Madison, WI, USADoes anyone happen to know how often the grocery sack spawns during scavenges?
Switching weapons on transition screens is a known way to soft lock the game. I don't know about glitches following the Behemoth fight though. There are a lot of odd glitches that are dependent on which cart version you have and more importantly which SNES board you are running on.
That's what I was afraid of hahaha
I tried "blowing up" the aliens with the medic's ability to see if that helped keep the grip, but that didn't seem to help either sadly. I had never tried to blow up the aliens so I was a little disappointed you couldn't launch them like you can with enemies. that could have helped get them across the lava.
Well, I ended up just dropping them right at the edge, quickly picking them up and jumping at the same time to minimize the time above the lava. Can't say for sure it will work every time, but it worked tonight and I managed a huge new PB :)
Was just on pace for a 9 minute PB going into Lava Palaver and the game proceeded to drop an alien into the lava after I jumped. I restarted the mission, and this time whenever I'd get to a lava river, I'd wait until they dropped out of my hands before picking them up again and then jumping over the lava. Unfortunately, even after doing that, the game proceeded to immediately drop one out of my hands as I was jumping over the lava. Sucks to lose such a good run to some seemingly random drop/grip mechanic.
Does anyone have a better idea of what causes the aliens (or really any NPC for that matter) to drop out of your grip? Any way to prevent it?
I might try and re-route the stage so I don't have to jump over any lava, but there is always the one alien on the island that cannot be rerouted - so at least one jump over lava is required.
Hey, Seige! Consensus seems to be that you don’t really know until you test out the glitch - which is unfortunate. Thankfully, one of my Twitch viewers tested the glitch on their own personal cart and graciously sent it to me. I should be starting runs next week!
I just started learning the speedrun and was preparing to start full runs only to find out my cartridge also doesn't seem to work properly with the resistance glitch. I'm running this on actual hardware and I'm not in a position to hunt down an everdrive. Did anyone ever figure out a way to identify a cart that will work with the glitch?
Is it possible to have a 2 Player 1 Controller category added for the game? Darkarmist and I completed a semi-decent attempt and I wouldn't mind adding it to a board to possibly encourage others to give it a try.
Thanks! I’m having a lot of fun with this speedrun. I’m still looking for new improvements, but it feels like the strats are getting close to optimal. Optimal time with this new route seems to be about a low 24:3X, which is insane.
Hey Rash!
At the end of each scene, the game gives you 1000 points for every life you have. It takes 9 seconds for the game to count up/down 4000 points. Score count happens four times during the run, so that is a total of 36 seconds. The idea is to lose all your lives as quickly as possible at the beginning of the run, so you can eliminate the 36 seconds later.
The fastest way to lose all your lives is at the start of the boat section in Scene 1. It takes 19 seconds to bring your life count to zero this way, which means you’re netting 17 seconds over the course of the run.
This is also why I skipped the extra life in Scene 2 at 11:08. Doing so saves you an additional 4 seconds in score counts during the remainder of the run.
Unfortunately this strat puts the high RNG pie fight further into the run, but it’s a free 17 seconds, so it’s worth it in the end 🙂
Rash does the plunger jump. I've tried, but have never been able to get it consistently. Is it really an 8 second time save though? You still need to wait for the log to float over, but I suppose that would cut out a good chunk of box pushing. I'll have to lab it a little more and see what the actual time save is. It'd be nice to have a consistent strat for the plunger jump if it saves that much time!
I've been really getting into this speedrun since running a 12-hour challenge on it a few months ago. I played this game so much as a kid and the speedrun has been equally as fun. I honestly wish more people knew about this game!
I wanted to share a few additional skips/tech that I've started implementing in my runs in case anyone wants to try and push their times down a bit further.
Swing Skip (Scene 1): I borrowed this one from the TAS. At the very start of the stage it's possible to switch to Dot fast enough to jump up to the swing, kiss the pigeon, and land on the platform all in one go. This prevents you from needing to wait a cycle and saves about 3 seconds.
Hay Bale Skip (Scene 4): This is a big one. I started playing around with this, because it was something I used to do when I played the game as a kid, but I never knew how I pulled it off. Essentially what you want to do is fall off of the upper ledge to the top left of the hay bale, jump and land on the top right corner of the hay bale, while continuing to hold right, change characters and then mash quick taps of the jump button. This will allow the charcter to jump off the ground and prevent the game from launching the characters off the top of the screen. The game will only send you back to the beginning of the stage if you are sent off the top of the screen. If you can prevent this, you won't get sent back. This skip saves around 13 seconds since you don't have to bother with any of the gravestone pushing or block breaking.
Helicopter Switch Hit (Scene 5): Named "Wacko's Wacky Hammer" by Darkarmist in my chat. Wacko's hammer is able to reach the switch that opens the door at the end of the helicopter room in Scene 5 as long as you swing his hammer at the very top of a full jump. There is no need to pull the box over to hit that switch. This can save about 5-6 seconds.
Anyway - there's about 20-25 seconds worth of time saves for anyone who might want to revisit the game! It doesn't seem like there is much more to squeeze out in terms of time saves, but I'll continue playing around with things and let y'all know what I find!
I am also in the early stages of learning this game (haven’t done a full run yet). I second these questions!
