- Emulator used: FCEU 0.98.28
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Manipulates luck
- Uses death as shortcut
As with the most which games I end up tasing, I had no plans to TAS this from beginning. I did have good memories from my childhood of this game so I thought I could just play through some levels for old time sake, and being a taser also made me try tasing the first level just to see what I could do. I then somehow immediately found a way to accelerate faster from the start of the level. I compared this to the run of this site and saw that it didn't use that trick. And since I understood that it could be used to gain time in almost every level it motivated me to start the run. In the end, I have beaten the previous run by Guybrush by 3482 frames or about 58 seconds.
Short game info
The story for this game is basically to help Ronald McDonald getting his bag of magic back. You do this by going from level to level in each world picking up M cards in order to get permission to continue your quest.
Speed-meter notation
The velocity on address $4b0 goes from 127, maximum right velocity, downto -127 (that is 129), maximum left velocity. Values above 96 and below 160 can only be gotten by gaining speed from slopes or performing the acceleration trick explained below. When having a speed higher than 96 you can keep it by jumping and when touching the ground it decreases 3 values every frame, this is why this run has so much jumping included:)
Improvements
Acceleration trick
Normally when you start with zero speed, as in the beginning of a level, your speed increases with contant values up until the speed 64 is reached, then it stops increasing for some time before starting again, stopping again at 80 before it increases to 96. The "Acceleration trick" makes the speed increase up to it's maximum without these stops. Perform it by jumping at the first frame that you can control the player for best effect.
Precision
Due to the quite slow control of the player, for example when changing direction, this game is rather hard to optimize. By deeping studying in the game's physics this run has quite alot better precision than the previous. And having around 12 times the rerecord count of the previous one it's quite expected to be better optimized huh? :)
Strategies
Strategal differences occur in about every level expect those that are almost trivial to play. Changes exist in level 1-1, 1-3, 1-5, 1-6, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-6, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-5. 3-6, 4-3, 4-4, 5-1, 5-3, 5-4, 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 and 6-4. I here explain some of the most noticable ones.
- In 1-5 I build up speed by walking on the little slope at the bottom of the level and then turning around.
- In 3-3 I jump down for the M card one "step" earlier.
- 4-4 contains some changed digging.
- In 5-1 most things are changed.
- In 6-1 I use both boxes in a neat way and save more than 10 seconds.
- In 6-2 I grap the M without using the box. To get this to work you'll have to jump at the last possible subpixel.
- In 6-4 I kill the wand much faster by discovering that if you have the stone in your hands and touch the boss, he will take damage and the stone won't break.
Small route change
I skip the M card in 2-4 and take the second one in 2-1 instead.
Will I make the "all level" run too?
Well, at least not within the near future since I really need a break from this game. Of course I won't stop others from making it in the mean time.
Thanks to
Guybrush and the other contributors and authors of the previous runs.
Let me know if there's something you wonder about or want me to explain.
Happy watching!
mmbossman: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
ShinyDoofy: Will publish...
