This video shows optimal solutions for all 120 floors of Heading Out? mode. (30 floors in Easy, 50 in Average, 40 in Hard.)
Normally, Heading Out? mode gives you floors in a random order, and it's hard to avoid repeats. This video uses a cheat code (hold Left+Select at the "select display" menu) to play all the floors straight through in numeric order.
Every floor has a 50% random chance of being inverted vertically, and the cheat code does not disable this. When you play a run, a floor may be upside-down compared to what is shown in the video. The solution is essentially the same, just change Up moves to Down moves and vice versa.
The solutions were found by a computer search and are optimal unless there is a bug in my program. There may be other solutions that are equally fast, but not faster. Source code, and a BizHawk Lua script to recreate the movie, can be found at the video page.
If you need the move sequences in a machine-readable form, you can find them in the SOLUTIONS table at the top of the Lua script. There are separate solutions for both non-inverted and inverted versions of floors.
SOLUTIONS = {
-- Easy
[ "30" ] = { frames = 222, steps = 24, moves = "WWWWWWNWSWNWSWNWSWWWWWWW" },
[ "30i"] = { frames = 240, steps = 26, moves = "WWSWWWWNWSWNWSWNWSWWWWNWWW" },
-- etc.
}
I think the rules should specify to use Revision 3, 4, or 5 of the game; or else that there should be separate categories for Revisions 1–2 and Revisions 3–5.
There are five revisions of the game. Revisions 1 and 2 have the hover glitch, which enables skips that save over three minutes. Revisions 1 and 2 are not only faster but easier, because the hover glitch lets you clip into the item chamber in the first room of the dark castle, bypassing the difficult blind jumps in the second room. Compare the routes in my 7:20.44 in Revision 2 and my 10:37.77 in Revision 5.
I believe that Revisions 3–5 are equivalent for speedrunning purposes. Revisions 1 and 2 are almost equivalent to each other, with one small difference: a tiny map layout difference in Revision 1 enables you to teleport across a gap and collect the Lantern without going through the SHED and COMP stages. The difference between Revisions 1 and 2 doesn't matter much for a speedrun, because you don't need to collect the Lantern to win, and even in Revision 2 you can use the hover glitch to collect the Lantern. For me, Revision 2 is preferable because it lets you define the key mapping.
All revisions are available from the Internet Archive.
I made a randomizer for The Adventures of Captain Comic.
https://www.bamsoftware.com/comicrando/
It shuffles item locations, while keeping the game winnable. It can result in a different game experience. For example, early movement items can enable sequence breaks; you may have to do some stages in the opposite direction from normal; or you may have to dodge enemies because of not getting an early Blastola Cola.
