This one's route was completely developed by stopstopp. It's funny what you can do with more speed than the game's creators intended. (When I got this it was first on the online scoreboard.) This seems to be getting close to the fastest this route can produce, but there may well be a more opportune place or way to jump. Also if you use this exact route, you must change the stick's direction quickly and accurately right when you land. As for the jump (or fall or whatever), the farther the ball goes horizontally during the fall the better chance it won't break, so you want as much speed as you can muster before jumping. This is one heck of a fun level, when the spontaneous destruction bug doesn't get me early on. I think I'd better thank Gorash for this one I think I did very much like he described in an earlier thread at SDA. If someone can pull off approximately this route on an attempt where they do receive extra speed, I could easily see them tying or probably beating the online scoreboard record of 5.1 seconds. In this run I did not pick up any extra speed at the start, something that happens occasionally in this level that I can't explain. Here are comments on possible improvements: The Up launch straight to the goal?! I honestly don't know if that was meant to happen :D ) But of course it's future runners' job to change this! (I believe the Glass shortcut probably was intended, by the way, as with the small shortcuts in Odd and Neon. For my tastes, this is alright with me :) I think it's fun to see how the game is meant to be played, at least some of the time. Dizzy is an enjoyable glitch-fest romp, and Cascade is also a bit of one, but thus far we have not turned any of the other levels into total glitch-fests. Since the programmers seem to have worked really hard to stop the player from skipping parts of courses that aren't intended to be skipped, I'd say any opportunity to do so is a glitch.
My goal is not world records or PSN bests though, it's to get the times as low as I personally can.
I have to be careful in my comments not to say I have any "world records", because even though I am first place on the PSN online scoreboards in some stages, I have to assume that over the years some people have done better than me at these stages on the PC version.
(The PS3 version also has a whole other mode that I have not speedrun.) I learned there is also an older version of the game for PC, with levels that the PS3 version does not have. I play the Playstation 3 version of Hamsterball, downloadable off PSN. This is used in Dizzy and Cascade, and if I had to guess I'd say that similar shortcuts exist undiscovered in at least one more stage. So the faster you're going when you fall, the better the chance you'll find a shortcut.
The distances are not consistent the hamster can fall farther safely from one place than he can from another.Īlso, in general, the farther the ball goes horizontally during a fall, the better the chance it'll get past the game's safeguards and not break. What I mean is that it seems the game's creators programmed exactly how far the ball can safely fall from each and every location. Hamsterball seems to be a very ambitiously-programmed game. Thousands of hamsters were killed in the making of this speedrun.