This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6795: Spikestuff's NES Road Worker in 06:11.19

This game doesn’t seem to be speedrunable if it doesn’t matter how fast you clear the road.

Yeah, I don't believe this passes the requirements for tool-assisted play to stand out from normal play. And I don't know if it beats known records, since from the looks of it, aside from early input end, any playthrough of this game would be the same length. In fact, an attempt to beat this game in real-time would actually be much more entertaining and tense than this. TASing it makes it worse. And it has no competitive potential, a la Duck Hunt all levels. Watching it I thought there might be some impressive road cursor movement at least, but the game's input is even less interesting than it looks; all you do is go left and right and confirm on the bottom bar, and you have to clear the road's obstacles in order, removing basically all freedom from the player. Finding the fastest menuing is trivial. And being an unlicensed game, it's also subject to higher standards to be acceptable in the first place. Edit: Looking more into it, there are levels where the car starts stopped until you get rid of its first obstacle. So it does beat known records, but tieing this time is still too simple, there's no interesting aspects to the input that I can see.

@Blaze That kind of reasoning in your edit is exactly what was ruled on in [4173] SMS Zool: Ninja of the "Nth" Dimension "game end glitch" by The8bitbeast in 00:21.61 Even if it matches what a human can do, it's still acceptable.

Yeah, I shouldn't use real-time comparison as an example. I do think "The game-play needs to standout from non-assisted play" still applies. I read that rule as meaning it should stand out when comparing it to casual play, rather than speedruns. For instance, even if SMB is tied in real-time some day, the SMB TAS still stands out from non-assisted play. And of course, autoscroller games like shooters stand out through crazy acrobatics even if the end time is the same or similar. This gameplay doesn't stand out IMO. And I believe "If getting perfect times everywhere is not challenging, such a game is considered trivial" is referring to the difficulty of TASing perfect times, not the difficulty of matching them RTA. Making a perfect TAS of this game is definitely trivial, it is basically like paint by numbers.

With Zool, the game itself isn't trivial, so TASes of it are not trivial to research and make, even if one iteration of record-beating ends up with times similar to a human speedrun.

I think that this game is probably too trivial to be accepted to the website. The only things that seem to affect the final time are how long the initial menuing takes to start the game, how long it takes to select to clear the first obstacle (for some levels), and how quickly the obstacles on the last level are removed, which is also just done by menuing a couple of times. From both a TAS and casual gameplay perspective, this game is extremely trivial. As Blaze pointed out, the fact that it's a bootleg game also means the quality of the game itself matters in judging whether this TAS should be accepted, and clearly, this game is not very interesting. With regards to the entertainment value of this TAS, I think that I would rather watch actual bulldozers clear boulders off of the road than to watch this TAS again. Voting no.

Timing Issues Given that the pink vehicle stops at obstacles when they are in the way (and doesn't wreck); these stages are more akin to having a frame-rule (minimum frame count) than they are to auto-scroller from a timing perspective. Auto-Scrollers will always end in the same amount of time regardless of optimization quality through the stage (unless there's a boss battle or end trigger that the character has to hit at the end of the otherwise equally timed auto-scroller). But a stage that has a minimum frame count can take longer to complete due to poor play. So as the pink vehicle in Road Worker stops for obstacles instead of wrecking...this game's timing leans more toward frame-rule. The minimum number of frames being how many it takes the vehicle to get to the end of the road without stopping for any obstacles. It is the optimization of play in the TAS that allows for unhindered travel of the vehicle, thus making this minimum frame count achievable. Thus from a strictly timing perspective, optimization of input is what yields the shortest possible time (even if that's easily achievable). Yes, the game is absolutely boring to watch! But the boring waits alone don't disqualify it from acceptance. While the final time may be achievable by humans, the cursor movement/actions both in-play and menus are obviously superhuman. Thus the game meets acceptance standards from a superhuman and optimization perspective. What may make this game un-acceptable? 1) Triviality - Given the slow movement of the vehicle, there isn't only 1 possible fastest way to complete this game. There may be many variations in the TAS actions/solutions that could yield the same final time, thus no matter what someone does while TASing (so long as the vehicle isn't delayed) the final time will be equivalent. There's little to no opportunity for beating this run's time unless a glitch is found to end stages faster. 2) Bootleg - Held to higher standards than officially released games. I'm not familiar with all the requirements necessary and will thus defer to the judges.

This game looks like what happens when you cut the transportation fund in Sim City. Voted meh. It works, but it's like watching a county job. I blame the game.

om, nom, nom... sweet!