Just to clarify, it's the Master System version where you can do the early Phantom Castle entrance. To quote from the video:

On the Master System version, if you do this, you'll get a game crash or if you do it one frame later you'll get into the Phantom's Castle early.

There's two, one-frame windows. The first frame causes you to load an invalid level which causes a red screen of death crash. The second frame enters the Phantom Castle early saving 1.6 - 1.7 seconds. All other frames have no effect.

It's risky, but if that 1.6 seconds is the difference between a dead run and a PB, you have to go for it. If I go for it, I mash after the Island cutscene and hope for the best.

I recently discovered a very interesting glitch that completely breaks this game. If you die while getting damage boosted into a life potion -- therefore dying with HP -- the game thinks you completed the current stage and will advance you to the next stage. This works in every stage with a life potion, including all the boss levels and the final boss. This glitch works in both the SMS and GG versions of the game.

I haven't done any runs yet, but this would result in an enormous time save and make the current WR time completely uncompetitive. I'm thinking we'll need any% and glitchess% categories for both the SMS and GG boards if anyone submits any runs with this glitch.

Here are videos showing the glitch in action.

SMS:

GG:

Wonder Boy in Monster Land is one of the few SMS games that don't work with the Genesis controller. This is true whether you're using the Power Base Converter or a flash cart. I play on a Genesis with an Everdrive Pro, so this prevents me from playing the game. I could of course plug in an SMS controller, but given that the D-pad on those things were made by Lucifer himself, I'd rather not.

There is an IPS patch that fixes the game and makes it work on a Genesis controller. Would it be allowed to use this patch and submit runs or am I going to have to bust out BizHawk?

This website explains the fix.

https://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1203.0

I believe these games don't work due to the Japanese/Export check the games perform. Part of the region check toggles the select line on the controller port. It's supposed to be reset but these games fail to do that.

I patched the games to reset the select line or bypass the part of the region detection code that writes to the select line.

Ultimately I decided to abandon the RNG manip for the bolts. It's mentally demanding and you do lose a second doing the Library before the Clock Tower. What I ended up doing instead is simply playing consistently and making a note of each bolt pattern that I encountered. Instead of manipulating the bolts, I learned to read the pattern and react accordingly. I ended up with these notes. D means the bolt jumps down and U means the bolt jumps up. Based on the first 2 (and sometimes 4) bolts I was able to figure out the pattern I was on.

• DD-DU-UD-UU-DU

• DD-UU-DU-UU-DU

• UU-DU-UD-UD-DU

• UU-DD-DU-UD-UU

• UD-UU-DU-DD-UU

• UD-DD-UUD-UU-DU

The tenth bolt is the one you need to bounce on to reach the wall, so for the last pattern in my list I simply waited for an extra bolt before falling down the ladder to pick up the gem. All the other patterns worked well. Not sure if this helps anyone else since we're all going to play a little differently, but maybe it will.

That said, this RNG discovery was still really helpful. If I hadn't known there was a pattern in the bolts, I never would have considering writing the various patterns down.

I'm a bit late, but I just saw this thread.

Do what you have to do for your health -- that always comes first. Besides, if there truly is any advantage to playing on keyboard, I'm sure it's negligible. It's not like you can move faster or jump further with a keyboard.

I submitted an 18:13 run that "ties" the WR, but I'm actually a few tenths of a second behind the WR. I believe we should enable milliseconds when submitting runs and require milliseconds for top times of runs under 18:20.

For precise timing, I propose the first frame when the Master of Darkness graphic begins to fade out during the title screen (the first frame the colour changes) and end on the first frame when we see Dracula's "leaning back, dead" animation frame.

If there's no item or enemy sprites to capture on the screen, you can go to SMS -> Settings and set Display Objects to false to hide Asterix/Obelix. Assuming you're using BizHawk, of course.

I like the small gap between screens too. It's nice to know where the screen will scroll.

It's an interesting question. It would be nice to keep all the Golvellius versions in one board, but given the substantial changes made to the two ports I'm inclined to agree. Marble Madness takes the same approach by creating a separate board for each port.

This is an old post and the OP hasn't logged in since making it, but just to be clear to anyone reading there's no randomness here. The delay before the fade to black is normal and consistent.

Yeah, this is definitely needed. I just submitted a 15:26, so that's 2 seconds off petaQ's time. A month ago we had a WR tie at 15:34. We're both close and there's not much time left to save in the run. I like your idea of only requiring milliseconds for sub 15:30 times.

Adam_ak and btrim are the full mods, but neither has logged in for over a month.

This page suggests it's an input buffer on pause.

https://www.smspower.org/forums/15144-SMSCastleOfIllusionVersionDifferences

That looks awesome. I love the animated clouds.

Well that would be a game changer. Any footage of the glitch being performed?

This was played on original hardware. I checked the emu box by accident.

It certainly makes sense to me. Our community is small and there's definitely going to be overlap between all three games.

This is great work. The book is still a wild card, but I think I've come up with a solid route for Clocktower first.

Go to the Forest first and kill the boss. $0063 changes for each movement he makes, but it doesn't matter if be bounces or not. You will have a value of 241 at the end of the stage.

Now go to Toy Land. The two clowns should increase the value once each giving you 243 for the boss. Now here's where things go off the rails. The value will change each time the boss jumps, lands, and summons balls. I can't get a consistent value, but after a lot of save state practice I almost always end up with value of 11, 23, 46, or 92. I think the variance is due to sometimes not hitting the boss before his "has landed" code triggers.

Starting with one of those 4 values, let's go to the Dessert Factory. Only the boss changes the value in this stage and as long as you don't let him punch the walls then you'll get a consistent value each time based on your starting value. The game is also pretty generous here. Even if he just barely punches the wall, if you're fast enough with the next hit the value won't change.

11 -> 148 23 -> 41 46 -> 83 92 -> 167

Now we skip the Library eating a 0.7 second time loss and go to the Clocktower starting with one of those four values giving us one of the four possible bolt patterns.

41 Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Down, Up Delay 1 at gem ladder

83 Down, Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Down, Up

148 Up, Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Down, Up Delay 2 at gem ladder

167 Up, Down, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Down, Up, Up

You can identify the pattern you're on within the first one to four bolts. 83 and 148 are your best values. The others require you to delay one or two bolts.