Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk-1.11.8.2
- BIOS : SCPH1001.BIN
- Abuses programming errors
- Contains speed/entertainment trade-offs
About the game
The third game of the Naughty Dog's trilogy, and once again Crash must stop the plans of Doctor Neo Cortex.
Speed/entertainment trade-offs
If you put the SFX volume to 0 (aka SFX off), the cutscenes when entering (and sometimes leaving) levels will not play, saving some seconds each time. The drawback is that you will only hear the levels music and absolutely nothing else for the whole run. Since this can be quite annoying and doesn't save that much time (around 30 seconds), this glitch wasn't used.
The Item Glitch (or Box Glitch)
When you jump on multiples enemies in a row, you get some bonus. After an absurd number of bounces, you can even get crystals or other special items.
| Number of bounces | Item on the next bounce |
| 0 | Nothing |
| 1 | Wumpa |
| 2 | 2 Wumpas |
| 3 | 3 Wumpas |
| 4 | Life |
| 5-109 | Nothing |
| 110-199 | Time Trial Freeze |
| 200-263 | Crystal |
| 264-299 | Nothing |
| 300-363 | Gem |
| 364-399 | Nothing |
| 400-463 | Sapphire Relic |
| 464-499 | Nothing |
| 500-563 | Gold Relic |
| 564-599 | Nothing |
| 600-663 | Platinum Relic |
| 664-699 | Nothing |
| 700-763 | Power |
It wasn't intend to be able to get so many bounces, however it is possible thanks to 2 programming errors : you can increase the bounce counter when you are jumping on boxes, including the arrow boxes, and the counter won't reset to 0 when you reach the ground as long as you are spinning/sliding/crawling.
Note that for bounce boxes, you must spin at the same frame you jump on them, else the counter will be reset to 0.
Movement
Crash's speed is ~1.41 time faster (square root of 2) when holding two directions at once (i.e. Up+Left, Up+Right, Down+Left or Down+Right) than only one direction, thus when going to a specific direction, it's faster to "zigzag". For example, when going Up, it is faster to alternate Up+Left and Up+Right than just holding Up. The best zigzag can only be achieved with the analog.
| Movement | Approximate Speed/100000 |
| Walking/Spinning | 7.0 |
| Zigzag Walking/Spinning | 9.8 |
| Neutral Slide Jump (NSJ) | 11.9 then decrease by ~0.2 every 2 frames |
| Sliding | 11.9 |
| Zigzag Sliding | 16.8 |
With TAS precision, Sliding+Spinning is faster than Sliding+NSJ, but there is a limit to how much Crash can spin without a break, so from time to time I had to do a NSJ.
Unlike Crash Bandicoot 2, you can't get 25 crystals at once in any of the first 5 levels. In fact, there is only one arrow box, in level 4, and only 4 enemies you can jump to, which is just enough to get 5 crystals in this single level. This is still faster than doing the first 5 levels regularly.
To get the remaining 20 crystals, the choice was between Tiny's level and level 6, but for various reasons Tiny's level is significantly faster in the end.
Level 4 (Bone Yard)
There are 56 frames between each bounce on an arrow box, so any bounce I can get elsewhere that costs less than 56 frames is worth the cost.
Tiny
The duration and the number of lions depend if Tiny have 3 HP (wave 1), 2 HP (wave 2) or 1 HP (wave 3) left. To get 25 crystals, I must jump on enemies 225 times (Tiny works like a box, i.e. by jumping on him I can increase the bounce counter but I cannot get an item).
| Wave | Cycle duration | Maximum number of jumps possible |
| Wave 1 | 1056 frames | 10 |
| Wave 2 | 1152 frames | 12 |
| Wave 3 | 1218 frames | 15 |
Given these numbers, the optimal route is Wave 1 x2, Wave 2 x2 and Wave 3 x12, for a total of 226 jumps (including 2 jumps on Tiny). When exiting the level, a cutscene starts (because SFX is on), and by stopping it at a specific frame, the game will not do the animations it is suppose to do (throwing Crash out of the vortex, the same thing will be done after N.Tropy). As an important side effect, Crash will not do the crystal animation he is supposed to do 25 times, saving more than one minute.
Dingodile
Beside the first hit, nothing can be done to beat him faster, except the Dingo Dance Skip (see Possible Improvements)
N.Tropy
When you are close to him while he is still throwing his attacks, he will cast an unavoidable and instant death attack. However, the attack will not hit if you are in an invulnerability state, and the game only checks from time to time if you are too close to him, so I just have to move away from him during these checks. Also, he starts his second attack pattern sooner if you are hit by the last fire ball of the first pattern.
N.Gin
Most of his weapons must be hit 20 times to be destroyed, and the missiles easily got in the way.
Dr. Neo Cortex
With a good angle you can hit him as soon as possible and still throw him in the hole in two hits.
Possible improvements
- Better movement
- Getting more jumps in any of the waves in Tiny's level would lead to some time to save
- Dingo Dance Skip : At the end of the Dingodile fight, it's possible to skip Crash's dance, however the reasons for this are unclear (it is assumed that it's due to some loading problems in the game) and I wasn't able to replicate it no matter what I tried.
- Gate clip : There is a single instance of someone able to clip through one of the electric gate in the warp room, and nobody has ever been able to do it again since. At the very least, it would allow to not fight Dingodile, N.Tropy and N.Gin.
Special Thanks
- The8bitbeast for his level 4 video which motivates me to start this TAS
- The Sprash community for their constant support and advices
Suggest screenshot :
frame 52554
Noxxa: The item glitch makes the first half of the run drag on quite a bit; nevertheless, the run was received quite well. Accepting to Moons as a first publication for this game.
So yeah. "item glitch" as it's essentially glitching for the crystals... which is an item.
