Casually trying to learn to speed run this, I appeared to skip a level after the first boss, is this normal behaviour? This was on Easy mode. https://clips.twitch.tv/CrackyAttractiveCaterpillarBlargNaut

What in the world.

Can I get details on the hardware/emu involved?
You don't know what buttons, if any, you happen to be mashing between the transitions?

You should consider running with an input display up, so that when things like this happen we could recreate it easier. 😃

I'll look into this in a TAS later once I get your details, to see if I can replicate some stuff.

Cool find! 😃

Hey again!

Checking on your old broadcasts, it appears that you are using VBA as an emulator.
I should mention that VBA is almost exclusively banned in GB speedrunning due to it's inability to run at a constant frame rate, or emulate a lot of GB functions accurately.

The emulator standard for GB speedrunning is Gambatte, bgb, or bizhawk with a bgb core; all of which have been shown to emulate properly. These are also the only emulators accepted on this board_

If you want, you can read more about it here:
http://www.gbrunners.com/game-boy-speedrunning-explained

And if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. 🙂
I plan to still look into this glitch, but it could be emulator specific given the use of VBA.

Legs

It was VBA, so thanks for letting me know it's banned before I sunk too much time into practicing on it. I wasn't pressing anything I don't think, possible might have hit start right before it happened.

Perfect. Im gonna play around in TASstudio later and see what I can find.

Ill keep you posted on anything I find!

Legs

We were having a disussion about this in Discord, for documentation reasons I'm posting the relevant informations and my findings here.

I was searching for possible glitches, tricks, tips and cheats which could lead to possible route changes and came across something interesting on Gamfaqs: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gameboy/585692-bram-stokers-dracula/cheats

Originally posted by KeyBlade999Stage Skip
When the stage number is displayed, begin rapidly pressing B as fast as possible. There is a single 1/60 second window just as the stage number disappears where if you press B (holding does not count) you'll manage to skip the level. Not easy to get but really useful if you manage to get it.

We are currently in favor of banning this trick, as it seems like an intentional level selection for debugging purposes.

Findings:
• It seems to really be one frame only, but I wasn't able to pinpoint it so far.
• Using this trick will ignore difficulty settings as far as level restrictions go. So skipping Night 2 on Easy Mode skips to Day 3, it doesn't finish Easy Mode. The levels of Hard Mode are used.
• While ignoring difficulty settings for levels restrictions, the same isn't true for other difficulty restrictions. Item count, heart size and boss health is tied to the chosen difficulty.

My initial tests where done with Retroarch with the Gambatte core, then with Gambatte Speedrun.
I also just got around to test it on original hardware (Game Boy Advance SP with the american cartridge of Bram Stoker's Dracula), the level skip is also possible with this setup.