Most up-to-date movie file: userfiles/info/65254876577894993
Sharp Shot is an odd yet simplistic game released in 1982 for the Intellivision. It features four minigames: Touchdown Passing, Space Gunner, Submarine, and Maze Shoot—each of which were likely old demos for NFL Football, Space Battle, Sea Battle, and AD&D: Cloudy Mountain, respectively.
The goal of each game is to shoot as many targets (or touchdowns) as you can in 60 seconds. Though it is a score-based game, time still comes to play in the TAS through luck manipulation at the start of each minigame and how quickly the game is switched after the timer runs out.
Objectives
  • Aims for maximum score
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • 2 players
  • Genre: Action, Shooter
Okay, so what exactly was the goal here?
There are four minigames, each of which can be selected at any time. To make this a complete submission, I do not switch minigames until the timer completes for each as this will effectively showcase all of the game's content.
Now, I aim for the maximum score in each minigame, but since the minigames are on a fixed timer, where does the speed challenge come from? Well, points can still be scored after the timer ends so it is preferrable to accumulate those last points right as the timer ticks to '0'. Additionally, some of the minigames (Submarine, most notably) have a delayed start for luck manipulation.
2 Players Only Space Gunner and Maze Shoot allow both players to control at the same time so I took full advantage of that during this TAS. I did not play Touchdown Passing and Submarine twice to give the second player a turn as that seemed redundant and would detract from the entertainment value of the run.
Touchdown Passing
The paths that the quarterback, receivers, and defenders run are all random. To score as many touchdowns as we can as quickly as possible, we need to manipulate RNG such that the quarterback and receivers quickly line up with each other, and the receivers don't run too far into the endzone as that will waste time. The player only controls when the football is thrown, and it always travels in a straight line.
It appears the minimum number of frames between touchdown passes is 220. I continually improved the longest segments until no faster variations were found. The final product has no duration between passes that exceeds 240 frames.
Space Gunner
Shoot as many spaceships as you can. There can be up to five ships on screen at once, and luck is a major consideration here. Where the ships fly in from is random and I generally manipulate such that no ships spawn from the upper left or fly down the middle, as these are the longest flight paths to the crosshairs. Both of these paths cross P1's crosshairs first, hence the heavy score bias towards P2. Ships only come from these directions in the final movie if manipulating otherwise was slower or not possible.
Explosion shrapnel is random and can blow up additional ships in the vicinity. I fire on the right frames to blow up as many additional ships as possible ouside the crosshairs. Only five ships can be on screen at once, so the sooner I can shoot every ship, the sooner more can spawn.
Submarine
New ships can spawn on the left or right side of the maps and have varying speeds on the paths they take. New ships are ideally spawned in the direction the submarine is headed so they will meet up the quickest. There are four submarines, so the faster you shoot a sub, the faster you will be able to shoot the one that respawns.
I waited 21 frames before switching to Submarine and 24 before starting to start spawn four ships on the left. Yeah, luck manipulation in this minigame is extremely tough, as you may have guessed by the odd, unoptimal timing of many of my shots. Only three torpedoes can be fired from the sub at once, adding to the madness.
Maze Shoot
The methodology here consisted mostly of shooting whichever enemy or groups of enemies took the least amount of time to shoot. I frequently go out of my way to shoot groups of enemies that are close together for a precise double or even the rare triple shot! The player cannot control where the arrows shoot from; only when they fire.
Totals
Game Score
Touchdown Passing112
Space Gunner 68+113
Submarine 71
Maze Shoot 79+69
Total 512
I move on to the next minigame as soon as possible after the max score is reached for each. In Submarine, the final score is only on screen for one frame so it is barely perceptible. Score is tracked at Main RAM addresses 60 and 61 for P1 and P2, respectively.
Suggested Publication Notes
Insert first two paragraphs in these submission notes here
Winslinator shows off some superhuman marksman skills in each minigame, attaining the highest-known total score of 512 points in record time.
Suggested Screenshot Frame 12677

feos: Judging...
feos: Replacing with 10-point improvement.
feos: Feedback was kinda mixed, several people liking the movie and several people disliking it. When I think of some spherical average user in vacuum, I can see why this movie may not be entertaining enough to get into Moons. I explained my personal take here. Not that I don't want this movie in Moons because I disliked it, I just think the feedback was too mixed to take sides. Which means we can't say that this movie is generally quite entertaining.
But there was some talk about whether this goal should be Vault eligible. As Moth explained, this movie can't be considered a speed record in its nature, because it doesn't aim to end input early. Instead it uses all the available time to gain the highest possible score. Without the max score goal, one could just wait or occasionally shoot some objects, and the game would still end at the same time. This movie is not a time attack, it's a score attack, and nothing more. While Vault's "focus is exclusively on collecting tool-assisted speedrun records".
We had some extra discussion among staff about whether we want Vault to include more categories or maybe just include timed games in some form, maybe only for full completion.
We agreed that we don't want timed sports to be added, because of complexity and variety of their rules, which gets especially problematic when we try to define full completion or max score for them. Some games include variety of barely relevant stats one could maximize. In some games the timer can be paused. Some of such movies may last for several days. And none of that brings anything valuable to the table if we remember that Vault rules try to be as straightforward as possible, and the records should be widely considered meaningful and legitimate. And defining straightforward and agreeable rules for this inherent complexity looks like too much work for too little benefit.
Defining fastest completion for timed games is also a weird concept. You can end input early, but you can't make the ending happen sooner by better gameplay, aside from marginal optimizations like lag reduction. It could be argued that due to minor differences in how soon you can stop the movie or make the game end, such a goal is too trivial to compete for. There's just not enough room for gameplay optimization which is meant to be unlimited in terms of resulting time.
But even if we ignore timed sports games and full completion for timed games, there's still a fundamental question about what's left: full/max completion for timed games and Vault eligibility of that.
Full completion has a problem that after you've collected all of your items (or whatever it is you're completing), you will have to simply wait out the game doing nothing useful. In some games you need to do some basic things to still avoid a game over, but in others it's even simpler, so it may be many minutes of nothing meaningful at all. Even if we end the movie right there, we still have to sit through the rest, be it minutes or hours. And of course in some cases the game is so simplistic that ending input early makes it trivial to speedrun complete.
The final option is only allowing movies like this one, which uses all the available time to score to the maximum. And once again we couldn't come up with strong and convincing reasons to change the nature of Vault, why it would be good for everyone, and why such a thing would fundamentally fit.
The reason Vault even exists is to provide room for speedrun records that Moons can't keep due to low entertainment value. Since the site always aimed to host entertaining superplay movies, most of them being speedruns and some of them being playarounds, technically impressive speedrun records that were boring were being rejected until 2012. When adding a tier for boring stuff, we aimed to limit it to the most simple and sensible goals ever existed: fastest completion and full completion. If something is not speed oriented, it should be entertaining enough for Moons. If we don't limit such things, Vault would have to include all sorts of esoteric goals, requiring a lot of extra work on all levels, while reducing the overall quality of our publications. There was a lot of discussion about allowing boring, non-speedrun movies into a new tier, Demonstration, but over the years we haven't even once agreed about the rules such a tier should have.
A few of us wish to expand Vault for timed games (including me), but that feeling isn't a good reason in itself, if it's not based on strong arguments against the current system, that would look justified and be supported by site admins and wide audience. Wasn't the case here.
As a result, rejecting.

Samsara: So, this change took a while to happen! I suppose I'll provide some backstory here, because I like accountability and things were very, very different 2 years ago when this run was first submitted.
We were still using the Vault system back in 2020, so the site was still primarily focusing on a very small subset of objective categories and still valuing entertainment as a metric in order to get things published. This run kinda fell on the fringes of that system, and unfortunately ended up being a victim of it. It wasn't quite Vault-eligible due to the choice of category, and it wasn't quite Moons-eligible due to the audience reaction. I wasn't particularly happy with the decision, but we couldn't really do anything at the time.
One year after this submission, we overhauled Vault into a much more fair and objective system, not relying on entertainment value but on easily identifiable categories. Even with this change, though, the run still wasn't quite acceptable, and although we were talking about further changes behind the scenes, we were distracted by the ongoing development and testing of TASVideos as you are currently looking at it, which was a much higher priority for us, and was for many months after the launch at the beginning of this year. Naturally, further progress in rule and standard reform was always on our minds, and it still very much is to this day! Maximum score was something we'd always wanted as a standard publication category, and discussion of such was prompted by a recent submission (at the time of this judgement).
We got the rules ironed out with the community, they're still subject to change a bit more but if I have anything to say about it (and I do, as Senior Judge) they won't get any more restrictive. As of right now though, we can finally accept this submission now that the "maximum score" category is considered officially standard!

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6837: Winslinator's INTV Sharp Shot "maximum score" in 04:05.24
Samsara
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WARNING: Constant screen flashing throughout the Space Gunner minigame (roughly 1:02 - 2:02 in the encode, 1:00 to 2:05 to be safe). Take caution if you're sensitive. Game seems fairly mindless, though not enough to be considered trivial in my opinion. Human high scores look to be significantly lower than in the TAS*. It's a bit hard to watch at times (I guess I already made that clear with the warning), but overall it looks pretty Vaultable to me. Maximum score is a Vaultable category, and as far as I can tell, it follows all of the listed rules. The timed nature of the minigames seems to match that of [4090] C64 Decathlon "maximum score" by DrD2k9 in 09:35.02, especially with the extra measures taken to minimize time spent between minigames. Voting Meh on entertainment. *There's a 1p high score of 69 for Space Gunner (1p side of this TAS gets 68 in comparison), but the TAS uses both players and the discrepancy is almost certainly due to the second player getting far more kills.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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I have an improvement to post. This new movie gets 512 points, a gain of 10 points, and is only 16 frames slower. Submission notes and temp encode have already been updated. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/65254876577894993 Instead of waiting 48 frames to start Submarine, I first waited 21 frames before I switched to Submarine and then 24 before starting. I was able to start with 4 subs on the left so I gained 1 point there. The remaining 9 points actually came from Maze Shoot. This is the 5th time I've had to redo this minigame so I think I'm just getting really good at TASing it.
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I enjoyed watching it. Parts of it were a bit repetitive (of course) but it was short enough that it kept my interest, especially the final Maze Shoot part. It was interesting to see how the game "handled" points above 99, something they must have presumed would not be possible.
Arc
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Samsara wrote:
The timed nature of the minigames seems to match that of [4090] C64 Decathlon "maximum score" by DrD2k9 in 09:35.02
I disagree. Yes there are multiple mini-games like Decathlon. But in this movie the mini-games are all on a fixed timer, with 'fixed timer' meaning that the player is forced to play for a predetermined amount of time. If sports games on a fixed timer like football, soccer, and basketball are not individually Vault eligible, I don't see why combining them into a single TAS would change anything. This TAS functions the same as four consecutive fixed-timer sports games.
Memory
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Arc wrote:
Samsara wrote:
The timed nature of the minigames seems to match that of [4090] C64 Decathlon "maximum score" by DrD2k9 in 09:35.02
I disagree. Yes there are multiple mini-games like Decathlon. But in this movie the mini-games are all on a fixed timer, with 'fixed timer' meaning that the player is forced to play for a predetermined amount of time. If sports games on a fixed timer like football, soccer, and basketball are not individually Vault eligible, I don't see why combining them into a single TAS would change anything. This TAS functions the same as four consecutive fixed-timer sports games.
That would make sense if it was not for the fact that this is clearly aiming for score...
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
GoddessMaria
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Arc wrote:
Samsara wrote:
The timed nature of the minigames seems to match that of [4090] C64 Decathlon "maximum score" by DrD2k9 in 09:35.02
I disagree. Yes there are multiple mini-games like Decathlon. But in this movie the mini-games are all on a fixed timer, with 'fixed timer' meaning that the player is forced to play for a predetermined amount of time. If sports games on a fixed timer like football, soccer, and basketball are not individually Vault eligible, I don't see why combining them into a single TAS would change anything. This TAS functions the same as four consecutive fixed-timer sports games.
...I fail to see how this correlates.
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Samsara
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Arc wrote:
Samsara wrote:
The timed nature of the minigames seems to match that of [4090] C64 Decathlon "maximum score" by DrD2k9 in 09:35.02
I disagree. Yes there are multiple mini-games like Decathlon. But in this movie the mini-games are all on a fixed timer, with 'fixed timer' meaning that the player is forced to play for a predetermined amount of time.
If you look closer at Decathlon, a lot of the events there also technically qualify as being on fixed timers. The races don't end until the CPU finishes, the Long Jump is explicitly stated in the submission text to always be the exact same number of frames regardless of distance, the other events all require scratching/intentionally failing once the maximum score is reached... They're not explicit TIMERS, but they're still operating on some sort of fixed time.
If sports games on a fixed timer like football, soccer, and basketball are not individually Vault eligible, I don't see why combining them into a single TAS would change anything. This TAS functions the same as four consecutive fixed-timer sports games.
Or, more accurately, a single sports game and 3 shooters, and maximum score is a perfectly valid and Vaultable goal in either case anyway.
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warmCabin wrote:
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The Decathlon run aims for in-game time, to disregard the time needed to wait for the opponent to finish. If there's no in-game time in this game, and all the levels are timed, and some levels aren't sports, I don't think we even have a rule for such a situation.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Memory
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To me this is precisely the kind of game I had in mind when I pushed for the changes to score rules. This game is one where time in and of itself might not make the most sense as a goal, but there is an extremely obvious meaningful record to aim for. Also somehow I found this entertaining so I voted yes.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
nymx
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Samsara wrote:
Or, more accurately, a single sports game and 3 shooters, and maximum score is a perfectly valid and Vaultable goal in either case anyway.
I am in agreement with Samsara. If max score wasn't the goal here, then the only thing left for acceptance would be the entertainment level reaching moons...otherwise rejection. With a current 77% yes vote (my vote excluded currently), that would mean it is borderline in that area. But the author has correctly identified a suitable goal for submission...which rescues it from the fixed running time. (
Sports running with a fixed time, such as football, soccer, or basketball are not eligible.
)
Mog2 wrote:
It was interesting to see how the game "handled" points above 99, something they must have presumed would not be possible.
This is a good reason for a yes vote from me. In regards to an acceptance, I see that the optimization looks really good (timing shots to kill more than one enemy at a time, which in turn only supports a stronger Max-Score related goal). I recommend acceptance to vault with a branch supporting the only category possible for this game.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Arc
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Memory wrote:
That would make sense if it was not for the fact that this is clearly aiming for score...
So? A soccer movie on a fixed timer is ok as long as someone racks up a lot of goals? Why even have a fixed timer rule then?
Memory
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...The point is that it makes no sense to aim for time when time is fixed.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Arc
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"Sports running with a fixed time, such as football, soccer, or basketball are not eligible." Soccer is a sport that runs with a fixed time. Therefore it is not eligible. If this interpretation is wrong, the wording of the rule should be clarified.
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The problem with this game seems to be lack of any winning condition or state whatsoever. The max score rule requires following the existing rules on movie completeness. When there's no way to speedrun the game, then there can not be any speed record for it. This movie is a score record, but I don't think Vault has been designed for that. The Decathlon movie is both, which is why it was accepted.
Memory wrote:
To me this is precisely the kind of game I had in mind when I pushed for the changes to score rules. This game is one where time in and of itself might not make the most sense as a goal, but there is an extremely obvious meaningful record to aim for.
The current rules don't cover this situation. There will have to be another round of brainstorming to sort this out. If max score for Vault is a replacement for full completion (when there's no better way to define full completion), and the game doesn't offer any room for speedrunning whatsoever, then max score is the only viable goal. But full completion is required to be an optional goal, in addition to shortest time.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Memory
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feos wrote:
But full completion is required to be an optional goal, in addition to shortest time.
Why? What value does that add?
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Memory wrote:
feos wrote:
But full completion is required to be an optional goal, in addition to shortest time.
Why? What value does that add?
So the definition of full completion is not confused with regular completion. Of course there are cases when full completion ends up being faster than what normally counts as regular completion, but I only know of one such case: [809] SNES Mega Man X2 by FractalFusion & Graveworm in 31:42.45 (the current obsoletion chain still looks really confusing). If full completion is not optional, then it's required to win the game, and then there's no way to define full completion and fastest completion differently, which means full completion is pointless as a category.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
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HOLY H*CK STOP POSTING
Arc wrote:
Memory wrote:
That would make sense if it was not for the fact that this is clearly aiming for score...
So? A soccer movie on a fixed timer is ok as long as someone racks up a lot of goals? Why even have a fixed timer rule then?
Arc, honest question. Have you watched this run? I don't think you have, because comparing it to a soccer game isn't accurate. This is a pretty open-and-shut case as far as I'm concerned. It's 25% sports game and 75% shooter, which I don't think actually really matters in the long run: The football minigame clearly isn't a full game of football, so I don't think it strictly falls under that category, and even if it did, it's clear with the score not being able to handle going over 99 that there's a non-trivial element to TASing it. Even with rules in place, not every submission is going to have them be applicable. If it was as easy as "Insert rule, apply to every submission", we'd more or less just be able to automate the entire judgement process. Cases like this are the entire reason we have submission threads for discussion and Judges to make the final call.
feos wrote:
The problem with this game seems to be lack of any winning condition or state whatsoever. The max score rule requires following the existing rules on movie completeness. When there's no way to speedrun the game, then there can not be any speed record for it. This movie is a score record, but I don't think Vault has been designed for that. The Decathlon movie is both, which is why it was accepted.
I see this as an infinite game with no new content after the first loop, personally. There is technically a "fastest completion" for this game:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
Now, I aim for the maximum score in each minigame, but since the minigames are on a fixed timer, where does the speed challenge come from? Well, points can still be scored after the timer ends so it is preferrable to accumulate those last points right as the timer ticks to '0'. Additionally, some of the minigames (Submarine, most notably) have a delayed start for luck manipulation. [...] I waited 21 frames before switching to Submarine and 24 before starting to start spawn four ships on the left. [...] I move on to the next minigame as soon as possible after the max score is reached for each. In Submarine, the final score is only on screen for one frame so it is barely perceptible.
Time is optimized whenever possible, and there are potential frame improvements through better luck manipulation. The new file with a higher score is slightly longer than the original submission file, meaning there is at least a small element of time involved. Maximum score is very clearly the defined goal, but like Decathlon, fastest completion is still the subgoal. It's a matter of frames, yes, but that makes it all the more TAS-like to me. In a way, it feels like Overlord, where there's only about 5 seconds of meaningful optimization in a 4 minute movie. It's not exact, of course, but I feel there's enough here to warrant saying it's a potentially improvable speed-oriented goal. Granted, I don't even think that matters in the first place (we don't strictly need both max score AND fastest completion), but again, that's something to have a brainstorming session on in the future. Then again, does it even matter if this movie is getting good enough votes to potentially make it to Moons? I may have jumped the gun by talking about Vault, and I apologize for that, but if the voting continues the way it has been, "fastest completion" wouldn't matter at all.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Samsara, would you call this situation similar to a "max score" run of a soccer game? There might be optimization for better manipulation too, and optimally done menuing and stuff. I can't spot the difference if there's any.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
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I wouldn't say they're similar, no. This run feels a bit more similar to something like Touhou or Ikaruga if anything. Fixed length stages, maximum score/kills, nothing there to really optimize in terms of speed. The only difference is that Ikaruga/Touhou actually have optimizable boss fights, but I don't see that as enough of a difference to throw out the comparison completely. Max score soccer would be explicitly not aiming for fastest completion as well, since scoring goals would inherently waste time. It may be a fixed length match, but you're artificially lengthening it every time you score. Plus, depending on the game, there might not be any possible way to improve the time. If the score maxes at 99, then you'd reach 99 and would just have to play the rest of the match. In that situation, as long as you can score 99 goals at all within the time limit of a match, you can't do it any faster, since the match length is fixed and the goal animations/in-between sections would be similarly fixed. This movie is strictly fixed length no matter what. One minute per game, move on. Scoring more within a game doesn't make it take longer, it just increases the score, and in the case that the votes on this movie trend downward back to Vault status, I think it's perfectly acceptable.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Do you think a meaningful any% record is possible for this game, without caring about score explicity?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
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I suppose not, but I don't see why that matters in this case if maximum score is explicitly a Vaultable category. There's no need for an any% record for this game (it is technically any% in and of itself), this is the most you can do with it, and given the non-trivial nature of maximizing score it's definitely worthy of standing on its own as an acceptable TAS in my opinion.
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nymx
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feos wrote:
Do you think a meaningful any% record is possible for this game, without caring about score explicity?
In normal sense, no; however, if this game exhibited avoidable lag...would that constitute an any% run to have as many of them removed, regardless of the score?
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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[quote feos]Do you think a meaningful any% record is possible for this game, without caring about score explicity?[/quote] Sure there would. You would select each next game frame-perfectly and minimize lag wherever possible, as lag plagues pretty much every Intellivision game. So while IGT is certainly fixed, TAS time has leeway for optimizations. While I think this IS non-trivial, it would not be entertaining. Whether it’s meaningful is pretty subjective. Oh yeah and input would even end a minute early as it would coincide with the last game being selected. I instead went for the far more sensible goal which circumvents the entertainment issues... so I don’t see why a hypothetical goal irrelevant to this submission should have any bearing on the decision process here.
Noxxa
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I've been asked to give my opinion on this submission. Entertainment-wise, it's quite repetitive. Because of the fixed-time nature of the game, you're not really seeing any sort of progress towards a goal. It's just sort of accumulating points until the event ends, and then you start the next one, and it's a similar deal. None of the events really have a satisfactory ending of any sort, they just end after some time with very little fanfare. Besides being repetitive it's also just not a good watch, either visual-wise or audio-wise. The noisy explosion sounds and flashing screen effects are just grating to watch. I vote no for entertainment. Regarding publishability, I'm unsure about it. What's important to distinguish here is that this movie is not a speed record. There's nothing to optimize besides menu management (which I don't believe constitutes proper TAS gameplay just by itself) and maybe some lag management, which I also don't think can really carry a TAS by itself, as it's also not strictly a gameplay optimization. This stands opposed to every single other movie on this site (with exceptions of playarounds in Moons and Stars) - even other "max score" runs, which still maintain being tool-assisted speedruns at their core. In particular, the Vault explicitly declares itself as an archive for tool-assisted speed records. Maximum score is allowed as a full completion goal, but the essence remains that it is a speedrun that aims to get that maximum score in the fastest time attainable. That is not the case for this movie, as this game has no concept of fastest time. As such, by the rules as they currently stand, this movie would not be eligible for the Vault. Now, the next important question is, does it actually need to be that way? Some Vault rules have been quoted about the ineligibility of sports games that run on a fixed time. Now, this is not a sports game. But I believe the same principles apply here. A hypothetical soccer game TAS where one would just punt balls into the opposing goal repeatedly, while the in-game timer runs down its fixed course, would not be allowed by the Vault rules. The rules were designed this way because we thought it wouldn't really make any sense to publish such a TAS, which would have no speed value, nor anything of value to watch, being just a highly repetitive scoring streak. And is that description really that different from this movie? Maybe you can argue some entertainment merits (judging by the relatively positive reception of this submission), but I'm personally not seeing it, and that would fall outside the scope of Vault discussion, anyway. So, essentially, while this movie doesn't strictly violate the rule that eliminates fixed-time sport games from the Vault, I would say it does violate the same spirit. And if this movie were to get a free pass, then we'd need to re-evaluate how we disallow fixed-time sports games, and determine what actually makes this a different case. If that can be reasonably done - or if the rules for the Vault are changed to allow fixed-time games/sports, and non-speedrun movies in general - then I could see a future for this submission in the Vault. But only then.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.