I think you could be right and I am misremembering some of this. Thanks for the upload of the practice ROM. I'll have a mess around and report back if I find something.

haha thanks for confirming. Tight window! I did have to go up and down a few times before I got it.

The 10 year old nerd in me is loving this, finally after about 30 years I feel like I have accomplished something :D

There is a 2-3 Skip where you use a bat to get on top of the level, it saves 10s althought it's really RNG heavy and nobody goes for it, about the Dpad stuff, kinda curious, did you unabled the Left+Right option from your Emulator or even with it desactivated you could do this?

Didn't change any settings from a fresh install, but I am using a keyboard at the moment. I don't see any options to change that on OpenEMU so maybe it just allows it by default?

Maybe some more useless info - I think I remember how my master system controller was broken, and in fact probably still have it somewhere at my parents house. So the black D-Pad had broken off but I used to hold it in with my thumb but it was really loose. When doing this glitch I used to do full "360" circles around which now I think is what must have somehow caught the left + right button at the same time.

The other places I think I remember using the skip was 4-3, although i do remember mainly dying a lot with this one, doing the glitch when jumping up after going down a pot. And then walking a bit closer to the end. Can't rememebr if that actually saved time. The other was was as asterix, but I can't remember the level number, same tile set as 4-3 but with the platform you stand on and have to follow around. Using it somewhere got me pretty much straight to the snowball boss.

But I think I agree with Quarbit personally, this is probably only for TAS.

And sorry for my ignorance, just curious, is using a keyboard generally frowned apon for speedruns?

Oh also, I seem to remember I could do this on different areas with vines or ladders. But it resulted in death a lot of the time with the area glitching.

So I used to play this game a lot as a kid and I was surprised to see on the leaderboard no one really using it. I could see some people used a bat to punch their way up to the corner of the screen but it got me interested, I used to be able to do it so easily as a kid.

So I downloaded an emulator and think I now remember how I did it. My controller was broken, and the way I could move the dpad meant I could press left and right at the same time. Meaning, if I climbed the vine, pressed left + right as I jumped, then held right I could do this to the underwater doors:

Now I am not sure if this is just on the emulator I am using (OpenEMU on Mac) and if confirmed I am also not sure if it would be an allowed glitch, as I did it as a kid with a broken controller.

Might be of some interest to someone if they are bored, or maybe a TAS run. Bordem brought me this far...

So I used to play this game a lot as a kid and when I came to watch some of the videos I noticed no one was using the 2-3 glitch to skip to the underwater doors. I could see some people might get the bat to fly over and punch to the top of the screen, but I rememebered doing this skip fairly easily as a kid. And that you could use it in places with vines or ladders.

I downloaded an emulator and I think I now understand how I did it. I had a broken controller, and I could press left and right at the same time. So if you put yourself on the vine, press jump and left and right, then holding right, you can do this:

https://www.speedrun.com/asterix_sms/forums

Anyway, I am not sure if this is just my emulator, currently using OpenEMU on Mac. Or might be something people might not be able to use, being as I did it as a kid on a broken controller.

Might be interesting to someone if confirmed, maybe for TAS if anyone is bored. Might be other places in the game where it can be used but I remember dying a lot, like if you try and use it on the vine below in the above it often glitches the room completely.