General notes
- Uses GBAHawk 2.1.3
- Documented rerecord count - 12211
- Completes every level and unlocks every extra.
- Takes intentional damage to save time.
- Uses glitches and exploits to save time
Introduction
Totally Spies! 2 Undercover is a 2006 GBA game which is the second game based on the show and so on and so forth. The game is bad, the first game was better. I have done an Any% TAS of this game and I would strongly recommend reading my Any% submission for more details about the game (
https://tasvideos.org/9995S). I won't go over everything again here, I will mainly be going over the additions and differences of 100%.
The game has 5 chapters but in order to beat the game, you just have to finish the last chapter. Since you have 2 incomplete chapters unlocked at a time, this means that you only have to finish 4 out of the 5 chapters to beat the game. In Any%, we skip chapter 2 as that is the longest chapter in the run. In 100% however, we naturally play all five chapters with chapter 2 being played. I ended up playing chapter 2 after chapter 4 as it gave me much better RNG going into chapter 5. 1-3-4-2 ended up being 22 frames faster than 1-2-3-4 before entering 5-3 (gaining time in chapter 4 although losing a bit of the lead in world 2) and after 5-3, I was able to save time overall from better RNG (although it is hard to say how much faster this route is after incorporating multiple time saves since I initially changed the route).
The game also has confessionals at the end of each chapter where you have to answer 5 questions regarding the chapter (with the game asking some of the most random and specific questions). If you get all the questions right, you unlock a gallery entry where you unlock all the images from the cutscenes and game over screens. In Any%, you only need to successfully complete the last confessional to get the credits, you can completely skip all of the others. In 100%, we naturally successfully complete all of the confessionals to unlock everything in the gallery.
Here, I will go over the additions and changes to the 100% run compared to the Any% run. Worlds 1, 3 and 4 are identical to Any% with the only difference being the completion of the confessionals. For more details about worlds 1, 3 and 4, you can see my Any% submission (
https://tasvideos.org/9995S).
Confessionals
- You can perform multiple menu inputs at once in the confessionals which is not possible on most other menus. This means that we rarely have to scroll up or down without pressing A.
- On the 4th page, we can press right, A and B on the same frame to answer the last question without turning the page, saving just under a second and a half per confessional.
- Confessionals don't actually affect RNG which was a relief.
2-1 - Capture the flower
- In this level, your window to double jump is much tighter compared to other levels so double jumps are performed much sooner compared to other platforming levels.
- At the bottom of the two buildings, you have two high platforms you need to scale. You normally need to climb one of the ledges but if you perform a neutral jump and a well timed double jump, you can do an early wall jump which can get you up without a ledge climb.
- Both buildings have another ledge you need to jump up on the left side. For the first building, you have to climb up the ledge as the enemy does an attack you can't avoid if you stay on the ground but for the second building, you can do a neutral jump to make it onto the platform without a ledge climb.
- To get down the first building, you are supposed to turn left to climb down the building. You are not supposed to fall down the building because you would normally die from fall damage if you try (this level specifically has fall damage). However, if you grab the ledge and then drop off the ledge, you can fall down to the bottom safely, avoiding needing to go through the building to get to the bottom.
- Sam has pre-determined RNG. She can theoretically catch the plant faster but not by a lot. This is one of the only levels where Sam actually fully appears.
2-2 - Dissect the flower
- If you pause buffer, you let go of the pollen but the pollen doesn't have collision, allowing it to go through walls. We can use pause buffering in the second section to take the pollen OOB and take a much more direct line to the end, saving nearly 20 seconds.
2-3 - Infiltration
- This is an auto-scroller and a long one at that. All I could really do is activate switches as early or as late as possible for entertainment value.
2-4 - The pursuit
- Another long auto-scroller. This is one of the laggiest levels in the game although it is nowhere near the monstrosity that is The Cornfields. 2 long auto-scrollers are unfortunately what make this chapter the longest in the game.
- This is the only level where you physically play as Sam.
This makes this entire world worth it, this saves the game.
5-3 - The space race
- I got considerably better pre-determined RNG compared to the Any% run. If the rock ends up on the bottom of the screen, you need to do a much more precise setup in order to get the boss to hit it twice which makes it much harder to get the double hit than if a rock is in the middle or on the top.
5-4 - The tease
- I got worse pre-determined RNG compared to the Any% run although I still saved time overall over these two levels compared to Any%. I don't see any way to manipulate the RNG in this level at all since the level comes straight after 5-3, another heavily RNG dependant level.
Conclusion
And that's the run. Totally Spies! 2 Undercover 100% in 25:23 (25:12 RTA).
I'm finally done with this stupid game. The 100% run ended up being a lot shorter than I anticipated. The RTA Any% WR as of writing this is over 34 minutes and I didn't think that there would be nearly 9 minutes of timesave compared to it in the 100% category, a category that is 7 minutes longer in a TAS setting. But TASing often surprises you with how quickly you can get through games and this game certainly falls under that category. I'm happy to have finished this run. While a lot of this game not engaging, I will not deny that, the highlights are pretty neat and I hope that anyone who does watch far enough to see them can enjoy them too.
There is room to theoretically push this game further. Turning off music/sound and better RNG could theoretically both be enough to break another minute barrier (with a vast majority of that timesave coming from removed sound) but that does not sound fun to look into in the slightest. The only ways I know to manipulate the pre-determined RNG is by either waiting on the language select a variable amount of time with each extra frame giving you a new seed (which I didn't even realise until I was nearly done with the TAS) and re-arranging the chapter order which is possible in this category unlike Any%. The idea of re-TASing the whole game who knows how many times just to find the best RNG is not something that sounds engaging to look into in the slightest and making the game silent is going to make this run even less engaging. I'm hoping that this run is still acceptable however as outside of those things, I very much squeezed as much time out of this game as I could.
Darkman425: I've seen I think one episode almost two decades ago, which I guess makes me qualified to claim for judging with over 25% more content from the any% run.
Darkman425: Interesting how level order is pretty important when it comes to RNG. Nice work on figuring that out!
Accepting to Standard under full completion.
