(Link to video)
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Note: This is a Genesis game released only in Brazil, therefore PAL-M. I didn't know what version to use (Usa or Europe) so i added both.
Suggested movie description: Woody must save his family and friends, and he does just that on record time. Suggested screenshot: Frame 12742
Férias Frustradas do Pica-Pau (Woody Woodpecker's Frustrated Vacations) is a brazil-only game (B) released in 1995 by Tectoy for the Genesis/Mega Drive and for the Master System. There are 2 modes on the game: Fácil/Easy (this movies', 5 levels) and Difícil/Hard (Enemies act differently, there are more levels and some levels have another layout). The game has no known Warps/Passwords/game ending glitches, and the Easy mode is the fastest, due to having less levels.
This movie aims for the fastest time possible, and for that, it abused 2 glitches: The Smedley Crit (by beaking him, and quickly beaking the squirrel on the tree to drop a hazelnut on him, Smedley's damage animation doesn't play, saving some seconds and letting you beak him again, so you can do that over and over), and the Wally Early Damage (the game didn't intend you to beak Wally from behind before he stops in a barrel, unless you're inside a barrel just behind him. Sadly, it's only possible to do it once).
There are also minor strategies implemented that are not considered glitches, but were used: Damage Cancelling (While you're about to get damage from an enemy, you can press B to beak it, even if the enemy isn't affected by your beak, you doesn't get any damage), Invencibility Abuse (the game was programmed to let you have some few seconds of invencibility after being damaged, and if you time it right, you can get damaged on purpose to just breeze through some enemies and not get damaged at all) and Beak Deaceleration (After jumping, Woody plays a 10-15 frame animation of him getting up after the jump, but if you beak the air right before you land, that animation doesn't play).
The Bossfights (excluding Smedley's and Wally's which I already explained) were done just by spamming projectiles/beaks on them to end the level quickly.
RTA Rules: Time starts when Woody beaks the start button on the intro (Frame 318) and ends when the screen starts to fade (Frame 23699) - 6:30.18.
TAS rules time starts when the game is boot up, so it's 6:35.49 (The movie ends 1 frame earlier than it should).
The movie wasn't hard to make, some of the strategies/routing were done/found by me, and took almost 2 weeks to put up.

feos: Judging...
feos: Found 2 empty frames at the end of the movie and while checking things, I made the ending happen 13 frames sooner than in the original submission simply by ending the movie earlier.
feos: The audience agreed that this movie should have used the hard difficulty since that way the game has more content and an actual ending. The easy mode doesn't look like a definitive game completion.
But more importantly, this movie is very improvable. I was able to beat the first level by 40 frames and the last level by 280 frames after some poking around. The improvement comes from better timing on the basic actions this run consists of: jumping and attacking.
ItsPietroFelix, if you plan to make a movie on hard difficulty, please ensure it's more optimal than this run. A record should not be trivial to beat if we want it to get accepted and published. Note that this doesn't mean it should be impossible to improve - we don't require that level of optimality. It should just be hard to beat, at least significantly. Lots of useful info is provided in our TasingGuide.
Rejecting for suboptimality and poor difficulty choice.

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XTREMAL93
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nice run. but can you also make Hard mode TAS? It is preferable to use hardest difficulty if it have more levels.
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XTREMAL93 wrote:
nice run. but can you also make Hard mode TAS? It is preferable to use hardest difficulty if it have more levels.
I'm thinking to do that! But as there are more levels, it means more strategies to be abused. I'll surely do one if this one is approved.
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This run is good but i'm voting no due Hard being preferred in this case for a publication on TASVideos, because
Guidelines wrote:
Good reasons to use the hardest difficulty are: - More stages, such as Contra III - More interesting boss fights, such as new attack patterns, and new variety of methods used to whittle down their HP - More overall action without repetition, such as more enemies in a game that are interesting to kill
Nevertheless, I encourage uploading this movie to your userfiles and mantaining this encode in your channel, it is still a piece of documentation of the fastest possible time of a difficulty (we can say it's a proof of concept), that still may help speedrunners and whoever TAS this game in the future.
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Fair enough.
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I am going to abstain from voting on this, due to the problematic goal choice. After watching the movie, it seems to be fine up until the "end." I went ahead and google translated the final dialogue of this ending, and got this out of it:
Congratulations ! You have reached the end of the game in Easy Mode. Now, I want to see you finish the game in Hard mode, because in addition to having more levels, you will have to face me in the end. Do you have heart or are you a chicken?
This character is directly telling you to go complete the game in Hard Mode (and for quite literally all the reasons why a TAS would prefer hard mode). This character also from what I understand off Wikipedia's gist of the story is quite literally the main "bad guy" of this game. He is apparently the one you are meant to fight in the end to complete the story. Thus the end of "easy mode" from what I'm seeing is like a "bad ending" where the story is only partially completed, and hard mode is needed to achieve a complete (and I believe acceptable) ending.
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Similar submission that was rejected because it left out several levels: #5386: StarvinStruthers's GB The Lion King "Cub" in 03:14.38
Judgment note wrote:
This run only plays through the 4 levels that are available on the easy difficulty (Cub). The other 5 levels are only available on harder difficulties (Prince and King). Even though beating the Cub mode does give the credits, all the viewers agree that this 9-level game doesn't feel completed if one just reduces the challenge to make things easiest, and only beats less than a half of the game. This is the case when the easier difficulty setting isn't justified, so for any future submission of this game some other difficulty should be picked, to show the entire game. Judging by the FAQ though, King difficulty only reduces your health and increases enemies' health, so Prince mode would be enough here. Rejecting for the flawed goal choice.
Full movie that was accepted: #6461: Lobsterzelda's GB The Lion King in 09:19.47
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.
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I thought i could post an "Easy Mode TAS", because there are TASes in hard and easy modes of the same game.
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Thus the end of "easy mode" from what I'm seeing is like a "bad ending" where the story is only partially completed, and hard mode is needed to achieve a complete (and I believe acceptable) ending.
There are a lot of verified movies in this site that get "bad endings", so I don't see why this TAS should be rejected, but if it does, I'm certainly making a Hard Mode one, as those levels are also getting some strategies/glitches.
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[1607] GB Super Mario Land "hard mode" by MUGG in 12:14.77 starts from where [2091] GB Super Mario Land by MUGG in 12:08.75 ends and plays through the harder loop. 1607M can't obsolete the other movie because it starts from a savestate, which is normally not allowed. It was published because it's very entertaining, much more so than the regular run. If hard mode was available via a password or an input code, it would obsolete the easy mode, because codes are allowed if they make the game harder. Example: [2212] NES James Bond Jr. by feos in 18:29.84. In normal conditions, difficulty modes that play through the same set of levels don't result in different branches.
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.
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This game was my last cartridge before moving on to the world of Sega Saturn,.... it was kind of a bet from my dad, if Tectoy couldn't make a good game, then the 16 bit era would die and everything would be all 3D and movie-like in the world of video games. But after weighting the whole console collection I had, I was really more addicted to Master System and Mega Drive,..... and even if this is a "shitty game", I wanted to at least finish all my games, ... I wanted to see all their endings, .. and then I started replaying everything, that was in 1997, .. Well, this game, Ferias Frustradas do Pica-Pau, it has easy and hard mode, but this is a court session kind of thing, because: 1- the hard mode has more stages, but they don't add much to the run, as there are more slow and weird scenes like the dark one where just Woody's eyes appear, .. 2- you get to play against all bosses but the difficult don't change much for them,.... Buzz/Zeca is much different though, it kinda remind me of Gargamel from the Smurfs game 3- the collision detection go to hell hard, but... I guess a TASer would manage to fight and win, huh =) 4- there is a bonus stage, but I don't think it has any purpose except 1-ups,... which are not needed for a speedrun But .... I voted no, and.. I'm all up to seeing the hard mode done, as it adds much to the nostalgia to me ... since my great finishing all games I had thing ..... was on hard mode Also I think the boat stage has a shortcut in a waterfall that wasn't used in this easy mode run so I have to vote no anyway because of that (too)
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Jungon wrote:
Also I think the boat stage has a shortcut in a waterfall that wasn't used in this easy mode run
Can you elaborate on this?
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.
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Jungon wrote:
Also I think the boat stage has a shortcut in a waterfall that wasn't used in this easy mode run so I have to vote no anyway because of that
what exactly do you mean?
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Mechanics are quite annoying in this game, and the last level made them look especially bad, so I decided to do some more checking and saved 280 frames (compared to the trimmed version of this submission). Link to video User movie #69320246506369467 Here's a primitive lua script that prints your X coordinate so you could actually check if you're improving. Download PicaPau.lua
Language: lua

while true do xpos = memory.read_s16_be(0x01c0, "68K RAM") gui.text(0,100,"x: "..xpos) emu.frameadvance() end
EDIT: The first level is quite improvable too (40 frames after a quick test): User movie #69338186565063996
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.
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om, nom, nom... blech!
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feos wrote:
Mechanics are quite annoying in this game, and the last level made them look especially bad, so I decided to do some more checking and saved 280 frames (compared to the trimmed version of this submission).
ok, i'll certainly have to make another tas and a hard mode one.
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even though i know it will be rejected again, it's just to be saved here even if it needs to be as a user movie file. thanks for the advices, feos.
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