Wendy: Every Witch Way is a fun little platformer for the GameBoy Color. In it, Wendy the Good Little Witch accidentally releases the Chaos Emeralds from a treasure chest after clipping through the wall to her attic. The restless emeralds then proceed to knock down a floating castle that was blocking their view of the moon, and Wendy must flip her way through the castle to get them back.
Wendy's magic attacks in this game blink constantly, so they do not show up on YouTube half of the time. This can be fixed by blending the frames together. I know some people really dislike the blurriness frame blending gives, so... Link to Part 2 Frame-blended Part 1Frame-blended Part 2
I made two sets of encodes!

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: VBA v23, svn217
  • Aims for fastest time.
  • Takes damage to save time.
  • Plays on the hardest difficulty.
  • Sets a new record for most consecutive "Yeah!"s in a TAS.

Comments

(I apologize for the lack of depth in these comments; I am very busy with other things at the moment. But please feel free to ask any questions!)
There are only a few differences between normal and hard mode. In hard mode:
  • There are fewer stars.
  • There are a few more enemies.
  • You have less time to complete each stage.
  • Spikes kill you in one hit instead of doing one damage.
  • The final boss might have more health, but I never actually checked.
Stars are health and attack power. Higher level attacks go farther, and level four and five attacks are three-shot spreads.
There are two kinds of stages in this game: normal and flying. There are sixteen levels, and every fourth level is a flying stage. The final stage also has a boss fight at the end.
In normal stages, you must get from the start to the finish as fast as possible. You can jump, shoot, and flip gravity. Jumping costs 1 frame unless you were not moving when you jumped or you jump immediately after landing. Flipping gravity normally costs 50 frames, but you can save up to 27 by taking damage on the same frame gravity changes. It is also possible to jump again after taking damage.
By ducking right after you walk off a ledge, you can stand in midair. You will still be pulled by gravity, and you will enter your falling animation if you duck again or walk.
The corners of spiked platforms are safe to touch.
In flying stages, you must fight or avoid enemies while you automatically fly forward to the finish. Yes, they are the dreaded autoscrollers. Flipping gravity usually does not cost any frames and only immobilizes you for 16 frames. However, taking damage immobilizes you for some large number of frames that I never bothered to count.
You will automatically flip rightside-up at the end of the stage unless you are perfectly aligned with the finish. Finishing a stage upside-down does not save or waste any time.
You can still collect stars after you die, but that is not useful.
You are automatically pushed back to the left side of the screen during the final boss fight, but you will remain in place as long as you hold A. You cannot do anything in this state, though, so it is necessary to let go for one frame when you attack.
The final boss will spit orange and green orbs at you. The orange ones must be avoided, and the green ones must be hit back at him to make him vulnerable to your attacks. They will not hit him until they have bounced at least once. He has 20 health and 10 frames of invincibility between each hit, so it is not possible to beat him in one cycle.
The Advance World is a set of three normal stages that can only be played on a GameBoy Advance (unless you use a password). VBA does not allow for GameBoy Color games to be recorded in GameBoy Advance Mode, so I did not do them. They might be better off as a separate submission, anyway.
Certain actions, like holding select for five frames or entering the Konami Code, will remove one frame of lag before the password screen. I have no idea why.

Suggested screenshots

Thank you for watching!

klmz: Replaced the submission file with one that syncs on both old & new versions of VBA-rerecording. There should be no visual difference when played on v22.
Mukki: Judging...
Mukki: Accepting for publication. This played out like a very cute version of Metal Storm; the gravity element was interesting to watch and I liked the methods you found to abuse it. The game is pleasant to look at, so the autoscrollers were much easier to sit through than they may have been.
P.S. I like the last screenshot.
Flygon: Reencoding with new input file. Publishing at some point soon.