This TAS aims to complete Elf: The Movie for GBA in the fastest time possible - an odd pick for my first ever TAS, but the learning experience proved more enjoyable than the game itself!

Playback Info

I made this TAS using a clean install of Bizhawk 2.9.1 - the only setting I changed was disabling "skip BIOS" because I understand the boot sequence is required for submissions. The BIOS used is the standard World version, GBA_bios.rom, and the Elf: The Movie ROM I used has a SHA1 checksum of 06b313920e7adc05a0f4c968d05f9db70926c0ab.

Summary & Strategy

Elf: The Movie is the quintessential movie tie-in game - a simple, generally easy 2D platformer which only occasionally breaks from the formula with mini-games, top-down sections, and a bizarre third-person shooting gallery stage that honestly couldn't end soon enough. Though the game is meant to adapt the 2003 film of the same name, it mostly involves platforming through snowy levels, solving pipe puzzles, and ultimately helping Santa fly his sleigh without any meaningful exploration of the film's central plotline. Considering the existence of GameBoy Advance Video, I wonder if anyone was disappointed to purchase "Elf: The Movie" for GBA and find it was actually be a video game?

Buddy the Elf is only capable of walking and jumping in the majority of stages, so my main strategy was never letting him stop moving and primarily using jumps to avoid terrain or obstacles that may slow him down - jumping doesn't seem to have a speed-loss, but I certainly didn't want to have that jump sound playing nonstop for the duration of my run. Pressing Left and Right at the same time makes Buddy moonwalk in some stages, which offers no speed difference, but I thought it was funny.

Though I didn't experiment enough to be 100% certain, pressing Down and Left/Right at the same time during the top-down levels might extend Buddy's groundbox and let him walk out further off platforms, allowing him to jump gaps he normally could not cross. I use this strategy multiple times, along with making Buddy jump on the last possible frame to maximize distance. Sadly, there are points where your only way of crossing is a moving platform, and I caught myself waiting on them at least twice, though I don't think I could have reached them going the opposite direction. I did manage to exploit the fact that Buddy is able to move in this stage before the camera has focused on him, but this did not make much of a difference in the end - still, I thought it was funny, so I kept it in.

Going back to optimize the run would unfortunately require the rest of the run to be entirely redone, as the RNG seed of a level seems to be generated based on the frame the level starts - I had previously attempted this by optimizing the path Buddy takes through the stage collecting Christmas lights on the New York streets, saving ~4-5 frames, but it entirely changed the seeds of the following minigames, and I decided those few frames were not worth remapping the entire rest of the game. At the very least, these minigames often allow inputs before the screen has faded in, leading to amusing moments like the first pipe puzzle being solved within the first second.

This might seem unreasonable, but sadly, two of the last few levels of Elf: The Movie (namely the snowball fight and helping Santa deliver presents) are set on 2m40s timers that need to be entirely run down to advance to the next level, so improvements in the prior stages would need to be substantial to matter compared to the roughly 5 minutes and 20 seconds the game will always demand of you - never mind the 40 seconds of unskippable logos at the start of the game, and the level transition screens which don't receive any input for the first ~32 frames. Many stages also won't allow Buddy to move until the screen had fully faded in.

Though I made no active attempt to manipulate the RNG seed generation, and I admittedly only started making this movie two days ago out of an amateurish enthusiasm to try my hand at producing a TAS, I think I overall got a very good run by simply running Buddy as quickly as I could make him go.. which all things considered, isn't very fast.

I hope you enjoy the movie, and if you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to ask below.

eien86: Claiming for judging.

eien86: Uploading a truncated movie that does not press a button to skip the congratulations screen (this is not necessary)

eien86: This is a relatively simple plaftormer/arcade, made of multiple mini-game stages, some of which are auto-scrollers. The execution is visibly optimized and, poking around, I can tell the inputs are solid. Two minor points:

There isn't much more I can add to what Samsara has already said. I am going to join them in congratulating you for a solid first TAS and looking forward to many more.

Accepting to Standard

despoa: Processing...