The Bombing Islands is a puzzle video game developed and published by Kemco for the PlayStation. It was later re-released for Nintendo 64 as Charlie Blast's Territory in North America on April 2, 1999, and in Europe on June 18, 1999.
Game Objectives
- Emulator used Bizhawk 2.8
- BIOS used SCPH-5501.bin
- Aims for fastest completion
- Genre: Puzzle
Gameplay
The player controls the game's main protagonist and is tasked to demolish a series of bombs located on 60 islands, taking place across six different environments.
He must use these bombs and other things located on each island to help him clear the bombs so he can proceed to the next island.
An island has a single red detonator bomb, which must be grouped alongside other bombs in the level by pushing the bombs (excluding ones planted in the ground) before lighting the detonator bomb, which allows for all the bombs to explode and destroy the island.
If the player is either caught in an explosion or fails to remove all the bombs in the level, they are forced to retry the level from the start.
As the player advances, additional hazards are added to make the game more challenging, such as moving platforms, spikes coming through the ground, and slippery surfaces that prevent him from pushing bombs across. After each island is cleared the player has given a password which consists of five playing cards.
TASing Approach
I looked up Rayquaza911's Speedrun of the game on Youtube and analyzed it thoroughly. Already at the 3rd stage i managed to find a better way to execute the stage, i believe i managed to save around 5+ steps. When tasing the stages i would always look at his run to see how he would execute the stage, and look for potential flaws.
The stages get harder so i decided i needed some help from a script or Bot. To my surprise such a thing already exists in the game itself, lets call it Kid Klown Bot.
Kid Klown Bot can be accessed through the Menu and by selecting "Help". The game will present you with an example on how to clear the stage. Kid Klown Bot is perfect, he will always go for the least amount of steps necessary to clear the stage and the less steps you need to clear the stage = the faster it is.
At some point i was doubting Kid Klown Bot and did some testing with my own routes, he really is perfect down to the last frame. The game gets really hard to optimize in the last stages because of the hundreds of steps required to clear the stage, mistakes can quickly add up.
Kid Klown Bot is not 100% perfect however in a speedrun sense, sometimes he will take damage, use slippery tiles and more which is most of the time slower than moving from tile to tile. So for levels that have a lot of damageboosts and slippery movement i had to come up with new routes and movement to save more time over Kid Klown Bot.
Im not sure how much exactly i saved over the Bot, but it must be around 10+ seconds.
Steps
Kid Klown moves from tile to tile in 24 Frames, 48 Frames if he is pushing a bomb. After igniting the red bomb he runs with 16 Frames from tile to tile (No its not possible to push bombs in this state). Falling down backwards takes 2s, and falling forwards takes ~3.5s.
Getting run over by a bomb also takes ~3s. Taking damage from spikes is a few frames slower than walking from tile to tile, so this run takes as less damage as possible.
You also dont have to turn when you are 1 tile before the red bomb, you can just press x, circle, triangle or square.
Bombs
There are 4 different bombs in this game, ranging from Size 1 to Size 3.
- Size 1: This is a weak bomb. It only destroys the block underneath the bomb.
- Size 2: This is a medium size bomb. It vaporizes the block underneath and one block in four directions (up,down,left,right)
- Size 3: This bomb has the most exploding power. It blasts the block underneath, two blocks each in four directions (up,down,left,right), and one block each in four diagonal directions.
- Red Bomb: Needs to be placed right next to another bomb in order to activate a chain reaction. Placing this bomb in the corner of another bomb wont trigger a reaction.
Lag
Sometimes i will turn the camera or zoom in and out to avoid lag frames. I try to make it as less annoying as possible. There are also single lag frames that cannot be avoided, luckily it never happened to me that one of these made me delay an input.
When completing a stage you will be awarded with a code for the next stage. On this screen you have to press START to advance to the next level. Each world has some kind of color or hue to it, which means you can press START a few frames earlier than before (Iceworld and Lavaland for example).
A few frames are lost in the last world to this.
Island
Stage 1 - 2 Steps
Stage 2 - 2 Steps
Stage 3 - 35 Steps
Stage 4 - 26 Steps
Stage 5 - 19 Steps
Stage 6 - 21 Steps
Stage 7 - 54 Steps
Stage 8 - 55 Steps
Stage 9 - 27 Steps - Boing, also too much lag on this stage...
Stage 10 - 46 Steps - If you were to block the end of the conveyor belt with bombs and then push a bomb onto the first tile of the conveyor and then go inbetween you can get damagedboosted out of the stage and back in.
Desert
Stage 11 - 33 Steps
Stage 12 - 8 Steps
Stage 13 - 8 Steps
Stage 14 - 10 Steps
Stage 15 - 60 Steps
Stage 16 - 45 Steps - This stage might be improvable in some sort of way.
Stage 17 - 69 Steps - Weird camera angle to reduce lag again.
Stage 18 - 39 Steps
Stage 19 - 29 Steps
Stage 20 - 245 Steps - Sooo long.
Iceworld
Stage 21 - 46 Steps
Stage 22 - 7 Steps
Stage 23 - 38 Steps
Stage 24 - 73 Steps - Here i improved KKBot by around 1s by not taking damageboosts.
Stage 25 - 24 Steps - Small.
Stage 26 - 272 Steps - Looooong.
Stage 27 - 8 Steps - Spinning
Stage 28 - 42 Steps - Might be improvable in some sort of way , but this makes sense to me.
Stage 29 - 62 Steps
Stage 30 - 72 Steps - The first major improvement over KKBot, instead of pushing one of the last bombs to the left onto the slippery and falling down, I push it 1 tile down earlier and im able to come back for it later (4-5s saved).
Lavaland
Stage 31 - 71 Steps
Stage 32 - 68 Steps - Lots of lag.
Stage 33 - 40 Steps
Stage 34 - 33 Steps
Stage 35 - 148 Steps - This can be quite tricky.
Stage 36 - 262 Steps - Important to put the Size 3 Bomb in the middle.
Stage 37 - 118 Steps - Slippery which means = might be improvable, but looks good to me.
Stage 38 - 29 Steps
Stage 39 - 82 Steps - KKBot steps onto the conveyor belt to save 1 step, but i dont do that to save 1s.
Stage 40 - 73 Steps
Castle
Stage 41 - 34 Steps
Stage 42 - 84 Steps
Stage 43 - 120 Steps - Lots of falling down on this stage which really made me question some things...
Stage 44 - 56 Steps - Simple
Stage 45 - 49 Steps
Stage 46 - 206 Steps - A variety of obstacles.
Stage 47 - 169 Steps
Stage 48 - 127 Steps
Stage 49 - 108 Steps - Only 2 bombs in this stage.
Stage 50 - 183 Steps
Starworld
Stage 51 - 114 Steps
Stage 52 - 113 Steps - Boing boing.
Stage 53 - 248 Steps - KID
Stage 54 - 374 Steps - Maaaaan.
Stage 55 - 116 Steps - Lots of rerouting on this stage which let me save ~4s over KKBot.
Stage 56 - 241 Steps - JOE, try walking over the spikes to the left :).
Stage 57 - 449 Steps - The longest stage.
Stage 58 - 169 Steps - More timesave over KKBot again, because KKBot pushes the bomb onto the conveyor belt and then waits for it to finish moving before HE moves. You can also see at Step 35 where it looks like Kid Klown delays for 1 frame before moving. This is because moving over conveyor belts takes an additional frame, so instead of frame 73-97 (24 frames for KK to move) its frame 73-99.
Stage 59 - 193 Steps - Heart with a variety of obstacles. This stage really made me question if KKBot was perfect. After trying out some new routes i was really really surprised that KKBot is in fact perfect.
Stage 60 - 278 Steps - LAST, the most bombs in a stage. After igniting the red bomb i have to move the camera to reduce lag.
After completing this stage a cutscene will play where Kid Klown is told to repair the islands again, soon you will see why. Inputs end after getting the last code and pressing Start.
Final Words and thoughts
I wanted to tas this game at some point and now i finally decided to tas it. This was a neat little sideproject which i had a lot of fun with. It was fun seeing all the different worlds and stages and how they would be completed.
Suggested frame:
Any frame you like.
ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a trimmed version that removes 2127 blank frames at the end, and adds the CycleCount value.
ThunderAxe31: The Authors field is reserved for displaying actual people that worked on making a TAS, so I have to remove KKBot, sorry.
The movie seems very optimized. The author took in account that the smallest amount of moves doesn't necessarily end up being overall faster. Accepting.
