In this movie Kickle must traverse 97 stages collecting dream bags on each level and beat 4 bosses to save a princess. This is accomplished by glitch running across the grid shaped courses to beat levels much faster than would be possible otherwise.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: fceux 2.1.5
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes no damage

Comments

As stated above this game consists of a total of 101 levels in which the character Kickle Cubicle must traverse. Kickle has the ability to blow frozen air on to enemies freezing them. The blue enemies when frozen become blocks that are able to be kicked to kill other enemies or fill in gaps in the water so that goals may be reached. Kickle's other move is to place ice pillars to prevent enemies from reaching locations and can be used as stoppers when you kick the frozen enemies.
It usually takes Kickle 16 frames to get from one block to another block on the course but the game was designed so that after 7 or 8 frames you would be able to begin turning and moving in the other direction without moving back to the previous block. This is abused in this game by having Kickle turn for one frame so that he moves up to the next block and then immediately start moving forward again.

Other comments

Thanks

I would like to thank TASer blublu for his previous attempt at a TAS. His attempt helped make sure I was using optimal routes and gave me a few ideas I hadn't considered. Since I used his input on around 25 of the 101 levels, with his permission, I have listed him as a co-author.

Possible improvements:

There is a way to eliminate about 2 seconds from the run using a trick Randil came up with where you preplan your left and right one frame turns for each level but as this would barely affect the total time of the run and would take an immense amount of calculations and redoing it was left off.

Mukki: Judging...
Mukki: Accepting for publication.
ledauphinbenoit: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3398: goofydylan8 & Blublu's NES Kickle Cubicle in 59:48.31
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Loved this game, will watch soon!
Joined: 8/29/2005
Posts: 148
Location: Dayton, OH
Hmmm, why is the re-record count unknown?
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Re-record count is unknown because it was completely done using fceux's built in TAS Edit which doesn't have a re-record count. It lists a "tweak count" if you keep saving the recording as a .tas file but I have found that this number does not represent re-record count at all and using the .tas file causes RAM usage to balloon out of control so I just exported to fm2 whenever I wanted to save my progress.
Joined: 8/29/2005
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Location: Dayton, OH
Ok, thanks for the explanation. I'm working on a YouTube encode for this submission. I will post it in this thread when completed. Edit: Added YT link to submission text.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 91
Wow, that was really impressive. I particularly like some of those moves with the hammers. With 101 levels, there were only a handful of levels I saw that didn't say "hey, this path is the best one, you can trust me on that" beyond the miniscule individual frame left vs. right decisions. It's been a highly requested run for years and years, and it's an amazing run that inspires a feeling of "this run can't be improved by much". It's a Yes vote from me unreservedly.
Sir_VG
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Posts: 1911
Location: Floating Tower
Thanks for showing up those Special Stages. I remember one of them stumping me as a kid, but for the life of me I can't remember which one. Voting YES because it's well played and appears quite fast.
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Joined: 8/22/2006
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Also voting yes. I've played this game quite a lot, and this run is masterful. I also did some testing years back when that trick Randil and Healblade found to save some frames from planning the order of left and right turns, and your going to get maybe a full second, not 2 seconds. I'd still like to find out what can be done with enemy manipulation on 2 or 3 levels, but even my best outcome would save a total of a second. In short, this run is exceptional and definitely worth publication.
I'm not really here. Pressing Up+Down too many times glitched your graphics. And audio. Yeah.
mklip2001
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Quite nice! It's a long run, but each of the stages is good. The cutscenes are pretty ridiculously elaborate. Is it possible to make a Lua script that fast-forwards cutscenes between stages?
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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Location: Norrköping, Sweden
mklip2001 wrote:
Quite nice! It's a long run, but each of the stages is good. The cutscenes are pretty ridiculously elaborate. Is it possible to make a Lua script that fast-forwards cutscenes between stages?
As a matter of fact, I have such a script. I tested it again just now, and it seems to work well.
FCEU.speedmode("normal")

while true do

if memory.readbyte(0x3F0)==0 then
	FCEU.speedmode("nothrottle")
else
	FCEU.speedmode("normal")
end


FCEU.frameadvance()

end

NitroGenesis
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ledauphinbenoit wrote:
Edit: Added YT link to submission text.
Why are your subtitles not during the game play?
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Joined: 8/29/2005
Posts: 148
Location: Dayton, OH
I chose to put them earlier due to the fact that gameplay uses basically the entire screen. I could not easily fit them in without blocking the character's entrance, the map screen, or some part of the action. Edit: If anyone has an issue with the subtitles, I can always re-encode this if it is published. Let me know what *you* would have done. Although it is not stated in encoding guideline, I have been told in the past that subtitles should appear in the first 20 seconds or so of a movie.
Player (116)
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Pretty Good. Very entertaining! YES!
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1941] NES Kickle Cubicle by goofydylan8 & Blublu in 59:48.31
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4K 60 FPS YouTube encode: Link to video
fsvgm777
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You missed a u in Blublu.
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Fixed encode: Link to video
fsvgm777
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All good now.
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