Asterix and Cleopatra any% in 41:25 [PB/Current World Record] Balneor 2025-07-06 | My third run of this game, beating my previous time over a minute and one second.Met my goal of not dying once, just because. I honestly don't really know how to qualify this run with this little play time but it felt pretty good. All levels went pretty well, no big mistakes, and it felt cleaner than my previous run for sure.Sub 41 is very possible if I were to try, the mistakes make it very convincing. I *would* need to replicate a lot of good in this run though, something that'd require some grinding for. Sub 40 might be a bit out of reach ?Sadly this will be my final last run of this, and my last effort with this game for the foreseeable future. I might come back if a way is found to play multiplayer mode with only one character, at least for more no hit challenge shenanigans.I just need more personal time. And maybe I also wanna get back in Door to Phantomile stuff, to some degree......But fun fact, my previous run got me becoming a moderator of the game. That's how it works in some corners of speedrunning you know.With this responsibility, I'm morally obligated to keep watching over it you know !! That was a fun time. Thank you game for existing, even if it's only for a single person in the entire world.
Asterix and Cleopatra any% in 42:26 [Obsolete/Former WR] Balneor 2025-06-27 | First full game attempt with all levels routed and practiced.It sure took 7 months of off and on play. Not the easiest game to learn !I improved over my previous time by 6 minutes. After practicing the remaining levels, I knew I could make up 4m30 through sheer strats alone. I guess the rest came from slightly cleaner play ? And less deaths, although they don’t cost very much.I don't think I can go sub 40 but I can definitely get to 41. Maybe even 40 itself.I'll probably settle on getting a deathless run that also looks a tiny bit fast and doesn't do too many mistakes.Not so much to say. There should be more of these coming so.
Game softlock wall stuck Balneor 2025-05-17 | Surprising oversight by the devs. But at least this one only ever happens if you actively go for it. Go as up as you can, then hold up + a side direction.If you're not high enough you'll eventually get pushed away from the wall.The game lags a lot for some reason during this.The enemies can sometimes attack you, however dying sends you back on the exact same spot, so it's not an escape plan.
Asterix and Cleopatra any% in 48:48 [PB/Former WR] Balneor 2025-04-26 | It's been 4 months since I began learning this game, and my sporadic practice sessions have led me to only be able to route the first three levels.I thought about doing a beta speedrun so I'd have something to show for it if I ever lose interest in this in the future.Unfortunately you won't get to see much of my cool routing and strats because I failed most of it in this first ever attempt of mine. Level 1 and 2 are garbage and level 3 is probably the best thing in the run (read = alright). I had to grab a bunch of health when I wasn't supposed to need them.I didn't practice the later levels either, so I played according to what my guts told me. Things worked out okay in some places, and pretty bad in others. I died a bunch of times, lost my way a bunch of times, hit enemies slowly a bunch of times.Not feeling like explaining the strats, sorri.Actually there's one thing I'll say. Obelix is the best character for this game and it's not close. He may be slower than Asterix, but the difference is small and that doesn't matter when fighting. Obelix just outshines him everywhere else. That and he can do stuff Asterix straight up can't.I was expecting to beat first place, Contos's 56:40 run. And I did, by nearly 8 minutes. But that's not really a statement.My run and his are completely different, his run was like doing a blind speedrun after you beat the game the first time. It's bound to be massively unoptimized.He was also the only other runner of the game - the beat-em-up side of it. It's understandable that he didn't push further than that. The game in general seems completely forgotten today.This run's technically the third ever recorded speedrun of this game on whole earth - the very second one for any%. (fourth if you count the full Bash Them All cartridge speedrun)I'm suspecting sub 45 is achievable in this game. Probably won't go for it if it's too hard though. I'm not planning on staying with this game, simply contributing with specialized footage of it is all.Well, you definitely can go sub 40 by playing on the USA/NTSC version. But I don't consider that the intended way to experience the game and I won't ever touch it so...My ultimate stop would probably be a speedrun with no deaths.
Game softlock by enemy getting stuck off-screen 2 Balneor 2025-04-06 | By a different cause this time.For some reason when the statue goes up, these enemies sort of refresh ? If you kill one of them before it is fully lifted, it'll just respawn... but with like 1 hp. And their attack/decision also reset.If you kill the enemy at the perfect time though, it's so high up in the screen that it stops lunging at the player.Still alive and practicing this game.
Hidden random wall Balneor 2025-02-14 | Another unlisted upload.I kept holding left, even during the jump, but I still couldn't get through.The wall seems to vanish right after I land, perhaps it's not a coincidence.I try to re-enable it back but it won't come back.That's not my first time witnessing this kind of behavior tho.I'm still meant on learning the speedrun, I left it off around the beginning of level 2, but progress was going much quicker than the amount of time stage 1 took me to learn.irl matters have simply kept me very busy since, though it should be over soonIt's unfortunate this recording also had the chimney fire audio, as opposed to the 10 other things I was listening to while practicing this level that dayI don't think fire is a good idea in this level either...
Game softlock by enemy getting stuck off-screen Balneor 2025-02-14 | Because this game also need glitch videos.For real tho this is an unlisted upload, and knowing me, it made no sense for it to stay as such.I don't know what I could have done to trigger that to happen this. I tried air punching the whole left screen but I didn't touch it.I didn't try doing normal punches however. Maybe that would have worked.The game of course stops progressing onwards indefinitely... I'm glad a variant of this never happened in any of my challenge runsNo game audio, instead enjoy the audio of the timelapse of an actual chimney fire I found on youtube
Asterix and Cleopatra level 1 Asterix no air punches no damage Balneor 2025-01-04 | I’m not sure I know how to qualify this one.This clear has disgraceful gameplay. I failed to remember many of my strats, and I had a huge amount of unnecessary close calls. For some reason, this level is harder to memorize than all other. Go figure.Either way, I was dissatisfied enough that I wanted to redo it.But I found out immediately after the clear that some of these strats weren’t very reliable to begin with. It was akin to basically putting myself in a bad spot for free.The enemies here are clearly and obviously the weakest that the game has to offer.They have small to medium health, and their attacks speed are among the slowest.However, most enemies move as fast as you and love fake attacks. It’s not easy to dodge them or to deal damage safely, especially in groups of them.All enemies except for the heavy red dudes also have long range as well, the yellow-beard enemies being able to out-range you (Asterix at least). You have to be very careful when punching groups of enemies that don’t overlap.Two of the are and with three, it can be really have any other choice but to be extra careful 0:10 Strat to make two enemies overlap.0:44 If you kill the first one early, the second one will join you which is favorable.And yes, just like with the trees in level 3 the enemies can’t resist moving around the masts from the top .1:13 You can easily make these guys overlap and I forgot to do it in this run.1:53 Yet another strat for an easy isolated kill.I have a rough approach for dealing with most enemies dropping from the masts - they can’t be hit before that animation finishes btw – but it’s that, rough. 2:19 Some more indirect enemy overlap strategies2:45 You can easily make these guys overlap and I forgot to do it in this run.2:56 One of the harder sections. I have a strat for it but it’s not always working. This went very bad.The door at 4:22 requires 24 heavy punches to bring down. But the game only progress when two waves of yellow-beard enemies are cleared. And additional waves will spawn so long as the door stands. I have a ingenuous way to meet both requirements without losing any time, alas the enemies didn’t behave the way I wanted and a third wave spawned.5:04 I forgot my strat with this section.5:50 I wanted to destroy these crates (drums ?) before the two remaining screen waves spawned but I got trolled by it blocking my movement up to it. I don’t have a definite strat for this part. 6:34 Another hard section. Lots of enemies, not much ground to work with.This is where the play starts being bad. I must have cheated death 5 times.7:18 I actually forgot to look for a strat in this screen. I still did horrible.The entire final section was a fiasco. The remaining waves at 10:14 have an easy strat which I forgot per usual.Clear took 3 attempts I believe, even though I fluked incredibly well there. Sadly, this should still be the easiest level. Hardest one I still wanna say is level 6, but it has competition.And at long last, I’m free from these challenges.And not just that, I’m done with these for good. Remember, I originally wanted to speedrun the game, but instead got into this huge no damage rabbit hole.I’m gonna play any%. 100% sucks because you have to complete the bonus minigames. (also, the category doesn’t include the seventh bonus minigame of this game ? How is that 100% then ?)Now, food for thoughts. I swear. - Are every level no-hittable without land punches ? While it would make 90% of the game easy, getting past the select few anti-air punches enemies would prove to be quite a nightmare. Especially in level 2 with the running egyptians, level 3 with the crocodiles, level 4 with the bandage guys and level 6 with the troop formation enemies.- Is a full game no damage clear possible ? It definitely is, but I don’t have the time for it. Level 2 and 4 would naturally be the main roadblocks. And level 6 be the choke sauce.- Would no damage level clears be possible on multiplayer ? Probably, and I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be easier purely because Obelix is here. But there are a lot of variables to the equation I’m not able to get a read on. Namely, how would the AI behavior change with two players ? After all, it clearly looks like this game was designed with that playstyle in mind… but the most important factor remains to be addressed : which human on the planet will bother playing the game and getting this good for you ?- Are no damage level clears possible on multiplayer using only one character ?Whoa whoa whoa hold on you’re pushing it now boddy. For that you’d have to find a way to keep the idle character out of the fights. And saying this kinda removes all the fun of attempting it, doesn’t it.I guess a multiplayer setting enabling cheat for single player would seem interesting.- Are no damage level clears possible on multiplayer using only one character and land punches ?Alright, video over. See you in a while.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 2 Asterix no air punches no damage Balneor 2025-01-01 | I underestimated the difficulty of this level, but proceed to still beat it in three tries. The lowest attempt count by far for this challenge, although I believe level 6 took less than 10.Consider this the true level 2 no damage experience.Here’s yet another rundown of the enemies : - The giant egyptians are negligible- The hammer egyptians are negligible.- The hornpipe guys take slightly longer to kill via land punches if you want to be 100% safe. But they are still completely free. I thought that the one at 6:49 was gonna be a huge roadblock, but in actuality it’s still easy, as it’s possible to run safely after punching it. Turns out their attack doesn’t actually have such a large range.Well. About them, I found out that they in fact have anti-air punches around their sprite during basically the entire attack. But there is none of the such on the edges. Thereby making it possible to to attack them during the time of the animation where their hornpipe isn’t drawn out.- The sprinting egyptians are still just that, burning comets. They can either be chilled down (happens 90% of the time) or batted away all the same.But things are new now that we have to fight them during their chilled state using land punches. As even then, they still know how to put up a fight. You can only realistically fight them when they come to you horizontally, as out-ranging them is the way to go. Get out asap if they come to your line vertically. And then, it’s still dubious as they still have a decently long range. You mustn’t hesitate to back off for safety, even more so if you accidentally do a light punch.Yet it’s even worse when many enemies are around, as we will see.0:38 Now that we can’t instantly kill them, this part is a lot more treacherous. There’s barely any time to deaggro all three of them before the first egyptian eventually gets close by. I got lucky I suppose.Upon testing, I found that it seems possible to deaggro them from the right part of the screen, using specific movement. I don’t know how reliable that approach is, I haven’t explored it. 3:18 not sure why the sand mass despawns.3:55 is also a lot harder now that we can’t air punch. In fact, we ultimately can’t fight them from where we first deaggroed them. There’s just not enough space to move away from them as they get to us vertically. So we need to get to the bottom space to deal with them safely… while somehow navigating through through all these enemies on the way there.For this, I’m using a key enemy behavior. You see, enemies generally don’t try to attack when you are moving away from them. As long as you respect this, you can usually be as close to them as possible without danger. And this thankfully applies to the burning comets. In retrospect, I could have hugged the right edge of the screen and slowly went down without a flinch. But I didn’t think of doing that, because the walls in this game suck.Indeed, one very annoying mechanic of this game is the fact that walls/boundaries (most of them) don’t allow you to run on them. They’ll instead stop you from moving completely. It’s a great loss of mobility, and it can sometimes also troll you. In rare cases even, the only way to get unstuck from a wall is to move completely opposite to it (which can spell death). You just don’t want to touch them if you can avoid it.I could have easily died at 3:42 because of it, although getting this vulnerable was very preventable.You also have to not trust graphics too much when it comes to knowing where the walls are. They are often way rougher than they look.4:13 is the hardest section of the level by far. My original deaggro strat for the third wave stopped working for unknown reasons, so I had to find something else. The head-butt at 4:32 is to be expected, I’ve never been hit by it (over only a couple tries kek)The main problem is not just deaggroing, but also being able to hit anything safely afterward. There are four of them and they surround you completely. It’s hard to make decisions, and I lucked out in this attempt.6:34 doesn’t change much. This time though, I opted for medium punches exclusively, instead of the heavy punches I had spoken about in my first video of this level. I found it less reliable over time in comparison.7:24 Positional strat to deaggro this guy. I’ve tried simply killing it the normal way, but he just kept hitting me despite that, and I gave up.8:40 Couldn’t do the same strat without air punches, so had to do something new. It’s only the first wave that significantly changes. Here it went as well as I could’ve hoped, but it can be a lot more hectic than that. Sometimes, two of them can be lured at once which isn’t ideal.Only one left. Will level 1 manage to be harder than anything else ? The chances aren’t small. I sense a lot of attempt resets.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 5 Asterix no air punches no damage Balneor 2024-12-31 | This level shouldn’t last this long, but it does for a surprising reason.Using brackets for the title. Long story short, I believe that I once knew that the ground wooden cages at 3:28 and 4:43 could be destroyed with normal jumping. But I must have forgot this as I nearly instantly got used to using air punches to get through it quickly (you jump height is fixed and low). Either way, I’m not redoing this just for such a commodity, the challenge integrity is still kept.The purple guards are, for the sake of this challenge, relatively safe to handle. They love the attack priority glitch though, so you want to back off when that happens for ideal survival odds (I generally lazy out on that at the beginning). The green guards are the easiest enemies of the stage, so long as you take them into account and don’t let them outright backstab you.The stairs section at 1:01 is still pretty tough, and lots of decision making is required. I’m not sure if you can even find strats for these. But I like doing this movement that allows me to safely kill one of the green guards and sometimes more. Otherwise, always be on the move.4:26 The layout of these traps are quite weird. I believe I’ve never gotten hit by holding right once the way is clear, no matter the vertical position, so it should be fine.5:26 Also slightly complex section. I get two freebies by staying down.It might seem pointless, but I usually get rid of the bonus enemies, as they spawn other enemies when disappearing, which are required to be defeated to progress. The fan guys are definitely the hardest enemies. Their quick attacks on top of long range make them very dangerous. It’s possible to stand inside them, but it’s precise, so I ditched that idea. They become even more unmanageable once inside the palace with the slippery floor. Even then however, there is a way to beat them safely : Cross their vertical axis. This halves their speed which is vital (It’s possible with other enemies in the game including the green guards). Stand still, and punch them as soon as they come at range. The window for this first punch is small; either you’re late and they hit you first, or you’re early and punch in the wind, allowing the enemy a free hit. After dealing the punch, they slowly come at you and don’t really attack. To know when to punch, I use a visual cue of the fan almost touching Asterix’s large nose. Unless they are overlapping like 7:03, only attack one of them at a time.It’s possible to take the potion at 6:00 all the way to 6:09 and wipe every fan enemies there, but it’s incredibly tight. Killing two of them is good enough. That section is the hardest of the level and I’ve died to it three times before passing (and luckily clearing).The cushion guys return, and would rightfully be a huge menace. But the way the devs implemented them here is confounding. You’re able to out-range every single one of them before they even start moving. And the following punches after that are easy. The hardest part is to not accidentally slide too close to them. Quite slow, but it works !The level was fairly standard thus far (no it wasn’t ?). However, starting from 10:16, the game proceeds to do something completely unexpected and inexplicable.From there on out, all of the enemies try to avoid you. For real.My theory is that long story short, the enemies think that two tigers must be attacking the character (even though they are long gone). Naturally, they have to stay on the sidelines.Either way, while this means no immediate danger to us, as it turns out, trying to pursue and fight enemies this way, safely, and all under slippery ground is still a real issue.I had to resort to many different tricks to reach them. Especially with the purple guards and the cushion guys. But the more “small fry” looking enemy types are still very much chokable. With the green guards, when it is running in a square, you must avoid light punches at all cost, or else they will most likely retaliate immediately. Not to mention that for some reason, in this specific segment in the level only, exclusively while attacking, their hitbox is shrunk significantly and it’s nearly impossible to hit them during that.Don’t even bother doing any of that with the fan guys. Slowly tickle them to death using slide punches across the hall vertically. Always try to hit them while they are in the middle of the room rather than the sides, and always have sufficient speed before committing the punch.Well what a fucking mess that was.I’d be curious to see if it’d be possible to do things any faster while still consistently.I did first try the entire palace section despite it being very chokable. Not an easy level, but not harder than what came beforehand. Two levels left. Will level 1 somehow be worse ?
Asterix and Cleopatra level 3 Asterix no air punches no damage Balneor 2024-12-30 | Scratch what I said beforehand, because were this level 23 minutes long, I’m not sure when exactly you’d hear of me again. Only 7 minutes of this was taxing enough.Crocodiles appear the least and aren’t too threatening considering they are land punch tailored anyway.The pickaxe guys, despite moving super slow, are an actual menace. They never take knockback, and their very high range allow them to outrange Asterix. Though still easily disposable alone, they’re quite tricky to get rid off in groups, especially when combined with the remaining enemy type… but even just on their own, they won’t hesitate to seize your breathing room. They can be pretty dubious to dodge in that context too.Their relatively quick attacks makes assailing two enemies that are slightly apart from each other quite risky, and it’s why I intentionally make the front enemy attack at times like 1:10 and 1:40 to indirectly make them group up more closely.This, and with the fact that you can sort of safely dodge them by passing through them vertically (adding vital extra survival time to fights), it would make a stage full of these enemies not that challenging. And that’s why this next enemy, the stick guys are so terrific. I was already somewhat fearing them in my normal no death clears, so I was looking forward to hurting plenty.Well, all alone, these enemies are also really easy to kill. The key is to use (abuse…?) the fact that their stick attack can’t hit you if you’re inside them. The wriggle room is quite decent for that, you can even safely uppercut them so long as you keep hugging them.Dealing with two at once, such as in 1:46 and 5:24 would seem like quite the predicament however. They naturally have huge range, love sandwiching, take no knockback as well as attack even faster than the pickaxe guys. And especially all while using land punches, a move type that completely freezes Asterix in place.Still, I ended up going for a cheese setup. I first make them roughly vertically align, then pass through them to lure them to attack. If both engage immediately, I would then quickly heavy punch chain the both of them down. But it seems far more common for the second one to take longer. So in this case, I’ve learned to do movement that seems to force one of the two enemies to stop moving entirely. Leaving the other one solo and defenseless. I think the premise is that you stop moving vertically before the stick enemy that you want to freeze finishes attacking. I believe this could be applied in other places but I didn’t look much into it..It gets even worse when both types are combined together. You simply can’t take them head on without taking a blow back or the maneuver being too risky. The only roughly functioning strat I have is this slow attack lure process, before safely punching them, mainly seen at 6:57. Make sure to always pass through the stick guy.But the worst is when you have many of these enemies at once. It often becomes pandemonium and you need to react and make decisions. As such, I wasn’t able to find that many sharp strategies for this level. 0:45 Is easily the hardest section because of this. My best bet is getting rid of one of the stick guys before the pickaxe guys come along, in order to relieve pressure. And then survive from there. Also slopes.The slighest position also leads to different enemy positioning which only adds up to the madness. We see this no sooner than in 0:19 where things already went wrong as the stick guy decides to stop moving out of nowhere, making me hesitant.Clubs ? What are you talking about ?1:59 This intentional kill delay worked in my original clear, and it still works. Just make sure to position yourself correctly.2:13 another section with lots of variance. This approach to lure the pickaxe guys first is slow, but it’s the only decent thing I could find.For some reason enemies can’t stop themselves from passing the trees from the riverside in this level.The autoscroller has nothing different.The section at 4:01 is terrible, even though it might not seem like much compared to what we did before.I don’t understand why my strat works, and it seems a bit RNG. Idle at the beginning. Once the pickaxe guys get close, move left. Stop quickly and then move left again. If done correctly both of them will still chase you. If not, the stick guy will and things will go sour.4:20 Keep one enemy alife for this next bit. If you let it live, you can safely destroy the two bushes without extra enemies spawning.6:46 This part went completely wrong, but I also forgot my strat. I also believe I should have died at one point.Best pace died on 5:24. First half is harder than second.So is this the hardest one ? I doubt it. I technically had the least amount of practice out of them all so far, and wasn’t playing great, explaining the struggle. But it shouldn’t be underestimated. 7 minutes is also short.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 4 Asterix no air punches no damage Balneor 2024-12-26 | Even though my younger self was probably abusing air punches, I’m still feeling like I’m thoroughly avenging myself with this one.If this level took 23 minutes, it would be the hardest by far. But it's not, so level 6 still leads the way.Let’s start with the jumping bombs, as they don’t change much at all when it comes to this handicap challenge. The only change was in 4:04. This third enemy only moves once it receives a hit. Because Asterix’s land punches range is terrible, you can’t long range this enemy without it retaliating and unavoidably hitting you. Even hitting as far away as possible, you can only do a medium hit (which makes no sense and is backwards logic for this game), and the enemy will hit you back.So what we did then was using an air punch. But we can’t use that now so how do we hope to defeat this enemy ?Well, that’s where I need to introduce slide punches. It’s exactly what it sounds, but it’s also not obvious at first glance. Indeed, Asterix immediately stops right in his track when you let go of movement. However, it’s different when you move while punching, as he slides instead. The punch system still acts the same, it determine your punch type depending on if there is an enemy and how close it is to you based on the moment of pressing the button. But you’re able to move during the punch and have its damage hitbox cover some vertical distance.While it saves our life here, this move is kinda mid in general. you mostly end up doing useless light punches, or you miss the enemy completely because the vertical hitboxes of enemies are so tiny. It’s also quite risky. But let’s not complain too much.And as you can see, you can be as close to it as you want, but a light punch will always force it to not attack.They’re still definitely the hardest enemy without air punches. However, I must say that mummies are comparable, at least given then chance.There’s a lot that can be said about them, but the main issue is that they can sometimes roll in unexpected ways. And if you’re close to them at that moment it’s over. I don’t think it’s RNG or unpredictable, I feel there’s a certain logic that dictates when mummies roll, with edge cases and such. I don’t understand much of it though so I’m forced to cope with it. I think that my routing helps minimize the odds of these unexpected rolls to happen.But you can throw all of this in the window if you have to deal with more than two in a small area. Things quickly increase exponentially in difficulty with them.I’m just happy the part at 3:09 is possible. Moving this way at the start is the only way to have all these mummies come out cleanly like that. Don’t even bother otherwise, or you become a bowling pin. The remaining encounter are less problematic. The devs were overall quite merciful with their placement.This leaves us with the sphinxes to do without air punches. The experience is really night and day.Although they have more niche differences, the health value of both variants is the main thing to keep in mind here.They are most threatening in groups, partially because of their range abilities. They attack quickly and take no recoil whatsoever, meaning they can start attacking back soon. The projectiles have decent vertical range as well.This said, these guys are free when fought alone. And, it’s the leading approach when dealing with groups of them. The safest way is to attack one without being under immediate threat of another. As I demonstrate at 8:25.However, there is a lot of employable cheese.- It’s hard to explain the movement, but depending on the way you move, you can force one of the sphinxes to go all the way to the side. (it’s actually trying to get to your back, as they always want to sandwich you). By the time this happens, the remaining one is toast. 0:14 is the prime example, but you got movement variations. That said it’s precise and finicky and you have to anticipate it failing. Like 1:40 ! Also, when doing this misdirection tech, the enemies can also turn and fire away from you. They’re totally not supposed to do that, they never do it on their own. It’s a good thing when that happened, but I read the room wrongly at 1:04 and nearly died. They can, finally, sidestep in your direction like 1:21 which is scary because they can sometimes still fire.- You can abuse the fact that a sphinx can’t get behind you if your back leads to off-bounds, to lure only one enemy at a time. Much like 5:21 or 6:07. It’s also doable with slope like ground, but riskier as the enemies may still fire at you even if they aren’t exactly on your line.Best pace up to that point was 4:15. Didn't take that much longer than level 6, though it took a lot more attempts.I seem to have a newfound motivation with these. Next one I’m gonna try is level 3.I don't think any other level will top these two.Funnily enough, level 2 might end up being the easiest one.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 6 Asterix no air punches no damage Balneor 2024-12-24 | This was originally going to be one of six videos about no damaging each stage without air punches, but I lost motivation after finishing this one. As such, sorry for the lazy description.I was disappointed that air punches were this powerful and would nearly trivialize everything.Using only one move for the entire game is borings so I felt the need to challenge myself again without that move. And what better way to do it than with the longest level. This proved to be quite an ambitious clear. The level require intense focus in making the correct decisions as these enemies are quite unforgiving. The second half of the level is so much harder than the first half, but it only starts ten minutes in at 10:14. Nearly all enemies in the first half can be lured and beaten in isolation, whereas the enemies all come towards you in the second half. It also houses all of the choke points of the level.And you have to deal with the attack priority glitch which can be a real handicap in places. And of course, Asterix’s major punching weaknesses.Despite this, I fluked the clear in only a handful of tries. My PB at this point was at the two tents at 13:17.I’ve since learned a couple ways to deal with the slow shield guys at 1:19, and they aren’t such a threat anymore.On the other hand, the basic infantry has proved to be the hardest enemy in the stage. They move as fast as you, attack quickly and can be cunning with their fake hits.The heavy infantry have their strength (you can’t dodge their blows by going inside them unlike the basic infantry), but they move slower and are more forgiving when trying to run away.3:16 this roman moves in this odd way because it’s assuming the two other romans are ganging you (the game can only handle two enemies attacking you, and the remaining enemies wait on the sidelines). Once it begins its square movement cycle, it won’t attack. You can punch it then, however doing it wrong can be fatal.7:33 I found out that in the 2-player mode you can wipe these enemies using a power-up. But there’s nothing for single-player. Lame.Also, 2-player mode mostly makes more enemies spawn. It can get quite absurd sometimes. I would play it on emulator, but with mGBA you can’t seem to be able to make save-states on multiplayer.10:15 This dodge is intentional, and forces this enemy to join my line. They spawn in a awkward way and you can’t attack them safely otherwise.11:22 Intentional and consistent attack lure. This stop is the first choke point and it’s very easy for things to go wrong. Here though everything went perfect.12:49 This part usually isn’t that bad but it went horribly wrong. I kept getting the attack priority glitch, forcing me to flee.13:18 Choke point. The basic infantry can be deadly there, even down to the first set.14:35 Another choke point, mostly because the basic infantry is a huge source of the attack priority glitch.14:57 Choke point. Four waves of 4 enemies. Only saving grace is that they are the heavy type.16:15 Choke point for similar attack priority glitch reasons.17:03 These puny enemies have since become a menace, nearly as dangerous as the basic infantry. Their only downside is that they’re slow. But everything else about them is deadly. This section took a while to figure out a strategy for, and it’s not perfect.18:24 Make sure to be in the middle before the basic infantry waves begin, as it makes them considerably easier to deal with. Normally, they all come at once.20:11 This final stretch is very chokable, partly because of the enemy sets, partly because of the slope like ground. I had to resort to cheesy strategies with the bottom edge of the ground. Only one enemy can attack you at a time, because enemies can’t reach for your back.For the heavy infantry, although slow, it’s the simplest to stay idle and let them come in 22:03 I’m not sure how I didn’t get hit bu the retaliation attack. This could have been my ultimate choke, but the game was kind.As expected, it’s a lot more interesting. You get to actually engage with the enemies, know their hitboxes, their hp count, movement speed, attack behavior and so on… none of this you would figure out by abusing air punches.Since I’m not continuing, I checked the rest of the game to see if this challenge was possible and how doable most levels were. Well, it all is, and ironically, level 2 might be the easiest level. That is because you already cheese 90% of the level to begin with. Funnily enough, level 1 would be harder, the enemies there are actually pretty rough. Level 3 and 5 would certainly be pretty tough, and level 4 is comparable to level 6.I'm happy I had the motivation to do this before anything else. Though I might do level 4, as I had started attempts on it. But I might also skip to speedruns.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 4 Asterix no damage Balneor 2024-12-18 | This level is where my first game clear attempt died on. It’s easily harder than level 2 because of so many more problematic spots. Nearly the entire level is chokable.The sphinx are the most common enemies of the stage. They’re oddly the only enemies in the game to throw projectiles. Pink sphinxes have more health than blue ones.They are quite tricky to dodge in general, as they fire projectiles quite frequently. They can also shoot off-screen and their shots accelerate which you need to be careful about.But more. You see, enemies are able to make fake hits and attack *around* your position. And while this can be used against them, this behavior usually adds a lot of randomness to fighting.Still, most enemies can’t actually hit you due to a lack of vertical hit range, so it’s not that bad. But these guys can, and they’re quite adept at this mechanic which is a problem considering their infinite range.This said, Asterix’s remaining advantage of a larger air punch range (both directions) helps a little bit.Take your time and don’t underestimate them… or anything in this level really.0:18 This might be the worst club drop in the game. Despite it appearing out of thin air, it’s literally impossible to not pick up.However, there’s also a glitch that makes the player immediately drop it if you cross the trigger in a certain way. This seems 100% consistent if you hug the bottom of the screen, then jump ahead… so by all means.At 2:39 you must go to this corner to set-up for this next part.Mummies attack by turning into a ball and rolling across the screen.They both are invulnerable and deal damage on every single frame of their rolling movement, even the pre & post-rolling parts.They have a large vertical hit range. You’re obviously meant to jump, but their top hitboxes also are pretty large.Land punches are death especially with Asterix. He just can’t run away in time when they start attacking.Mummies are a nightmare in groups.Jumping over one mummy is sketchy, so groups of them is nearly impossible.They can also disperse on both sides, and it’s just as hellish as it may sound. There’s more to say but I’m cutting it there.Getting to 3:41 is already something, but then here are the hardest enemies in the game.These bandage guys feel like they belong in a Dark Souls game for how unforgiving they are. They have lots of health, taking a baffling 5 air/heavy punches.They can jump in many ways, making them hard to predict.Their attack is instantaneous and they do it upon landing or after taking a hit.And last… they have humongous attack range *on all sides*.So, jumping bombs if you will. They “explose” if you are around them, and you can’t punch them without going boom.The only no-hit technique I could find on these guys back them was this : youtube.com/watch?v=1JHV9h075p0 (funnily enough, hitting them in the air causes them to stay airborne. But this doesn’t affect the gameplay much.)I was originally gonna do this challenge with that… but as you can see instead, I made them look basically free here. Why is that ?I think the devs must have known the killing machine they ended up designing, so they made the following change : they straight up inverted the damage table on them.Heavy punches do shit damage... and light punches kill them in only two hits ! Even a small punch followed by a medium one is enough.This information is a game changer, but only as long as you connect the first hit. And man, you can’t ask for much with Asterix. In order for the enemy to not attack, you need to punch them with a light hit *during their jump*. The timing with his light punch is incredibly precise, not to mention the enemy can jump around your punch. It’s a precarious process, even with my best positioning.Obelix can literally outrange those guys with his light punch and atomize them in a second.So : 3:46 : I scroll the screen down then hug it from there. Kill the first guy quick or the other one will get you. Last one doesn’t react until you punch it.4:23 : The easiest one as you can fight each of them individually with ample space.5:11 : Bad. This position makes you safe from getting ganged up by the top one. Don’t move too far to the left though.7:58 : The hardest encounter. I couldn’t manage to find an easy setup, and the guys on the left are the most unreliable to hit both at the same time.The remaining autoscrollers in the game are at 6:47. You can pass first half without moving if your position is good. Second half would be tough, but being able to buffer the club actually leads to a huge cheese, as the mummies can be hit before they come.5:53 Blue enemies spawn after the pink ones while the wall moves. I messed it up here by making an extra set spawn but it was fine. This part took a while to figure out the best way.8:38 Don’t get close to the sarcophaguses and you’ll be fine.Here you have it. I’m so glad to have done this for myself. But is my quest over ?
Asterix and Cleopatra level 2 Asterix no damage Balneor 2024-12-18 | So the second hardest level in the game is… right after the first and easiest level, obviously.The stage has 4 enemy types. Two of them are completely free.One of them is this hornpine enemy (0:24). They stand still and don’t move towards you.Enemies spawn when they call to rally. One might think that killing them asap is good, but the enemies will still spawn regardless so…Despite this enemy never moving, they are still quite dangerous. Their attack have priority over your air punch. Not only that, but their attack animation is highly misleading : except for the first 1/3 of a second, nearly every single frame of the entire animation deals damage. You basically have no choice but to wait for them to stop attacking.Oddly menacing foes, but easy when you have the trick.This leaves us with the most widespread enemy type in this stage : the sprinting egyptians. Or what I’ll be calling burning comets.The good news : they can be knocked down with a single air/heavy punch.The bad news : everything else. Their gimmick is to ram the player.They run as fast as Asterix, both horizontally and vertically so you can’t evade them by the sides.They can damage through your air punch. Even if you run away !They can ram you at the top of your jump (???). Even if you evade their blow (which is extremely precise), they’ll likely begin sprinting again.And worst, they mainly come in groups.These absurd stats easily make them the second hardest enemy type in the game, far away from whatever third place would be. They effortlessly burn through your health and are a near unstoppable force, like a burning comet.Still, with advanced tinkering, I could find two reliable ways to chill down these comets. And the first one is quite literal.I said that these egyptians would follow you vertically… well that’s not always the case. Sometimes they keep running in a straight line even after you move out of their line. It’s fairly easy to make them do that.That wouldn’t mean much on it’s own, because it’s still too dangerous to attempt killing them via air punches on their side while they’re running. However, if you get vertically aligned with them… then the enemy permanently loses its running state, and is forced into a way safer walking state ?And this deaggro mechanism is the key for defeating them. This is what you see me do for most of the stage. For now.1:05 Make sure not to destroy this block. It’s used to deaggro the sprinting egyptians.You can probably do it without but don’t bother.2:33 I have to wait because the game takes a while before it can spawn the next enemies.Also make sure to destroy this block, it liberates extra space to make the next part easier.2:56 This is the first hard part of the stage. There are tons of sprinting egyptians, the last set especially has you be swarmed on both sides. This took a while to find a good strat for. Sitting on the corner then moving left this way and at that moment seems to reliably make the three left enemies not jump at you. Their movement is position hypersentitive though so they may still misbehave. 3:36 This part is possible without the potion. Please don’t bother.3:55 These stone wheels can be destroyed for bonus items, but the timing is even more scuffed than the barrels in level 1. The ones the revolt leader treads on are indestructible, which inherently makes the ones behind it nearly impossible to hit without taking damage.Now as a matter of fact I had already done this stage damageless with Obelix before starting anything with Asterix : youtu.be/I_MjGbxj_oYAt that point, I didn’t know how different Asterix was. I still blindly believed they were the same. But that quickly changed after I played this stage, with the second roadblock at 4:54.Sprinting egyptians could be dealt with by luring them in a straight line and then sidestepping them vertically. But this section has no vertical dimension, and you’re facing six whopping sprinting egyptians...We can retreat no more, we must face the burning comets head on. The land punch way. This is where Asterix has it worse. Obelix’s extra punch range makes quick work of them.Asterix, on the other hand, *has* to initiate conflict with a *medium* punch. For some reason, with that specific punch type, the enemy stops moving right before ramming you.If they’re alone, finish them. If in groups, wait for the next enemy to come closer, and do a heavy punch to knock both out. Here though I punched too early both times, causing a medium punch to come out. I was lucky to survive though.They're still very scary using that method, the punches are tight and they can still easily jumpscare-hit you.Also worth mentioning that you straight up can’t kill two overlapping egyptians with Asterix. One of them will always end up ramming you. Obelix, again, faces no such problem.6:46 was a headache to figure out.The music takes on a whole different meaning after doing this. Much like the last remaining level.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 6 Asterix no damage Balneor 2024-12-18 | All three remaining levels are the reason why land punches tend to suck in this game and why Asterix is a bad character (alternative : it’s just me forgetting that a game eventually has to be challenging and that you can’t be expected to be mindlessly mashing the punch button to get through everything in said game).Land fighting is risky business in this game, and almost guaranteed to get you in trouble if you make mistake.On top of it not doing great damage on average, you have poor mobility when punching because you just aren’t able to move during that time. Some enemies can also quickly attack back after being punched that’s super tricky to deal with.Now compare this to the air punch, which always does max damage, and enables full movement. You now understand why it’s optimal for 95% of the game to spam that move.And it’s sad, because the fist combat feels pretty good, and air punches are a bit boring over time. But only Obelix can truly experience fighting for what it’s best.But why is Asterix so much worse than Obelix ? Simple. The primary difference between him and Obelix is that he has a shorter land punching range, and that all three of his land punches take longer to come in and to end than Obelix. So you’re both slower and need to be closer to the enemies attack them.And don’t forget that Asterix is subject to the attack priority glitch that essentially kills your run if you don’t expect it.And in this level, nearly every single enemy attack faster than him. Not only that, but they even have side attack range as well, so trying to escape by walking isn’t guaranteed to work either. Punching enemies is just not a good idea with him.One of his two advantages is that he moves slightly faster.And I will give credit where it’s due, it saved me from near-death situations here (I got the level first try after practice).So this level is basically full air punch spam. Much like the game tbh. But you still have to be careful of a couple things :- The slow walking romans at 0:51 are the biggest hazards of this stage. They counter your air punches in the front, and land punching is very unreliable with them. The only reasonable strat, again, is to air punch them from the sides. It’s the most effective way to get rid of the vast majority of the enemies. And your air punch is prioritized over the enemies doing an attack animation there.They are very scary in large groups however, and reaching their sweet spots in that context is tense.- On the first frame that you move diagonally, your character can’t jump.This is a painful glitch that happens nearly all the time by accident. Enough to the point that you need to move in specific ways when using the air punch in order to avoid it entirely. (this is what got me hit in the level 5 clip)Moving on. Idefix is useless and I forget he’s even here most of the time. He only appears in this stage. They found uses for him in other games, dunno why they couldn’t with this one. 3:05 This is scripted game movement, the hit doesn’t actually damage me (though I think you can avoid it still)4:10 After the initial two static waves (touching a boulder will hit you until the very last frame of its animation btw), the game will throw boulders at your position if you stand still for like half a sec. It’s impossible to see when the boulder comes, so you have to deliberately lure it. It’s easy to forget that it’s there too.The boulders will stop spawning once you get to the second enemy wave… and it’s the last time we see this mechanic. For whatever reason, it was only used up for this 30 second section. It’s also bugged slightly. If a single boulder hasn’t dropped on you by the time you reach the second enemy wave, then the game will still want to spawn one on you… no matter where you are in the room ! But this stops once you actually get transferred to the next screen. Simply make one boulder fall before you continue4:51 Although these enemies are anti-air punches, they’re arguably the easiest to beat as they move slowly and have poor range.They take long to kill however. So I don’t know what the devs were thinking here by putting so many in a row. It’s just boring. At least I found a slightly faster way to get them.11:55 New and last enemy type in the game, golden plated armor, clearly veteran legionaries. But they aren’t that much different than what we already saw. 12:06 Accidentally took the club, gotta love these hitboxes. I also proceeded to almost immediately losing the run with the next enemies because of that. Should have simply used it out.This level is slightly harder than level 5 because it retains around the same level of uncertainty and risk, with the slow anti-air guys and the slopes. On top of being the longest level in the game by a wide margin (though I again played slow). Gee, I wonder what would happen if you do this without air attacks. Must be a different story.With this, we’ve officially passed the “easy levels”.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 5 Asterix no damage Balneor 2024-12-18 | Now this level I remember a lot more… well, at least the prison part. That palace got me tripping all the way through the first time.So, each enemy has their own recoil system. Depending on the punch type (of which there are only three types, as the heavy punch is essentially equal to the air punch), each enemy will have a different recoil effect. They can either be pushed back a little with no change to their state, or be completely knocked over and unable to move for a second or two, and anything in-between.Most enemies get knocked over with the powerful punches, which is great for survival. But fighting enemies this way using the air punch can be tedious sometimes. With enemies that have lots of health, but who are knocked down with the hardest punches, you have to wait that they get back up because because they can’t receive hit when on the ground.Instead, weaker punches can be used to keep these enemies up standing.While one could do this with all the enemies to quicken the beating up process, I only chose to do it with these purple spear men when not accompanied with other enemy types. They are very slow and our punches can out-range them so it’s fine.Truthfully, even such a simple action with simple enemies isn’t fully safe. Especially if you punch two enemies at once. For some reason, the game can sometimes interpret that you’re trying to hit the enemy in the back instead of in the front of the group. So you do a light punch instead of a normal punch. The enemies then don’t take as much recoil, and get closer to you while you’re still stuck in the punching animation. If you don’t anticipate this you’ll almost guaranteed to take a hit.I’ll call it the attack priority glitch, and it’s one of the more annoying bugs. That for some reason Obelix doesn’t have.Let’s just say for now that the other enemies are much safer to hit with air punches.Anyways, I still have to be careful doing that here. Those purple spear guys can instantly deal damage, as they lack pre-animations. You can still safely air punch into them, just retreat before your punch finishes.Things get more awkward though in bigger numbers, as they like to move in strange ways. Case in point : youtu.be/2eHsPClB3M0 (I ended up getting hit because of a different glitch I’ll mention later)And the chaos is even more amplified when fighting on slopes, like 0:57.We’ve seen a couple in level 3 already, like the autoscroller.Slopes are troublesome because your horizontal movement suddenly becomes diagonal. I don’t know why they couldn’t just extend the ground like they do in other levels.Not only does this make aligning to the enemies harder, but the enemies themselves aren’t affected by it. It becomes this huge mess where you can’t hit stuff anymore as you’re used to, and enemies hit you from nowhere. The sense of depth is lost. The only way is to look at the shadows. Yea, good luck playing the game that way.Fast forward to the palace part of the level.The fan holding enemies at 6:21 have no recoil even after receiving a hit, so you can hit them immediately after. These types of enemies are especially dangerous with land punches, since they can hit you while you’re still frozen in the punching animation. These foes are essentially tailored for air punches.Icy ground at 7:04, yucky. Also strangely applies in the air. And of course only you. Air punches are a life saver here. It’s actually fun to – literally - sweep the floor back and forth.Man they sure had fun with the cushion dudes design. They’re definitely the chokiest enemies of the level though. You can’t air punch them head on, their cushion attack will prioritize over you. They have a bigger horizontal hitting range… and instantaneous attacks ! Safe way is from the sides. It’s extra scary when they aren’t alone, and I honestly completely lucked out at 7:49.I didn’t talk about the magic potion until now. The game lays you a couple gourds (roasted boar for Obelix) per levels, like the one at 7:59. You become invincible and can OHKO everything for a short while.Now what’s funny in this context is that you’re required to knock down a whole lot of doors in a row. For the info, the doors and gates you encounter until this point in the level all require 4 air/strong land punches to be brought down. So the potion would seem very welcome here... but it’s all a playful facade, as these doors (with the exception of the last one) actually only take as little as a medium land punch !8:23 I gasped audibly as I got to this part. It’s so absurd that I don’t know how my memory didn’t remember this.Thankfully, it’s an easy section. You can actually punch the tiger, but it would just never die no matter how long I tried.You can recognize the box throwing mechanic seen in level 1.Overall a bit harder than level 3. More problematic sections and enemies. It’s also one of the longer levels, although I played it a bit slow.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 3 Asterix no damage Balneor 2024-12-18 | I barely remembered this level being a thing.It’s time I touch on what the playable character’s movesets are.Yo got land punches and air punches.Land punches are simple punches. Depending on how close you are to the enemy or structure, you do more damage and enemy recoil. More exactly, your character does either a light, medium, or heavy punch animation. It also applies different levels of recoil to enemies (sometimes leading to enemies being knocked and stunned to the ground). As you can see, you aren’t truly in control of your punches. The game decides that for you, probably to make up for the fact that each land punch animation are mostly of the same length, so there would be no reason not to do heavy ones all the time. This punch sorting system is overall fine, but it’s not infallible or devoid of bugs. Against static objects while standing still, the game can sometimes make you do different punches. There are no combos you can pull off, much like you cannot buffer punches. You also cannot move during a land punch until it’s over.Air punches happen when you press attack while in the air. Your character gets in an air punch state that only stops once you land. In this state the character deal as much damage as the heavy punch, unconditionally to distance, in both the left and right directions with decent range. Though you can only hit a target once per air punch. You can move during the entirety of the punch.Air punches are pretty good in this game.Obelix is much of the same.Much like other enemies, crocodiles can counter air punches by hitting you through them. Land punches are usually the way to go for them. At least they die in one hit no matter what.The rest of the enemies in this stage are definitely tougher than those in level 1, but they remain reasonable and fun to fight. The long rod men are the main threat as they attack fairly quickly and have a long range. But nothing problematic, especially if you know where the enemies spawn.The bushes (0:21) need to be destroyed to progress, and the enemies infinitely respawn if you don’t. Though you still need to kill the remaining ones after you’re done. They’re a bit convoluted.Once destroyed the bush drops a wooden club. This is the only equippable weapon in the game, although it shows up often. You equip it by simply touching it.Here though you can see me gracefully avoiding it like the plague, not without reason : it’s so shitty it might as well be planned sabotage.You hit slow, you do pebble damage, you do yawning knockback. Its only advantage is long range… except with air punches, where it gives you no range !Adding insult to injury, it has a big hitbox and is very easy to pick up by accident. And even more egregiously so around those bushes. The club will spawn as soon as the bush is destroyed, and will auto-give it you if you’re vertically aligned. The only way to avoid it doing that is to hit the bush from as far back as you can. It will spawn, but its pick-up hitbox will shrink back to normal after that.You instantly lose it upon hit. It’s too bad I can’t afford to do that for this challenge… so instead you have to waste your time using it in the wind until it goes out. Because it doesn’t have a timer.Still, I probably went overboard with my efforts to avoid it, and probably added more risk to myself for the fun of it.The pickaxe guys coming to the left at 0:48 behave in a weird way. Instead of coming to you they just waddle around the edge of the screen. It makes them difficult to take out safely. The slope ground doesn’t help.Autoscrollers like the one at 2:35 in this game are static, the enemies spawn in the same way everytime. That means you can memo the way through.And thank god for that. If they were randomized, then this stage would be the hardest one of them all without question. Indeed, this autoscroller is a nightmare on a casual/blind play, and you are guaranteed to lose a life, perhaps two. Multiple things are at play here : - It’s the longest autoscroller, there are lots of enemies.- You can only move slowly.- Movement is extra weird because of this “slope” like river you are surfing on.- The camera is bad and you can’t see in front of you. This is a big problem, especially with crocodiles who are barely visible yet can jump at you instantly.- You are armed with the infamous wooden club from earlier. It’s almost impossible to hit anything with, as the timing is both odd and precise. You’re way more prone to getting hit. Not to mention you have no hitting priority against things coming towards you. If you attack something that also is currently attacking, you’ll still get hit.Just memo it. It’s not like you gain anything for killing enemies there, it’s a pure survival section.The rest of the stage has nothing relevant to say so I’ll cut it there.Despite being the shortest level, it’s definitely a step up from level 1 because of the autoscroller and the overall harder enemies.
Asterix and Cleopatra level 1 Asterix no damage Balneor 2024-12-18 | Be sure to check the playlist. Link is too long. 50004life“Asterix & Obelix: Bash Them All!” is a GBA game I had in my childhood. I remember having a pretty good time with it, to the point of remembering distinct IRL memories.It’s a single cartridge that houses two separate and original Asterix games.The second one, simply titled “Asterix and Obelix”, is apparently the most popular one according to its speedrun page. Yet it’s the one I liked the least. I don’t remember it being fun to me, it felt more punishing and grindy than fun. Not to mention I was completely stuck at a certain level, that I could never figure out how to get past.I should still check it out at some point.But what I was looking forward the most out of this game was definitely its first side (that I thought for the second time was the second, until I verified it for this description), “Asterix and Cleopatra”. It’s a simple beat-em-up with 6 levels and mini-games interlaced along the mix. One thing I was surprised to see before playing was that there’s actually barely any coverage on the internet about this game.I’ll try my best to speak about Asterix related things using the proper English localization, even though I know nothing about it. Like what the hell is a Getafix and a Dogmatix.Anyways so I replayed the game. I’ll cut short on my reasons for playing it in the first place cause it ended up not being relevant to say. Took only two attempts to get through it, unsurprisingly.And, fitting to my recollection, the game overall was fairly neat.But the more I played it, the more I was confounded about certain things.Along this series of videos where I no damage clear each individual stage, sorted from easiest to hardest, I shall expose them.Level 1 :I remember this level the most, but that’s probably because it’s the opening one. Sick background.The game takes about an hour to complete if you don't idle. Level length is variable, this one is about average.You can play between Asterix and Obelix. Despite Asterix being selected by default as you enter this menu, he’s the worst character for survival, by a wide margin.That was a big surprise for me to learn, as I always thought they were mere copies. I always mained Asterix, because… why take Obelix, the obviously slower and bulkier Gaul-looking choice ? (even though canon wise he’s supposed to be able to wipe out everything in one hit)This level is the easiest one by far. The hard bits are honestly not even combat related. Mostly remembering where the rolling barrels hazard spawn so you don’t forget about them and lose the run. The bridge section at 5:29, as the jumping mechanic coupled with dodging the wonky hitboxes of these barrels make for a pretty awkward segment to play. Oh and those yellow-beard enemies have kind of weird erratic movement that can confuse you sometimes.Much like the beat-em-up genre as a whole I suppose, the game is mainly about advancing forward, then taking a halt to bash up hords of enemies. Although some sections will ask that you break a certain obstacle in order to advance. Like the box at 1:11, even if it doesn’t look like that’s the way forward.Speaking of boxes. The game has various things you can destroy or hit for either food or extra lives (or nothing). Sometimes these structures can be less obvious to spot.For some reason though, the boxes in this level respawn as you get back and forth the ships. I get the design reason for it, it’s the tutorial level. But it’s still funny to point out.And as it turns out, barrels are destructible objects as well, that can hold items. But they’re a pain to destroy, as their hitbox sort of blends with their damage one. You need to pull a punch quite close to them (air punches don’t work) and they knock you hard. It’s a lot easier on the minigame version of this.Every level has one special enemy based on a sprite color swap of one normal enemy. They die in one hit and try to run away from you. Getting just one of them unlocks the bonus level after you beat the main one. They are self explanatory and not super interesting, so I won’t show them here. You can look them up.They can drop health sometimes.The three small boxes at 3:16 can be picked up and thrown. It’s the only level throwable objects are available in the whole game !The progression may sometimes mislead the player. During the final part, you can keep punching the mast, but it’s 90% useless. Except for the last go, you only have to do two quickly-timed punches for the captain to lose grip, beat the spawning enemies, and repeat.That’s it for level 1.For what the game is, it has decent music. I’m a bit worn out on this one though.You might ask why I’m playing the game on 50 Hz. Well, I didn’t even know there was a 60 Hz version... and the higher pitched sounds feel completely off to me so I’m definitely not playing it ! You can argue the game was designed for Europeans anyways (someone please don’t prove me wrong)
Nahatomb phase two audio quality decrease glitch Balneor 2024-10-23 | I just pressed pause randomly. And when I unpaused, the audio quality decreased. This is the Namcollection version.I tried it on USA for a bit and couldn't get it. Doesn't mean much so long as we don't know how to get it at all, but...
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 35:40 [PB/Current World Record] Balneor 2024-10-23 | Run begins at 2:34 and ends at 38:15.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2276937194This run beats the previous any% world record held by me, a 36:04, a 24 second improvement. Played on the 8th of october.What the actual fuck.This is it : my any% retirement. Even if new tricks are found, I don’t think I’ll continue. This shall stand as my legacy run. The spiritual successor of my 39:48.This run is almost completely cracked. It was my best attempt in the whole grind… and it converted.On the menu : perfect Ghadius, good 3-1 including the switch snipe skip, perfect 6-2, perfect 5-2, perfect Gelg Bolm and Nahatomb I, good Pamela. *And* the bonus inclusion of the 1-2 end plane skip (which is a very recent trick add, and the first instance of it being pulled off in a top level run - this is also why this is an all-green splits run except for 1-1). And overall decent clips. That's right, I did not get the third hardest trick in the run, the 4-1 end room skip that’s basically 1/3 RNG. Along with that sorrow, the run also had slight sloppy moments that costed me a couple seconds in various places.But despite the cost of these, and some other small hiccups, the movement quality of the run was still overall above average for me, and I still saved more time than I was expecting.It’s clearly not perfect, but it’s still convincingly my best speedrun ever, with a level of execution that completely overcomes everything I've ever done in that category. I will remember this run, the stream, and you guys very fondly for it.And now, about the future of the category…If one were to : clean the sloppiness / get all the tricks first try (including the 1-2 plane jump and 3-2 switch snipe) / have good bosses (possibly faster kills than what I have for Joka, Ghadius and Naha I and III) / have great clip execution = = I think 44 would happen.Needless to say, I don’t think that’s a realistic time for any of us currently. The degree of perfection is a couple realms higher than my run, and even still so if I had indeed gotten the 4-1 skip.Going deeper now is becoming exponentially demanding now, and it's abundantly clear that faster runs will only become as such by small increments.Yes, any% has officially entered its optimized chapter. Is this one of my best overall accomplishments ? Definitely.From the moment I got back to it in July to today, it took me 58 full run attempts across 3 months, or roughly 35 hours to accomplish this.Part of me wants to continue, to see and experience the thrills of an even more perfect run, on the most prestigious category.After all, I think I can do a mid 45, even if it would require some serious time, courage and determination to get.But I took my decision. It's sad to let go like that, to give up this trick proficiency that likely won't be used or seen again. But I'm looking at long term prospects, and it's not my first time making such a difficult choice. Don't worry about me.And to seal the deal, I will take a vacation from speedrunning for a while. Once I come back however, I should be returning back to no skips, where I hope to achieve my own 46.Thank you for anyone's encouragements throughout the months. You know who you are.The fate of any% is now upon your hands.
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 36:04 [Obsolete/Former WR] Balneor 2024-10-15 | Run begins at 2:20 and ends at 38:28.VOD : No vods ! Played offline !This run beats the previous any% world record held by me, a 36:13, a 9 second improvement.It took me 22 full-game runs to get a new PB, my biggest attempt count by far. I felt I had spent a considerable amount of time and effort into this, but after seeing this number, it doesn't seem that much large.Well, I've only realistically been able to play on the weekends, and I would sometimes not even get the opportunity of playing at all. So even though it's nearly been two months now, I didn't get to play how I wanted.In fact, I hadn't played in three weeks before this point. I wasn't out of shape, but I wasn't really at peak form either.And with the runs not having been as great as of late (besides a couple interesting attempts), I made the difficult decision of beginning a new grind cycle.I took on the persona of my 3 month past self, an invigorated veteran player with boundless confidence and pride, about to kick this bloody campaign that is any% for the first time in 6 years.My pseudo goal time to beat was my 39:48 (so before I uploaded my 38:44. I also technically had already beaten this time in 2023 with a 39:05, but it was in preparation for the first edition of the MMR and I had no plans to continue). I used fresh splits for the occasion.I was using this ruse as pretext to derusting while keeping it fun and light-hearted. And, being worried of wasting people's time by streaming under - what I presumed to be in - a weakened playing form, I chose to do runs off-stream....I'll be cutting right to the end of this long story (including not speaking about a WR choked on Nahatomb - which was the run to beat on these splits - and about my new controller, as the previous one broke - leading me with this time and the Nahatomb choke run) :I missed 35 by 4 seconds. I'm a bit disappointed, I honestly thought I had it, with so many things going well in this run (3-1 switch trick, 4-1 end room skip), and all of the big time-losses of the previous PB being cleaned (Clean Gelg Bolm, perfect 6-2,-14s Naha I).But as it goes in speedrunning, perfection only rarely happens. I did create new mistakes. This time, they are fairly simple : only getting a fast Ghadius, and losing significant time on 5-2 by failing to bring an enemy for the wall-clip at the beginning.And the run had some sloppy parts as well (especially in 3-2 with that switch snipe - I will never go for two attempts at it from now on), all amounting to this time. Clips can be better.I might still remain by this persona for a little while, as precaution for if those were freak attempts. But also as I believe it can help with pressure. And I do find it fun to poke around with, so bear with me for a second. But this time I'll return to streaming.In more than one way, I'm glad this run did not accomplish my goal.I'm not to the point where I can say this is overdue, but I'm not gonna lie, I was expecting it to happen a bit earlier. Hopefully the next one is it.
Pamela 4-hit combo Balneor 2024-09-09 | Check out part 1 : youtube.com/watch?v=XYnyQnp-HHs Part 2 : the Pamela vaporization processFrom an obscure funny glitch to this… how did we get here...So, while I was continuing to research the glitch and preparing the video (or what ended up being the first part), I played around the double Seadoph hit some more... and as I was having fun playing with it, without any goal or idea in mind, that’s where I saw it.A third hit, spawning out of absolutely nowhere. I wasn’t recording when it happened, god knows why. All I could do was relying on my faulty recollection ability. Using it, I tried reproducing it again, but simply couldn’t. I was brute forcing the inputs really hard in the first place, so there was little to no luck I was gonna figure out what does what (That and it caused uncomfortable stress to my fingers).Though not without bringing it up to the community, I decided to leave the matter be for a while, so I could focus on the making of the video. And initially, the second part was gonna be about me showing the triple hit, assuming I could get it again.As I kept doing unrelated stuff for said video though, the mythical third hit just materialized in front of me, in a seemingly completely unrelated situation. This time, my OBS captured it. “Cool, I got rid of that itch out of my back now.”And then I gasped, in awe, as I witnessed live what you’re about to see. Sadly, tragically, even something as legendary as this won’t be able to make it into the TAS. It’s still too slow. Well, yet, hopefully. This was my only fight recording attempt.I know my boss RNG in the set up phase was slow, but I don’t think you can save enough time there. Likewise, maybe it’s possible to initiate the Seadoph hit combo earlier. That bit appears to me like it goes against my own knowledge. But clearly, these glitches and everything surrounding them are complex enough that they cannot be fully grasped by one person. From that, may a faster strat be found that is faster than the TAS.It’s technically at equal speed, or faster than the fastest full-run pamela strat, the “4 dash Pamela”. Sure, that approach finishes the fight in 35 seconds, two less than this brand new approach. But the counter to that is that Pamela actually returns to the center way more quickly with this 4-hit combo approach.Most important however, are the retroachievements ILs… there, the gate are blown wide open.This fight is much more reliable to execute than the double hit fight I proposed in my previous video. There’s almost no RNG needed, and the execution is finicky, but it isn’t as bad as it looks.The hardest part is definitely for when you’re about to wake up both Seadophs off their inflated state.From there, you need to grab the first jumping *as early as possible*, then immediately throw it at Pamela. If you’re too slow, the game won’t register a hit. You basically need to hit Pamela before the second Seadoph jumps out.Then, you grab the second Seadoph once it finally decides to jump up as well… but not too soon ! You need to delay the grab a little bit. If you grab it too quickly, the boss won’t receive damage, whereas if you delay it, the “remote hit” will happen.From there, you do double-jumps until Pamela vaporizes. (I stopped trying to understand why)The combo hits that you get by repeatedly grabbing the enemy are lenient and not a problem.You can’t do it infinitely, I think it doesn’t allow any more hits once the then-knocked Pamela is about to return to the center with Seadoph. But it should give you *just* enough hits for this, assuming you grabbed the second jumping Seadoph correctly.And this was performed on USA. Remember when I explained how JPN had the advantage of being able to instantly turn a grabbed Seadoph into a hovering inflated version at will ? Well, you can still do this strat even with the USA handicap of having to double-jump by grabbing the other Seadoph.(I haven’t tested it yet, but it’s likely that every version outside JPN behaves this way.)Really, the only annoying part is having to trigger the Seadoph grabbing glitch. Which, if you aren’t using save-states, can be extremely painful.You’ll notice that I started with no health. That is simply so I could die as soon as possible after getting the glitch. You probably can get yourself to low health like that without losing time.There’s technically a faster death animation if I go in the water (assuming you lose your last HP by an enemy, *then* fall down). But the time it takes you to land in such a position after getting the full Seadoph grab glitch, even with the earliest Seadoph arena, might make it naught.Yea. I think I’m done here. Damage done.
Seadoph grabbing glitch / double Seadoph glitch Balneor 2024-09-09 | Read pastebin for description : pastebin.com/cKACQA2zIt's long. Really long. Enough characters to fill in 4 youtube descriptions... but that's this glitch for you.Part one of two.
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 36:13 [Obsolete/Former WR] Balneor 2024-08-18 | Run begins at 2:38 and ends at 38:47.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2227362723This run beats the previous any% world record held by me, a 36:26, a 13 second improvement.This run is officially goat any% material. It's my best speedrun ever currently, though I know I can still go beyond it. in fact, this streaming session was probably my best one ever. It probably was the best Klonoa dtp any% session ever... and the best Klonoa dtp session period, honestly. youtube.com/watch?v=S4dFee-ZfqAIn the current top level meta, there are three legendary tricks. Their difficulty are comparable to one another, and beyond anything else in the run (using my, or most people's strats). These are, in descending order : - Perfect ghadius : you get 4 hits in during one cycle of phase one, and then take him down using all 6 moos in the second phase, preferably quickly. Extremely RNG heavy, tense execution, painfully easy to choke.- 4-1 end room skip on the left side (any method).- 3-1 switch trick.Ever since my unretirement, I only ever managed to get only one of these tricks per run, usually the last one. And I've done a lot of runs.Today. I did ALL THREE. No. I did ALL THREE, TWO RUNS IN A ROW.So either this was the craziest fluke of my entire Klonoa career, or I've just reached another level.And of course, in this run, the vast majority of it was perfect. There are only three mistakes. Namely, a -7s Naha I strat compared to my previous PB's -14s.Two tries ultimate 6-2 skip.And... this Gelg Bolm last hit fail, which wasn't a motor skill failure. I found the placement of both the boss and the enemy to be in unusual spots, and it messed with my timing.So, and as you can see by this beautiful green splits run, I lost about ~~43 seconds overall. Such that technically, 35:3X is possible.Now, about what's next. I have to be smart about running the game and reaching my goal. I can't just hope that things will continue to improve and I'm gonna keep one-upping myself every single time, a pattern I've been noticing now (where are my old 37 days ? My last 9 runs had six 36s in them). Clearly, luck has had a huge biast on my side. And by virtue of the etherial laws of probabilities, it will be forced to turn over extremely soon. I really can't expect myself to achieve this level of performance consistently.Thus, I have to humble myself, and go one step back. Because I think it will do me no psychological good to attempt to beat this run directly with another one, I'm just gonna pretend it doesn't exist, and I'll instead run against my 36:26 again. If you remember, that time had none of these tricks, and yet, I was only less than 30 seconds away from the sub. I didn't save the splits for it, but I wouldn't be using them during the run anyways.At the end of the day, my bottom line has always been about having at least one run per streaming session that manages to get at least one of these critical tricks. I don't care what happens beyond that.Oh, and I STILL didn't feel pressure. Maybe just a little bit of after passing Ghadius, but nothing that would risk my play.Though you might remark my heavy breathing in places. Well, that was deliberate. Some attempts ago, I had a pretty good pace making it to Nahatomb. I wasn't feeling particularly stressed though the run was close to PB pace. But suddenly my back started to ache.It's a very rare sensation, and I don't know if it's just me, or if all speedrunners are experiencing this to some degree. But much like nerves, it can disturb your composure and make you lose focus, though in an overall shorter timespan.I thought that breathing in and out at regular intervals during a confirmed good run would make it less likely to happen later on (on top of being calming to some degree I guess), but I'm just doing whatever.Enough writing. We all had fun for a moment, but next PB will truly take time. No pressure. 36s are still worth a penny.
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 36:26 [Obsolete/Former WR] Balneor 2024-08-18 | Run begins at 0:43 and ends at 37:09.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2225864939This time beats the previous any% world record held by me, a 36:41, a 15 second improvement.Don't have the best recollection over this run unfortunately, though for good reasons. I just know that it's the best run of the category I've done yet. Yet.Not a lot of things are perfect/maxed out with my strats, but I did many things great. The main thing to take away from this run is that I didn't get either the 3-1 switch trick or 4-1 end room left skip. And yet I still got this time.Still didn't feel much pressure. Though that Nahatomb I clutch was tense.
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 36:41 [Obsolete/Former WR] Balneor 2024-08-10 | Run begins at 2:19 and ends at 39:00.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2220621151This time beats the previous any% world record held by amoser, a 36:49, a 8 second improvement. It also beats my previous time by 38 seconds.I kinda don't believe this run exists tbh. I wanted to believe something was wrong again, maybe I had missed the beginning split or something. But retiming the run still resulted in this time.Earlier in the stream I was struggling and failing at making mediocre runs still be 37s before starting this one. After getting the 37:19 I proceeded to do 8 full-runs that didn't deliver a PB. Which in my history, is the largest amount of runs it took me before accomplishing so.And I wasn't expecting getting anything like this... at no point in this run did I think it was gonna PB by that much, let alone PBing at all. Well, about that. Because the run did start great. Rongo Lango and Pamela weren't perfect, but I probably got my best 3-1 ever, including the switch trick.But I thought I spilled some of that time-save with this really stupendous decision at the start of 3-2 (also why does this word mean the exact opposite of how it appears to be written like;;). It's like, you got a great stage, but suddenly it's not so savory anymore.Perfect Gelg Bolm was expected, and then the 4-1 w-c where I lost 40 seconds. I managed to retrieve most of them back. I then failed the end room skip on the left side (the usual for me)... and then I tripped and failed it again on the right side !By this point I though the run was fast enough to get 37. Not PB or if so by a measly margin, but enough to make a decent time. The run was uneventful until 5-2 which I perfected. Joka was alright. And then 6-1 was also basically perfect, which is hard ! I did fail 6-2 once though. Even though in retrospect things really imply the contrary, I thought I lost my chance at PBing there. And I thought I made that loud and clear to me by failing Ghadius completely... making a calculation mistake.In the end, I got the luck in Naha I and nailed the -14s strat, and III had good RNG for once.(I stopped going for Naha II TAS strat in order to make things less difficult). It probably was my best Nahatomb, and it won't be easy to match again.And yet, my sorry ass didn't think it was gonna PBThis unusual belief may be explained by the fact that I tend to misjudge the cost of my mistakes to be higher than what they are. But another major fact to consider is my deliberate disregard of the splits. As you know, I prefer "sensing" the pace rather than looking at concrete metrics, mostly because it's fun but not only. I'm not gonna go over it again, but clearly, both of these element play a huge role in making me feel completely oblivious to this time. About the splits being imperfect... yea, I think I've come to the conclusion that I have some sort of lack of attention when it comes to these... its genuinely harder for me to flawlessly activate all of the splits in a run than to complete a 37 min run.Not to say I've had to reset my splits 4 or 5 times ever since returning to this, as every single time, inaccurate numbers would surface or I would accidentally save splits that have impossible golds. I often wonder why I even bother with them, but I obviously know better.I'm still gonna let you guys confirm if this is indeed accurate or not. My mind refuses to acknowledge this run until it's verified (or else).Though even if it is real, I'm still gonna continue running. I want to score more 36s and get better runs. There's clearly still room for improvement, especially for me. I think in the long term, 35 is possible, but it would be extremely difficult, lucky, and ask for a lot of perfection.
Nahatomb phase one glitch continuation Balneor 2024-08-09 | I show the exact same glitch behavior as the previous video (youtube.com/watch?v=rKWRUXtz-1Q) but this time with another attack, the enemy spawning one.I included the moment before I paused as it may or may not have implications on this behavior.A theory I have is that I may have paused the game right as Nahatomb was about to do the spawn enemy animation. And for some reason, this would have the effect of advancing the animation further than normal, once the animation gets played again.If this theory is true, then these early moves may not mean much of anything in real speedruns (?). But they would drastically change how ILs are being played like.I've played the fight more than a hundred times, and yet have only gotten this twice ever.
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 37:19 [Obsolete] Balneor 2024-07-28 | Run begins at 2:19 and ends at 39:38.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2209627774Nice improvement. This run is I think alright. Not "good" level yet. Good is when I go :0X or 36:5X.I updated my splits to reflect each individual phases of Nahatomb, as the -14s strat became usable and each phases all have become a lot more complex. I need to switch my split key though. Ol' space bar can't cut it anymore.I lost ~~40 seconds on that 4-1 w-c. .Roughly about 17 sec loss going for 3-1 switch and 4-1 perfect end. That and bosses have a bit more time to them.But I still had good 3-1 clips, perfect Gelg Bolm (streak of 2), good 5-2. ultimate 6-2 (streak of 5. Can't way to choke this endlessly in the future), fast ghadius (streak of 2). And then -14s Naha I (streak of 2 !) and TAS Naha II... why must my rational self say this is just an okay runSlowly bur surely.But on a more serious note... as fun as the funky DJ music glitching is to listen to... I have to make myself a new burn. It's a pretty old disk and its starting to be sketchy.I dunno when I'm gonna be able to run again. Hopefully the disk I produce won't have any of these issues, otherwise I might have to look into another method. Good thing there has been new ones recently.
Joka day phase behavior glitch Balneor 2024-07-28 | I might as well upload this Joka clip if I upload the Nahatomb one. Extremely short USA clip. After doing his hand gesture, he's supposed to idle for 1.5 seconds (youtu.be/SkUWLJSfU6E?t=1863). But he didn't, and I've never seen him not do it up to this point. I had retried this fight by way of death.Again, this has implications on the TAS. By making him start moving foward faster, we could save time by doing the crazy TAS fight skip slightly earlier. It's unclear though, as the enemy configuration needs to be correct, and here the enemies have 1,5 seconds less to load in than normal.
Nahatomb phase one glitch Balneor 2024-07-28 | So subtle you won't notice it.Hint : it's at 0:13.Okay, times up. So Nahatomb here initiates its fist shockwave move way earlier than normal. Usually, the camera pans up when he does it, but he stays immobile for ~1 second before actually stating to move. But here he nearly immediately pulls it off. Look at any of the fights here and see the difference : youtu.be/ZL3SzI39Zhg?t=13This has two implications : 1 - your -14s attempt dies if you get this in any circumstance. But you shouldn't be worrying too much, I only got it once over many dozen fight resets (does this specific fact matter, I don't know).2 - if we could get this early attack to happen wherever we wanted, we could potentially use it to change the fight strategy. Is a -22s strat possible ? We need to figure out how it works first. And this was on Namcollection. Does it matter ? Version difference ?
(OBSOLETE) Nahatomb phase one -14s strat routing for greatly reduced luck dependance Balneor 2024-07-27 | Disregard the glitchy beginning.Uses save-states.Lone enemy/Moo : dark Moo that doesn’t spawn with armor.Clockwise/counterclockwise : direction in which the set of three armored death Moos run.I think I found a better way to coin terms for strats of this boss :- Traditional strat without the coinflip : “+0s” (“-0s”)2 ground smashes (7s*2), tongue (~~14s)- Traditional strat with the coinflip : “-7s”1 ground smash (7s), tongue (~~14s)- Previous fast strat : “-14s”2 ground smashes (7s*2),- Current fastest strat : “-21s”1 ground smash (7s)So, continuing the previous video now. I didn’t mean to, but as I was practing it still, my mind wandered off looking for positions and movement where this -14s strat could become less luck dependent. As remember, the only asymmetrical thing about this fight, is the fist position.To be fair, I only really tried the position I showed in the video. I tried the Queen cannon and then the Seadoph one, but I didn’t get very convincing results.With the Granny one though, I was quite surprised, as I quickly made the strat possible in 3 enemy layout situations. The fourth one came up a while later.I haven’t tried Balue and Moire, so clearly, there’s more to be explored.All you need to do is hold left after skipping the cutscene, and the enemies will spawn exactly at the middle of the Granny platform. Once you reach it, you have to pause right after the enemies spawn. It costs 0.5 seconds, but you can guarantee going both left and right.Now for each outcome :- Left lone enemy spawn anticlockwise direction (aka health side fight) : the beginning of this one is actually lenient. You don’t have to grab the lone enemy as fast as possible because you have to wait. Stand around the Balue cannon grounds, and start moving right as soon as Nahatomb begins rotating towards you (here I do it slightly earlier but I still go it). Fill Moire’s, and prepare for Balue’s side. I made it look harder than it can be by taking that hit.- Right lone enemy spawn clockwise direction (aka fist side fight) : first discovered approach of this strat. Once you grab the lone Moo, go left towards Seadoph’s cannon to fill it. Then prepare for the Queen side.- Right lone enemy spawn anticlockwise direction (aka fist side flee) : keep going right, and fill Moire’s cannon. Then go left to prepare for Balue’s side.- Left lone enemy spawn clockwise direction (aka health side flee) : this is the worst outcome and it’s almost impossible to fill two cannons and get rid of the enemies before Nahatomb responds in a slow way. Instead, you want to only fill one cannon, and get rid of both normally.After it, you need to stand at the Queen ground, and pray that no matter where the lone Moo spawns, the armored enemies don’t go left. Otherwise they just don’t fit nice at all and you can’t fill in the cannons quickly.But even if they do line in to the cannons correctly, you may still get in trouble. For some reason, in this specific fight point, even if all the cannons are filled, Nahatomb may still do a slow move. You need to be much faster than usual to be able to skip that attack.Because you still need a coin flip, and because it’s overall slower (read below), this outcome is the least desirable.Once you’re past the hard rush execution part, and the boss respawns enemies, you need to position yourself correctly for the next bit. I position myself between the empty cannons but from the other side (like a capital letter Y).You don’t care where the lone Moo spawns, because you’re going to be waiting through the fist shockwave move anyways.But you’ll need to fill the cannons wisely relative to the direction of the shield enemies. See visual helping guide : imgur.com/a/VC3WIK4 This strat video isn’t perfect. In the nothing side fight clip, on top of not filling the last cannon quickly at the end, I wasted time by not going in front of Nahatomb. This resulted in the boss turning, which is roughly 2 seconds slower. Don’t forget.On the other hand, you are guaranteed to lose those two seconds in the health side flee strat. You simply don’t have enough time to face Nahatomb before he decides to turn.And finally, there’s yet another step that could be gone where some extra consistency could be squeezed out of -14s.Instead of exclusively trying to fill two cannons and get rid of the third enemy - which is the approach I’ve used here -, only filling one cannon and getting rid of both enemies could allow for more fight paths (as seen in the nothing side flee clip). They are left to be explored with the three other paths (beginning the fight at the Granny grounds), and maybe some of them can lead to luck-free fights with easier execution.Actually pulling through with this sounds you’d need to memorize a whole tree diagram to ensure the appropriate movement depending on the cenario. But I’m not personally gonna go this extra step. I want to see how viable this is in runs now. And I want a break.
Nahatomb first phase new strat + ultimate strat comparison video Balneor 2024-07-27 | New Nahatomb phase 1 strat, new strat compilation. A direct continuation to the previous video : www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQH2K7nFKJcThis uses save-states.In the previous description, I mentioned how I thought it was impossible to fill all three cannons using armored-less enemies, before Nahatomb initiates his tongue attack.Well, I just wanted to practice the - then - fastest strat again given amoser started using it in bad shaped runs… and did exactly that. Pretty quickly. Almost without realizing it too.So, disregard the term I used to describe it, I think it’s bad. These strats should have better names really.Traditional for the conventional top level strat, NTA (no-tongue-attack) for the previous fastest strat, TS (tongue-skip) for this new one ???As explained, you try and use all three enemies to fill cannons before Nahatomb does an attack, skipping it.This strat is both a lot harder and more luck reliant than the one before it. You need : - The lone death Moo to spawn to the right (1/2)- The three armored death moo to go in your direction (1/2)- The first armored death moo to break from Nahatom’s fist shockwave, near the close vicinity of the cannon- To grab it as soon as you can, then filling the cannon before immediately proceeding to the right. You’ll probably need to take an intentional hit because Nahatomb’s fist will be right in the middle. The fist can push you to the right if you touch it from the base which can be useful. But it can also break your enemy or block your cannon shot, This is the hardest execution part.- Ideally grab the following two enemies moving down the slope for extra speed and without jumping. It’s almost impossible without. Sadly, this attempt shows the bad example, as not only did I have to jump, twice, but I had to shoot backwards. Don’t get it wrong though, even with, it’s still extremely clutch, and you need to make your shots without losing any speed and on the absolute edges. It’s also incredibly to get hit while grabbing them.- The lone death Moo of the next spawn to appear to the right of you (1/2).Also, you’ll notice that I immediately started going left towards the adjacent cannon. I thought going there (as well as to the cannon after it, which is barely reachable on-time) would help with the positioning of the armored death moos, but I didn’t find my (admittedly limited) testing very conclusive.I also considered avoid having to shoot at granny’s cannon during the 3-o-fill (if you will). You see, the cannons each waggle vertically, but not at all at the same speed. Balue’s the slowest, then it’s Moire (he’s almost unnoticeably faster unless you wait a full minute), then Seadoph, Queen (same story, almost indistinguishable with Seadoph unless you wait a while)… and then there’s Granny, which is uncomparably faster… for whatever design reasons. Honestly, I thought Balue and Seadoph would be in the lead. Not some old lady...Anyways, because she moves up and down so fast, I thought she would be very annoying to hit, sometimes forcing a jump out of the player. In the end I’m also not too sure. It might be better to go towards the next cannon on the left at the start… but then it messes with the position of Nahatomb’s fist…Super brutal trick, even for ILs. It's still most likely technically easier than the TAS Joka final phase skip. But to use this in runs ? Ewww. Now I don't love this phase anymore.And if you're wondering why we need to have the enemy spawn to the right instead of the left... I haven't fully tested if a strat variant was possible on the left. It would be insanely useful because it would eliminate the first step (you can pause for half a second to know where the enemy goes). You have to consider that Nahatomb's fist position is asymetrical, potentially making this different, or naught.
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 37:40 [Obsolete] Balneor 2024-07-21 | Run begins at 0:34 and ends at 38:15.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2203717232The second and last practice run I did before the race runback (Where I got 38:18).Splits are messed up, don't look at them. I did something wrong and only realized after learning out in confusing that my presumed time was a """36:27""". I'm the kind of player who doesn't look at their splits and prefer sensing it on the fly.I also accidentally saved the splits afterward so I had to wipe out the entire data... or I don't know. I'm illiteratePerfect Pamela and Perfect Gelg Bolm, in other words a fine start. I also did unplug my headphone (for listening to the game) by accident out of Joka frustration, and I had to plug it back up in 6-1... which resulted in a silly time loss.I sadly again can't recall much about this run. Even though it's my PB. I was one hour away from the race and I had to eat in-between. My dumb self abruptly ended the youtube recording like that, but at least on Twitch I do have the rest of the talk where I find out the issue and calculate the final time.37 is good, but given that I reached it without too much pain, I think I'm gonna go for something 36 related. Which if you don't know has yet to be done. I don't care about the crown, I just wanna reach that floor for myself.And if both I and amoser were to reach it, then we could watch over the rest of the DtP civilisation as the gods of phantomile. Okay maybe not that deep. But we'd make toast and have a good time up 'ere
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 37:56 [Obsolete] Balneor 2024-07-21 | Run begins at 1:01 and ends at 38:58.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2203706191The first practice run I did before the race runback (Where I got 38:18).A lot of things have happened today, so even though this is my first 37, I have kind of lost track of the contents of this run. Sorry !
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 38:31 [Obsolete] Balneor 2024-07-20 | Run begins at 2:31 and ends at 41:02.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2202813818My run for the PlayStation Racing race ! (https:// therun.gg/races/ricky-weekly-18)Landed second, beaten by amoser by a dozen seconds. Good fun !Kind of the same thing as the previous PB but apparently I was faster by 13 seconds.I got first try ultimate 6-2, that's about the only good thing.Well, I thought my movement for Naha III was sick looking, even thought I got awful RNG. Rip Gelg Bolm, I had a pretty nice perfect fight streak until now. Also the fight on its own costed me 40 seconds, I didn't even anticipate it to be this bad.Awful 6-1, better but not fast Ghadius still in three runsIf Gelb Bolm was perfect, this would be 37
Klonoa : Door to Phantomile any% in 38:44 [Obsolete] Balneor 2024-07-20 | Run begins at 0:07 and ends at 38:52.VOD : twitch.tv/videos/2202440732at Evening practice for the PlayStation Racing weekly event this saturday, where Klonoa DtP has been selected to be run (https:// therun.gg/races/ricky-weekly-18).First 38 run ! This would be a very meaningful minute to reach... but I didn't feel anything after achieving it. I was honestly just baffled that it even beat my unsubmitted 39:05 which was a bad time, let alone be worthy of the sub.Outside of a perfect 5-2 (fastest cycle) and Naha II TAS cycle (an incredible time-save of two seconds over conventional strats), it's just mediocre. Slow and retry-heavy skips.37 should be very doable, and trust me I want to more but you know how it goes for me
My MMR 3rd edition participation : Klonoa LsV any% popkaless speedrun 1:44:31 Balneor 2024-06-15 | Team Is Pepsi Okay ?Was running against my PB of 1:43:23We won
My MMR 2nd edition participation : Klonoa DtP 100%NG+ speedrun 1:02:07 Balneor 2024-06-15 | Team Fire MarshallTime estimate was 1:07We got second to last place
My MMR 1st edition participation : Klonoa DtP any% speedrun 39:46 Balneor 2024-06-15 | Team Green SplitsTime estimate was 41We got last place
Klonoa DtP i-appli phone port demo lazy speedrun help footage for game leaderboard set up Balneor 2024-04-13 | Title. If you are expecting commentary, check the src forums or the # java channel in the server.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile 100%NG+ in 1:01:01 [PB/Former WR] Balneor 2024-03-09 | Start to finish : 0:55 - 1:01:57 / VOD : www.twitch.tv/videos/2085898078This time beats my previous time of 1:03:20 by 42 seconds. Was beaten by 30 seconds by NeilLegend's new time, 1:00:31, 2 months and 20 days later.Played the Namcollection version on PS2.My second valid speedrun. Also a much better run. No huge mistakes, and while the worst segment was by far the end of 6-2, it's bound to be imperfect on average so that's acceptable. Improvable bosses, still not a top notch early game but at least the run doesn't look horrible anymore. Only one minute left to save, which is definitely doable but nothing to underestimate either. I'm planning on running a little bit of this even after the MMR, at least if irl things are going my way.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile 100%NG+ in 1:02:38 [Obsolete/Former WR] Balneor 2024-03-02 | Start to finish : 0:33 - 1:03:12 / VOD : www.twitch.tv/videos/1972862595This time beats NeilLegend's time of 1:03:20 by 42 seconds. Was beaten by 97 seconds by my new time, 1:01:01, nine days later. Played the Namcollection version on PS2.Running this category in preparation of the upcoming Misfit Mascot Relay race occurring in two weeks from now. This was my first complete speedrun after two invalid attempts.A terrible run full of medium time-losses and careless mistakes. I tried and failed the Nahatomb phase II TAS cycle for fun because I was convinced my run wasn't even fast enough to beat my old 1:04:33 time anymore.I would ramble more but I have the commentary for that. Watch the following gameplay at your own discretion.Sub hour is very possible.
Its fine to play this, actually (see comment section) Balneor 2024-01-01 | This took 12 hours of real attempts, but that's not including practice. If we do, then it probably jumps up to 16 hours. I have a number of achievements that are around 13 hours long, and the only one I'm not entirely sure about the length of would be my first Golden Spiral trinket get. Back then, I wrote it to be about 13 hours too, but I do not know if it counts practice. If it didn't, then the overall count would probably be hours longer.But in the end, I'll never know. that's why I have no choice but to move forward and confirm that this is my current longest grind ever on a single checkpoint.I can also say officially that this was my worst grind ever. Even worse than my 333333 easy 100% deathless. The lowest point that I've ever reached in that one was an unreal amount of rage, and being completely terrified to play the final level of that custom level.But here, it's reached a level that I've simply never seen or experienced before in my entire life. Truly, my frustration reached such heights that I was inches away from actually accidentally breaking stuff in my room. My anger energy was through the roof. I was praying to the gods that they would give me some toy or something that I could throw around or smash with a hammer to calm myself with no remorse. It was seriously dangerous, and I believe that I have to be very careful about not picking the correct thing to play in the future.Truth is, it really was nowhere as bad at first. I started doing attempts for real around the 5th hour of play time on this save. Before that point, I didn't know how to do the downwards trip yet so I played carelessly. And, at around 6h30, I got my first final screen choke, which didn't bother me.For one, I felt I had achieved this result quickly and that my overall trajectory was good. Things were fun. I never felt any stress, and that would end up being true for the entire grind.Secondly, I didn't really deem this a menacing screen. I have no particular strat for it, I would just try to wing it everytime. And in downward practice, I was always able to get it under at most four tries (this would be very unlucky to have). So during actual runs I was naturally expecting to have high odds the next time I reached it. Or, taken at absolute worst, it would take me four attempts total to clear. Because there truly was no play difference between downwards practice and real attempts for me.So, I spent 6 additional hours to get 9 consecutive deaths on the room.This should never have been allowed to take more than three hours of my life of real attempts, instead it took double. This level is all I've done in the last two days in my free time. This truly is ADPLC : the sequel. My anger eventually turned into silence as these gradually happened, and as I observed my overall progression, which was nothing short of extraordinary. I was rolling on the floor out of laughter after the 8th one. At that moment, I reached this extremely rare mental state for challenges where shit's gotten so shockingly and inexcusably out of hand, that you just cheer for things to worsen and take even longer. I shouldn't have to say, this is my unluckiest grind ever.With that said, lets get to the stats. The stats I doubt I will ever have the words for :Top reach : 256 times / twelfth room death count : 36 / eleventh : 15 / tenth : 18 / ninth : 25 / eighth 12 / seventh : 4 / sixth : 6 / fifth : 8 / fourth : 8 / third : 7 / second : 4 / first : 9Everything after the ninth screen isn't supposed to be hard by the way. It was never anywhere this tanky in practice.I would just constantly get paces past the hardest stretch (room 12-9), and I would land just about anywhere, hit every spot. Just simply not the last screen. And I've reached the bottom multiple times with 10x less effort during downwards practice.I still can't get over it.I probably never will.SolarOddity, do not take any of the words in this description, or any of what I will now say personally. This is your level, your baby. It has all the rights to exist, and you can do all that you wish to do with it. If you think you can clear this, if you want to clear this, I will cheer for you until the very end.That's your level, your rules, your philosophy.You did what you sought out to do. This is beyond a shadow of a doubt the hardest DTTHW shaft in existence.But for anyone else out there reading this, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart : don't play this.There is nothing you could possibly gain over beating this, go play something actually fair and stimulating instead. Alternatively, wait for a potential nerfed/balanced version, if it comes.This is the worst thing I've ever played in my life, and I should never have allowed myself to play it. I got so carried away... I'm sorry, but out of spite I will not name this level. You can still find it here, but anything beyond that isn't my responsibility (thread was since deleted by maker on the 13th)
14166 done on Namcollection with a PS2 controller Balneor 2023-11-17 | I wanted to beat the old Japanese time of 1:42.03 but this time with equal playing field that keyboard wasn't allowing.I was expecting this challenge to be much harder on controller, but it only took like 5 hours of derust and attempts.Uploaded a month ago. Was unlisted because at first I didn't think it was that important to make public. Reverted that though cause after some consideration, I felt it was important to show such low times were perfectly possible on console. That, and beating this legendary time on equal grounds. 1:40 is 100% possible, 39 would be unreal tho
Pausing while entering loading-zones Balneor 2023-11-11 | New glitch I can’t believe I’ve never seen before. It’s so simple (read : frame-perfect) to do, and yet, this might be the first documentation of it ever.There are quite a lot of things to say about it, but there are also many unresolved questions I will leave to who is willing to take them down.So, this frame-perfect pause input works regardless of whether you’re walking towards the loading-zone or not (I find it much simpler to jump and land on it). It’s very similar to the pause glitch relative to mirrors in Maze of Memories : youtu.be/6uWlIGY6z_Q?t=1107Upon doing the pause input, you can see the loading-zone being triggered, though for a curious reason, the Klonoa silhouette animation that acts as a visual fade-down is completely paused. Sometimes, completely glitched even. The outcome of a given door seems consistent, but the results are between them different.And of course, what we’re here for, the pause menu is visible at the same time. Not just that, it’s fully operational despite what we’d expect. Although, when the loading-zone animation finishes, the game proceeds to load the next room, and by then we can understand that the pause menu is toggled off.What’s even more peculiar, is that if you have an enemy with you while performing this glitch, you lose it on the way back ? And some enemies… just never respawn back ???If you have a way to die, even if you’ve already activated a checkpoint after this point, you’ll still be fine. But you can just as easily softlock yourself sometimes.The one million dollar question everyone awaits an answer to now is, can we use this menu and potentially bring havoc to the game ? Well… you do have the time to select an option like retry / quit. However, the l-z animation is very short, and the game in general nearly instantly loads any room in the game. Despite selecting retry or quit, they don’t have enough time to actually initiate, and the game will force load you to the next room with no apparent change or impact of your action.To be exact, it’s possible to leave the pause menu *before* the game takes you. If you mash pause, or the “resume” option after doing the glitch, the game will resume as normal before it takes you to the next room. The proof of that is that if you had carried an enemy and did this, you won’t lose it.And… although you can’t fully use the aforementioned two options… if you’re super fast, you can mute the music with them. Which I think is a big first in this game. The music you are supposed to hear in the next room will be disabled until you lose a life, go to another room (pausing does nothing), and perhaps wait super long. Quite a shocking find.Anyways… I thought. If normal loading-zones don’t give us enough time to fully utilize the pause menu, are there perhaps special loading-zones in the game that would, somehow ? And the answer is yes ! In Joilant Fun Park and Underground Factory, you have these doors that once you trigger to open, remove control of Klonoa for two seconds while the door opens, and triggers a room transition. I think these are the only doors. And not to be mistaken with key doors, that don’t force you into a room transition (and for which don’t seem to have any special behavior if you pause while opening them ?).With this, we are fully able to use the pause menu. Alas... at first glance, even that doesn’t seem to lead to much. If you select retry / quit, and they initiate *before* you’re taken to the next room, then those options will play out perfectly fine. If they initiate *after* you’re transported, then they are simply bypassed, and the game resumes as normal.The only case I haven’t tested is when performing these actions coincide exactly with when the game loads the next room. I won’t test this outcome as it’s already annoying enough to do the glitch on these doors, you have to do a lot of stage treading before being able to retry again.All in all, there is probably a lot more to this glitch than what we currently know. And in general, the act of pausing at very awkward game moments has yet to be touched. Perhaps when emulation of this game will become good, and we save-states will prevail. Because even without TAS, it’s clear that this quality of life would lead itself to many breakthrough.For fun (read : pain), I managed to pull it off during a board stage. Based off what I can see, it doesn’t seem to behave different than in the standard stage. Then again, if it *has* differences, I won’t be the one uncovering them.Usually, in games, pause glitches like this one has a high risk of breaking the game. Unfortunately, so far this doesn’t seem true with this game.But on the other hand, it might be interesting to learn that this glitch is also possible on the remaster. As a matter of fact, it was discovered a couple months earlier : youtube.com/shorts/eslPvM3EgdsApparently, the effects are much buggier over there, sadly, no one has truly played around it yet.
Klonoa 2: Lunateas Veil any% popkaless in 1:43:23 Balneor 2023-11-09 | Run begins at 1:19. VOD : twitch.tv/videos/1972862595A nice improvement. Cleaned the stupid deaths, most stages, a tad less worse bosses, even topped my Ark Rev with faster engines. On the flipside, the game trolled me pretty hard at the end of Maze of Memories, and I lost a significant chunk of time in Kingdom of Sorrow in a puzzling fashion. Overall though, I reached my goal. I should be ready for when the relay race comes, if we somehow have a shortage of L'sV runners, which lol.Therefore, it would be a complete surprise to nobody to learn I'm now gonna return back to DtP any%.Oh, and sorry for terrible audio.
Klonoa 2: Lunateas Veil any% popkaless in 1:47:14 Balneor 2023-11-06 | Run begins at 6:08.Just like before, uploading this because it's my first speedrun ever of the game. VOD : twitch.tv/videos/1969814834This is to prepare for the MMR relay race, since I'm also a volunteer runner for this game. My submitted time estimate was 1:45 so needless to say, I had to work. After a week or so of practice, this was the result.This run has very good and very bad stuff. Most bosses were of the latter, some stages went horribly south, and I wasn't fully warmed up. But a lot of the game went as expected. Surprise getting all three engine skips, even if my execution was particularly slow with the latter ones.If you haven't noticed, this run blacks out very often, especially at the beginning of rooms, cutscenes... It's one of the notorious reasons why this game on PS2 hardware is a huge pain to speedrun on (I'm using a Retro Tink 2H Mini). You need even more specialized equipment to bypass these black screens, which I don't have... so instead, I learned to live with them. As it turns out, they don't matter too much for the vast majority of ther game, most they can do is make it hard to grab clocks. And for the few that are annoying, they merely force you to wait a little bit, without incidence in the routing of the room itself.On the other hand, and as illustrated in this run, it made things like getting through the save screen very slow. A black screen usually lasts 2 seconds, so multiplied by 20+ across the run, it makes for a significant time loss. I could probably learn to push buttons in the darkness, but it's something I'm not too confident upon.A lot of time to save, and it shouldn't be too had to reach the estimate, once I have a tighter grip on things.I'd probably do-uhh... let me rephrase it... I would *see* myself running this a couple more times in the following days. That would be closer to the truth.What else to say, oh yes, flawless splitting.
Title screen bug Balneor 2023-10-26 | This is a documentation video about a version difference that's mostly meant to serve as a source link for my online version difference document of the game. I would normally unlist it, since it's not big enough to be a video on its own.Only, I believe this is the very first glitch that's been found about the iconic title screen jingle. So even if it's fairly small, I thought it was relevant to show.0:28 if you're impatient.While the glitch itself is hilarious, its trigger is much more mysterious. i couldn't find what you're supposed to do exactly, but I believe this has some truth : - Have a save-file that has one save leading to 1-1(*), and enter it - Spam pause, skipping through the cutscene, and stop once the pause menu opens up(**)- If the vision music hasn't played, or only for a frame or two until you paused- Quit to the title screen and wait(*) I've tried doing this when loading the stage on the world map, or by quickly retrying the stage itself. But it doesn't work there. I haven't tried doing it after creating a new save-file. I didn't test many other stages with this, but I couldn't really seem to do it with 1-2, 2-1 and 6-1. Additionally, this only seems to work on Namcollection. I couldn't trigger it elsewhere.(**) You don't strictly need to instantly skip the opening cutscene at the very beginning. But you really want to not allow the music to play. I suspect directly retrying the stage doesn't work, because for some reason the music plays earlier than it does when you load it from a save location in a given save-file. You don't need to haste once you open pause.There's probably way more to it than what I show here. But at least we have this as a starting point.
Ghadius aerial corruption Balneor 2023-10-25 | Brand new corruption spot, first accidentally found by !nconsistent here : clips.twitch.tv/FuriousObservantFennelPRChase-eup40-Y7MHsakVJCSurprisingly, not only was it reproducible, it turned out to be the simplest corruption method the game currently have. It’s surprising it wasn’t found earlier, although its random steps have perhaps played a role in that. And it involves our good old King of Nightmares.Heading there, you want to deal four hits so it triggers the game to make a transition to phase 2 in the future. However, you want to enter an orb *before* it actually takes you there else it won’t work (in other words, Ghadius must not say whatever he says there youtu.be/W9WOYZsEB7g?t=9486). After that, you take the orb back to the inner ring. Doing this on its own won’t do it, but it will however induce a graphical bug at the top left edge. A one-frame long colored square. It was orange here but it can also be pink. The last step to the corruption is simply to hover upon being sent back in the arena. It doesn’t always work, but it’s quickly attempted over.Its effects aren’t the most random and volatile corruptions the game has seen. As far as I can tell, all it does is instantly turn the game all red. In various shades of red should I say. Can be a lot brighter than in this video, or with a faint purple gradient ?It’s hard to tell if it’s the hover that causes the corruption, or if it’s simply a matter of being high on the screen. If you don’t immediately hover after falling, it won’t happen.To be thorough with this information, you *can* press jump on a very specific frame (that isn’t always available) right before being warped back, and it’ll make Klonoa jump in the air. Still, you fall down faster than the corruption frame happens... unless you stop yourself by hovering.After the sudden transition of the game to hell, the game remains surprisingly very playable. No slowdowns, no audio bugs, crashes… even when entering the orbs… or retrying/quitting the stage. Doing these two last actions reveals the corruption carries over, in a diluted form.(if you're wondering, triggering this with the corruption already present doesn't seem to do anything special)Now for the question : why wasn’t it found any earlier ?For casual players, it would be very unusual to enter orbs. You tend to view them as dangerous things you want to avoid. Entering one, at such a specific time, and then hovering on the way back…Speedrunners are much closer to it than them. We enter the orbs to skip a long phase transition animation, right as the game wants to advance to phase 2. However, hovering is generally seen as a slow and hindering movement, especially for a moment like Ghadius where you always want to be on the move. Best they would get is the yet unnoticed square corruption. ...In the end, all we had to do is wait for the one to try it.To be fair, there probably were other runners who were in this exact situation, that simply didn’t get the corruption… and you know, it’s not possible on JPN and Namcollection.Overall, a very neat corruption. One so easy to do, and seemingly perfectly stable, that I’d wager you could get it in a run, and play the remaining minutes with it on for the funsies.I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t personally ban a run from using it. Shit's not even epileptic !I checked other places in the fight where this could happen, for instance phase 2 to 3. But couldn't find anything. Possible there's more to it though.
