Rit and Tam saves their mother by defeating evil monsters with ladder summoning and shuriken throwing skills.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.1.6-interim svn2267
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Abuses death to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Spams ladders and shurikens
  • Makes fun of bosses

Comments

The reason to choose [E] rather than [J] is ability to jump and shortening the cutscenes between levels
The game is all about luck. Hence the rerecord number, I learned how the game works:
- The 1st path the AI will do depends on the previous level input (ABSTUDLR)
- The spawn depends on the current frame the level starts
- The AI acts depending:
  1. is there a power up
  2. what type of power up
  3. where are the players (X and Y)
  4. semi random (input)
- The bosses has a "check input at every frame and act as I want" thing.
Overall, I made a TAS which completes the game then rerecord the whole to optimize it and get the best luck at all bosses and scenes. Notice that sometimes it looks like it's possible to improve a level but it just visual. For instance, obtaining the multiball powerup will change the AI's mind even if I don't pick it up, that's why it could look "clumsy" while it's actually a great pull I did.

Other comments

Thank you:
- goofydylan8 for showing this gem
- tasvideos for being existing
- Zeupar for motivating me to NOT rush the game and go for optimization
- you for reading this and probably watching the movie
See you until my next TAS =)

Mukki: Judging...
Mukki: Good response on the whole. Accepting for publication.
Toothache: Publishing

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3420: MESHUGGAH's NES Rod Land in 07:49.39
Post subject: rod land: youtube + video file + nzb
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Link to video video file (lossless 60fps) http://www.multiupload.com/J3T8GN8MRW http://www.nzbindex.nl/download/65814723/Rod-Land-by-MSHUGGAH-0749-Rod-Land-E-.part1.rar-60.63-MB.nzb
  File: Rod Land (E) [!].nes
CRC-32: 11a245a0
   MD4: 4fcb9e228fe5e0c75045c040d40bdd74
   MD5: 0ee0779ad39042e1767ff09aeafb92dd
 SHA-1: 34e755c33ef9be6ac5d2270f4d48c5a49f2365b4
RachelB
She/Her
Player (127)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
The game isn't particularly entertaining to watch, but it looks well made, so i'll vote yes.
Player (84)
Joined: 7/25/2011
Posts: 58
It took me a little while to understand what was going on, but I like this run. It was entertaining to me, and the luck manipulation is very impressive. Yes vote.
Editor
Joined: 3/10/2010
Posts: 899
Location: Sweden
Multi player action? Automatic yes vote.
Experienced player (508)
Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359
The run looks good, way better than I was doing up that point overall. I have a couple questions about the first enemy AI and the spawn location. Can you select any first enemy AI for a level without affecting the time of the previous level? So can you finish level one in a certain number of frames and without that number changing choose a separate 2nd level AI? Second do you understand how the spawning differences work? I was looking at it for a bit and it seems like the player and all but one of the enemies X-positions vary by less than 3 and then 1 enemy x-value can be as much as 40 (maybe more) depending on the frame as you said. Finally is it possible to easily manipulate this value?
Editor, Player (44)
Joined: 7/11/2010
Posts: 1022
What's with the death and use of a continue? I thought we'd already established that that was a bad idea in TASes, no matter how much time it might save, as it makes health management a lot less interesting.
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 757
Boring as hell, poor music, horrible port, uses continues in the run for no viable reason [This is NOT Battletoads after all] and nothing that jumped out and screamed super human awesomeness. :( I'm sorry but this is definitely a No. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
MESHUGGAH
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Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1349
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
goofydylan8 wrote:
Can you select any first enemy AI for a level without affecting the time of the previous level? So can you finish level one in a certain number of frames and without that number changing choose a separate 2nd level AI?
The way the AI acts at the next level depends on your previous input (mostly A B S). The strategy was finding the best solution for each scene and manipulate it to get that proper luck. This way I don't need to sacrifice frames.
goofydylan8 wrote:
Second do you understand how the spawning differences work? I was looking at it for a bit and it seems like the player and all but one of the enemies X-positions vary by less than 3 and then 1 enemy x-value can be as much as 40 (maybe more) depending on the frame as you said. Finally is it possible to easily manipulate this value?
Now this is what frame dependent. The frame I start the scene will change the spawn location of the enemies. Being slower on a scene leaded me a much better spawn for the next scene. Notice the scene I had to use the balloon -> it was manipulated by being faster on the first 3 scene and being slower (by a very few frames) on one of the scene before that part. However this isn't easy as "wait 1 frame and enemy position will be +1" it's mostly like a "different frame -> different spawn" scenario.
ais523 wrote:
What's with the death and use of a continue?
As far as I know this has been discussed for games where you need to use credits (arcade games). I abused death for 3 reasons: luck manipulation (many scenes), speed advantage (boss 2) and entertainment (boss 3 game over)[/quote]
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
not entertaining
I recommend you to watch an unassisted speedrun of this game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMssQ8iZUaQ This way you can compare how much things I did in order to come up with this TAS (or watch the rerecord number). =)
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
MESHUGGAH
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Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1349
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One more note about luck/AI manipulation: notice scene 6 I obtained the multiball powerup which modified the AI to don't use the ladder, this way I could climb up with RIT and kill them faster with a rocket instead of using an S for TAM and wait a lot of frames to be able to get there to that point. The same goes for scene 20 where the monkey wouldn't get hit by the rocket/"2 side bomb" if I obtain them, not to mention the multiball hit.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Editor, Experienced player (608)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
Quite fast-paced, to the point where the action is almost hard to follow. Really good luck manipulation too. I'm voting Yes.
mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
This got a little old for me, but it was impressive, and it was short enough to not get boring (unlike the "Bubble Boy" I game I remember seeing in the submission queue some time ago). I'll give this a 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.
Joined: 1/13/2012
Posts: 6
Pretty little game, short enough, fast enough, entertaining enough =) so yes.
dendy rulez
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. ---- [1949] NES Rod Land by MESHUGGAH in 07:49.39
Editor, Publisher, Player (46)
Joined: 10/15/2021
Posts: 370
4K 60 FPS YouTube encode: Link to video