Watched and was inspired that we should represent the game a little more fully here on speedrun.com.

I am considering a new category (or subcategory of any%) for "Level 5" or "Hardest". Because it would be a pain to start a new game file and do all that menuing with the timer going, I am thinking perhaps we could create the game file, enter the game, set all the customization, and then go back to main menu, and start timer on this second "Start Game". Let me know what you think about that.

And of course there is the possibility of a 100% run, or a "Max Rank" run / "All Prizes" run, but I'm not sure how long those would take, I am probably not interested in any category that takes multiple hours. More research is needed!

Also in the comments of that youtube video the game's original producer describes her time at TLC which is a pretty cool read.

Very nice run.. and commentary. Especially about Frederick the Frog and his pants.

I don't know this game as well as I used to, but each of the games in the Treasure series here does it a little bit different. As far as I'm aware, you can't abuse game mechanics to skip the puzzles like you can in Treasure Mountain or Cove- you have to do four puzzles to get the digits. Those are also the only two that have 100% / Max Rank runs for the same reason. I've attempted two Treasure Cove 100% runs, and the repetition is so exhausting.

In case you're not familiar with the other Treasure games, Treasure MathStorm is probably the most similar to this one. There are only two categories over there- one for a single loop and one for a single loop with all the collectibles (crystals in this game) The menuing is kind of a pain in Treasure Cove, Gizmos, and Operation Neptune too, but at least you only have to do it once.

Thank you for the feedback! I think I am going to try for 100% tonight, where the Master of Mischief is defeated. I don't know if it's a 4hr or 40hr task but I'm willing to learn in the name of Science.... :)

Hey, if you make a 100% run, I'll make a category so you can post it.

OK I played for 90 minutes on the same save here is what I learned:

• Sunglass sunbeams always give the code
• The higher your difficulty the less Starbucks you get, but everything costs less as well.
• In 90 minutes I got only 51 of the required 450 crystals for max rank / end sequence. At that point I was being allowed 4 crystals per orbit, or 12 crystals per loop. I think eventually you can get 5 crystals per orbit, or 15 crystals per loop, but I don't know what triggers this. I moved from 9/loop to 12/loop midway after doing 2 loops... or maybe it was 3? My final loop took me 16 minutes, and this included buying digits from Starmart for the final orbit, which is pretty fast.

In other words I think the 100% speedrun, at the not-rushed pace I was doing, would be at least 8.5 hrs. That math assumes I would start getting 5/orbit soon. If 5/orbit is 100 crystals away, It would take even longer.

I was not prepared to play until 5AM so I stopped :)

I might do a 100% loop run sometime. But. Not tonight.

My Open Questions about the game...

• Can we datamine the .DAT files to learn all the mechanics of the game? I've never done any datamining but I would be open to trying it out.
• What triggers us getting 5 crystals / orbit?
• If one plays "normally", will one have All Gifts when one gets 450 crystals, or does it take longer?

I've also cooked up a conspiracy theory about the crystals, but I'll save that for my next run.

Some answers:

• In Cove, there are many more possible treasures than Loops to get 100%. I’m sure they didn’t expect kids to get every gem or crystal every round
• In the other games, number of collectibles per level is determined by rank, which is either determined by total score or number of items collected, depending on the game.
• If prices and starbuck rewards really do drop later in the game, the best 100% strat would be to play the first round calendar game until you have enough money to buy digits the rest of the game. Might bring it below 8.5 hours

If prices and starbuck rewards really do drop later in the game, the best 100% strat would be to play the first round calendar game until you have enough money to buy digits the rest of the game. Might bring it below 8.5 hours

This is a good idea. The day dock and the other games do scale up in difficulty while you are inside them, and it happens pretty quickly if you get it right. But perhaps either a well placed "wrong answer" every so often and/or menuing inside the day dock to manually adjust difficulty could be used to achieve this. I will try it out!

Additional discoveries:

• You can skip storybook intro with spacebar (WR timesave)
• You can get 5 crystals / orbit as soon as the first Orbit 2 if you put satellite difficulty to 5 immediately.
• I tried everything but I couldn't figure out how to make the star mart cheaper. It definitely does get cheaper but I do not understand how this works. Maybe it is tied to rank?
• You can set back activity difficulty while inside the activity.

Satellite level 5 will lose a lot of time... unless... ya'll think it would be kosher to use this app. I coded it up. Think it would be kosher on a theoretical 100% run? This is v1. v2 could perhaps automatically read your screen and update, sort of like an autosplitter. If I used it I'd make it available to all. I think my brain would melt doing 100% without it.

It's interesting you bring up datamining, we recently discovered via a YouTube video that one of the producers of this game is still around and we reached out to her in an effort to see what insider details she might have.

Haven't heard back from her yet, but fingers crossed.

That app is great! Do you have it hosted anywhere or is it just local?

@Admiral_Flapjack He’s the one that found her 😉

Awesome. WIP, I'll post source & windows executable immediately if I use it in a run or if I decide the run isn't worth doing Ill still post it. I did some research on datamining dos executables, it sounds pretty hard. I probably won't go further down that path at the moment.

OK I have a 450 crystal run in the bag. It's quite an adventure as you'll see.

It's not true 100% I don't think since we lack all the gifts, so I suggest the category be called "Champion Super Seeker %" or "Become Champion Super Seeker."

I suggest that time stop occurs when the medal is placed around your neck, for reasons I will explain in the run itself. But if you want to make it end on last input that's OK.

Not ready to upload the run and the app yet, will do this tomorrow. In the meantime, here is just a small taste of what I learned along the way...

“450 Crystals” would be my suggestion.

Dosbox just be that way sometimes.