Topic by TASVideoAgent

General info

As one of the authors of some previous runs and knowing our, me and Genisto, run was improvable, I've decided that I must improve it. Then, Randil had decided to work on it and submitted his improved version. It didn't change my mind. On the contrary, it encourages me to start it sooner than expected. My run is 24 frames faster than Randil's movie.

   * Emulator used: FCEU 0.98.16
   * Aims for fastest time.
   * Takes damage to save time.
   * Uses death as a shortcut.
   * Manipulates luck.

The goal of this game is to rescue all 6 goonies. You cannot finish the game with 4 goonies as the game will restart at level 1, with 0 goonie, when finishing level 5.

Tricks

"The pass through gate" glitch, which was discovered by Genisto, is done by pressing start in 30hz (turbo). You cannot pass through solid wall.

Like Randil did mentionned, this game is extremely random. Making the goonie appear at correct safe is easy as it's frame based. But manipulating enemies is complicated. Especially, there are 2 important places where luck manipulation was needed for enemies.

The first one is at beginning of level 3. You must make sure no enemy is appearing till the bomb has exploded and make one enemy appear at correct time. In my version, one enemy did appear before laying down the bomb but I did make sure it disappears as soon as possible.
Why is it so imporant!? It's for letting the counter, at memory address $11c, go down at 1. And when it reaches 0, a ghost is appearing which saves time later by letting dying the hero. Randil found it easy to do so, I think he was just lucky but trust me, it is REALLY HARD. With many possibilities I have tested, only one got the desired result.
In other words, when $112 = 0, $11c goes down.

The second place is even worse as I was forced to lose, 60 frames. :S. It is at beginning of level 5, a fish MUST appear when the bomb is laying down to explode. This one, I did tested so many things, I even restarted the whole game several times in hope to get the desired result, but didn't even managed to get the 1st one, the one where I must manipulate the ghost, to even rework, so I lay down my hands, at least, for now. If I take the shorcut at level 3 to reach level 5 as optimally as possible, a mouse appear, in the secret room, so soon that he moves right and that saves lot of time but with that randomness, no fish appears at beginning of level 5. So, to make it appear, I was forced to kill an extra mouse at end of level 3 which changes, of course, the randomness at secret room and the mouse doesn't appear so soon. So, in other words... THAT SUCKS!

Also, in level 3, I was forced to lose some time because of some Fratelli brother appearing at wrong time which cancels the mouse to appear there which was needed to collect a bomb and also manipulating randomness. If it's possible to get the desired randomness without losing time, I think the level could be improved by 8 frames but I did try hard to solve the problem but I failed.

The RAM addresses that I found useful are:

$11C Countdown for Ghost
$5E8 Randomness result for enemies
$441 Number of steps on ground or climbing. 1 step = 52 And for climbing, 40.
$112 Number of enemies on screen. 0-3

Those that are ± useful are:

$114 Number of Fratelli bros. appearing during a game.
$119 Number of mice appearing during a game.
$11b Number of bats appearing during a game.
$11d Number of skeleton appearing during a game.

I think those ones may be useful if someone make a bot for that game. Also, I did noticed that a mouse always appear at x frames. There is probably some counter for them too and probably for some other enemies too but I didn't searched for the RAM address as I am lazy. :P

Extras

So, the improvements are in level 2 and the passageway, I did gain sufficient frames to reach the 8 frames rule to make the goonie appear at right place in level 3.

And gained 16 frames at level 3.

Didn't improved level 1, 5 and 6. They seem to be as optimal as possible. Well, I couldn't do better.

Final Score

Well, like in my other runs, I always, or mostly, try to get as much points as possible. I did finished the game with 5400 more points than Randil's version.

I did kill one less enemy, -100 pts, than Randil but killed a ghost which worths 500 pts. Obtained the "Twin bee" which worths 5000 pts.

As an extra, I did make appear "Konami Man" but couldn't get it.

I couldn't make appear other bonuses without costing time. Sorry.

In conclusion

Like Randil, I am not really optimist that this run is perfect. I feel that it is improvable. However, it is another one extra step closer to perfection. :)

Thanks to Randil for his discoveries, especially the one for the ghost. Also thank to my former partner, Genisto and former competitor, Walker_Boh.

My niece, 4 years old, thought it was a Mario game as the hero is similar to Mario. ;)

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.