Another game that has some really questionable cover art choices for the USA release.
Anyway this is a game where you possess people and things
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.5.2
- Takes damage to save time
- uses GBC in GBA mode (needs the AGB bios to work)
roughly a 1,612 frame improvement to the current publication if you factor out the BIOS (I didn't actually do the exact math so that might be off by a couple of frames, I'll fix it sometime later)
The improvements come from some different strategies that help make some levels faster, as well as some other better optimizations.
Best Ending is described as getting all 3 keys to open the door and save your girlfriend. At this time we aren't interested in making an any% version of this TAS, however if enough demand exists for it then we might consider it, however there's not really that much different we'd do for any% as you just dont go for the keys.
Stage 1
Out of the 3 enemies the game gives you to possess, the girl is the fastest in walking speed, so we get her first. We later take over a bomb throwing enemy because he can do 2 bars of damage with each hit instead of one hit from the girl.
Stage 2
As a ghost you can move through walls, however doing so will take a ton of life off of you very quickly, so we can't realistically stay as a ghost for too long.
Here we get the Robot, which has the fastest walking speed. It also has a rocket launcher which makes for a great weapon on some bosses. There are other characters however that can kill bosses faster than the Robot, however they lose a ton of time from normal walking speed, which makes it not worth doing.
Stage 3
there's a small opening in the wall at the beginning where we can jump through, there are a couple secret areas behind walls like what you'd see in DKC2 for example.
You can get a pretty fast shooting pattern with the robot if you duck immediately after shooting, normally it takes about 60 frames for you to shoot another rocket because of the shooting animation, but this way we can fire it as soon as possible.
Stage 4
For the boss we can keep firing while staying on the ground, the published tas actually jumps when the boss shoots goo at the player, however we don't have to do that, which means we can keep giving damage to the boss and do a faster 3 cycle fight.
Stage 5
Lots of rooms where the game can lag very easily. a few frames were lost in areas where the invisible lag could not be removed.
For the boss we want to get him to be near the ground as much as possible so we can keep shooting at it. we sometimes take damage on the boss in order to stay in the air longer and fire more shots.
Stage 6
We switch to the girl here because she has a really fast climb. while her walking speed is slower compared to the robot, it ends up saving enough time than it wastes to be worth it.
to get the last key, you need to step on platforms that spell the word "GHOST", it doesn't have to be in any order. the route that's taken is a tunnel with invisible walls all around, so if you're wondering why we dont just jump very early on, that's why. (In fact, we jump early on to show you the invisible ceiling)
after we save our Girlfriend, we then possess her and use her body to defeat the final boss (why did I sound so casual when saying that?)
