Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk v2.9.1, Genplus-gx core
- Goal: Aims for fastest completion on the main difficulty setting.
- ROM Used: Fresh dump from an original cartridge; most ROMs on the internet are an edited version without the title screen. SHA1: 295E3FE1EAEC3E5181E7DCB46CEC6507D393B82D
Background
Third time publishing a TAS for this game, second time in this category.
This movie is a
2616-frame (43.656s) improvement over
my last attempt from 2022, thanks to a skip in the waterfall section in level 4 and better movement optimization in almost every level.
Goals
The goal is to beat the game as fast as possible on the main difficulty setting, "Modo Difícil" (Hard Mode).
We go through all levels and bossfights, but we do allow in-level skips, such as the waterfall skip in Level 4.
The run
Here are some tricks used in multiple levels:
Abusing animations
We can abuse some animations in the game to save time.
When Woody falls from a great height, or even from a simple jump, he plays an animation of him "getting up" that drops your speed to half. Since we fall down and jump all the time in this game, we would be decelerating everywhere; however, this can be cancelled with the pecking animation.
Pressing B on the controller activates Woody's main attack, pecking. And that animation overrules almost every other animation, and when he stops pecking, he still maintains his speed:
Woody's hitbox on his skid animation extends a little bit further to the right, and if timed correctly, can save frames on reaching ending triggers on long straightaways.
Jump = Bad
Even though the animation of Woody getting up can be skipped every time with pecking, jumping is still very slow when we do need to jump, so we only jump when it's needed, excluding unnecessary jumps, and we try to jump as short as possible to avoid air time.
But we can also avoid other jumps:
- Getting hit on purpose by the squirrel in Level 3 to get up the ledge, skipping a jump
- Running through rocks in the ski part in Level 3 to avoid jumping
- Manipulating the X position to always be able to run over the dog in Level 5, avoiding the need to fall down and jump up again, saving a jump
Now onto strats exclusive to certain levels and bossfights:
Level 1
Sadly, the spacing between the platforms at the end of the day and night substages is just too far away from each other to be cleared with a full jump, and since the cycles of the moving ones are in unfavorable positions, we sacrifice some time by waiting.
Bossfight
Nothing too special here, we hit Smedley from the left side and even "crit" him (hitting him with a pinecone before his damage animation plays out) once to get him to force a hit (he would turn away if we didn't).
When Smedley loses, we could just run into the wall until his animation plays out, but by stopping a bit earlier and running through at full speed when it does let us go, we can get to the ending faster.
Level 2
It's kind of tricky to get the keys in some parts, like the sections with Wally, when we need to wake him up with the horn (that can be buffered from other rooms), and running through him. The problem is, since in hard mode we don't have any invincibility frames, we sometimes have to peck for a couple of frames before being able to go away without taking damage, the problem gets even larger in rooms where Wally is right next to a light bulb that can shock us, making the delay even bigger.
In rooms where there are no keys to be obtained, it's largely just a "run straight, peck rats if they get on your way and that's it" scenario, in one room there is a carpet that makes us bounce into some light bulbs, the safer way is to just slide while pecking to avoid it, but if we time it right, we can peck through the light bulbs, not losing much time, since this type of jump from the carpet doesn't make us lose speed.
Bossfight
We are supposed to wait until Wally stops at a barrel to sneak up behind him and hit him, however, when he turns, his hitbox ever so slightly overlaps with the barrel's, allowing us to hit him while still inside, and by going back and forth we can hit him multiple times, glitching his hit detection and ending the bossfight in less than seven seconds.
It doesn't save nor lose time, but Woody just turns invisible during the fight. Why not?
Level 3
Nothing too special in the first bit, run, peck enemies, jump up and down. The part at the top of the staircase is specially tricky since those goats are pretty much invincible and we have no invincibility frames AND our pecking is limited.
Bossfight
Nothing special here either, running to the right and jumping back to make the squirrel drop a pinecone on his head, sneak up behind Charlie and hit him, back to back to back.
Level 4
Since we lost a LOT of health in the ski section in Level 3, we get some of it back with the lollipops in the boat section.
Also, thanks to
Jungon, in my second submission, that pointed out that a warp does indeed exist in the waterfall section that I never came across while playing myself or watching other gameplays, a good chunk of this run's timesave comes from that.
Underwater section
We spare some fish lives here on purpose, since having too many points at the end of Level 5 triggers a useless bonus section. We also take a hit on the last fish because the hit animation gets us a little bit farther to the right, saving some frames.
Bossfight
This section would have no changes from the 2022 submission, but we hit Gabby one extra time, since that allows us to reach Splinter faster by skipping his "death" animation, and since it's skipped, we can just get him to the right edge of the screen, closer to her cage.
Level 5
Nothing too crazy here either, we jump and peck Buzz to skip the animation of him throwing bombs at us and manipulate mole patterns to avoid damage and our position to avoid falling down pits and having to jump more.
Also, since we spared killing fish in Level 4, we don't have to play the Bonus stage here.
Level 6
Doing the intended route. Get the keys, warp through barrels, peck some rats, the usual.
Bossfight
Yeah, nothing to add here, just jumping from cannon to cannon as fast as we can.
Final Notes
Timing
This movie ends on frame 31699, when the game effectively ends, however, the last input is on frame 31530, to get in the cannon for the last time.
Suggested Description
Férias Frustradas do Pica-Pau is a platformer for the Sega Genesis, made and published by TecToy in 1995, only in Brazil.
In this game, Woody Woodpecker is on vacation with his friends and family, when Buzz Buzzard, upset he wasn't invited to the party, kidnaps everybody and leaves only Woody behind. And it's now up to him to save them.
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 8893 looks funny.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Replacing with a trimmed version that is 169 frames faster.
nymx: I've looked at your history and you have been trying very hard to get this game through. After comparing this to a couple of speedruns that was done at GDQ, it would seem that you have finally mastered all the techniques needed to make the optimized movie that this community has been waiting for. Now that we have a run that is nearly 4 minutes faster, I can finally be the one to congratulate you!
Accepting to Standard!
