I did Ki! I did it!
~ Arino Shinya, GameCenter CX
Game objectives
- Uses warps
- Uses a game restart sequence
- Genre: Platform
The Quest of Ki (カイの冒険) is a video game developed by Namco in 1988. It is part of the Tower of Druaga series (in fact, it serves as a prequel to the series). The player controls Ki, a priestess sent by Ishtar in order to retrieve the Blue Crystal Rod, which was stolen by Druaga.
In this run, warps were used. The warps route is as follows: 1 -> 6 -> 11 -> 19 -> 28 -> 37 -> 44 -> 51 -> 58 -> 59 -> 60. Note that there are special floors after floor 60 (floors 61-100); however, after talking to senior judge
Noxxa, I decided to not include them. However, I do think they should be included in a warpless run, should one ever be made.
Ki can float for as long as the A button is held down, which is a trait not found in a lot of other platformers.
Tricks
Skipping Namco screen
A simple soft reset at the beginning bypasses this screen.
Skipping intro
Selecting "Continue Start" instead of "Normal Start" bypasses the intro. NOTE: Since the game just freshly booted up, I will still start at Floor 1, so I consider it fine.
Skipping intermissions
Pressing Start or Select before the intermissions (screens with Ishtar or Quox) show up skips them.
Instantly landing on floor
When Ki moves at a certain X speed and the A button is released at a certain moment, Ki will instantly land on the floor when she reaches it instead of levitating on it for a moment before landing on it. There may be subpixels at work.
RAM Addresses
There's not much to talk about the floors, except that it takes about 4-5 seconds between grabbing the chest containing a warp and the warp actually taking effect. By the way, you can still die in that time period and have to re-do the entire floor again. I decided to at least make something interesting out of these periods.
Floor 58
Getting the orb at the right side of the level (makes you invincible against Will o'Wisps (insanely fast-moving enemies that you can't avoid in Floor 58)), then going back to the left side where the Will o'Wisp is is faster than getting the Wing at the left side, then go back to the spiked area at the right side, from my testing.
Floor 59
This floor was a nightmare to do, especially because of the section where the invisible floating wizards are. I did my best to optimise it as good as I could.
Possible improvements
Improvements are never excluded. It all pretty much boils down to better optimisation.
I first heard of this game by watching a Japanese show called
GameCenter CX (ゲームセンターＣＸ), where a middle-aged comedian called Arino Shinya attempts to beat a retro game, while being supported by various ADs (Assistent Directors). Check out
this Wikipedia article for more details. It's a pretty fun show to watch, actually (if you don't understand Japanese, check out SA-GCCX, a fansubbing group (link below)
).
Special Thanks
The BizHawk devs: For making such a great emulator.
SA-GCCX: Without them, I likely wouldn't have discovered the show and this game in the first place.
My will: For pushing me through TASing this game.
Suggested screenshot
Frame 2456
ゲームはナムコ～
Noxxa: Good, nice and short run. Accepting for Moons.
