UkraineHi everyone. Today I decided to review some speedruns of the game, and I was surprised that on the first bonus level, the balloons appeared very late for runners Hostel and jodosutari, while other runners (like myself, Spyriel, and Hirexen – previous record holders) had them appear much faster. Wanting to figure out how this works, I found memory address $05CC, which acts as a timer controlling when the balloons emerge from the pipes during the bonus level. By default, after a hard reset, its value is zero, meaning the player has to wait 255 frames before the first balloon appears on the bonus level. After that, this variable is updated using the following formula:
LDA $1B ; unpredictable random value
AND #$3F
ADC #$28
STA $05CC
This means each subsequent balloon will appear approximately 40 to 100 frames later. The game's randomness is quite unpredictable, so it was often necessary to restart the game if the timers were unfavorable, since hitting a good cycle is extremely difficult. Now for the most interesting part: If you perform a soft reset, the value at address $05CC will be preserved for up to about 100 frames. However, if you do a hard reset, $05CC will be set back to zero, meaning you'll have to wait another full 255 frames on the next bonus level (which means at least two and a half seconds longer).
In other words, with a hard reset you will always lose a lot of time on the first bonus, not making it into a good cycle.
one of the best run of the year. Congratulations!
Hello! The old version of the autosplitter was accurate but required setting a 30-frame delay. I created a new version that starts after selecting the first level in the menu and doesn’t require setting time offsets, eliminating some confusion. I’ve uploaded the autosplitter to the "Resources" section.
Thank you! I actually lost a couple of seconds on the climb, didn't always get the double jump on the first try, and made a couple other small mistakes. There is still time for improvement.
Recently a similar discussion took place on the Chip 'n Dale game forum. Most runners agree that since the original game requires watching a long cutscene, speedrunners will have to watch it too. Using a romhack in the main category would be unfair to people who play on the original cartridge. In addition, JP is not a game that requires frequent resets at the first level, and therefore watching the cutscene is not a problem.
St4nzzz does not speak English well and writes messages using an automatic translator. Perhaps because of this there are some misunderstandings. I do not think that his goal was to offend or somehow humiliate anyone. I hope that the ban of his account was only temporary, because he has been involved in speedrunning for a long time and made many significant runs for the NES-platform.
Hello. Do you plan to return links to megamanleaderboards in the "Social networks" section?
The old run with the turbo button was removed from SRC, and in the new one he used fceux with a framecounter and displaying buttons on the screen. We see no reason to reject it. If you find any suspicious things in his new runs, then write.
Another interesting strat on the last level. It is much faster than the standard route, but unfortunately very inconsistent in execution.
