Basic Information

Memory Addresses

• A more organized watch file of these addresses
• Y-Position always increases when you go higher and decreases when you go lower.
• The "Stall Y-Position" of the game is 0. If you fall OoB to that Y-value, the game will freeze.
• Y-Speed also determines fall damage. If you stand on the ground and Freeze it on a high negative value (ex: -8), continual fall damage will apply every frame until your health runs out.
• Tip: Walk in different directions to determine which is X-Position and which is Z-Position before TASing a segment.

Useful Controls and Shortcuts

Movement and Jumping

Turning

Lag

Randomness

Desyncs

Doors and Invisible Walls

Cutscenes

EXP and Stats

Speed and Jump Values

Weapons and Bosses

Tricks and Glitches

Weapon Boost

Bunny Hopping

• Jumping backwards and firing a recoil-heavy weapon will give you a much higher movement speed than normal. You can then do frame-perfect jumps to preserve your speed, provided you don't land on a lag frame (though this can be avoided by pointing the camera lower or higher before you fire). You can also turn while in the air and fire again to boost in a different direction (which adds to the current X and Z-Speed).
• This makes normal gameplay much faster and allows you to skip cutscene triggers and parts of levels.
• The fastest weapons for this, in order, are Shot Cycler, Slugger, Kineticore, Side Winder & Ballista, and Stavor's Stave & Rip Gun.
• While the Shot Cycler yields the fastest hopping speed, other weapons will sometimes need to be used instead to conserve Shot Cycler ammo.
• As you have to look up somewhat to Bunny Hop, this makes the run more entertaining by keeping it from looking at the ground all the time to reduce lag.
• You can also straferun forward, jump, turn around and then boost to gain a bigger boost.

Jump Boost

• Looking at the ground, jumping and firing with certain weapons will rocket you up a good distance, usually over twice as high as your normal jump. This works best with one-shot recoil weapons like the Side Winder, as most multiple-shot weapons don't provide enough of an initial boost to keep you in the air.
• This use of Weapon Boost, especially when combined with Enemy Hopping, allows you to skip major parts of levels, reaching higher floors and tops of levels before the game intends you to. All of E2M2 can be skipped with this glitch.
• Note that when on top of a level, some walls will not be visible due to the game only expecting them to be seen from one direction, and many walls will not be loaded in yet. However, their collision is still there, and level maps can be a big help in finding where you can land to continue jumping across the top.
• With the right vertical facing angle (~47), you can do a full Bunny Hop and Jump Boost at the same time. This works best when facing backwards, as in the testrun in E2M2 to make it on top of the hammer room.
• When boosting to skip an elevator, sometimes Hiro will stick to the ground, as his controls will still be locked. This can be canceled out by hitting a wall, or prevented entirely by aiming up more when doing the boost, to trick the game into giving you your controls back.

Boost Through Walls

• If you repeatedly boost yourself into a wall or polygonal mesh at a consistent angle, your X-Speed and/or Z-Speed will build up until it reaches 89 or -89, at which point Hiro will clip through the wall's hitbox and out the other side in one frame.
• Attaining this speed takes 23-60 seconds depending on the weapons used to boost yourself through the wall. This means it would be most useful in large skips like clipping through a wall blocking a level's exit, rather than minor skips that would make it slower than the intended route. Note that this can use up at least 2 of your weapons' ammo, especially early in the game, and more would need to be found to continue shooting or boosting with them. This might make the glitch slower in the long run depending on the weapons used.
• The best weapon for this is Stavor's Stave. It only uses 1 ammo per shot and has quick cooldown/reload, meaning you can achieve clipping velocity with it in a little over 23 seconds and still have shots left over.
  • Kineticore can do the glitch in under 23 seconds but would require 108 ammo, which would probably turn out slower to acquire.
• You can easily go out of bounds with this glitch. However, usually there isn't anything to stand on OoB, and you will fly or fall through empty space until the game freezes.
• If you've built up only your X-Speed, you won't be able to clip through a diagonal wall unless your Z-Speed is also 89/-89. This can be a good thing, as you can use diagonal walls to halt your chaotic movement before you fly too far out of bounds.
  • If the level is large enough, you can also turn the camera most of the way around and fire in the opposite direction of your movement, thus cancelling the clipping effect and letting you safely hit a wall and stop.
• This is the main strat in E3M1, using the Side Winder and 66 ammo on either the keystone gate or the south wall of the village house.

Tips

Enemy Hopping

• Discovered by AdamAK on the PC version. On the N64, you can jump again after the initial jump onto the enemy.
• Enemies will freeze their movements while you're on top of them; this can be good for firing at certain bosses who otherwise move around a lot.
• Some enemies will not allow you to land on them, like Medusa in E2M4.
• This can be used with Weapon Boost to skip some elevators, as elevator ceilings are not solid. Just hop on a tall enemy and boost up to the next floor.

Spider Hopping

• A variant of enemy hopping with a specific jumping enemy. The E2M2 spiders will jump when you jump to try and hit you in midair. If you jump onto them with precise timing, you can land on them in the air. This gives you extra height to Jump Boost to the top of the level.
• By being on the edge of the spider and having certain input and good RNG (advanced by wasting frames), you can make the spider jump again immediately, usually higher. This allows you to "chain" jumps and reach high places with the help of Weapon Boost.
• The spider's maximum jump height is around 70 units. Get it to jump to a higher platform and jump again if you need more height.
• Pressing the keyboard shortcut for U (equivalent to moving the Control Stick up) seems to coerce the spider into jumping.

Statue Hopping

• Similar to Spider Hopping, the E2M3 statues at the beginning can be lured on top of a higher platform and made to jump again, allowing you to get on top of the walls.
• This may not be of any use like in E2M2, as E2M3 requires you to collect five tablet pieces before the end trigger appears.

Sticking into Walls

Straferunning

• A form of diagonal-running exists in this game, and can be used anywhere, including to start off a Weapon Boost. Running at a perfect 45 degree angle will give you around a 20% increase in speed, or 2.00 at Speed 2 instead of 1.68. It does not increase with jumping.
• Strafing by itself is only about 65% of your forward speed. For Speed 2, you strafe at about 1.091.
• When straferunning at most angles, the X-Speed and Z-Speed values will add up to a value greater than the Speed stat value.
• Backwards straferunning can give you a speed almost as high as your forward speed, and can be useful in some situations.
• Strafecrawling and strafeswimming should always be used instead of normal crawling or swimming, as the faster speed saves lots of time throughout the slow movement.
• One good use for this trick is when walking up to Kage Mishima in E4M5, as you won't have any normal weapons to boost with.
• You can also switch between C-Up+C-Left and C-Up+C-Right to turn corners more quickly.

Canceling Fall Damage

• By doing a frame-perfect jump upon landing from a great height, your Y-Speed will go right into the next jump and avoid any fall damage you would have taken.
• Make sure you vary the frame or angle of your jump so your one frame to jump again isn't on a lag frame.

Shooting Through Walls

• If your weapon has a large blast area, as with the Side Winder, its shot can reach through walls and ceilings to destroy enemies or objects on the other side.
• This is used in E1M2 to blow up the force field engine without having to crawl through the tunnel.

Miscellaneous

Level Maps

• E2M1 Map - Unfinished, but shows the major points of interest. A Jump Boost wouldn't save time here since there's only one wall you can get on top of and it's not on the way to or from the drachma.
• E2M2 Map - Mostly finished ceilings height map (with testrun route)

Ingame Cheats for Testing

• All Weapons: C-Left, C-Down, C-Right, C-Up, Z, L, R, C-Left, C-Down, C-Right, C-Up
• Stage Select: C-Up, C-Right, C-Down, C-Left, R, L, Z, C-Up, C-Right, C-Down, C-Left
  • Once entered, use Control Stick Up+Down to select a level.

Misc. Notes

• Don't insert the Expansion Pak (leave N64>Use Expansion Slot unchecked) for a TAS. Just having it loaded creates lag frames. High-res mode may look better but it would have to be a speed/entertainment tradeoff because of the longer time.
  • For casual playing, high-res mode works best with the Glide64mk2 plugin in BizHawk.
• You can get crushed by elevators. Be careful not to be under one when it's coming down.
• Your health is reset to 100 for every new mission, whereas armor and ammo amounts are always preserved into the next mission.

Misc. Links

• Input files and BizHawk RAM Watch files
  • Encode of the above testrun, up to end of E2M2
• RTA/speedrun record (44:11)
• Forum thread