(Link to video)
Starting life as a Manga in 1988, Shounen Ashibe is a long running series about a boy (Ashibe) and his pet Harp Seal (Goma-chan) and their adventures.
In this game, we set out to Dive, Jump and Swim our way to victory - rounding up all the collectables and besting all the foes in our way.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.4
  • Beat the game as fast as possible in real-time
  • Take damage to save time

Routing:

  • For each level we must obtain 8 collectables in order to activate the goal at the end. There are no additional collectables outside of those 8 and the locations they appear in are fixed
  • There are 4 particular NPCs in this game that challenge us and when we beat them we receive a coloured gem. Once we have collected all 4 of these gems, we gain access to the final stage, The Castle
  • With branching paths and obstacles blocking our way sometimes, it is important we collect items in the perfect order. This took some trial and error, testing alternate movement and routing options
  • There are switches that must be used in some stages in order to open up a new area or activate hidden platforms. This needed to be carefully factored into the overall route
  • Cycles and enemy behaviour are proximity based. In light of this, I had to keep a watchful eye on how I related to those cycles and possible means of keeping that cycle in play whilst I routed in additional item collections around it
  • In the Underwater Stages, there are invisible currents of water that push us back. They must be navigated expertly to keep up our momentum!

Movement:

Regular Land Stages:
  • Diving with Y is the fastest form of movement and is utilised wherever possible. It is important that we keep in the diving animation as long as possible too, so that we capitalise on the full speed increase before having to re-initialise another action
  • Jumping is the same speed as walking and we can leap to whatever height we wish without incurring any frame loss, which is handy
  • Ledge Diving - If we dive into the very corner pixel of most platforms it allows us to instantly shift our momentum in the opposite direction, which is crucial for getting speedy turnarounds
  • An important thing to avoid at all costs is falling from too great a height. If we do, Goma-chan becomes stunlocked for multiple seconds before being allowed to move again
Underwater Swimming Stages:
  • Similarly to on land, diving with Y is the fastest form of movement here
  • 30hz mashing Y when pushed against a wall is the fastest means of gaining height
  • Maintaining our momentum during these sections is vital, so it is best to avoid clipping as many corners as possible
Overhead Swimming Stages:
  • 30hz mashing the Swimming Action is the fastest means of movement for these stages
  • Collectables spawn when we are within range of the NPC, so aside from the brief moments where we have to leave their far-spanning range of vision to collect the furthest thrown collectables, these stages otherwise play like autoscrollers

Final Thoughts:

This game was a blast to optimise!
I really enjoyed learning to TAS a platformer and this game has a nice movement set to play around with. Coming up with different ways to fill the downtime was an interesting exercise too, seeing all the wacky ways I could get Goma-chan to move.
I hope you enjoyed watching c:

Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: What an adorable little game! Run looks optimized and well-planned, and the downtime was made interesting even in the slower portions, what with the throwing things and the water. Very nicely done all around! Accepting to Moons!
Zinfidel: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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xxezrabxxx
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Game title translates to Boy Ashibe: Goma-chan's Big Amusement Park Adventure (Japanese title: 少年アシベ:ゴマちゃんの遊園地大冒険) Movie syncs in 2.6.1 by the way Found it quite cute and humorous , so I will vote yes.
I like to comment on submissions and look around the site. You have probably seen me before (if you have been around for a while) either on the site, Discord, or any other social media. I recently took up making temporary encodes for new submissions. Also, I never forget to greet Tompa wherever I find him! "when resyncing stuff sucks it's called Resuccing" - EZGames69 “If an emulator stops being accepted to the site it should be called an emuLAMEr” - EZGames69 "oh no discord, everything I say will now be logged forever, sdfsdf, time to hide" - Masterjun "just had to give therapy to a taxi with daddy issues" - psx Current Projects: Mother 3 (75% complete)
Samsara
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Queen of Feedback Asking here, asking for feedback once again. This is a pretty cute and nicely paced run that I could see getting Moons, but there hasn't been much audience feedback on it at all, so I'd love to have a fair chunk more before I'm confident deciding the tier.
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EZGames69
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I also thought it was very cute, and I was kinda surprised to see a couple of neat tricks here and there, like using a skateboard from a tree to get some extra speed. Yes vote.
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Arc
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Samsara wrote:
asking for feedback once again
My initial impression was that it looked like [4260] GBC Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! by illayaya in 43:02.29. Both are cute animal protagonists in games based on anime/manga, but there appears to be no direct connection between the development of the two games. Hamtaro is a Vault movie, so "he cute" is not a good reason by itself for Moons. However, this movie is more entertaining than Hamtaro because most of the gameplay in Hamtaro is just talking to one hamster and then running to another hamster somewhere else. Although the overworld and whirlpool parts are not very interesting, most of Shounen Ashibe is spent platforming. It's the non-linear platforming style with the objective of collecting items before reaching the exit, which is significantly superior to pure left-to-right platforming and a strong argument toward Moons. Still, half of the published movies on the site are platformers, and so I feel like I've seen this type of thing a lot, especially in SNES and Genesis games. But, those movies usually are Moons. Even [3704] Genesis Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest by Jigwally in 09:45.69, which is a fairly good gameplay comparison to this movie off the top of my head, is Moons. The current overall site distribution of tiers is 5.0% Stars 57.7% Moons 37.3% Vault But 71.7% of Platform games are Moons or Stars, so as a group they are seen a bit more favorably. Furthermore, 81.3% of SNES Platform games are Moons or Stars. The ones that end up in Vault tend to be slower paced and/or pure left-to-right movement. The gameplay here is pretty quick and sharp with a few little boosts here and there. The fact that it's a seal rather than a human is interesting. The music and sound is suitable for the game—not too noticeable, but appropriate for the tone, and standard SNES style. Overall it's probably in the 55th to 60th percentile of entertainment, maybe higher for people who like this kind of thing. I would be surprised if it did not make Moons.
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The game looks and sounds good, gameplay is not stupidly simple, so the movie wasn't boring. But it still gradually gets old because gameplay is mostly identical to what we see in the first level, and there's no a lot going on there. Voting Meh.
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Post subject: Movie published
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4439] SNES Shounen Ashibe: Goma-chan no Yuuenchi Daibouken by callumbal in 12:57.84