Digger - The Legend of the Lost City is a game where you star as Digger T. Rock, who must dig his way through 8 caverns to find the lost city, which if you look in the credits, still has a running water fountain! This game is fairly hard in real-time but with tools it becomes quite fun.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.1.4a
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Uses warps
  • No longer colours a dinosaur :'(

Comments

We started this run when SilentSlayers looked at my submission. He ended up saving a few frames, and when he found the new way to do the shortcut on Cavern 3, I canceled my run and we decided to improve it. We also found a tons of new routes everywhere that save a lot of time. We also optimized a lot of movement and saved a lot frames on every level.

Stage by stage comments

Cavern 1

Easy stage, didn't save any frames though because you have to wait for the enemy.
Frames saved in this level: 0 Frames saved overall: 0

Cavern 2

Another easy stage, just collect 2 items and don't break the ground. A bit more optimization here too.
Frames saved in this level: 12 Frames saved overall: 12

Cavern 3

A bit harder of a warp to do, but still quite easy. SilentSlayers figured out that you can get the power up first and then kill the ghost right away and trigger the warp, which saved a lot of time.
Frames saved in this level: 104 Frames saved overall: 116

Cavern 4

The first level without a warp. We discovered you can skip the dynamite buying without losing time later on, which saved a huge amount of time. Other than that, a few frames were saved from just more optimization.
Frames saved in this level: 295 Frames saved overall: 411

Cavern 5

We found that you could get 3 dynamite in this level while still making the elevator by using a power up. That's why Digger can survive that big fall. Other than that, we saved a few frames from optimization.
Frames saved in this level: 21 Frames saved overall: 432

Cavern 6

We take a whole new route that involves going left at the start. This saves a lot of time. SilentSlayers also found a glitch involving getting inside the time pillar, which we used to get higher and skip digging, which saved a good amount of time too. Other than that time was saved from optimization.
Frames saved in this level: 375 Frames saved overall: 807

Cavern 7

Most of the optimization comes from the ladders areas. Nothing too special here.
Frames saved in this level: 45 Frames saved overall: 852

Cavern 8

The final cavern. We use a diamond on the first dinosaur because it is faster than TNT, and we just crawl by the second dinosaur, because it's faster than TNT and diamond. Then like usual we distract the final boss with a diamond and beat the game.
Frames saved in this level: 200 Frames saved overall: 1052
Note: Overall we didn't actually save 1052, we lost some frames from the timer. So when I save 1052 frames I mean in the levels.

Special Thanks

We'd like to thank nitrogenesis for his original run. We would also like to thank the academy for-*shot*

Suggested Screenshot

Final Thoughts

Thanks for watching our movie, and don't forget to question yourself as to how there is dinosaurs living in caves underground.
I'M TIRED OF THESE MOTHER FUCKING DINOSAURS, IN THESE MOTHER FUCKING CAVERNS.

Nach: Nice improvements to the past submissions. Accepting as a first run for this game on behalf of the academy, and my parents, and my coach, and my coworkers... *shot too*


TASVideoAgent
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Looks good. Now, are you sure you're done improving this? ;) Thanks for the encode, Darkpsy!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Kaylee
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Yes, we are very proud of this run.
mklip2001
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Submission comments wrote:
don't forget to question yourself as to how there is dinosaurs living in caves underground
How else do the dinosaurs escape the meteors? :) Anyway, nice improvements. Caverns 5 and 7 are the only ones that feel slow, but that's because the rest of the caverns are really awesome. Yes.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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This run was much more entertaining than the last one, in addition to being faster. Yes
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Does anyone else think that the music in the Ice level is strikingly similar to the Battletoad's Ice level music? Yes vote btw.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
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Digger is so amazing, he can walk through dinosaurs.
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Digger is definitely one cool guy.
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Pretty cool. Yes vote, encoded in HD and SD. YouTube Archive collection Download
Dwedit
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I never would have guessed that this game had warps.
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So here's an interesting question, does dying in a bonus room count as using death as a shortcut?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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I'd say no; it's basically equivalent to intentionally failing the minigames in Donkey Kong Country. Assuming the death doesn't count against your life total, anyway.
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I kinda like it when bonuses are played. As long it doesn't get repetitive.
Kaylee
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Yeah, that's why we died. Every bonus is the same god damn thing XD
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1571] NES Digger: The Legend of the Lost City by Kaylee & SilentSlayers in 03:26.93
Joined: 7/8/2009
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the lost city is athens? lol and it has sky, even if it's underground
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Heh, it's good to see my original slack speed run finally inspired a proper TAS, just like I hoped it would. Nitrogenesis did a good job of optimizing my run, but you guys fixed up a lot of my larger mistakes on top of optimizing the stuff I got right. Awesome stuff, especially with the new optimizations. I always wondered if you could skip that shop in level 4. And that level 3 warp was much cooler-looking than mine. >_> Was there any luck manipulation to make the dynamite spawn in the right places in world 5? I noticed they jumped around a bit in my run when I reloaded the level. Do you guys mind if I put a link and annotation to this run's page on my original vid?
Kaylee
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For level 5, we noticed that too, but it didn't matter because either way we could get enough dynamite. Also, we don't mind at all if you link the run. :)