Released in June 2000, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is a 2.5 dimensional, side-scrolling adventure game featuring Kirby, our little pink hero. This time around, it's up to Kirby to collect the seventy-four crystal shards and save the fairies' home, Ripple Star.

Game Objectives

  • Emulator used: Mupen64 0.5 rerecording v8
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Collects all Crystal Shards
  • Genre: Platform
See this page for most of the tricks used in this run.

Comments

Yet another new N64 title from yours truly! The soundtrack and atmosphere of this game captivated me as a kid so I decided that it deserved a nice TAS. I decided to go for 100%, otherwise I would have just ended up using the fire ability all the way through. This game isn’t really fast-paced, but I still suggest you watch it all because each stage has a nice little touch to it. Alright, now sit back and enjoy!

Stage by Stage Comments

1-1

Unlike the SDA run, I just use the single fire ability instead of the double fire ability. sonicpacker and me tested it and it turned out to be way faster to blow air after each use of the single fire. Boss battle is optimized.

1-2

Pretty short stage, there. I try to entertain as much as I can during the boss battle.

1-3

Jumping before the stairs and use the single fire afterwards is faster. Jumping on the side of the platforms instead of climbing through them is also faster. I easily one-cycle the boss.

1-4

Here, I’m forced to take a hit to save time. I think I could also have manipulated the boss to avoid the falling apples animation at least once, I’m not sure.

2-1

Sadly, there’s no way to make the sand go up faster. Also, rolling down the hill being in the rock form is slower.

2-2

It’s possible to get a fire enemy hit boost in the King DeDeDe maze part, but it’s slower.

2-3

I’m not really satisfied with this stage. There are some tiny mistakes that should be fixed in v2. It’s faster to avoid the last big underwater bone from the left.

2-4

There’s a little trick here that I call float-reset; when you take a hit, your floating counter resets, thus giving you the ability to fly again. You’ll also notice that I keep my single fire power-up instead of getting the light bulb ability. There’s a limited amount of possible 3-items combinations (about 5, that I know of) so I just tested them until I found the good one.

2-5

Now, this boss battle was a pain in the ***. Manipulating the different phases was insanely hard and I’m glad I could one-cycle them all by still keeping my best friend, the fire ability.

3-1

Not much to say here.

3-2

The major timesaver here is to run in the water as much as possible because the current gives you more speed.

3-3

Two things to point out; first, turning into rock form will give you much more falling speed than being in Kirby form (thanks physics??). Second, I had to wait a little bit before turning into the hamster, otherwise I would have gotten in the owl form (you can’t reach the shard by just flying up there).

3-4

Like you, I hate water stages, but at least they are easy to optimize ;)! Pulling a fish up your head saves time in this case.

3-5

Loved this battle as a kid! Everything is optimized here, to my knowledge.

4-1

By getting hit by the spider while swallowing, I can clip trough the ground and collect the first shard a bit faster.

4-2

Constantly jumping with the mine cart saves a lot of time. The room with the pillars going up and down can’t be done faster, afaik.

4-3

I chose to manipulate the sculpting part and get the umbrella instead of the hat or the pizza because it turned out easier to do with the curling ability.

4-4

Optimizing the curling was the most annoying thing in this whole TAS. I think some frames could still be saved with better optimization (same thing goes for 4-3).

4-5

I take damage both to save time and entertain. All the boss phases are manipulated.

5-1

Same as in 4-2, constantly jumping with the sleigh saves a lot of time.

5-2

I love this stage’s theme song!

5-3

With some testing, I figured it was still faster to re-visit 5-1 and get the fire ability. Also, like in 2-4, I just tested the different regular possible combinations until I got the good one.

5-4

Ah, the factory! I did some silly stuff at the “ceiling-crushing” part because it can’t be manipulated and thus can’t be done faster. I also had a big decision to make and whether or not I was keeping the fire ability or switching it for the electricity ability. Why?

5-5

Because this boss is a troll inside a huge robot costume! He is a pain to manipulate, but there’s worse... when trying to hit him with the fire ability, in his second form, you have to hit a very specific spot to hurt him, otherwise it won’t work. Anyway, off to the last planet!

6-1

This stage looks a lot like 1-1. Same music, same shard locations, same tomato before the room transition, mini-boss battle, same ground design, same enemy position... (déjà vu?) Everything went well, what can I say?

6-2

Ohhh, that scary feeling I got when playing this stage as a kid is still haunting me... hence I beat the stage as quick as I can! You know, looking back at this, I still see some tiny improvements, but nothing major.

6-3

The light saber is mandatory for this stage... what a deadly weapon! Fun fact: enemies don’t “die” until you fully swallow them. That’s why I couldn’t just put the fire dude up Kirby’s head and wait for the cactus enemy to appear.

6-4

Here comes the final boss (or is it?). I was easily able to one-cycle him on every phases, unlike the SDA run.

Last stage

I tried to find a good pattern to end up the input early, but didn’t get anything. I hope you enjoyed the run, thanks for watching!

Special Thanks

  • sonicpacker: He encouraged me and gave me feedback throughout the run.
  • Survive: His 1-1 TAS run motivated me to pick this game up again and finish the run.
  • peril1337: His SDA run gave me a nice goal to beat.
  • Comicalflop and CoolKirby: For watching my WIPs and giving me advices.

Baxter: Not the fastest paced game, but a well executed TAS. The 100% goal lead to significantly more variety and planning. An any% category for this game seems almost pointless given this movie, so collecting all shards was a great choice. This TAS got a good response from the viewers; accepting.
Aktan: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
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Fantastic run! Easy yes vote!
Personman
Other
Joined: 4/20/2008
Posts: 465
like dis if u cry evrytim
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Editor, Experienced player (607)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
TASVideoAgent wrote:
5-1 Same as in 4-2, constantly jumping with the slay saves a lot of time.
"Slay" should be "sleigh". Great job completing the run! 02 battle was really fast! Big YES vote!
Noxxa
They/Them
Expert player, Moderator (4131)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Nice job. I loved this game, and I love this TAS. Yes vote.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Editor, Experienced player (851)
Joined: 8/12/2008
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Location: Québec, Canada
Thanks guys! See Aktan's post below for the encodes.
Player (116)
Joined: 5/13/2009
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Location: suffern, ny
YAY i love this game! Yes Vote
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Joined: 5/8/2010
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Location: Entropy
Very nice run, sad to see Kirby crying so much tho. Where's the happiness gone to?
Editor, Experienced player (729)
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I see you forgot to go back and hex the part I told you about puffing up and blowing air before hitting the ground from a big height to avoid the slower bounce in 3-2.
Homepage ☣ Retired
Editor, Experienced player (851)
Joined: 8/12/2008
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Location: Québec, Canada
Comicalflop wrote:
I see you forgot to go back and hex the part I told you about puffing up and blowing air before hitting the ground from a big height to avoid the slower bounce in 3-2.
Yeah, it couldn't be hexed because the Hamster transformation would have desynched. There's also some other sequences before that part where I don't puff air out. Edit: the YT encode looks very bad. I am currently doing a new one (in 480p).
Joined: 6/26/2011
Posts: 167
Wonderful run. I saw the WIP earlier and got to see the rest of it now. This game's been waiting for a TAS for a very long time and it finally got a great one. No doubt about it, this deserves a Yes vote and a round of applause!
First a movie gets submitted, and ends up accepted despite breaking rules other runs have been rejected for. And when I vote less than spectacularly on this movie, I become the victim of harassment and threats. Yay, favoritism.
Editor
Joined: 3/31/2010
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Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
I am glad to see TAS getting a run of this game. Would a "bad ending" run be faster by a few minutes and that's why we have a 100% run instead?
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Editor, Experienced player (851)
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hegyak wrote:
I am glad to see TAS getting a run of this game. Would a "bad ending" run be faster by a few minutes and that's why we have a 100% run instead?
A bad ending run would be much much faster but, like I said in the submission text, it would just be fire, fire, fire, fire, fire... all the time.
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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Nahoc wrote:
hegyak wrote:
I am glad to see TAS getting a run of this game. Would a "bad ending" run be faster by a few minutes and that's why we have a 100% run instead?
A bad ending run would be much much faster but, like I said in the submission text, it would just be fire, fire, fire, fire, fire... all the time.
The any% route would also be very similar to the 100% route, which is the same reason why there is only a 100% Kirby's Dream Land 2 run.
PCachu
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Bama: The real reason he's crying is because he never gets to do his Happy Dance. (Srsly, a Kirby game without the Happy Dance? WTF were you thinking, HAL?)
Active player (277)
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Funnily enough, the Happy Dance music is one of a few songs available in the Sound Test that's never played in the game.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Funnily enough, the Happy Dance music is one of a few songs available in the Sound Test that's never played in the game.
I noticed that too! No dance even after defeating a boss! I guess Super Smash Bros. made them think that people would rather Kirby said "HI!" and waved instead of dancing. Or it could have been too hard to animate on the N64.
Active player (277)
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Some say Super Smash Brothers is also the reason that Kirby can only float around puffed up for a limited time now, but a limited time is different from Smash Brothers' limited number of puff-ups.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Some say Super Smash Brothers is also the reason that Kirby can only float around puffed up for a limited time now, but a limited time is different from Smash Brothers' limited number of puff-ups.
Yeah, and in some newer Kirby games, like Return to Dream Land, he can float an infinite number of times like he used to. I don't see why Kirby 64 needed a floating limit though, since some shards are near a pit or very high, and they can be difficult to reach.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Funnily enough, the Happy Dance music is one of a few songs available in the Sound Test that's never played in the game.
Another example is some unused music that was going to be the "Choose Your Character" music, when Adeleine, King Dedede, and Waddle Dee were intended to be playable in the main game, as they are in the minigames. (It could have been intended as a 4-player game...who knows?)
Joined: 7/11/2010
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How come (at this time) there is 96% yes votes and 3% meh votes? That's only 99%...?
RachelB
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sudgy wrote:
How come (at this time) there is 96% yes votes and 3% meh votes? That's only 99%...?
Because 96.9 apparently rounds down to 96%.
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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sudgy wrote:
How come (at this time) there is 96% yes votes and 3% meh votes? That's only 99%...?
I don't think the counter always rounds evenly. There are 33 votes right now, so it assigned 3% to each vote. It wasn't made to display decimals, and it looks like it just ignores them anyway. If there were 50 votes, it would easily assign correct percentages to every category, but for now, it's a little messed up.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
If you count the total number of votes by adding 32 to 1, you will find that it is 33. Either vote count divided by 33 is the resulting percentage you're discussing. In the case of the 32 "Yes" votes, the result of 32 divided by 33 is 0.96 with the last two digits repeating, or 96.96% with the last two digits repeating. If this is the real value for the percentage of voters which voted "Yes", which it is, that means that the forum software printing the vote percentages is simply truncating the decimal and all following digits. This results in inaccuracy in totals, but is sufficient in describing with some accuracy the overall result.
Joined: 1/9/2012
Posts: 25
Well, I must say, this is a very good TAS run. And the fact it's a 100% run, meaning the player doesn't spam Fire's ability all the time because he needs other abilities to get some of the shards, makes it much better. And, I would give this a YES vote if I was able to. (Then again, I've hadn't needed to post on here until now...)
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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ah2190 wrote:
And, I would give this a YES vote if I was able to. (Then again, I've hadn't needed to post on here until now...)
If you make three more posts, you will rise to Newbie rank and be able to vote on any submission.