Glover is a cross between a puzzle and a platforming game. The engine is similar to that of Mario 64. The aim of this run is to complete the game as fast as possible which means not collecting all garibs and thus not playing the bonus levels.

The Game

You are a magic glove whose mission it is to retrieve magic balls in six different worlds from an evil glove to save the kingdom or something to that effect. To do this you must grab the ball and cross through 3 levels plus 1 boss fight in each world without damaging or losing the ball.

Important aspects of basic gameplay.

To complete levels you must usually activate a series of buttons. A red button with a yellow circle is only activated by touching it with the ball. A red and white button with a "+" on it it activated by glover fist slamming it.
You can restart from a checkpoint in a level but only if you are holding the ball AND are resting on the ground. This is why you sometimes see me wait for an unusual amount of time before rolling over a button. I need to wait for the ball to quit bouncing.
Glover can use a magic spell to transform the regular rubber ball into a bowling ball, small metal ball, and a crystal ball.
  • Bowling ball - very slow, you can't bounce it, but is very strong and can break things. It also sinks in water, which comes in handy on several occasions.
  • Small metal ball - very maneuverable, but doesn't have the bounce and speed of the rubber ball. It is small so it can fit in tight places. It sinks in water as well. Since it bounces worse than the rubber ball, it can be faster to use in places where bouncing is not preferable.
  • Crystal ball - delicate and breaks from almost anything. It's only advantage is that it doubles the amount of points & lives you get when you pick up items with it. That means you get 2x points from garibs and 2 lives from and extra life. Points and extra lives are useless for this TAS.
There are several types of potions in glover. Two that come in very handy for a TAS.
  • The beachball. Turns the ball into a beachball for a limited time. It is very light and bounces very high. It also can go at insane speed if the camera angle is just right. This allows me to make some mega shortcuts and travel very quickly.
  • The Speed potion. Speed potions are always great for a TAS! As you would expect, this makes glover move very fast. This can be used also to make large jumps that would otherwise be impossible.
  • The helicopter potion. This allows glover to fly in the air like a helicopter (go figure) for a short time. This is obviously useful. I take some large shortcuts with this.

Aspects interesting for a TAS

Many factors make Glover an interesting game for a TAS. It is a platformer (which are always popular) and a puzzle game (showing interesting ways to solve various situations). Glover has many types of movements and 4 different types of balls, each with its own unique characteristics. It also has a variety of power-ups (potions) with interesting attributes. This means a lot of possibilities to consider when optimizing levels.
Most importantly, the TAS takes advantage of a multitude of shortcuts/glitches/and unorthodox play. What you see in this movie deviates highly from a regular playthrough or a console speed-run.

Tricks/Glitches/etc.

  • When glover has no ball, jumping is faster than walking. Double jumping is slightly slower than single jumps in most situations.
  • When he has the ball on a flat surface, dribbling it as fast as possible is the fastest movement.
  • Cutscene skipping. When you roll/smash a button, a cutscene is triggered. If you pause the game and respawn from a checkpoint the frame you touch a button, the cut scene will be skipped but the button will be still activated. This saves a good deal of time.
  • The "chicken" gltich. One of the more bizarre glitches I've ever seen! There is an egg throwing chicken in this game. If timed properly you can get the chicken and glover stuck together by having the chicken jump at glover while he is holding the ball in a throwing motion. Oddly this causes both to fly upwards into the air as long as they are stuck. Glover can become unstuck by simply canceling his throwing motion. This is used in 2-1 for a huge shortcut.
  • Dynamite boost. There is a dynamite enemy that explodes when you get near him (much like the bomb-ombs in smb2u). Normally this blows glover and the ball into pieces as one might expect. But if timed right it will send glover and/or the ball flying through the air unharmed. This is an extremely fast movement and also allows for shortcuts but is extremely hard to time so that you end up somewhere useful with both glover and the ball still intact. I use this in World 5 for a nice shortcut.

Summary

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates luck (primarily the slot machine in level 2-1, but to also boss behavior to some degree)
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Plays on hardest difficulty (has both an easy & normal modes, this one plays on normal)

Special Thanks

Vidar (meepers) played a significant role in the making of this TAS by discovering shortcuts & glitches (like the chicken glitch). Also some parts if this run were recorded by her (some of the world 1 & 3 boss fights); also the whack-o-mole game in 2-1. Also meepers recommended the game to me and motivated me to work on it. I also want to thanks kirbymuncher, maza, comicalflop, and AKA, for feedback on WIPs & general motivation.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1539: adelikat's N64 Glover in 41:23.88
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Sorry bro, I didnt find this to be enough entertaining to vote yes. I voted meh. But congratulations on your first submitted N64 game.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
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"Congratulations! But you missed 6 bonus levels!" oh well. Nicely played, well executed. I thought I spotted frame savers here and then, but regardless, awesome shortcuts, glitches and such, you really reduced the projected finish length. "Yippee!" "Abracadabra!" "Shazam!" "Alakazaam!" How about "Yes vote!"
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I'll assume that the last boss fight had to go down like it did, and vote yes. I agree with angerfist that it's not the most entertaining game to TAS, but I imagine some of that has to do with the fact that I haven't played the game. Regardless, good job
Joined: 4/30/2007
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why hello there i have been watching these entertaining videos since around tas #60ish several times before i thought i saw something that would make me want to actually do a post, but not until now as i recall, a month ago when i finished glover for the 5th or so time, i had the thought it would be a great game to see tas'ed i am glad my thoughts are psychic a pox on the non-yes votes! that is all, and thanks for doing it
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I thought it was quite an interesting watch. voting yes.
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Voting Yes. I think that this was an interesting game to run; the variety of moves and levels was pretty nice and some of the tricks were pretty cool. I was fairly entertained throughout. Technically I couldn't really see anything worth improvement (I've never played this). Nice work, Adelikat.
Mitjitsu
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I'll watch this over the coming days, from what I've it looks OK.
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What a fucking weird game. I liked it well enough and Gex was published so this should be too.
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There were many parts of that game which were very interesting. I was also bored in a few places, too, but it was good enough for a yes vote.
nesrocks
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nice. I've watched it with fast forward and that was a good watch.. like all other games in this site, I bet that who has played the game before can appreciate it even more. yes vote.
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FODA wrote:
like all other games in this site, I bet that who has played the game before can appreciate it even more. yes vote.
I have to agree with FODA, someone who has played this game will LOVE the video. I, on the other glove (^^), have never played the game and was not as amazed as I could have been had I played the game previously. Giving this a low yes vote.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
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I have played better games that I got for free in a box of cereal (not kidding), but the run brought me more entertainment then the cart ever did. Yes vote.
Has never colored a dinosaur.
Mitjitsu
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The run is comparable to the Gex run, its an OK game as long as you don't directly compare it to SM64 or B+K. Personally the run was a bit unoptimized for my liking with a lot of it just relating to general accuracy, but its good enough for my yes vote.
Joined: 12/28/2004
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I cant help but wonder what some of those bosses were suppose to do. yes vote.
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Twelvepack wrote:
I have played better games that I got for free in a box of cereal (not kidding), but the run brought me more entertainment then the cart ever did. Yes vote.
you lie but i did buy it for $3 used at a blockbuster 4 years and some months ago
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Damn that glover is adorable. Run looked well played, but wasn't incredibly exciting. Though if I had played the game before, I would probably appreciate it more. There was just enough action for me to give it a yes vote. Nice job adelikat.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
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Voted yes on a run well done. Glad to see you've put the advice I gave to good use. Too bad it still isn't sub40 :[ Some parts look a bit unoptimised.. like dino world 3, upon activation of the pit-switch, you miss it and bounce twice before setting it off? A bit more, but that's about it. gj <3 IMPORTANT NOTE: WHERE IS THE GLOVER DANCEEEE ;-;
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this is me wrote:
you lie but i did buy it for $3 used at a blockbuster 4 years and some months ago
Trooth. Chex quest. I shit you not.
Has never colored a dinosaur.
adelikat
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Vidar wrote:
Some parts look a bit unoptimised.. like dino world 3, upon activation of the pit-switch, you miss it and bounce twice before setting it off?
This is on purpose. To return to a check point, you must be done bouncing before pausing the game.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
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I'd like to watch this, but unfortunately I cannot view N64 movies. Any chance of a low-grade AVI of this being made soon, or is this another "Wait until publication" movie?
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I was offered to make such an encode, but a 40 minute movie is out of my capabilities. to compare, I made a video of weatherton's run, and my 5 minute movie ended up being 138 mb. (probably should not have used H264 quantisizer 25 single pass. That made a very high quality encode, yet a massive filesize.) Plus on my laptop AVIs take soooooooo long to encode with mupen, when encoding it goes at about 6-10 frames a second. A 1 one minute WIP for me to encode can take 5+ minutes. So I'm going to leave this ball in DeHackEd's court. I could possibly create AVI's of each world individually, and make it lower quality than I usually do, but I have a justified suspicion DeHackEd is the man for yours (and others') AVI needs.
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vote yes of course. the nintendo 64 segment needs more attention.
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Finally got around to watching the last level. What parts were entertaining were very entertaining. What parts were boring were very boring. Luckily for you, there was a majority of entertaining points (if you turbo through level transitions and whatnot), so I'm giving this a reluctant Yes vote.
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I had found a strange way to skip the monkey boss years ago when I played this game, so I recreated it. http://biospark.paragonsigma.com/boss_trick.zip I'm not sure if it's applicable to your run because I doubt you would use cheats. If that's the case, then maybe there's a way to get the ball inside there too. Edit: Sorry, I realize this isn't the best place to post this.