Hi,

I started speedrunning the game recently, and I've got some questions. It seems that the randomness is possible to predict, as Top 3 runs are very close to perfection.

• How often does the Heart appear? That's the reason that 80% of my runs have to be restarted. I know that after one appears, it won't appear for a while. Does it depend on time? Number of creatures killed?

• Purple coins in caves - what does the order of highlights depend on?

• Scroll creature - first level always has Dinosaur as the first creature (on the first run after launching the game), and the most interesting is Level 2 - 80% of the time the first creature is the first Snail to the right, but sometimes it's the last one near the Super Scroll, a Dinosaur, or a Spiky-tall-woman-thing. And like 5% of the time, it's the Snail, but it's probably somewhere to the left and I have to restart. Same thing if I get a Spike Giant (?) in Level 7 - he's so far to the left that I don't even bother trying to go there, as even the potion won't last enough to get through.

Thanks!

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!

I honestly didn't expect such a detailed reply! You are amazing. Thanks a lot!

Flimbo's Quest was my favourite game on C64 back then. I finished it for the first time few days ago and got interested in its speedruns - it's surprising that the game is not more popular.

Also, Red/Green Batman is a great name.