I was looking at AmenAnthem's no OOB Easy WR just now and I noticed it actually floor clips through the destructible block after the sub-boss in Nighttime 2. ETA: the run was performed after the date of the first OOB run and verified, but should still be discussed here

I have some new routing tech in the game anyways, so my post is in no way an attempt to foul AmenAnthem's run or give myself an advantage.

(Edited) The question then should be asked: is this/should it be permissible in no OOB category runs? It's important because it would also be usable on the second breakable floors at the top right end of Nighttime 2.

I feel like it shouldn't be permissible going forward in no OOB runs but part of me doesn't want to see a WR run junked because of such a tiny thing.

Re: Jack In the Box, that is precisely correct. I have a couple of theoretical manipulations that are likely to make for a consistent window, thus far I think it would be better to leave players to explore and work out their own preferred manip though because that boss is so chaotic that trying to do something outside your comfort zone won't help.

The superscroll in 6 is given regardless of your scroll status, uniquely among those upgrades. There are rare occasions in 2 that you can get it without obtaining the scroll from the east dino for example when it's still loaded into the opposite side of the screen, but generally that's super rare.

The death in 6 was just accidental, there's no benefit at all.

Edited: Was going to look at using book fight letter positions as an aid but they are useless because you can manip the H/L positions in-fight but this doesn't change seed. I am now looking at attempts to manip H/Ls for faster fights. Your best bet is to practice your Jack in the Box fight so that you consistently land on only one of a couple of seed values and then go to clock tower ahead of Library to keep a set seed pattern. I'm looking at a possibly more reliable Jack in the Box fight but it may just be that you have to learn to recognise what pattern of rng you're on in the clock tower and knowing that it isn't random, know whether you need to burn or delay by any number of bolts by your own methods.

No idea re armadillo, though I've never had to wait that long for it. Probably I just have experience of knowing how to spawn things - you might want to kill other enemies and move around on the very end screen to get it.

I recommend new players to spend time practising with £400 and £800 strategies because this will give you more experience of hairy trips west in Level 5 and 7 increasing your skill faster and sharpening your decision making skills.

If you want to use a £1200 strategy you will need to understand the purchase rules to avoid horrible lumpy runs, which requires experience, AND you will need to be absolutely on point with your money walkovers. It is VERY easy to lose time attempting a £1200 strategy - if you end up needing money in the banks in 5 or 6 you are generally screwed unless it's a snail conversion or you're harvesting insurance for 7.

If you want to use a £400 strategy, get your money from: -West Bank 1, and the two Alien Men who come across the bottom path after that returning to the shop, and other enemies you find in L1 -Opportune walkover points in L2, exploiting the 4 snails on the bridge on the return to shop -Opportune walkover points in L3.

For an £800 strategy (best fit overall), add in the East Bank in L2, and more enemies in L2 and 3. The general rule is any cluster of 2+ enemies is good to grub money unless they require many hits (ie a group of miners in 3 is terrible). 1 moneybag, as a rule, should take <1.0 seconds to grab out of your way to be worthwhile. If you struggle, use West Bank in L3.

In Level 3, buy the Red Miner, IF: -It comes up as letter 2, 3, or 4 (only if you have NOT exited the shop first) -You haven't already had Red Batman (since that's the goal object) -You have not had Red Rat in P1, unless you then get Black Rat

Obeying the above, buy Red Miner, after White Miner.

In L4, if you get the Red Pussycat west of the level, jump in the shop straight away and buy it. You can go west for the pigeon, not east: to the 3-pronged bridge just after where Red Toad shows up.

If you get the Mosquito in L4 you don't need to wait for it to appear: just get the Superscroll straight away. Similarly for Black Lynx, scroll the screen so that the 2 columns right of the shop, before the water, appear, and it will Superscroll. You can't do this with Red Lynx or Red Toad. You can spawn the Green Toad on-screen then run back and Superscroll without a kill, generally.

In Level 5, if your first enemy is any snail, go right. If he is there and your 2nd enemy is a snail, buy it and the antelope which follows (it's always the far antelope). You will then always get the closer, right-side Blue Athlete.

Never EVER buy the worm unless it's your last letter, or you want to try a 50/50 gamble from p5 that you will score a good p6 animal when behind your pb. Worm slots transfer to the west snail, one of the slowest enemies in the whole game, and there are plenty of places in the WOF where worm follows worm. So if you absolutely must buy a worm, go out of shop first and manipulate WOF a bit.

If your first snail in L5 comes up in p4 or later it is reasonable to gamble on buying it without travel. Never in p1-3.

In L6, the pigeon who haunts the mausoleum is not on a fixed cycle. He can spawn early, in which case jump over the top of the bank, normal position, in which case go BACK and around the bank, DO NOT TRY TO KILL IT because you can fall in a hole, or late. If it's late close, you must get used to fireducking after jumping into the centre of the mausoleum, because the Blue Athlete can often line up badly.

In Level 7, the normal ratio of ghosts appearing west versus the one you can spawn by moving east is 6:1, but you only lose 2-3 seconds for an attempt so it's often worth it. Toad ratios are 1:1 and the west toad will sometimes give a draw delay.

I think it would be best to leave things like triggers out of any level maps, since they can be broken - Snail in L1 for example simply doesn't spawn sometimes, and there are a couple of ways to spawn White Dinosaur based on travel distance rather than a specific loading point one side of the shop. I'll knock up some little videos on all the basic concepts and things needed to advance in the game at the weekend. I have a copy of the code disassembled and the ability to use ICU64 to view memory in real time, but I lack the specific ability to delve into things like bank stuff and draw delay beyond a normal person, if you know anyone willing and interested to crack this logic, let me know.

A long long time ago I made a thread on everything2 about precisely this stuff, I will cull the shot info from it later and collate relevant info for things like flying fish. This would be a useful place to include draw delay info as well - this is the phenomenon where an enemy doesn't spawn as usual and you have to kill something else first or scroll the screen back and forth first. Certain enemies are more prone to this. I can add in your requested level secret info as well into separate documents, and knock up some gifs that illustrate the relevant concepts. Great to see someone else eager to spread the technical know-how!

Here is the spreadsheet detailing the RNG distribution of enemies.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18JOu_LbxQfVieQXBKDWUaRnGwGVtIoTWaXB6AFGY7ys/edit?usp=sharing

For every enemy in the list, when it is drawn from the pool its instances in WOF are replaced by the one above it (or going back around from the first to the last). This makes distributions very uneven.

Here are some general tips and rules about purchase logic: -A £1200 strategy seems to be best. It requires collecting £800+ before the start of Level 3, using the banks on the way in 1, 2, 3, and the junk in 5. This strategy enables double buys in L3 with favourable patterns leaning towards the red enemies, saving more time. It also gives you backups for buying 2 enemies in L5 or even insurance for 7. -Your most likely first enemy in L3 is Green Batman. NEVER buy this outright. If you want to spin the wheel, go in the bank first, and kill the batman who may spawn in the cave above the invulnerability first, then buy. Following this, if you get Red Miner, buy it, that should really tilt you towards red enemies. -If a Black Rat comes up first, and you can reliably get in the shop quick enough to stop 4b95 within 2-4 slots of movement, do it and buy it. 25% of the time you get Green Batman and have a time loss. 9.4% of the time you get Red Batman giving good implied odds. 25% you get Red Rat which is highly favourable. 28.13% you get the Red Miner, also buy that then for a guaranteed Red Batman. (For Red Batman you need to load him by scrolling the screen sufficiently to the left, this takes practice.)

If the Grey Egg has already been collected, and you get Black Rat, you can stay in the shop and buy it, increasing Red chances.

Otherwise, generally, you want to collect Green Batman and hope for favourable deviations.

In Level 5, never EVER buy the worm. It leads to some really janky sequences. If you get a snail on your first few enemies, go right and see if he's there. If he's there, don't go in the bank. If he isn't there, go in for an extra £400, back, and buy. Always try to wait until the snail close/far situation resolves before buying here. If you know the last enemy is a far away one, feel free to buy it. For antelope you typically have to go outside and check he isn't local first, there's no easy way to tell except from very specific enemy patterns that you will begin to recognise.

In Level 7, if you have spare money, if your first enemy is the King Cabbage, always buy him. Always buy Hook, and if after Hook you get Quasimodo, buy him too. Do not buy Quasimodo then Hook, you screw up RNG that way. In L7 your odds are already stacked in favour of a nice ghost or toad, it's up to you whether to gamble on it being the closest one for a few seconds time save/loss.

Hello! Delighted to have another new runner join. Now that we have 2 new runners I will post all my info in here this week and make a few Youtube videos about things. I had been planning to write a guide for some time, meanwhile here is some info.

You are right, what seems random is pseudo-rng. Everything runs on counters and name tables.

From power-on, a heart first appears at the 9th non-scroll kill. After that, on every 15th kill. Other power-ups are level-counter specific, and the count remains in place between runs, so if we ever did marathons or 3/5-completions this comes in useful. One of note: in L4 you get a super weapon on the 8th kill. Currently this is just a little bit slow for our purposes but it makes a useful piece of info. A fun one for you: 255 kills in L2 gets you a superscroll, if you don't die of boredom first.

Invulnerability drops in L5 and L7 come every 12 kills, again hugely useful. In L1 this is every 30 kills, again kinda pointless.

Level 6 is an hourglass every 3 kills, though it seems to max out quite early.

The scroll creature is controlled by 4b95 in main memory. It cycles once roughly every 10 frames/0.4 seconds, stopping at times dependent on x-coordinate, or slowing down. Behind it is a unique table of 256 values for every level, akin to Wheel of Fortune. The game designers deliberately skewed the proportion of each enemy. When you are in the shop, the wheel is always entirely stopped, except that if you buy an enemy, 4b95 increments by precisely 1, which is a tremendous useful asset.

The list of enemies per level is defined by a linear bank of data. It keeps track of each enemy, say 1 to 6. Then when a new target is drawn, each instance of its appearance in the Wheel is replaced by [n-1] looping around backwards. The identical-looking enemies in levels 5/6/7 have their own slots. The Wheel of Fortune also controls whether Green Batman appears from the first cave rightwards in Level 2. Accordingly, there are strategies you can use to know when you have a good pattern, and what enemies to buy. I will post the sheets of this data for you tonight along with my observations about good/bad purchase strategies. If you're just starting out I recommend gunning for £12-1600 to make 1/2 purchases in Level 3, 1/2 in Level 5, and keep £400 spare for Level 7 or a super weapon as needed.

Banks are the one thing I have not fully gotten to the bottom of. Again, you may have noticed the purple coin order in L1 first bank is always fixed if you follow the same path: this holds true when you smash through it quickly too. Then from L2 onwards it always starts to deviate. What I have noticed is that the game seems to favour setting purple from the highest rows first. For the bank in L2 I look at where the first purple is, and then either tackle the right or left-hand side first in a couple of specific patterns - my old PB's may show some of this. For L3 I do the same, but beyond that I haven't found ways to directly manipulate it. These banks are far better than the ones in 5 or 6, though 6 is alright if you need a quick top-up after some adverse luck.

In passing, the naughty ghost that tries to get you as you come back to the shop in 6, from the gravestone just left of shop, is not controlled by 4b95, and I cannot manipulate its appearance, but again I think one of my PBs shows the method to get past it every time: move back one stone then jump over it.

Enemies slightly off-screen can be spawned by scrolling the screen just a tad: so in Level 4 in my WR I can get the black panther without directly seeing it on screen. Same applies for some other things.

There are also a few places you can deathwarp: in the no secrets category they save a chunk of time. For example don't go over the bridge in L3 after killing the green batman on the left, just walk right and jump through the gap, and it'll lose you a super weapon but you save SO much time. It might be worth doing two of those because waiting for L4 for a super weapon is so much faster than scrounging money for it. Impossamole noted that multiple deathwarps without purchasing any enemies comes close to WR but the odds of good enemy rng are so low that this is basically not a reasonable strat, it is better to scrounge money and buy in the right circumstances.

Similarly, turning the music off saves about 7 frames every time you get a scroll, saving 1-2 seconds in a run overall: it seems to reduce the lag time for the scroll code to execute, though I highly highly recommend you keep music on until you are about a 7:00 level player because it will greatly aid your timing.

You are likely aware that when you fire you stop momentum: this applies over gaps too so learning to time jumping fire is very important. Equally, when you duck, you temporarily go UP slightly, so from the shop platform in L1 you can kill an Alien Man while ducking down to get the Sleeping Snail. Similarly therefore there is a distance from which you can instantly pick up money from walking over it, any further away is a slight waste of time because for as long as a shot is on screen you are immobilised.

I'll post the spreadsheets with the direct Wheel data tonight. Looking forward to watching your runs!

Here is the first primitive version of Usain Bolts clock manip. Go to Toyland first, before forest/choc factory, I haven't yet checked whether inversion of this messes you up. Kill both clowns after the bubble skip, so that they only raise their arms once each. (It's possible to get past them that way without killing them but even with the slope speed you can flub.) You are aiming to get one of those two patterns on the Jack in the Box to get a seed of 5, which gives you a natural High bolt for the wall skip, and a backup High in case you lose one from a hit.

I have looked into the RAM for the game and begun to understand the events that cause the pseudo RNG for Clock Tower bolts. It is not random. Address $0063 is affected by movement of: The boss in forest Active moves of the mini-clowns, and movement of the boss in toy factory Choco devil hitting the wall/breaking up Breaking a walking A or the jumps of a bouncing A, or appearances/moves of the book in library Activation of bolts in the clock tower.

Activation means that a bolt is allowed to move off the stack: if you are quick and kill a bolt in place it will not advance the rng counter.

The easiest way to think of this is to imagine a series of branching paths which lead to a fixed point in a sequence in clock tower. Once you enter that level you can no longer edit what path you are on, but you can burn as many bolts as you need to get an H not an L on the right one.

Just as interestingly, it seems that inverting level order will put you on a different path even if your actions in the levels are the same both times. If you have done many runs before you will have noticed sometimes you had the same pattern in clock bolts because of this. So for example if you are very consistent at Levels 1-3 but struggle with Book boss, going clock first may help your RNG.

It may take some time but I plan to research into specific ways this can be manipulated so that there is a firm strategy available for fixing this rng. Meanwhile feel free to try your own methods in practice - you can try to reliably perform each rng action the same each run, and work out where you are in a pattern.

One more thing that may be of semi-importance here: I noticed a now obsolete TAS by Tee-N-Tee uses Castle of Illusion v1.1 rom stating: "In this version, you'll get the deciding movement of the second topmost screw nut "naturally" (meaning you don't have to spawn and respawn this enemy in a whacky way), which more than makes up for the 30 lost frames in the previous level."

Unsure whether the official releases rule covers this discrepancy but perhaps it should be looked at going forward just for consistency's sake since we can now begin to manip the rng ourselves.

Long Way excludes all the shortest routes. Logically then it should also exclude the skip - if only also because psychologically a lot of non-god-tier players get the yips on the snake and that should be a legitimate part of the challenge of the run.

That's odd since in SMS NTSC clock runs concurrently faster but lag affects PAL less as the game has more time per cycle to execute.

Hi Didor, welcome! I'm active so the runs would definitely be reviewed. I had started learning the full game a while ago but the hitboxes are punitive so I put it off and continue to do so :D Btw we found out you can duck into barber poles to skip the jumping animation after each level which saves a few seconds overall, and you can get early hits on Dr Maybe/Snowman at the end.

This is just an update to mention that a very knowledgeable person gave me sufficient evidence that Tokumi2008's runs were TASes such that I removed them from our board. Tokumi never submitted his runs for consideration and at no point has he done anything wrong - this was a mistake on my part based on suspecting a higher level of play in Japan similar to Tetris the Grand Master. Please feel free to still watch Tokumi's two runs - they are an outstanding display of a perfect game and may well help new runners to get a feel for how they should approach the game. I have asked this contributor to scan over other added runs here and in SHOG for any evidence of anomalies. I am very grateful for his help, not least since the WR in beginner is now grindable again :D

I think the odds of someone insisting on a PAL category are so low we can just let it slide and reason by analogy that the rest of the series is tracked at 60 and we just defaulted to that absent specifics yeah. You have good clear rules about specific emulators in any case.

I hear what you are saying, all the other versions have NTSC releases and the only difference afaik with GG is the screen, which in this case isn't so much of a diff. I feel that since we have existing runs on SMS rather than GG it makes sense to keep things as they are - the game isn't particularly hard so I see no need to grandfather in a PAL variant or even to worry overly about using it.

Yo, fumbled around with this on PAL and VHS back in 2005 for ever so short a time to maintain sanity. Would love to pick it up, so let me know if any guides were ever made or if I should add anyone on discord.