Game Boy Weekly Contest Round 1: Super Mario Land

[Gloves | 11,762]

FYI the guys on 2-2 that pop their heads off, you can jump on the flying head, then onto the body for 900 points (100 + (400 x 2)), rather than the normal 400.

[guillavoie | 1,208]

@RedWow, that first week went quite well, lots of good scores posted. Nice job with the rules, that was a great idea.

Congrats to @0xDEAFC0DE for winning the first VGS Game Boy Weekly contest! All the players breaking 160k did awesome as well ( @koifish you got really close of a 170k score, and a win!).

[Link | 2,708]

3 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

With the final minutes ticking away here's my video. I'm interested if anyone had any strategies that I missed.

Great video man, thanks for sharing. You definitely hit some things I didn’t know about. I should have checked the player’s guide and seen some of it (more hidden blocks and power-ups), but I was lazy and never got around to it.

I don’t understand the superball trick. As seen on the second bug at 1:16, you can run into enemies for full points. (I don’t think you fired a shot, maybe you did, but I get 400 for those guys just by running into them.)

Here are some things I caught that I didn’t see you do~

In 1-2, at 2:05, you can chain the flies and get extra 200 points for the second one. At 2:12, you can jump from the 1st lift straight to the 3rd to save a few seconds. At 2:19, if you hit a block while the heart is on top of it, extra 100 points. You can get this either up top or below. 

1-3: 4:24: I find it quicker to break all the bottom bricks first, then hit the top ones. 

2-1: 5:46: I think it’s faster to grab those two coins by jumping on top of the pipe just before leaving the room. 

[acromite53 | 337]

Did anyone else have problems with this game crashing? On 3 separate occasions, the game froze on me. I'm using a GBA SP 101.

[koifish | 555]

I had one crash playing on a DMG. I had some weird events as well, like used coin blocks disappearing, or phasing through blocks. Once, while underground, I jumped into a wall, and I went through it, and began sliding through the blocks. I slid off-screen, and the game interpreted it as me going up the pipe, which was in a totally different location of the room. Also, I once ended up behind the 2-3 boss, so instead of being able to hit them, I was just stuck behind the wall that breaks away when the boss is defeated.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

20 hours ago, Gloves said:

FYI the guys on 2-2 that pop their heads off, you can jump on the flying head, then onto the body for 900 points (100 + (400 x 2)), rather than the normal 400.

I did know about this, but I never got good enough at it to risk doing it in a run (especially since so few of my runs made it to 2-2).

17 hours ago, Link said:

Great video man, thanks for sharing. You definitely hit some things I didn’t know about. I should have checked the player’s guide and seen some of it (more hidden blocks and power-ups), but I was lazy and never got around to it.

I don’t understand the superball trick. As seen on the second bug at 1:16, you can run into enemies for full points. (I don’t think you fired a shot, maybe you did, but I get 400 for those guys just by running into them.)

Here are some things I caught that I didn’t see you do~

In 1-2, at 2:05, you can chain the flies and get extra 200 points for the second one. At 2:12, you can jump from the 1st lift straight to the 3rd to save a few seconds. At 2:19, if you hit a block while the heart is on top of it, extra 100 points. You can get this either up top or below. 

1-3: 4:24: I find it quicker to break all the bottom bricks first, then hit the top ones. 

2-1: 5:46: I think it’s faster to grab those two coins by jumping on top of the pipe just before leaving the room. 

Yeah, I'm still not sure exactly how the super ball trick works. At 1:16, I did fire at the first bug but the effect lasts until the second. You definitely get 100 if you run through those guys without firing though.

1-2: I found out that you can chain those flies around an hour or two before the end of the competition, so too late to add in. I do normally skip the 2nd lift (actually I started skipping the 3rd towards the end), but for whatever reason I didn't do so in the TAS. I didn't know at all about hitting a block with the heart on top. I'm sure I've done it accidentally many times, but I never realized it was extra points.

1-3: I've never tried that, but I will say I was much faster at breaking the blocks on console than in this TAS.

2-1: I used to do that and still did when I would have to wait awhile before getting another super ball, but I have accidentally entered the pipe too many times. I figured it was worth the couple extra seconds to make sure I didn't leave two coins behind.

16 hours ago, acromite53 said:

Did anyone else have problems with this game crashing? On 3 separate occasions, the game froze on me. I'm using a GBA SP 101.

I had it happen twice to me with my GBA SP 101. Once doing a relaxed play-through to find more strategies, and another in a middling run, so not much lost. I assumed it was due to a bad cart connection, but maybe there's an actual bug we were encountering.

[acromite53 | 337]

11 minutes ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

.

I had it happen twice to me with my GBA SP 101. Once doing a relaxed play-through to find more strategies, and another in a middling run, so not much lost. I assumed it was due to a bad cart connection, but maybe there's an actual bug we were encountering.

I think it must have been a glitch. The game is pretty janky. This one froze when I ran through a bunch of enemies with a super star.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

6 minutes ago, acromite53 said:

I think it must have been a glitch. The game is pretty janky. This one froze when I ran through a bunch of enemies with a super star.

Probably. Mine also had the offset status bar when it froze both times. I don't remember doing anything that seemed like it may have caused the crash but who knows.

[Link | 2,708]

Never had a crash, but I had a strange glitch on 1-2 in one run. At the staircase (see 2:08 in the video), i forget exactly what happened, but there was something strange about the goombahs. They were in the blocks or something. Then when I reached the end of the stage, the bottom door wouldn’t activate.