Speedrun of Tom and Jerry for Gameboy. The game is a sidescroller based on the cartoon. Damage is taken. There are some shortcuts taken because the character bounces off enemies when hit. This is used most notably in level 3, where a mousetrap is used to launch the character onto the end of the level.
Introduction:
Tom and Jerry is a kid’s cartoon where the mouse generally triumphs, with the cat being ignominiously defeated. The video game is a side scroller, with a lot of up-and-down motion as well. Jerry can take 4 hits before dying – the fifth kills him.
RUN SPECIFICATIONS
Takes damage to save time. Aims for fastest time. Does not use passwords.
GENERAL
Jerry never goes out of his way for an item. The game has no power-ups, only items that heal him or give him an extra life. On some levels he does pick up the healing items.
I found that holding A at the score screen after a level is quicker than mashing… But by the time I had discovered that, I was at level 3. So I had to redo levels 2 and 3.
Jerry has a temporary invincibility after taking a hit that lasts several seconds. At some point or another, he’s gotten through nearly every enemy thanks to it.
When Jerry hits an enemy, he recoils, which is abused to some point in level 2, greatly used in level 3, used for the crazy mousetrap-banister-dumbwaiter move in level 4, and to get out of water – fast – in level 5. Later, he has little use for the move because he rarely needs to turn around.
LEVEL 1
There wasn’t much to this level – just holding and B for most of it, though at one point I had to let go of B. It was actually faster to go up the ledges at that slow speed; otherwise Jerry would get knocked back by the ledges. Cars normally slow you down, but at one point I abuse a movement glitch to launch Jerry at top speed with a car.
LEVEL 2
This level has quite a few ledges on it. Near the end, I simply hop on a series of ledges and land right on the exit sign. I figure this is fastest because there are no hills up in the sky.
LEVEL 3
I had to redo this level because of a mistake I made at the end of 1 and 2 (see GENERAL), but I don’t regret that because I found a few time-savers along the way that I didn’t use in the first run. For example, in the published version I start to turn in midair for the jumps into pipes. I don’t do that in the first version. I use a lot of bouncing off enemies on this level. First, there’s that soldier I use to get on a ledge; Then, another toy soldier to get me on that balcony. Finally, there’s the mousetrap that launched me onto the exit sign. Notice the way I catch that pipe – in my test run, I couldn’t do that, and it cost me several seconds.
LEVEL 4
The staircases were tricky to navigate. It is possible to go up with B pressed, but on most it doesn’t help. I spent a long time figuring out how to jump off the chairs to top height – literally jumping on every frame for a few frames around landing time – before I figured out that you need a preliminary jump. Then I found that, because of a movement glitch, it’s slower to jump at higher heights. This is because when you jump higher, you don’t go higher on the next jump, but spend more time in midair. Note the fun little segment where I bounce up the stairs, off a mousetrap and off the banister to a dumbwaiter. That’s probably the best move so far in the run. Then there’s the ridiculous jump off the couch. Jerry can actually move higher, so high the camera loses track of him, but then he gets knocked down by a ledge. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to guide him, then realised the super-jump wouldn’t work at all.
LEVEL 5
This level is interesting because it has so many gaps. Enter: TAS. Viewing in slow motion, you can see Jerry getting “678” under him as he enters water. What’s up with that? There are little platforms above the shower I thought he could jump onto. He can’t jump on from anywhere close, so I abandoned the thought. They’re probably for decoration. The pools were very interesting to go through. I often had trouble getting the timing right flying out of the pool. There are actually 2 routes at the end that get the identical end time – 21 frame rule, much? The TAS uses the more impressive one.
LEVEL 6
No, it is not faster to use the banister at the start. He has to jump off, which wastes time. The second one is quicker, though. I discovered you can clear the stoves with some tricky jumping; then you can barely miss Tom and keep going, top speed. Later, Jerry has to stop dead to get past the stoves. Then he has to pull off some fancy jumps, ultimately get hit by Tom, then make it to the exit.
LEVEL 7
I hate the saws. They’re really hard to get past at top speed. It’s often flatly impossible to do that. Notice the stops. This level is interesting because there are 2 possible routes. One is only about 1 second better than the other. A couple jumps literally had no margin for error. Go one frame earlier, he hits the obstacles; One later, he can’t make the jump.
LEVEL 8
Too bad you can’t go into pipes from above like Mario ;). This level has a lot of water, which is frustrating because Jerry goes so slowly in water, and you can’t get out of it a lot of the time. It’s best to get out of water as fast as possible, as you saw in level 5. Jerry is a little faster swimming than walking on the bottom, so he bounces around quite a bit. Note that by the end of this level, the score is enough for #1 on the high score list.
LEVEL 9
This level is pretty insane. I remember playing on my Game boy, before I even knew what a TAS was, and thinking “If only there was a way to play in slow motion and retry if you messed up”. I find a lot of levels interesting in the way he jumps over huge gaps without seeming to care, but this level takes the cake there. Note the way he hits spikes and uses that to run over power lines. In real life a mouse running on power lines won’t get zapped, so that whole power lines thing doesn’t make sense.
LEVEL 10
This has so many ways to go, and only 1 is right. I actually went through in normal speed to find the right way (I think my end time was 3:40 on normal time… lol). There really wasn’t much to this level – simple TAS pwnage.
EMULATOR INFORMATION
Used Gameboy mode. Up+down, left+right disabled. No frameskip. Recorded with Nitsuja's VBA 1.9
OTHER
Frame 33691 is the earliest frame at which it is impossible for user input to end the game. If the movie ends at frame 33690, it would be possible to pause before reaching the end of the level.
Truncated: Quoting you from the submission thread:
I honestly think this doesn't deserve to be published.
I can only say that this reflects my view well. I'm doing you the favor of setting this to cancelled while you work on a new run.
