By Way of Exposition

There is a young empire, headed by a wolf named Badler. Although ambitious in its desire to rule the world, it is smart enough to start slow, and begins by conquering a small archipelago to work its way up from.
Enter a trio of counteractive terrorists, residents of one of the islands, who get fed up with being ruled by this fascist regime. Although lacking in formal organization, they each serve an important role in there own little movement.
  • Punky Skunk: Primary action guy and main character. His decision to stand up to Badler catalyzes the other two into doing the same. And yes, his main form of attack is to stink his opponents to death.
  • Nash: Gadgeteer genius whose inventions include the pogo stick and snow board. Has a penchant for building gameshow setpieces on a whim. Who knows what his species is supposed to be.
  • Kelly: Pink rabbit whose function is simply to assign silly names to various areas, often while referencing other works of popculture including Cool Runnings, and explain how the controls have changed for the current boss fight. Otherwise some bizarre form of fanservice.
The villains, on the other hand, have a more formal organization:
  • Badler: Self appointed dictator for life. Seems to relate with Scooby Do villains, as shown in a cutscene you won't get to watch during this run. Is depicted to wear red, although he's wearing black whenever you see him. Thinks he's so cool his eyepatch switches sides every time he turns around. Literally.
  • Commander Chew: Second in command to Badler. Most conflicts will be with this guy. Smart enough to realize that kidnapping the female companion is pointless and goes for the more strategically important weapon dealer Nash. Also quite honorable in that he's willing to have a 100 ton weight dropped on him for losing a game of volley ball (although he's a cheating scumbag during the boat race).
  • The Chew Army: Mice that act as military grunts. They come with all sorts of crazy armaments, including a costume that looks like a large flower pot. Very loyal to the regime.

The Game Itself

This is a rather bizarre title. Once you read the back of the CD case, it becomes apparent that it's trying to ride the waves of Sonic the Hedgehog several years too late. Trouble is, once you boot up the game itself you quickly realize the character is less a smelly Sonic and more like Sammy Squirrel (the grey one in the beginning) [EDIT: dead youtube link removed] with a sense of patriotic indignation. And a pogo stick.
That's not to say the game itself is bad. Its platforming is solid and is a fairly good way to unwind. It's just that the title is wholly unremarkable and will leave little to no impact on you unless you've played it as a child. And, as a corollary to that, this game seems like it would be good for kids.
So why did I make a run for a kid's game? Someone (I think it was theenglishman) showed me |this article [EDIT: dead article link removed] about a year ago, and I saw this game on there at 33. When I first saw that, I thought to myself, "I am so making a run of the title when the proper tools come out." Well, the tools have come out, so I made a run. I mean, come on! It stars a skunk! Skunks are a close second to raccoons on the Awesome Wildlife totem! Not to mention they're also in the same family as ferrets...
...oh, all right, fine. The only reason I did this was because of the skunk's connection to the ferret. If the closest I'll come to TASing a game with a ferret is to TAS a game that stars a cousin, then by golly, so be it.

A Few Notes About the Run

About the minigames: For the most part, I aim to simply get through the levels as quickly as possible. However, in the first ten minutes, I have to play four different minigames. I decided that watching me fail some of them in order to reduce bonus time would be rather dull, so I decided to do as well as possible within the constraints of tool assistance, regardless of the bonus that should come. This results in getting a score of 117 for the matching game and the 109 lives that come as a consequence.
About the sound: This game uses CD audio for its music. If you want to hear the (often illfitting) music, burn the ISO to a disc and read mz's post here. I personally couldn't get it to work via virtual drive mounting, although some have had luck with that route.
Or you could use SaPu's CD-ROM Plugin. Works even better and requires no pesky cables! (and don't worry, it plays back just fine with this plugin)

Notable Bugs

The main conceit behind this title is that scattered throughout the levels are various devices that aid the player in doing whatever. The most useful bugs are the result of these.
  • Switch Jumping: After changing between outfits in midair, you have a window of two frames in which you can jump. Good for accessing shortcuts and working around some obstacles.
  • Switch Snapping: If you're within a certain distance distance of certain platforms, Punky will "snap" to that platform's level. Used to climb faster is some cases and to assist in the above glitch in others.
  • Claw Walking: Comes in two forms, both of which can only be done while wearing the claws.
    • Fast Walking: When you press left and right at the same time, Punky will double his walking speed in whatever direction he was facing. Needs to be a good distance from dirt to work.
    • Wall Zipping: If you press the opposite direction you were walking with no gaps in the input, Punky will continue walking in the original direction, but walls will act like he's walking the direction you are holding. This allows you to enter into walls and initiate a wall warp once you get in far enough. There can be no dirt laterally near the place you are entering, and can screw with how objects get generated in the level. In part two of Pathgrinder III, if I had entered at the earlier point, a boulder would have appeared where I would have gotten out at, blocking my path. In Crevasse Chaos, I couldn't perform the zip right before the end because the flagpole wouldn't have generated. (also, in Pathgrinder I, the vertical zip was the result of the quicksand right next to the wall)
  • Dirt Grabbing: Another claw glitch. If Punky catches a dirt wall while falling, he may get a vertical boost putting him 16 pixels above where he should have grabbed. If his head gets lodged in a wall or a boulder as a result, you can perform the afore-mentioned wall warp.
There are also two other glitches that aren't the result of suits.
  • Stink Extension: While in standard outfit, attacking near the apex of a jump will cause Punky to hover for the duration of the attack animation. Used mainly for some minor stuff.
  • Victory in Death: After hitting the flagpole, the screen will stop scrolling. If there's no solid ground underneath you at the time, this will create a pit which will kill you, but the level will still finish anyway. Used once to force the end-of-level bonus time down. Does not work in Aeroskunk.

Known Goofs in Order of Severity

  • I made two in Pathgrinder II, both in part 2: First, I should have wall warped at the very beginning to reduce travel time as standard Punky. Second, I should have fast walked closer to the flagpole to reduce claw travel time.
  • I probably should have waited in the dialog during Drill Sargent in order to manipulate the Commander's final position to be closer to the bottom.
  • In both Castle Hassle and Sugar Rush Hour, I should have jumped first thing after grabbing the roller blades. This would have brought me up to max speed instantly.
  • I don't think I handled most of the updrafts optimally. Who knew falling for a bit before entering would give you slightly greater height?
  • About half way through I realized I was handling the dialog boxes wrong. As such, most of these can be improved by exactly one frame.
Most of these could be hexed in, except the RNG that functions on many levels is based on a universal timer that gets started when you begin the first level. In order to hex these in, I would have had to redo most of the levels, probably multiple times, in order to get things to synch back up, and I don't quite have ComicalFlop's near lethal determination.
I hope you enjoy the video.

Classifications

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Ignores delays due to bonuses (only during the minigames; in the levels I try to bring this down during autoscrollers)
  • Takes damage to save time (often just to work through something, but also the previous classification)
  • Manipulates luck (bosses and the matching minigame, plus item drops in some levels)
  • Abuses errors in programming (already listed)
  • Uses death as a shortcut (kinda sorta)

Settings

Although recorded off a disc, it plays fine using an ISO or a virtual drive. You may not get music that way, though.

Random Screenshot


adelikat: Replaced submission file at author's request. (Ferret_Warlord: Jumped over first pit in Windy City instead of jumping into it, saving about 12.5 seconds; some subsequent parts redone to get the RNG back in check)

mmbossman: Finally got this to work, and while it is pretty standard platforming fare, it's definitely worthy of publication, so I'm accepting it. However, due to sound issues, encoding may take a while.
ShinyDoofy: Processing. Thanks to error1 for the audio!

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2181: Ferret_Warlord's PSX Punky Skunk in 47:33.37
Player (39)
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Now we just got PlayStation games coming in from here and there. Anyways, I will get to watching.
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I'm getting desyncs right off the bat. Are there any other conditions you haven't mentioned Ferret?
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
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I forgot to mention it was an updated test version of 0.0.7, but I started recording using the standard 0.0.7, so that shouldn't be an issue. I have updated the submission with a link to an image containing all my settings that play it back just fine. If that doesn't work, then I don't know.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
mz
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I'll leave it capturing before I go to bed and hopefully there will be a full encode for tomorrow when I wake up. I'll watch it then too, I'm too sleepy now. I'm not having any desyncs as far as I tried, which probably is not such a good thing for this game. :P And what's even better, music seems to work if I use SaPu's CD-ROM Plugin! Which probably is not a good thing either, but it's probably better than complete silence. Anyway, you'll all have to wait for my encode of this awesome game until tomorrow (if everything goes well)...
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
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mz wrote:
And what's even better, music seems to work if I use SaPu's CD-ROM Plugin! Which probably is not a good thing either, but it's probably better than complete silence.
Just downloaded it. All I have to say is: Sweet! This is even better since it seems to handle the music commands more accurately, and actually stops when you exit out of the emulator! I don't know how well it holds up recording input files, but at least it will be great for playback. I'm updating the submission text to include this.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
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As for the 'sound continues when you exit PCSX' thing, you can stop that by hitting Escape while playing then clicking the X, rather than just clicking the X on the game window. That same problem annoyed me a lot before I starting doing this. :p
Voted NO for NO reason
mz
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I had a lot of trouble recording the music (it doesn't get decoded by any part of PCSX, but by Windows' Sound Mixer...), but I was finally able to record it externally and make it sync with the rest of the video. :) But... I forgot about how big the final video would become (~200 MB), and this is a major problem for my crappy Internet connection. I had already uploaded most of the file into Archive.org, but I got disconnected from the server and then I couldn't resume it, since the file wasn't on the FTP server anymore somehow. And it takes around 7 hours to upload 200 MB on my connection. :P So, I hope someone else will encode it, because I don't know when/if I'll be able to upload my file. Anyway, the run was great! It really is a good game, especially for a TAS, since it never gets too repetitive and the visuals are beautiful (it looks like a good SNES game); also, the minigames were really entertaining and diverse, I'm glad you decided to play them. I really enjoyed the whole movie, good job.
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
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I'll see if I can encode it
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Hm. SaPu's plugin seems to have its own quirks related to the music. Man, I wish I had a Playstation right now. Would help confirm which is more accurate.
mz wrote:
Anyway, the run was great! It really is a good game, especially for a TAS, since it never gets too repetitive and the visuals are beautiful (it looks like a good SNES game); also, the minigames were really entertaining and diverse, I'm glad you decided to play them. I really enjoyed the whole movie, good job.
That's some high praise right there. A lot higher than even I'm willing to give it. :O (but thank you anyway)
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
mz
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
That's some high praise right there. A lot higher than even I'm willing to give. :O (but thank you anyway)
Yeah, it's probably just me: I had really low expectations before watching this movie. :P But it truly was a lot of fun... I forgot to mention my favorite parts about the game were the boss fights, they were really interesting and original.
errror1 wrote:
I'll see if I can encode it
Cool. Let me know if my audio+music capture can be useful; I could upload it somewhere if you need it...
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
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I tried everything and can't get the cd sound to work. Iso, mounting, burning to a disk, various plugins and no luck. My only other option is to rip the music off the iso, enable the console output and link up the tracks biased on what the console says it's playing so at this point a audio+music file would be a big help. It may be because I am using vista, I know CD audio is handled a little differently in it
mz
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Er... Yeah, a log like "FRAME_NUMBER: Play track 2" would be useful, and more precise. I can't think of another way to add 100% precise CDDA music. Anyway, here's my not-so-accurate try if you want to use it: http://rapidshare.com/files/197876507/pcsx.mp3
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
Joined: 2/26/2007
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Man I want to watch this run :3~
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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unfortunately your audio file doesn't sink with my video file because the load times are different. I think the problem is I was playing from a CD, it was the last thing I tried and I should have changed it. I am rerecording it off an Iso and hopefully it will sync then.
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Recording off the Iso synced fine with the audio. Here is the encode. http://files.filefront.com/13285392 Now I can review the run. The game is extremely unremarkable. The graphics are quite good and it would have been a nice looking genesis game. The music is decent but unmemorable. It seems to be played well and has a several surprising shortcuts. Not very entertaining but it should still be published. 6.1/8.3
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errror1 wrote:
Recording off the Iso synced fine with the audio. Here is the encode. http://files.filefront.com/13285392
The synchronization of the music doesn't sound quite right (although the sound effects are fine). It's about one second early towards the beginning but then drifts to one second late towards the end. This is the third different synchronization I've heard for this game.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
The synchronization of the music doesn't sound quite right (although the sound effects are fine). It's about one second early towards the beginning but then drifts to one second late towards the end. This is the third different synchronization I've heard for this game.
I think this is unavoidable without a massive effort. If I had to guess I would say it's due to the load times. I don't think it's worth fixing, you would need to manually time every song and the result would hardly be noticeable.
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First off, thanks mz, errror1 and ferret. (side note: mz is underlined red [wrong spelling] but eRRRor1 is an english word that is apparently spelled correct) This is a really cute game, even though I feel gay typing that. A simple looking platformer, but played very well by that ferret kid. I love how he rapes the computer in that end-of-level bonus (?) round. Makes me laugh every time. My only question: This is seriously a PS1 game? It truly looks last gen, and am surprised that a 2D, colorfully depicted, non-polygonal game was ever released for this console... but, again, it adds to the charm :3 Lookin' good, relative of the polecat!
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've actually played this game for a couple of hours and it's pretty neat. The game's graphics are distinctly Japanese and charming. The controls are pretty forgiving (you can actually STOP ALL TRACTION IN MIDAIR during some of Punky's transformations) and the levels are decent. After seeing Ferret's run I'm pretty damn impressed! I never would have thought this game to be a TAS candidate, and after playing it for a bit before watching this run my enthusiasm weakened further. But you've proven me wrong :P. Anyway, this gets 8/7 from me. The pace is pretty slow before you start to get upgrades but everything else is great. The minigames in particular are awesome, I remember almost breaking my index finger during the pedal generator minigame. And if I did show you that article a year ago, I certainly don't remember it. Sorry :/
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Post subject: I'VE GOT IT!
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*watches error1's encode* It's...so...cute... Well, if Nash can manufacture 1ups to dispense in minigames, he deser'es to get bilked of 'em like that. It was pretty funny watching Punky twitch on the matching game so, and mo'e before the commands were gi'en. *continues watching* [miscellaneouscomments] The iron boots Diggers weigh nothing in pack, again. Wallzips? Temperamental platforms? Quaint lapine fanser'ice?? Obnoxious HUD? Early hopes of nonlinearity and 'heart pieces' dashed...That's a silly 'olleyball costume. Incomprehensible worldmap style? Check. [/miscellaneouscomments] ...Okay, actual gameplay question(s). Does jumping with snowboard SkySurfer equipped up slopes matter? Is it superior/inferior? *checks* you already mentioned flag mistake in Pathgrinder II... How about switching to shoot the flag from [skates/board/chute/pogo]? On second thought, probably loses time... I won't claim to understand that ending. o.o 7.5/8.6 edit: forgot to mention the 99 superfluous li'es-in-platformer = hurrah.
Post subject: Re: I'VE GOT IT!
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eternaljwh wrote:
*watches error1's encode* It's...so...cute... Well, if Nash can manufacture 1ups to dispense in minigames, he deser'es to get bilked of 'em like that. It was pretty funny watching Punky twitch on the matching game so, and mo'e before the commands were gi'en. *continues watching* [miscellaneouscomments] The iron boots Diggers weigh nothing in pack, again. Wallzips? Temperamental platforms? Quaint lapine fanser'ice?? Obnoxious HUD? Early hopes of nonlinearity and 'heart pieces' dashed...That's a silly 'olleyball costume. Incomprehensible worldmap style? Check. [/miscellaneouscomments] ...Okay, actual gameplay question(s). Does jumping with snowboard SkySurfer equipped up slopes matter? Is it superior/inferior? *checks* you already mentioned flag mistake in Pathgrinder II... How about switching to shoot the flag from [skates/board/chute/pogo]? On second thought, probably loses time... I won't claim to understand that ending. o.o 7.5/8.6 edit: forgot to mention the 99 superfluous li'es-in-platformer = hurrah.
Oh... kay. Wait, that's right, your v key is borked. For a second it looked like you were trying to type out some bizarre accent. Anyway, about the snowboard. Sometimes jumping up slopes saves a few frames, sometimes it doesn't. I don't know what gives. So, I just discovered a huge mistake in Windy City. It's close enough towards the end, and the saving big enough, that I'll attempt some hex magic. Please postpone judgment of this submission until I finish it. I'll admit I'm caught off guard by how well this submission has been received. I was expecting more reactions like error's, seeing how that's closer to my own. I am grateful for the feedback about the matching game, though. I was rather nervous about how that would go over.
theenglishman wrote:
And if I did show you that article a year ago, I certainly don't remember it. Sorry :/
I'm not certain if it was you or not, as I've completely forgotten. You just seemed to be a likely candidate for doing such. Either way, I'm blaming this submission on you. ;P
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Post subject: Edit: Link changed for further insanity
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All right, sorry about the brief delay. The internet died where I live and I'm going on a stop-gap measure right now. Anyway, here's the fixed.pxm. To go with that, here's a savestate to skip right to Windy City (don't trust the extension, it's slot 5). Now if an admin could update the submission, I would appreciate it. Thank you. In other news, I am insane.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
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You better link the pxm in the submission text (favorably at the beginning) so that a judge actually sees it before making a decision.
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
In other news, I am insane.
Resized. D: