Intro and Help Assistance
2 years ago
United States

Hello, everyone! I hope all is well. I'm posting here to see what all I can do to help either get more times on the leaderboard or to lower any existing times on the leaderboard by providing any information that I know that I use in my runs. Information on this game is scarce when it comes to mechanics and just general guides to speedrunning this game. And while I do have a good time for this game, I certainly don't know everything this game has to offer. Most of what I do know has come from constant playing of this game, watching previous runs of runners past, and scrounging up what little info I could to make the run what it is today. While I've heard talks of a TAS being done on this game in the works, there is no TAS of the full game just yet (although I do believe there is a two-player TAS of the entire Joker Level on YouTube). Slowly I'm creating a guide for this speedrun, but life sometimes gets too hectic and it gets pushed to the side. With a thread like this I'm more than happy to answer any immediate questions I can here. I will try to be more present on here, too. Gonna aim for at least once a day or once every other day. You can also shoot me a whisper on twitch or a DM over Discord. My username is still the same on both. Happy Running!

Basecase, PakLomak, and RomZdark like this
Russia

imho: full guide creation can really become a very boring thing to do and there's non-zero chance it won't make up it's way to the forums. Maybe it will be better if you'll just post helpful things you know for the moment in standalone thread and will update it when you'll have time & desire. It's also better to kick off with sharing major glitches and tricks. Of course it's all up to you. Good initiative anyways.

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About tas

TopazDragoon39 likes this
United States

It's weird how there still isn't the shmup stage. Seems like there hasn't been anything found to really skip it. With the Wonderland stage, it looks like they're time shots and kicks to get rid of enemies before they come on. Damage boosting in the Backstage stage is helpful, but probably not practical since you'll be at a disadvantage for the cheshire cat (at least solo anyways). I'm curious if attacking the cat like that would be better than what is currently being done. Good findings nonetheless!

United States

Helpful Tip/Hint: Memorizing Powerups

One offer of help I can put here is to memorize where powerups are. This game is not kind when you die for it will knock you down levels of your weapon depending on where you are in your weapon progression. For instance if you are at max power and die, you will go back three levels. If you die again without picking up a powerup from that point, you will go down another 2 stages. Knowing where your next powerup is can make or break how the rest of the speedrun goes. So memorizing where those powerups and health is will help!

Now, ideally, you don't want to die; however, there are two areas where I find it acceptable to die and you can still get a decent time. The first is in Wonderland with the little caveat that it happens during the mini boss...which is easier said than done with the gauntlet of machine gun flowers that you have to jump past happening right before it (I've personally dubbed that section/transition phase as "Murder's Row"). The next stage after that mini boss is the first jet pack stage which will have a plethora of rotating weapon powerups to build yourself back up to max power if you are able to destroy the flying Tweedledum toys (the first two Tweedledum toys will always have weapon powerups in them...after that it seems random what gets dropped).

The second stage where I find it acceptable to die is the Laboratory stage in Mr. Freeze's level. The tanks you encounter will fire a lot at you. It will hurt and each shot is spread out far enough to where your invincibility frames will run out and be damaged even more. Yet those specific tanks and the ice machines later in that stage will drop a weapon powerup when destroyed (just be aware of the grayed out token that will show up after the green color in this stage because it will knock you down one stage of your weapon).

United States

Helpful Tip/Hint: Tea Party Checkpoint Skip

I remember when first learning the speedrun of this game I was getting to a point where I was consistently getting 49 minutes on my run. At that point, King_iOpa had WR at 47:20 and I was mostly on pace with him up to that point with what I was timing out before I started streaming. The more I deciphered his run I saw that he was completely skipping a checkpoint I would normally be doing. After figuring out what was going on, I made a change with what I was doing to help cut a huge chunk of time for me. I'm not sure how this works or what the actual science is behind this happening, but huge shout outs to King_iOpa for this find.

It all starts after the 2nd checkpoint in the Tea Party stage (it's the checkpoint with the large circle of dolls you have to destroy). Even though the sign tells you to go, wait for a small stack of dolls to come in from the right side. As it approaches you, jump over the stack of dolls and have it closely follow behind you by stutter stepping towards the right. DO NOT DESTROY THE DOLLS! The dolls will eventually break apart to just several single dolls. Keep at least one of the dolls on screen at all times (you can probably take larger stutter steps at this point) and wait for a teacup to come in on screen. The teacup can come in from either the left or the right side of the screen, so be aware of that. When you see the teacup, that is your cue to go as far right as fast as you possibly can. When you can't travel to the right any further, destroy any enemies that are still on the screen. If done properly, you will get a checkpoint that will have 3 sugar cube jars coming at you (first one from the right, then the left, and random side for the third one) instead of two large stacks of dolls and 3 teacups. This skip saves about 40-60 seconds.

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Helpful Tip/Hint: Positioning And Timing Can Go A Long Way (Level 1)

I've noticed in this game that mini-bosses/bosses in this game act/move/behave differently based on where you stand and how much health you deplete from the boss when fighting them (one example can be my fight against Joker and compare how Joker does his movements to when Miles fights him). By no means do I think I have the best method for fighting them, but this is what I do for for my fights.

Clown tank: Before fighting the tank, it is imperative that you get to the fight as fast as you can with the charge shot that's in one of the trash cans beforehand. At the start of the battle, I stand close to the doors of the building in the background and crouch fire 9-11 charged shots at the lower portion. I will then double jump backwards and crouch fire as many charged shots as I can before the powerup runs out. For a point of reference, the charge up shot lasts around 13 seconds. In a perfect fight you will destroy the lower portion just as the tank hits the center of the screen which is where the next phase will begin. If it's past the center of the screen, the tank (once it hits 59 HP) will move backwards to center. The further away from center the tank is the more time you lose. If done well, you should have more than enough health to tank (pun intended) the hits for the second and third phase. The second phase is the middle portion. Nothing exciting to report for this other than holding the attack button. The third phase has Harley Quinn popping out of the top that explodes and will throw bombs at you at various heights. I position myself to where Batman's/Robin's legs are splitting the middle line in the 2nd window from the left on the top floor. I wait a little bit after the top explodes to start attacking Harley, because it seems like she has some I-frames at the start of that (but I'm not entirely sure). If done correctly, you can defeat Harley before she hops to the left and repeats throwing bombs at you. It saves about 2 seconds. If you don't get it, just turn yourself and finish her off that way and be sure to get as close to your pose spot to get to the next stage faster.

Harley Quinn 2: This is for the final time attacking Harley starting when the boulders fall from the ceiling. The boulders seem to be random where they fall from above. They do 1/8 of your health each hit. From full health, I don't want to take more than 2 boulder hits (essentially having 75% health left) or else I will have to adjust my positioning for the final phase. I will position myself at the second dark diamond on the left after the rocks. As the Vectorman-looking claw comes at you, I will double jump to the right and position myself to the fourth dark diamond from the right. At this point, the rubber banding effects of the crane will hit you back and forth to where you can fire your weapon to the top left corner of the screen to attack Harley without having to do anything else. Even with Harley throwing bombs at you, you should have enough health to tank every hit. Side note: Harley will move herself to the opposite side of the screen if you get too close to her. She will not do so if you do this strat properly.

Joker: (You should start this battle with no less than 50% of your health) The start of the battle I will position myself to where my legs are splitting the center dot of trailer you're on. I will crouch fire straight up at the beginning. Stay crouched until Joker moves to the left. Joker's balloon basket's hitbox isn't as big on the bottom, so you can get away unscathed. Stay in the center and follow Joker with your weapon. The first two passes Joker makes should barely miss you. He will then slide on the trailer going from left to right and then right to left. Tank those hits and continue to follow him with your weapon. After this, he will slam his balloon down to the bottom left corner. As he slams the corner, double jump towards Joker continuing to fire your weapon. He will slam his balloon straight down in front of you. By this time he should be defeated. Get to your final pose spot and get ready for level 2.

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Helpful Tip/Hint: Positioning And Timing Can Go A Long Way (Level 2)

Here is what I do for the mini-bosses/bosses in Level 2!

4-turret Blimp: With this fight, I opt to use the green weapon for this over the red weapon. The minimal testing I've done with the red weapon is negligible when it comes to how fast you beat it. It tends to boil down to the amount of things you can hit. When you destroy a turret the hit box of what you can hit gets smaller requiring you to get closer to the boss potentially losing more health or a life. Green allows me to keep my distance, keep my health, and put consistent damage up. I will position myself at the far right of the screen because the far left turret will fire at you first and go down the line. Timing your jumps when firing your weapon, you should be able to take out the far right turret before it fires at you. Adjusting your position to just right of the line closes to you on the floor, fire at the next turret. You should be able to destroy the next turret before the next wave of firing happens. After the second turret, adjust yourself to just left of the line on the floor you're closest to. After the third turret goes down, move to just right of the center line and attack the final turret. When that is done, fire straight up and take out what's left of the blimp. Two-Face will come down and throw some dynamite at you. Go to where the dynamite isn't and you'll be golden!

Tri-Copter: At the start of the 13 minute long shmup stage (yes, 13 minutes) I switch to the red powerup. The clearing of all the waves of enemies combined with the potential charge shots dropped from the enemies that are random make this stage (and most of Level 3) easier to get through. This mini-boss is no exception. Based off of the what formation the orange planes give you right before this will alter where you're positioned at the start of the battle. Regardless of this, I will always attack the top turret first at the start. When the copter starts to move down, I will switch to the bottom turret. It will pause at the bottom of the screen for the moment before going back up. I will switch from bottom to top turrets while the copter is paused ever so slightly at the bottom mostly to dodge the blasts from the turrets (they do a lot of damage). When the copter starts to transition up, I go back to the top turret and destroy it. When that is destroyed I will attack and destroy the bottom turret leaving only the middle turret remaining. Try to leave the middle turret last because it only fires rockets at you and the bottom and top turrets blasts will get longer and increasingly harder to hit because of it. The rockets can be a nuisance since there will be a lot of them and will do 1/8 damage to you. The red powerup will help with clearing them out though. Once the final turret is destroyed, the copter will start to ram into you dealing massive amounts of damage. It has rubber banding properties to it, so use that to your advantage. Now you can lock the copter in the top right corner before it charges at you. I position myself to the right of the health counter at the top of the screen. Now very rarely you can lock the copter in that corner and it won't charge at you. I haven't been able to do this consistently, but play around with it and see what you can do with it!

Spaghetti O's Turrets 1-3: I'm VERY aggressive with these fights. There's a lot of turrets that will do a lot of damage to you here in this mini-boss gauntlet. Health Management is key! #1: I will place myself right in front of the mini-boss and keep myself there for most of the fight depending of what blasts it will fire and how much health I have. If it's doing it's lengthy blast, I will back off and dodge it for the most part, because you will run out of I-frames before the blast ends hitting you multiple times. When the turrets fire the rockets, I will wait for the last moment to move straight back to get hit by a lot of rockets at the same time effectively only counting for one rocket hit instead of multiple ones. If you are low on health, the turrets firing the rockets will have plenty of hearts in them when you destroy them. I opt not to do this because that wastes time and I want to go fast in my speedrun ;}) The mini-boss will also give you a plethora of hearts when defeated, too. #2: Before the second mini-boss, the turret beforehand that moves up and down will have a charge-up powerup in it. Destroy that turret and wait for the last possible moment to grab that powerup to maximize your damage output for this fight. Clear out some of the more peskier little turrets in this area to help you out. After that, just go HAM on this mini-boss regardless of what it or the rocket turrets do. #3: This last turret can give you one of four patterns. What fires at you first will determine what pattern you get. The best one is where the two closest rocket turrets open and fire at you first. You can pretty much plant yourself in front of min-boss and just fire your weapon without any fear...depending on your health that is. The next best pattern is a combination of a turret firing 3 rockets at you followed by the min-boss firing at you. It will do that 4 times so each rocket turret has a chance to fire. This pattern is manageable, but you'll have to dodge the mini-bosses attacks for the most part. The next pattern is where two rocket turrets will open up and fire a lot of rockets followed by a lot of attacks from the mini-boss. It will repeat this for the other two rocket turrets. Not the best pattern and a lot will be coming at you. Keep your composure and you'll be good. The final pattern starts with the mini-boss firing at you. After this, all four rocket turrets will open fire at you twice followed by lengthy attacks from the mini-boss. Like the pattern before, Keep your composure and attack the mini-boss when you can. The boss will cycle through these four patterns if the battle goes on too long.

Two-Face: The search light from the copter and the rubber banding properties makes this fight trivial. Start with firing at the boss. I will follow him down to the bottom of the screen (there is no real benefit to this it's just what I've always done lol). As he charges at you, backup and do a dosey-doe around him to avoid getting hit (he'll do a quarter of your health if he rams into you). Follow him to the right of the screen and try not to move up and down. Try to keep in the middle of the copter. When he fires his first attack, he'll start to move up. If you just only make a slight adjustment up when he does this, you won't make him move up and down; just back and forth. Play teeter-totter with him. By the end of the first attacking phase, he should be around 20 HP left. He'll start to charge at you in the second phase. Just move backwards when this happens. Although he should be defeated just as this phase starts. That should be level 2 down!

United States

Helpful Tip/Hint: Positioning And Timing Can Go A Long Way (Level 3)

Here are the strategies I use for beating the mini bosses/bosses in level 3!

Cheshire Cat: This is an interesting boss for the fact that it takes more damage from physical attacks (jump kicks) than it does from your weapon. So what I do is a mix of jump kicks and weapon blasts. The cat has a few attacks. It's main form of attacking is when it pounds its claws on the stage making stage lights fall from the ceiling. It also has laser eyes and will swipe at you with its claws if you get too far to one side while it still has health. If the fight goes well, you should never see the eye lasers or go too far left/right to get hit by the claws. My strategy is to stand in the middle and jump kick while firing my weapon straight up. That's it lol. Batman and Robin will be nudged away from center once you attack the nose (if you do neutral jump attacks on the nose). On the decent of the jump I will nudge Batman and Robin towards center stage again so I can maximize my damage from jump kicks and firing my weapon. Now the cat will start off with having a line of lights fall at you. It will go from left to right or right to left first and then reverse it. This will then be followed by lights falling from random places on the stage. After this phase to the laser eye phase, it seems to be random what pattern of lights falling you will get (either the line of lights or random falling places). The best kind of luck would be the random pattern where the lights steer clear of center stage so you can continue to attack uninterrupted. The lights will do 1/8 of your health. I try to enter this fight with full health from the previous stage. Getting hit too much or bad RNG with the lights will have me alter my placement so I don't die. An average fight time for me is between 55-60 seconds going from the end of the previous stage to the cat's health hitting zero. One thing to note: when you get its health to zero, move to the far left or far right of the screen. The curtain will fall then rise back up again. The cat head will fall down and fall forward. If you are in the vicinity of the head when it falls it will do massive damage to you (I think 1/3 of your health). Once it falls get to your pose spot to move to the next stage quicker. There is rare chance that the head will continue to bounce on the stage over and over again wasting about 15 seconds. I haven't been able to catch this on stream yet, but one day I will!

Tweedlegnome: This is the boss at the end of Wonderland. All it does is try to jump on you...that's it, really. Now depending on how much health you have from the transition phase beforehand along with the multi-colored dolls attacking you can make this fight a little uneasy. It will start falling in from the top left of the screen. What I do is I will time a double jumps to go underneath him while it jumps at you while also attacking him with my weapon when not jumping. It has 3 types of jumps: low, medium and high. It's easy to go underneath him in the medium and high jumps. You can do it with the low jumps, but you will probably get hit more times than not with that type of jump. Try not to be at the very edge of the screen for this fight. There is a high chance you will get hit multiple times between how the stage is curved upwards mixed with the jumps from the boss. It will do some knockback when you get stomped on and can be frustrating. This can be one of the places where I find it acceptable to lose a life and still get a good time, because the next stage will have a plethora of weapon powerups to build yourself back up to max power.

Mad Hatter: For the previous fights in this level I will use the red powerup. I switch to green for this fight because Mad Hatter's hitbox is small and tends to be far away that a spread shot weapon will not cut it. This is a dangerous fight if you let it go on longer than what it should. At the start of the battle I go to the second column from the left. Specifically I will be between the middle and the right edge of the column. Mad Hatter will com in from the top right of the screen. Fire your weapon at him until he goes into his hat. His HP should be around low 80's/high 70's. Normally Hatter will be moving around in his hat throwing two sets of dolls that can't be destroyed followed by two rabbits. The hat has rubber banding properties to where you can make it stay still, but the placement in that second column at the start will automatically make Hatter stay put. When Hatter reveals himself again, start unloading on him with your weapon. When he starts to move right, follow him by double jumping over while still firing your weapon. He will duck down briefly giving you time to position yourself on the left edge of the third column from the right. When he reappears, attack him with your weapon until he has 9 HP. This will then malfunction the hat he's flying in. Finish him off (and potentially rabbits) that will fall from the bottom of his. hat. Get to your pose spot and get ready for the final level. Congrats! You beat the hardest level in the game.

Side Note for Mad Hatter: The strat I put is what I use now and CAN be the faster strat if your accuracy and your placement are on point. Alternatively, you can be "safer" and more consistent with a different method. The fight starts out the same with placement, but do not let Hatter's health go lower than 86 before he ducks down the first time. When he appears again attack him but don't jump until the cards with Hatter's face on it come at you. Jump for each card that is in your column and the column to the right. The hitboxes of the cards are wider than you think. The first pass of cards will go from left to right at a decent pace. Then it will repeat itself left to right again only faster. You should get Hatter's health to 9 HP by the time you jump over the card to your right on the second wave of cards.

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Helpful Tip/Hint: Positioning And Timing Can Go A Long Way (Level 4)

This is what I do for the Mr. Freeze fight since it's the only boss fight in this level:

You are in the jetpack for this fight. The start of the battle starts off with you destroying the glass of the Dr. Wily flying snow globe machine Freeze is in. Freeze will move his way toward you. Stay in place until Freeze is right next to you. Tank the hit and go right through him and quickly turn around to continue the damage. The glass will break when it hits 68 HP (almost nice). Freeze, once he is on the left side of the screen, will call in 2 circular drones. These drones will have short blasts of ice coming out. Destroy one of these drones and keep the other one alive for the entire fight (this is vital to this fight). Once the glass breaks, Freeze will transition back to the right side of the screen waiting to go into his next phase. Freeze can only be damaged if you hit him directly. Freeze will bob up and down as you move up and down on screen. Freeze will also call in another circular drone that has an ice blast that is larger in radius and is much more annoying than the ones beforehand. Destroy the newer drone with the larger ice blast while still keeping the other drone alive. What would NORMALLY happen now is Mr. Freeze will go from the right, to the bottom, to the left, and then to the top of the screen firing a gun that has a spread shot spanning the entire screen. You would need to find the empty parts of each blast to not get hit by it. He would then chill in the top right corner of the screen no longer bobbing up and down. HOWEVER he does not go into this phase unless all of the enemies beforehand get destroyed. You will have to dodge attacking the circular drone while you attack Freeze, but it's definitely manageable. Once Freeze's HP is at 14, he will move to the center of the screen and lose control of his ship while dangling underneath it. In this phase you can only attack the ship itself. The ship can be hit either from the side, top or bottom. I find it easier to attack it from the bottom, because I find it easier to dodge the circular drone but it might be different for you. Normally the ship will fire ice blasts from the bottom of the ship. If you get hit by it, it will draw you up to the ship and will do massive damage. Again this will only happen if you destroy all of the drones. If you leave that drone form the very beginning alive, Freeze will just dangle from his ship in the middle of the screen doing nothing. Deplete the rest of Freeze's health and time stops on the full blackout which happens around 11 seconds after Freeze's HP hits zero. Congrats!

Russia

TopazDragoon39, oh wow, I didn't realize it's you who was in my chat that day, lol. Thanks for stopping by :)

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United States

Searching For Consistency (Part 1/2)

The next two things I want to discuss is to see if anyone can help me with two particular stages that I just can't seem to get through consistently fast enough. The first stage is what I call the Orange Sponge Stage, the stage after the Wonderland stage that happens to be the first jetpack section.

For me, a nice target time average would be between 2:15-2:20. In my most recent PB I got a 2:12 for that split. That is a really good time imo; however, comparing it to the PB I had beforehand I lost a few seconds because it was a 2:09 or a 2:08 on that split. I typically use a musical cue to figure out how well I am doing in this stage. When I see the start of 3 Tweedledums carrying dolls that span the entire screen will indicate to me whether I'm ahead or behind of where I want to be...kind of. It seems to me that from the first two Tweedledums to the 3 Tweedledums carrying dolls that span the entire screen and from those 3 Tweedledums to the end of the stage the enemies that spawn in will be random with how many show up and how long the dolls they are carrying are. There have been times where I felt like I'm doing well in this stage only to find out that I spent 2:40 on that split. The opposite also happens where I felt like I was nowhere near where I wanted to be, but I would get a 2:13.

What I tend to do in this stage is I will never hold my attack button down the entire time. This doesn't make too much sense, but there have been times when these Tweedledums will get almost this "super armor". I noticed that if you leave these guys alive long enough, they will eventually start flinging the dolls they are carrying. It might be at the apex of their back and front swings, but I'm not entirely sure. If the Tweedledums throw the last doll they are holding before you can destroy it, then the Tweedledums will acquire this "super armor". Hence why I will not hold down the attack button the entire time. Plus not attacking the entire time gives me just enough time to adjust my positioning for the Tweedledum coming in, because they have this tendency to just go all over the screen on you. This leads me to believe they have rubber banding properties as well. Making slight adjustments can help even the Tweedledums out.

That's it for this stage. Any advice or help would greatly be appreciated!

United States

Searching For Consistency (Part 2/2)

The next and final stage I need some help in is the very first stage of the last level.

It's a very simple stage. You only have 2 enemies to worry about: a periscope and a flying drone. If you just move to the right, you will have about 7 or 8 checkpoints to get through and you move on to the next stage. However, my times for this split are all over the place for this stage. An Average target time for this split is about a 1:30. My times, though, can be around 1:30, to somewhere in the 1:20's, to upwards to 1:40, 1:50, and even 2 minutes and I don't know why!!!

So I tried doing some testing. I almost feel like this level is point based in some facet, but still not entirely sure. 10K points seems to be a target score in this stage...or at least that's what I try to get. Sometimes I will accumulate up to 12K points and be stuck there for 1:40 or 1:50. Sometimes I will only accumulate 6-8K points and be done in 1:25. Still no consistency. The flying drones are worth 500 points and the periscopes are worth 200 points. I will say the more points you accumulate early in the stage allows for less checkpoints to happen. As I mentioned before, there are about 7 or 8 checkpoints. Accumulating a lot of points early in the stage will make it to where you will have somewhere between 4-6 checkpoints where sometimes no enemies will spawn in the transition phases and checkpoints towards the end.

Then I found something interesting watching someone else play this game casually on twitch. While scrolling through the Retro section, I came across the twitch user that goes by Juno973. He streams a lot of Retro games which includes this one from time to time. When he gets to this stage, he hardly moves right at all. He just lets enemies come on in and he destroys them. He will at times adjust his position on the screen to destroy the drones in the air since they can be rather pesky, but will never actually go to the first checkpoint. Normally enemies would just spawn in endlessly, but, after a while, they will stop coming. Batman will go to his spot on the screen for his victory pose and the stage will end. I ended up trying this method, too, just to confirm this. And it works! The points you accumulate and the number and type of enemies that come in seem to be random on what is required to move to the next stage. It's even weirder when you have Robin doing this. Since his victory pose is on the right side of the screen, he will run to his spot. Yet if you aren't close enough to the checkpoint, Robin will just keep running on his own. You can't control him whatsoever. He will run for about 10 seconds. To be fair, I've had Robin do this to me a few checkpoints in as well as just waiting in the the very first area of the stage. It's just really weird that this can happen.

With my current PB, my time for this split is a 1:22 which is going to be hard not to lose time to especially when I can't figure out the consistency for this stage. My gold split for this was recently highlighted on my page which happens to be a 1:12 AND I DON'T KNOW HOW OR WHY THIS HAPPENED!?!? Maybe it has to do with timely bomb drops, but what items drop seems to be random on what you get. Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

United States

New Skip?

As of writing this (August 19, 2021), I might have stumbled upon a glitch last night during my run attempts. It was during the Orange Sponge stage, the stage right after Wonderland and the first jetpack section. Normally it takes up to 2:15-2:20 on average (my gold split for that is around 2 minutes). After about 15 seconds into that stage and destroying 5 Tweedledums and on my way to destroying the 6th one, the screen fades to black and transports me to the Tea Party stage. JUST 15 SECONDS! However, my game froze on me while I was in the Tea Party stage for some reason. I'm not sure if the two things are connected. Maybe the game realized what had happened and was confused on how it happened and just broke. I don't know. I'm not smart enough nor do I have the necessary equipment to figure those things out.

I noticed as I replay the clip that there seems to be some sort of graphical glitch that chops out part of Batman's midsection as the screen fades to black. I've seen this happen to my game before most notably in the last stage of the first level. At both checkpoints where the waves of balloons come at you, I use the charged green shot to destroy those waves. Part of Batman's character sprite along with the path in the wake of the green shot just gets cut out. It possibly could be that there is just too much happening on the screen at once with the fast moving background going one way, your weapon blast going the other, enemies getting destroyed and items getting dropped. It probably doesn't work in the first level because Batman and Robin are stationary when this happens therefore not adding to the overload being put on the system. When this happened in the Orange Sponge stage, I was moving forward to destroy the Tweedledum coming in (which also makes you fire your weapon faster or so it seems) and I was near the top of the stage.

Again, I don not know the logistics of this nor do I know how to explain this any further without knowing how this game actually works. Here is the highlight I made of the clip that was made (shout outs to SheWolfVal for the original clip). I might make a new highlight that includes what happened when the game froze on me.

If anyone wants to try this for themselves to see if they can replicate this and explain their findings, I would be most appreciative. Sub 40 minutes hype!?!?

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United States

This is a point of reference for what happened on that Orange Sponge stage especially when the VOD was going to be deleted in a few days. This was at the beginning of the stream, too. I start out with getting the best weapon RNG you could get in the first stage. This was then followed by me throwing away that RNG by messing up the Harley fight. After that I frustratingly reset my Genesis several times out of rage (shocker, I know). This was then followed up with the run that had the Orange Sponge skip which extended into the soul-crushing "end" of the run. I'm hoping with posting the full run up to that point can give someone more of an insight of what actually happened so that way we can replicate it to push this run as far as we can.

Russia

Well, maybe this happened because one doll that being used to skip checkpoint at teaparty hasn't been destroyed untill the next wave should appear.

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Eiffel 65 Testing

I did this in one of my last streams. I did 7 attempts to this stage to see if I can find a pattern to this. What I wanted to have happen was to start out this level with 2 periscope enemies coming from the left. Those enemies can come from the left or the right with the more likely beginning having the periscope come from the right. Thankfully I was able to get two periscopes to come from the left at the start of stream. I wasn't so much concerned with the periscope enemies as I was with the flying drones in this level.

I seemed to have found some sort of pattern with the enemies up to some point. As I mentioned up above when talking about this level, you don't need to move at all and the level will end if you just destroy all the enemies that come on screen. Normally up to this point in the game if you don't move as far right as you possibly can, the enemies will spawn endlessly. The sequence of enemies that come in on this stage, however, are the same through the first 20 enemies. When the flying drones come in, they will start off by staying in the middle of the screen. Once the 12th enemy (which happens to be a flying drone) comes in, it will fly and hover along the right side of the screen. The next two drones that come in after that will fly and hover along the left side of the screen. The next drone after those two will fly and hover on the right side of the screen. The 20th enemy will be a periscope. After this, the sequence of what enemy comes in and where they will be/come in from will vary. This was the first 4 attempts of this stage. The average time for these four attempts was between 1:30-1:35. These times do not add into the factor of when I normally start this split which is when I lose control over Batman after the Mad Hatter fight (basically it's another 3 seconds so 1:33-1:38). I also purposely avoided items if I could just to have consistency through all 7 attempts. Average number of enemies that I saw were between 35-37.

The last three attempts were slightly altered. I decided to inch my way to the start of what would be the first checkpoint but not actually triggering the checkpoint. Once I saw the start of the flying drones transitioning to the right side of the screen was when I made my way to the first checkpoint. Once this happens I allowed the rest of the consistent sequence of enemies play out with the periscope being the last one. The number of enemies that appear and sequence changed while doing this approach probably because I was despawning enemies that were appearing on the left side of the screen. One run like this (not adding in the 3 seconds for the actual start of this split) was 1:21 with 29 enemies after the 3rd checkpoint, 1:55 with 37 enemies after the max 8th checkpoint, and a 1:21 with 30 enemies shortly after the 6th checkpoint (this run had a couple of checkpoints where it would tell me to go immediately because I'm assuming I despawned a number of enemies going to those checkpoints).

Still going to be doing more tests in the future. An average time to aim for in this stage is around the 1:30 mark. In my current PB (42:17) my time is a 1:23. My best time for this (which I'm pretty sure I have this highlighted on my channel) is a 1:10.

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Hey, everyone! I hope what I and anyone else has posted so far has helped in some facet. I do sometime in the new year want to put out step for step stage guides for this game on what I do and how to go about beating them the best way I know how. Before I do that and try to get some more attempts in, I have a question (more so a clarification) for Pak or Negative. After speedrunning X-Men 2 Clone Wars for the Genesis for a good chunk of the year, the discussion of when to do the final split was had. It was determined that when the entire screen went black was when the timer stopped instead of the instance of the screen starting to fade to black.

For Me with this game, I'm pretty sure I split at the moment I see the screen start to fade to black. Would you guys want what I've been doing where it's the first moment of black or would you like to wait for the entire screen to go black? I'm good with whatever is decided I just ask that the rules in that regard to be specified a little more. Thanks in advance!

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If no one has watched this yet, definitely take a peep of it. It explains some of the coding tricks used to create the backgrounds of what you see when playing the game. This is part 1. In fact Stephen Thomson, one of the members of Clockwork Tortoise who worked on this game, actually was posting and replying to a number of the comments of this video including this little tidbit: "The jetpack level with the red background was supposed to have a giant flying caterpillar. We didn't have the time to implement unfortunately." Could you imagine what could have been?!?!

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