All collectibles

Glitches explained

# Animation cancelling

Opening the weapon menu interrupts animations (the one exception to that is the weapon switch animation, where the weapon menu is disabled for the first few frames). What this means is that any weapon switch animation can be cut short by opening the weapon menu a few frames into the animation. Beware that this does *not* reset the weapon cooldown, it *only* stops the current weapon-related animation.

# Ammo underflow (PAL only)

If you press A to shoot/attack and then cancel the weapon animation by pressing L, the game will "store" the attack; in RTA, this is most easily done with the lead pipe or the baseball bat. This stored attack can then be used to fire a weapon which does not have any ammo left, thus resulting in a negative ammo counter.

https://www.speedrun.com/static/blob/wzxr3x7z.gif

Once you finish the current level, in the next level that weapon will have maximum ammo (more precisely, the ammo count will be whatever value it currently is plus 256. So a -1 turns into 255, a -2 turns into 254, etc.). The ammo underflow glitch is EU-exclusive (for some reason, in the US version the ammo counter does not decrease when the shot animation of the weapon with no ammo happens). For more detail & what's going on in RAM when performing this glitch, cf. [here](https://tasvideos.org/10014S#AmmoUnderflow).

# Door clipping

![](/static/blob/xzd25k5e.gif)

When you shoot a crate, the game stores this information so this broken crate is not loaded in "whole" again when re-entering a room. However, there are two routines for this: an old one that the developers overhauled but forgot to remove in the end, and a second one which does things correctly. All detail regarding this faulty first function can be found [here](https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Posts/538137), but the upshot is that it writes to a part of RAM which overlaps with the address which tracks whether a door in the current room is open. So what can happen is that when you shoot a box, this deprecated routine unlocks a door by setting the corresponding "door byte" to 1.

The reason this glitch is so hard to replicate is that because this routine is deprecated, which byte is set to 1 is decided by a byte in RAM that is not initialized ("random garbage"). This means the door is unlocked if and only if this uninitialized byte holds a specific value. But the chance of this being the case is rather small (1/255 = 0.4% when going by random chance), which is the reason why this glitch was only reproduced a handful of times over the years. Even worse, targeted manipulation of this uninitialized byte is basically impossible because it is not static (rather, it jumps around in RAM based on a certain pointer).

From my testing this glitch is useful only in level 2 and nowhere else. For one, there are only a few rooms with a locked door and a crate, and the only rooms like that where a clip would save time at all (rooms M19 and M20 in level 8) I did not get the clip to work even once. As of now there are no known RTA setups for this glitch.

# Damage boosting

Explosives mounted to a wall can be used to give you a speed boost if you jump into them by activating bullet time:

![](/static/blob/qzp5qd1e.gif)

Strictly speaking, this is less a damage boost and more another animation cancel. During bullet time the game slows down, meaning the speed of the bullet time jump has to be increased accordingly so it looks like Max is still moving at normal speed during the jump. The game achieves this by setting the speed during this move to 6 (while the usual maximum speed is 1.66), so when the bullet time is interrupted your speed is suddenly more than three times the usual maximum. Because bullet time during a jump cannot be stopped at will (e.g., by pressing R again) this is the only known way to make use of the bullet time speed boost.

# Sticky jump

If you jump at a specific distance from a ledge your jump will be cut short, resulting in less air time:

![](/static/blob/xz0j6k4e.gif)

What happens here is that if the trajectory of your jump is close enough to the edge (without you hitting the wall), the game ends the jump animation because it considers the target height reached. Shortening jumps this way saves time almost always, except in certain situations where the ledge is positioned right before a room transition. However, note that—depending on the specific ledge—you have either one or at most two frames to hit this trick.

# Nicole glitch

This is a useless but fun little glitch: if you time the inputs when starting the final level just right you can make Nicole spawn in the arena as a normal enemy. However, killing her seems to have no effect (certainly, it does not end the level).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IYn_QP4LzI

Strats/Tutorials - Youtube Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_7kNUIjkDclfA5exANCdyVsMX4CaorBr

Version differences

There are two versions of the game: the PAL (EU) version, and the NTSC (US) version. According to [this GameFAQ page](https://web.archive.org/web/20241006183737/https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/919070-max-payne/data), the US version released in December 2003, while the EU version released in March 2004. This means that the US version is v1.0 and the EU version is v1.1 (as also encoded at the very beginning of the Combined WRAM when playing the game: for the US version it says *Oct 30 2003 14:21:33*, while for the EU version it says *Dec 12 2003 20:03:06*). This difference is not merely cosmetic but has significant consequences for speedrunning. The tl;dr is that the EU version, maybe not surprisingly, is the better version to run, but the point of this post is to document all the changes between the versions that are currently known.

**Gameplay**

- While Max can never shoot over obstacles (tables, counter, etc.), *only in the EU version* is this also true for the enemies. Indeed, in the US version the enemies can shoot Max from behind tables and the like (at least it seems this way), making for quite a challenging asymmetry in certain levels. This is most notable in level 7 where certain rooms are incredibly difficult to clear without dying
- In the EU version you can buffering inputs through any screen transition. What this means, for example, is that holding any direction, or A to shoot, during a cutscene will result in Max moving or shooting after the cutscene. In the US version on the other hand this will do nothing: you really have to let go of all buttons and the start holding directions or press A for the action to happen. This doesn't sound like much, but it makes many setups possible and is an overall quality-of-life thing to have
- There is a difference in how throwables work, resp. what trajectory they take when thrown. Implications of that difference are a few enemies that simply die upon throwing their weapon in the EU version (e.g., the molotov enemy in level 4 or the grenade enemy in level 8), and the fact that in the very last level, in the US version you can stand right up against the wall when throwing the grenades to destroy the steel ropes, whereas in the EU version doing that hurts Max and you instead have to throw from a rather particular distance from the wall

**Glitches**

- The [ammo underflow](https://www.speedrun.com/max_payne_gba/guides/lnmxw) glitch does not work in the US version; seemingly, it was introduced in the EU version when fixing something about the US version's weapon animations.
- In the EU version, upon starting level 7 you get back all weapons that you had unlocked prior to level 6. This may very well not be a glitch but rather a choice the devs made when finalizing the EU version. Still, I'll list it in this section because I'm not sure whether this is intended, and it anyway is a fact that in the US version you don't get any weapons back when starting level 7

**Minor**

- The top of the title screen in the EU version says "Max Payne Advance", while in the US version it's just "Max Payne"
- In the EU version, turning off gore in the options removes all blood from the game. In the US version, the same setting only removes the blood from active enemy that you're shooting/killing, but the blood that's part of the scenes is still present.
- The maximum ammo count for the ingram and the dual imgram are 300 in the US version, which was lowered to 250 in the EU version. This change is probably due to [a bug in the US version](https://www.speedrun.com/max_payne_gba/guides/lnmxw) where the ingram ammo count does not correctly carry over to further levels if you have more than 255 ammo. The maximum ammo counts of all other weapons are the same in both versions though
- In level 3, in one of the bathrooms (Level 3, Room C4 in the notation of the [All Collectibles guide](https://www.speedrun.com/max_payne_gba/guides/9sx9o)) there is an extra enemy in the US version which runs at Max and drops shotgun shells once killed
- There is a [random hole in level 5](/static/blob/dz4jqvdz.png) (at the bottom of the long staircase) present in the US version which is simply not there in the EU version
- The first lava pit in level 8 is [secured by a railing](/static/blob/1n8jm9ve.jpg) in the US version, which has been removed in the EU version (but the [jump over the lava pit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cta0wBr6SbY) is still possible when first jumping onto the railing)
- The password for the computer in level 9 is different. In the US version it says ["668 the neighbor of the beast"](/static/blob/wzxrq45z.jpg), which was fixed in the EU version (["667 the neighbor of the beast"](/static/blob/dz4jomrz.jpg))
- In the second corridor of level 11 (Room M6 in the notation of the [All Collectibles guide](https://www.speedrun.com/max_payne_gba/guides/9sx9o)) there is only one guy behind the mines in the EU version, but two guys in the US version
- In the outside platforming part of level 11 there are [three mines placed on the walls](/static/blob/3nv2vgyz.jpg) in the US version, which are simply not present in the EU version

Weapon compendium

Source: [this spreadsheet of mine](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19bRSBabZEs9W7_0w-YPKe0avFNa5vMpKztMgehe9R5E/edit?gid=238730839#gid=238730839). For more info cf. [here](https://tasvideos.org/10014S)

---

|Weapon|Eagle|M9|Dual M9|Jackhammer|Pump action|Sawed off|M4|Ingram|Dual Ingram|
|---|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|
|Maximum ammo|48|162|162|80|80|80|150|250|250|
|Ammo per weapon pickup|12|15|30|12|7|2|30|11|22|
|Ammo per ammo pickup|12|15|15|12|12|12|30|22|22|
|Weapon cooldown (in frames)|20|16|14|20|40|30|10|10|5|
|Damage per shot|112|75|150|375|300|375|150|225|225|
|Damage per second|304|249|560|1018|427|700|747|1120|1920|

---

|Weapon|Lead pipe|Baseball bat|M79|Grenades|Molotov|
|---|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|
|Maximum ammo|-|-|20|20|10|
|Ammo per weapon pickup|-|-|75|75|75|
|Weapon cooldown (in frames)|24|24|60|5|1|
|Damage per shot|450|750|301|360|319|
|Damage per second|517|862|228|377|476|

Name	Autor
All collectibles	toca 1 year ago
Glitches explained	toca 1 year ago
Strats/Tutorials - Youtube Playlist	toca 9 years ago
Version differences	toca 10 months ago
Weapon compendium	toca 10 months ago