taking corners optimally. It always feels like no matter how fast you go, you always have a speed of 270kpm/h when taking corners.
I picked the spider vehicle for a reason, because we need to cross over to the island, which i do by mostly floating over.
Reward Vehicle 42
It's a boat? It's definitely not meant to be used in the water, but more likely in snow or ice.
If you are wondering what the text on top right says, it says something like "cross in one go" or "cross without falling in the water", because if you stay in the water for too long your vehicle gets sent back to safe land.
Island 5: Desert Island
Box 44
Time to fill out the flying vehicle category on this island. This is a jet gondola. It moves from side to side or spins around, not used for racing.
Desert Island is the biggest island in panekit, so its only natural that it has the most amount of boxes and minigames. The next box we are getting is located on the side of a wall in a valley. We get there by floating over the small river.
Box 45
This is a basic vehicle with a booster mounted on top of it. It's suited for both land and flying races, but more preferrably land. WISE.
Minigame 43
This minigame is a 1v1 against another vehicle. We must damage the enemy vehicle as much as possible. The enemies HP is the Address 0D9DF8. Ball projectiles deal around 300-400 damage, depending on where you hit the enemy vehicle. This is a difficult minigame to optimize because of this.
We pick the same vehicle we used to collect the box within the rocks on the 1st island for this, it shoots a lot of projectiles. Shooting projectiles not only slow our vehicle down, they push the enemy vehicle away. Not the easiest minigame to tas honestly... so instead of letting it break me i decided
to focus more on doing this minigame damageless. What you can do to optimize this game even more is to get the enemy vehicle stuck in the log, but then i would have my doubts about this being damageless. I still think i made a good approach towards good optimization on this minigame.
There is no time limit or anything for this game, it just says "WIN".
Towards the end, i shoot the last balls in the enemy vehicles direction and drive backwards. Its to get close to one of the other minigames signs.
Reward Vehicle 43
Its the vehicle we just faced, and we are going to use it for ourselves now.
Minigame 44
This time the qualifier for this game is K.O, because the enemies vehicle ai improved. It shoots a lot more projectiles now. I still went for damageless.
The vehicle we are using can shoot both lasers and balls. Lasers do a lot more damage than ball projectiles. 2 laser hits equal 4k damage. While the lasers are on cooldown, we can shoot balls towards the enemy. If you press down on this vehicle, you can shoot ball in a 45 degree angle.
You can also decide to shoot single balls or 2 balls at the same time.
A weird thing i noticed about the enemies HP is that it goes into the negatives once i go past 30k of damage. Not sure why.
Reward Vehicle 44
Its a rocket, amazing.
Now that we are down in a valley again, we can pick up another box here.
Box 46
Person riding a bicycle. Its slow and shoots projectiles.
We are somewhat free to do whatever minigame we want to play now. Time for another race.
Minigame 45
We didnt actually trigger this minigames warp yet, so we warp ontop of the hill and fall down into it. Before we collide with the ground, we press start to activate the minigame. This lets the minigame put our vehicle to the ground almost instantly.
2:20 is the qualify timer for this big race. We use the mix of GPX and tropical island racecar for this, 4WD. Just like tropical island, this island has lots of bumps in the road which can slow our vehicle down if we arent careful about the driving angles we take.
Don't forget about drifting either, we can do it here too to get extra speed.
You are not required to go through the checkpoints that increase your time limit by the way, you could choose a fast flying vehicle and go straight through the map without ever touching one of them. It is still nice to show off the whole race of course, even though it means that i would have to put
more work into it.
The box after the 1st checkpoint is not gotten yet, its very awkward to get with this racecar and my speed would drastically decrease. We will get it later. Still, i couldnt help myself but find a skip for this race with the racecar. Near the end of the race, instead of going up the mountain, i can just drive on the side of the mountain and fall down by going side to side.
I do this because the vehicle is rather light, otherwise it would flip over midair.
Box 47
Its a normal airplane.
Reward Vehicle 45
An airplane again, almost the same look.
We crossed a lot of minigame warps in this race, now we can warp to almost all of them.
Minigame 46
Push the enemy vehicle off the hill. 50 seconds to do this minigame. I believe you could finish this game without ever doing anything. I let the enemy vehicle push me off intentionally, but i still win the game because he actually fell off first. The waterstriders long legs allow the enemy to just go through us if we were to make ourselves taller.
Reward Vehicle 46
We got the enemy vehicle as a reward again, but thats the last time. It can flip over other vehicles.
Minigame 47
The clouds are our objectives and they can only be reached with a flying vehicle. "Finish" is the qualifier for this minigame, so we have infinite time. We need to find the perfect balance between gaining height and keeping the top speed. Not much to say, just fly into the sky until you reach the clouds and you win.
Reward Vehicle 47
This is a surprise box. Wind it up and press x to get a surprise.
Before we get to the next minigame, i want to collect 2 boxes that i could have either missed or potentially not gotten during a minigame. These boxes are next to the minigame we just played. We use the brown airplane for this.
Box 48
Motor.
Box 49
This is a basic flying vhicle. I cant make it work in the tas.
Minigame 48
Doing the minigame again where you have to push the enemy off the hill, but with the big rocket this time. We have 15 seconds for this. Why use a flying vehicle? Well, i needed the box that is placed on the top of the biggest hill on the island.
Before we fly up and get the box, we have the enemy vehicle flip our vehicle into the air. This is better than having to start from the ground. We also need to be slow enough for the enemy vehicle to fall off the hill by themselves.
Box 50
50 boxes already, wow. This one contains a panel.
Reward Vehicle 48
A flying vehicle with 2 rotating blades.
Minigame 49
Collect the balls that randomly fall from the sky. This 1st round of the minigame is not too difficult with the 15 points required, so you could use any vehicle to show off. I wanted to show off the mosquito vehicle with its 3 legs for this.
What i dont know about this game yet is what actually determines the increased point gain of some of the balls i collect. I think its if you touch the balls directly in the middle you get more points.
Reward Vehicle 49
This excavator does everything you want it to do.
Minigame 50
The "full" island race again with the WISE vehicle we got at the beginning of the island. The qualify time is reduced to 1:35. Still easy. Now i want to show how this race looks like if you skip 60% of it. The WISE vehicle operates by using bounces rather than flying straight through the air.
These bounces need to be optimized by having the vehicle land a little sideways rather than straight. If it lands straight down, it will just smash into the ground. The first turn of the race needs to be performed through the log and sandpile, because it lets me clear the wall much better.
We collect the box we initially skipped earlier, no time is lost.
Box 51
Ambulance.
The route is now straightforward, just fly around the island and trigger the last checkpoint of the race. The race will still be won this way. You actually have to go through at least one of the checkpoints. We would be short by 4.5 seconds.
Reward Vehicle 50
My favorite vehicle, the dragonfly. Perfect for the next game.
Lets warp to the minigame we triggered at the start of the island, its difficult.
Minigame 51
We will play this minigame with the dragonfly. I will give you some tips about this minigame since it could be difficult to understand and route.
1. Going through the hoops will increase your time limit
2. Going through balloons will award you points based on your time limit.
Oh wait its not that difficult actually. But yea, one thing to know about this minigame is that there are a total of 6 boxes you could collect, so you need to make a route first.
Since the minigame only requires you to get 300 points, you dont have to go through all of the hoops and balloons to finish it. We can just get the first loop and go through the middle of the minigame to the right. It won't count as "area out" which is good.
Now we can start collecting boxes.
Box 52
Contains a panel.
We cannot get the box that is next to this one, its too much out of the way.
Box 53
Panel again.
Reward Vehicle 51
I dont know the exact name for this vehicle. Its a table you can spin around.
Minigame 52
We are still going to use the dragonfly for this minigame. The objective of this minigame is to create contrail and maintain it.
The minigame only starts if you create the contrail first, then you have 40 seconds to get as much points as possible. This minigame also wants you to do aerial stunts, some of them are:
1. Get close to the water
2. Sudden upward movement
3. Maintaining contrail gives you points over time
4. Barrel rolls (?)
You will get less points each time you repeat one of these tricks. Since the minigame does not have an "area out", we can collect boxes all over the island. We could have collected some of the boxes we got earlier this way, but its boring
to collect all of them with the same vehicle and strategy.
Box 54
Has a tire in it. This is the last box which will contain parts. 100% completed for the box part category. We obtained a reward vehicle for this achievement.
Box 55
Very good flying vehicle which we will use at the end.
We lost all of our points because got in contact with the box. Its possible to avoid this, but i couldnt do it here.
Box 56
This one is a pane tower. The tallest vehicle.
Reward Vehicle 52
Im surprised that this is our first vehicle that can drive on water.
Minigame 53
Back to the minigame where we have to collect points by touching the falling balls. We use the vehicle with the 2 rotating blades to collect 25 points. Its an unusual choice to pick this vehicle, but i want to give every vehicle a chance.
Reward Vehicle 53
Looks like a basic flying vehicle, but we will use it now for the next game.
Minigame 54
Things are getting difficult with the 2nd version of the hoop minigame. 1500 points require you to go through almost all hoops and balloons. No route for this minigame this time, i just play it normally. For the start of this minigame i have the new vehicle do a sort of "drift" along the ground.
This saves 50 frames to get to the top speed.
Box 57
The last box with a vehicle in it. Its a mini rocket but it can sure as hell fly. We are getting an additional reward vehicle for this achievement now.
There isn't much to say about the rest of the minigame, just normal flying. We can skip 1 hoop and 1 balloon and still get 1500 points.
Reward Vehicle 54
It's a dragon!
Minigame 55
The mini rocket is chosen for the 2nd version of the aerial stunt game. Its the same as the previous version, but we need 250 points now. There might be a better way to create the contrail on this vehicle, but i shaved it down frame by frame to make sure its optimal.
Reward Vehicle 55
I thought this was a flying hamster at first, but its a bee.
Minigame 56
Lets reach the clouds again with an old friend of ours, the first flying vehicle we got from the tropical island. I would have used another flying vehicle for this minigame to avoid repetitiveness, but this is the only vehicle that can reach the clouds in 10s.
Here i made sure that the vertical speed and the vehicles speed dont change, making it nearly 100% optimal. We can draw in the tires from the vehicle by holding circle and tuck in its wings with R1, creating less friction and make it more stable.
I found someone on youtube who made a crazy vehicle designed just for this game. Look how crazy this game can be with custom vehicles.
Reward Vehicle 56
Its an upgraded version of the flying vehicle with 2 rotating blades. Now it has 4!
Minigame 57
We choose the airplane vehicle we got from the 1st version of the aerial stunt minigame, it looks like a moth when its wings are tucked in.
Lets talk about how 50% of the tas was basically for nothing. This game wants you to cross all of the islands again. Each time you cross an island and touch down one of their main areas, your time limit increases by a lot. There is no "area out" either, you can drive or fly whereever you want.
I had more than 15 minutes to spare when i came back to the first island.
What does this mean now?
It means i could have most likely gotten all 57 boxes in the game just through this minigame. All the different ways and optimizations were basically unnecessary. But im not mad. Im glad i chose different vehicle to get all of the boxes. Sure, i could have looked up videos of Panekit, but that would have
destroyed my incentive to tas the game. I would much rather have it look like this.
You can only play this game if you finished the 1st versions of this islands minigame (not sure if it counts the previous islands too). Just remember, i wanted to show off all of the vehicles and their different strengths through this tas. I like optimizing all of my tases as much as i can.
Panekit is just different.
Reward Vehicle 57
Its a shield.
The credits now play and its possible to skip them, but i decided against it.
Dont leave yet, we still need to do this game one more time!
Minigame 58
We switch to the rocket again, but we take a slightly different path in the middle of the minigame. Unlike the 1st version, we dont have a lot of time. Only 2:45 minutes.
Reward Vehicle 58
Its the bomber airplane we just saw in the credits. The last flying vehicle.
The credits play again and maybe i should have skipped them, but to me the tas would have ended here.
This is basically a final score screen, the amount of time played and distance travelled etc.
Is this 100%?
No, this is not 100%. We are still missing 1 achievement vehicle which you can only get by fully uncovering the map and reading all the signs that give you tips and hints.
The achievements we got are:
1. Collected all boxes with parts in them: 30 (100%)
2. Collected all boxes with vehicles in them: 27 (100%)
3. Uncovered the map: 86%
4. Read all the signs: 0%
5. Played all minigames: 100%
I was hoping for the last achievement to grant me the last achievement vehicle... too bad.
What is the category called then?
I most likely will submit this tas as "all boxes, all minigames" but this might change.
Bonus Content
Its not much, but i added a little bit of content at the end of the tas.
Notable mistakes
1. I delayed the warp for 2 minigames in the early game by multiple frames... could save ~1s.
2. For the first "parachute vehicle" minigame i could get a better start and probably save 0.3s.
3. First "long vehicle" race could save 0.2s at the end by driving through the grass.
4. When i was backtracking in the mid game i could have used L2 and R2 to jump around the warps quicker, could maybe save 1s.
5. The races i optimized could most likely be improved by a total of 1s over the whole tas.
6. Better camera angles in early game.
Final words and thoughts
My biggest tas yet and it was a lot of effort. Thanks for watching and reading.
InputEvelution: This movie takes a number of artistic liberties to show off a wider variety of interesting content that result in it serving more as a playaround than a fully speed-oriented movie. As a result, I've chosen to append "playaround" to the branch name. Accepting.
