Men in Black: The Series is a game for the Gameboy Color based on the cartoon based on the movie based on the comic series of the same name.

Game Objectives

Difficulty setting

This game does get pretty hard on its own, but I chose hard difficulty to make things a bit more interesting.

Hard mode places more enemies (a lot) around each stage. On normal most enemies are killed in one hit, hard mode upgrades some enemies to a whopping 2 HP! Some bosses, each Treblor encounter for instance, tends to fire towards Jay a lot more often.

Branch

The reason I made this movie despite knowing about the glitches in this game beforehand is that I feel this run more accurately displays what a real-time speedrun would look like if played by a super-human.

Movement

MIB HQ

There isn’t too much to note in this stage except that the spiders (which I think are supposed to be Drone Bugs have odd hit boxes that fall faster than they do. This means Jay can shoot them out of the air easily.

HP resets after every elevator ride which makes taking damage in this stage a non-issue.

The balls in the third room are instant death for both enemies and Jay. I could use them to bounce around and kill enemies for me but it would be much slower.

Manhattan

There are sewer grates around this stage that you can fall into for a health/extra life pickup, but I won’t be needing it. One very precise trick is when Jay passes the newsstand where Frank is, passing the

This stage hosts the first Treblor (or “Buzzard”) encounter. Dodging his projectiles is very slow given Jay’s limited movement, so the best option was to gain higher ground. In Easy and Normal modes Treblor is a lot less likely to fire directly at Jay, but rather scatter the projectiles around more.

Sewers

In this stage we are introduced to Skraaldians (the giant bug guys). They come in two varieties; ones that will jump out of the water and run towards Jay, and ones that will pogo in and out of the water continuously.

The issue with killing them on the run is that they only accept damage after they’ve begun descending from a jump. All of this meaning that I have to momentarily stop to shoot them, all while maintaining what forward progress I can make.

At the end of the stage Jay meets an unshelled Skraaldian. Just before, Jay can pick up the Noisy Cricket. While it is powerful, you only get 3 shots with it. Normally Jay is supposed to be blasted back after each shot, but crouching negates this.

Given the amount of Skraaldians Jay has killed, he should be marked for death, but instead we move onto that “The Elle of My Dreams” episode or something.

Aerodome

Here we are introduced to Vemaxes (the trilobite-like aliens). Their movement is based on a timer so damage is unavoidable in this stage if you want to keep moving (and you do). The death here is specifically done as soon as Jay hits the level checkpoint that respawns him basically where he dies. Essentially, more than two hits need to be taken, all of them after the health pickup in the stage. Why not go back for the pickup? Well, it’s much slower for one, plus I would have to re-take the damage anyway so the death done in this way saves a lot of time.

The Treblor encounter here is a bit tricky. This game decides to have Treblor above Jay at all times, yet the only way Jay can shoot upward is with that slow turning shot that leaves Jay open to attack. Basically, there’s not much technically with this fight, but it took a number of tries just to optimize without taking damage.

Rooftop

The jumping here is a nightmare due to how often you have to jump to get onto 1-inch tall platforms only to fall back off. One thing of note is that the ladders can be clipped onto from a distance to save a few frames per application. One thing that may not be immediately obvious is that the platforms with the fans on them one-hit-kill Jay.

The Treblor fight here speaks for itself. The actual boss, which looks a bit like an Ixion, has a set firing pattern based on when the level is loaded. Thankfully the enemy jumps a fair bit which allows Jay to get three shots in during that round.

Forest

There isn’t much to say about this place up until the final boss fight where Treblor reveals himself to be Buzzard (which the level intro text spoils).

The Noisy Cricket in this stage has infinite ammo. So basically this boss comes down to a game of following Buzzard and pounding him with the Noisy Cricket shots. After Buzzard is dead Jay has to shoot the cocoon with Kay in it to end the game.