Disclaimer:

This walkthrough is aimed at people willing to accept the challenge to get to 1,500 points that will unlock a 100 points medal for the game Windowz 98 NetTowns Edition. If you are ready to curse a lot (worse than a Venetian), ragequit, and get frustrated but have the will strength to accept this challenge, then this walkthrough is for you....or at least it might help increase chance to reach the goal and curse less. I promised myself that I would do a walkthrough in case I got the achievement and finally today, after a week, I did it and so here is my personal guide on how to get the achievement 1500 POINTZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

I don't fully guarantee this guide will 100% help you in getting the achievement since the game is still pretty unbalanced in some elements even though it got better after I wrote my review on the game. Plus keep in mind that this guide might be updated since, according to developers, there are future updates that will add power-ups to the game. But in the meantime I want to share what I've noticed in this game after a "hellish" week of constant fails as I am not used to these kind of games (sorry GD but you are not my type :p), I am more a very slow player who prefers to explore things, discover secrets and unlock as many achievements as possible. Without any further ado here the guide.

AOL Jump: the basics

AOL Jump is a minigame that can be found in the aforementioned game, and it can be unlocked only after connecting to Internet (Internet Connection Wizard, it will then explode after connection has been made and AOL Instant Messenger will appear, click on it and the yellow man will run away and create the minigame). The goal is to collect as many coins as possible while avoiding enemies that can jeopardize your run if you hit them (you have to start over the minigame if you lose).

AOL Jump: enemies

There are four enemies to avoid like plague and these are:

Cacodemon, orange thing with a CD, the globe and the computer. You can notice the computer is surrounded by a red square. Well, that's approximately the dimension of the hitbox around it that I've noticed during my gameplay. All of them must be avoided, even the glob in case you have to jump to get a medal mid-air, but I've noticed that the computer is the most dangerous because it has a large hitbox that can kill your character even if he jumps relatively away from it.

pro-tip: make high jumps to avoid it as much as possible even if this means sacrificing some coins unless you mentally know where the hitbox is and you can manage it at a relatively close distance.

Little secret:

During my gameplays I've noticed a bug that can be exploited very well if you know it. This exploit usually happens when you start to gain velocity and is characteristics of Cacodemon. This exploit makes it the easiest enemy to deal with.

In this screenshot you can see the man jumping very close to the Cacodemon (in many sessions I even almost passed through it at very high speed), touching its hitboxes but the man doesn't fall down. He can jump on it safely because I think the Cacodemon has a mobile and probably a small hitbox, since he's the enemy that moves up and down in a very visible way. With other enemies jumping this close would have caused a game over, but because of this bug typical only for the Cacodemon, you can jump safely, even running almost through it when you reach high speed. Test it and see for yourself. Of course I don't rule out developers might fix it and this exploit will disappear but in the meantime take advantage of it.

ERRATA CORRIGE: I've tested this bug at low speed and it works at low speed too. You can jump on the Cacodemon basically when you almost touch it without losing. So you can jump very close to the Cacodemon even at low speed, take advantage of this bug/exploit to make the run more relaxed at least when you encounter it.

AOL Jump: power-ups

The two main power-ups are the clock and coins so far:

Clock

It slows down the speed at which the character runs. I think the slow down approximately lasts 10 seconds, judging from some gameplays of mine I've recorded to better study the patterns. They can be very useful especially at the beginning to mid part of the game (by mid part I mean when you reach circa 750-850 points) because it will allow you to resist more when speed becomes more challenging. The more, the merrier.

Coin

This is your biggest helper so far because it increases the score in a more fast way compared to mere running that increases by 1 point every 1 second. As you can notice in the image I put the value of a coin and the number of required coins to reach 1,500 score. The actual result is 42.8 but I adjusted the value. The ideal thing would be to catch all the coins that are on the path because for every coin lost, you have to recover two coins (one to balance, and the other to have an advantage along the path for when the speed increases too much). So, for example, if I miss three coins I will have to recover six to have an advantage or at least offset the loss. It essentially doubles the effort, literally since this game is based on math.

AOL Jump: is there a pattern?

I will quote what MihaP (the developer of the minigame) told me as reply to my review under the game:

the power-ups are spawned randomly without too much logic put into it, so you might have games with no or plenty coins depending on how lucky you are.

Broadly speaking it's true, the location of power-ups (and enemies) is random, but in my constant gameplays I've actually noticed a pattern in their distribution and I've roughly classified about five main patterns with a mix of these:

• more clocks, less coins
• more coins, less clocks
• equal distribution of both coins and clocks
• less coins, less clocks
• more clocks, more coins

These patterns can vary across the path, meaning I can find more clocks and coins at the beginning, then a bit less during mid part of the run and again a more balanced number of both.

My favourite pattern for this type of medal is ofc the "more clocks, more coins" especially of the beginning to mid part of the run because it allows me to collect a higher score in less time and resist a bit more when speed increases a lot.

pro-tip:

My suggestion is to hope for it to come (20% chance of getting this pattern) but at the same time it's nice trying to adapt to less favourable patterns (less coins, more clocks or less coins, less clocks). If you aim at the medal and see an unfavourable pattern you can always abort the mission, by hitting an enemy and restart until you get the combination you like the most.

Enemies are spawned randomly too but I've noticed that at the beginning of the game the distance between each enemy is short, then the more you go on and game progresses, the longer the distance is between each enemy (if you manage to get a good number of coins at the beginning, you will notice this pattern around 600-700 points approximately).

The more you play it, the more you will predict position of mid-air coins. The position of the coins in mid-air follows these patterns:

• near an enemy (some are at a favourable distance like in this case, others may be too dangerous to reach)
• behind an enemy (impossible, give up)
• far away from an enemy (it usually at the beginning of the long path)

Initially I missed many mid-air coins, but now I can predict their rough position and jump to get them without hitting the enemy.

AOL Jump: strategy???

When it comes to a strategy to beat the game, aka get the medal, keep in mind that this mixes luck, randomness, patterns and skills along with a speed that increases a lot after a while (when the game was more unbalanced the speed began to increase almost at the beginning if you didn't catch many coins, and at that time you encountered more enemies and few power-ups).

So the first thing to do is playing without thinking about getting the medal, get first a feel of the game and its pace and it doesn't matter if you lose, because trust me you will lose and you will lose a lot. It will piss you off a lot, especially when you almost reach the goal. But an advice I feel to give you is not to fix your mind too much on the game while playing, try to paradoxically keep yourself a bit distracted, focus on your breathing if you feel it is increasing (the emotion of reaching the goal can jeopardize the medal, trust me I've experienced it). For example, I hummed, talked to someone or listened to music while playing and this relaxed my mind, allowing me to reach high scores.

Of course this advice might not work with everyone and I don't suggest it to those who manage to keep their mind focused 100% during the game, in those case study the pattern when playing.

Another thing to do is getting your eyes used to the speed, initially it will be hard but the more you try it, the more your sight will adjust to the speed. When the game was more unbalanced, the speed was atrocious making extremely difficult for me to keep up with the sliding speed. I don't recommend using the touchpad or mouse to jump, spacebar gives me a lot more control over the jump, jump speed and jump force. So use that, experiment with it until you memorize the types of pressures to exert based on the proximity of the enemy and coin. It will become natural after a while (usually after 5 days of intense training and by intense I mean small sessions in the morning, afternoon and evening).

Don't get discouraged if you won't manage, keep pushing and gradually improvement will come (score is a very good indicator of your gradual improvement, take a look at my scores and you will understand what I mean). Your eye coordination, finger coordination during jumps and reaction time will increase and get better the more you play.

I don't know if this guide will truly help you, but I hope it gave you some hints at facing this difficult achievement (in my NG gaming experience it's been the most challenging so far).

I will continue to test the game to see the types of new power-ups that will likely to be added in the next big update and this guide might be updated too.