Game Mechanics

Movement

With limited exceptions, you can only travel in four directions. Reversing direction is generally faster than turning ninety degrees because of how momentum works, so you should try to avoid turns when routing. When in midair, you may reverse direction immediately, but you cannot turn ninety degrees. If you try to turn and then jump while you still have full momentum (see “Diagonal Jumps"), you will jump in the direction you were originally traveling rather than the one you want to go. Because of this, if you need to jump after a turn, you need to allow yourself time to stop. This is another reason to keep unnecessary turns out of your route.

If you run into a corner while most of Whizz is in line with the open space next to the corner, the game will “push” Whizz around the corner. You will be halted on the frames where the game pushes you around, but you will resume movement when you are clear of the corner. You can use this to avoid having to make two turns to get around a corner. This also works in midair, so you can jump at a corner and land on a platform to the side of it (see how the lakes in 2-2 and 2-3 are traversed for examples of this).

Buffered Jumps

If you let go of the jump button while in midair, then hold it down again, you will jump as soon as you hit the ground. This can be used to climbs steps more efficiently, and also set up sequences of jumps to happen consistently.

Another use for this is jumping off of flags and other powerups. Normally, powerups disappear when you run into them; however, if you jump on the same frame that you land on a powerup, you can jump off of it and gain some extra height. Buffering the jump makes this easy and consistent.

Attacking

When playing on the normal and hard difficulties, spinning removes one point of health. If you try to spin while you are at 1 HP, the game enforces a spin cooldown of a couple seconds, so you have to be very careful about when you spin while low on health. The red-and-white enemies in each stage are immune to spin attacks; any enemies that are susceptible to attacks will die in one attack.

Enemies may drop red mushrooms, which heal you, or blue mushrooms, which hurt you. Red mushrooms will turn into blue mushrooms if you let them sit for a few seconds. If you really need health, you can get a guaranteed red mushroom by spinning while standing on one of the red buttons that sets off a rocket. This is good for one mushroom per button.

General Tricks and Glitches

Diagonal Jumps

The Whizz physics engine does strange things if you jump a few frames after turning ninety degrees, while your momentum is still shifting. Sometimes, you will sort of jump in the direction you intended to go, but with a little list in the direction you were originally traveling. Sometimes, you will do a very short jump that just barely turns you toward the new direction. Rarely, you will do a long diagonal jump that moves you a couple tiles in both directions.

It is not currently known how to manipulate diagonal jumps. The amount of delay between when you turn and when you jump does not seem to matter, other than that if you jump too early or too late, you will get a regular jump rather than a diagonal jump. The pixel on which Whizz is standing when he starts the jump may be a major contributor. In any case, because it is not known how to make them happen consistently, it is probably best to avoid trying to do diagonal jumps at all.

Door Geometry Abuse

Breakable and unlockable doors do not have invisible walls over them, even if they are next to parts of the level that do have invisible walls over them. You can jump over any door as long as there is a nearby enemy or object you can use to get enough height.

1-HP Bug

When playing on normal or hard, the game does not check which door breakers you have collected if you spin while at 1 HP. So, as long as you are at 1 HP, you can break open almost any door. Because of this, in many levels, it is much faster to spin a lot and intentionally take damage from enemies in order to get through doors than it is to collect the door breakers as intended.

The only known exception to this bug is the horizontal platform doors in some stages, like before the wall of platforms in 2-3. For those doors, you must upgrade to the third breaker level.

If you use your spin attack while at 1 HP and then collect a red mushroom, you may spin and exploit the 1 HP bug during the time when the spin cooldown would normally be in effect. This may be useful in some cases to kill an enemy and then break open a door without waiting for the cooldown, if the enemy happens to drop a red mushroom. If you wait longer than the cooldown period to spin again, the 1 HP bug will no longer work, at least until you get back down to 1 HP.

Continuous Spin

If you spin and then fall into a lake while still spinning, the game stops your spin animation, but forgets to reset your spin state. So, subsequently, you can attack enemies and break open doors simply by running into them. The effect ends if you use your spin attack manually.

You may still take damage when running into enemies, even if you kill them with the continuous spin attack, so this does not give you invincibility.

Balloon Animation Skip

If you die after crossing the goal, or if you die in such a way that your momentum carries you across the goal, the game will play the death animation and then take you to the end-of-level scoring screen. The death animation is much faster than the usual animation of running to the balloon and then flying off, so this can save a few seconds in levels where it is practical to cross the goal while poisoned or after time has run out.

The game still subtracts a life when you do this, so if you do have zero lives and you cross the goal somewhere other than 4-2, you will game over after the game computes your score.

Game Over Bug

Sometimes, after playing Whizz for a while, the game's logic for handling death starts overwriting things in memory that it shouldn't. This causes the game to break in several ways and eventually crash.

One effect of this bug is that the life counter updates incorrectly. For example, you may game over after a death despite not having previously died in the current run. Also, after continuing, the game may show that you have 0 lives, or 9 lives, or a number of lives represented by a glitched-out sprite. Once the bug triggers, you will usually game over after every death.

Another effect is that the camera can completely freeze. Sometimes, it will remain at the beginning for the entire level. It may also alternate between following Whizz and freezing up when Whizz kills an enemy, when Whizz collects a powerup, when Whizz takes damage, or at apparently arbitrary times. The behavior typically changes after each death. After several deaths, the game usually gets back to a state where the camera follows Whizz normally, though it may feel extra laggy. As with other camera breaks in this game, the gameplay is not affected apart from the fact that you can't see where you're going.

A third effect is that the background art and animations can get messed up. Some examples of this, depending on the level, include the animation stopping and the color palate changing.

Completing a level after this bug has triggered often crashes the game, at which point, the game is quite literally over.

It is not known what causes this to happen. It has so far only been seen when the game has been played without resetting for a long time. It is also not known how long, "a long time," needs to be for the bug to appear, but a fair estimate would be an hour. Because of this bug, it is recommended to reset between runs even though you can get back to the title screen from the ending.

Level-Specific Tricks and Glitches

1-2

Camera Break

This trick apparently underflows Whizz's position and breaks the camera for the rest of the level. It is not useful for speed.

To activate the break, get on the platform that moves in four directions, just before the brick door. When the platform moves over to the left or top side of the open space, walk a few pixels off of the platform, so that Whizz is on both the platform and the solid ground next to it. The platform will stop moving. Jump and try to move back in the direction of the platform at the same time (it is okay to move back a little after you jump). If you jump correctly, Whizz will appear to hit his head on an invisible wall and then fall through the gap between the solid floor and the platform.

Whizz will now be in a part of the level geometry where he is not supposed to be, and his position will be impossibly high/low. You can escape this area by running to the right if you activated the glitch on the left side of the open space, or up if you activated the glitch at the top. Whizz will fall back down onto the solid ground normally around the open space.

When this happens, the camera starts wrapping around the screen and loses track of where Whizz actually is in the level. Whizz will still be in bounds (once you fall back down onto ground, anyway) and can progress through the level normally, but the camera will not follow his actual position. Furthermore, all sprites (enemies, powerups, moving platforms, etc.) will be invisible. Also, springs will not be active, though this does not seem to make a difference in completing the stage.

1-3

Early Platform

TODO

Extra Fancy Balloon

TODO

This is easily the most important trick in the game even though it creates extra lag and costs time.

2-1

Camera Shift

TODO

Camera Break

TODO

2-2

Button Jump

TODO

Platform Skip

TODO

Super Sled

TODO

2-3

Early Platforms

TODO

4-2

Door Jump

TODO