A TAS of Takeshi no Chousenjou (たけし の 挑戦状, Takeshi's Challenge). This game is a cult classic among Japanese video gamers and finished first in Famitsu magazine's kusogē (クソゲー, crap game) ranking.
This TAS was made in FCEU v28, but works in FCEUX when converted.
Aims
- Aims for fastest time
- Abuses programming errors
- Sings karaoke
- Violates common sense
About the game
Basically, it is an action-adventure game where "common sense is dangerous". It says so on the box. In order to beat the game (by reaching the treasure), you must do things like "sing" karaoke using the Famicom microphone, quit your job, divorce your wife, beat up people for apparently no reason at all, wait for at least 5 minutes looking at a blank piece of paper, go hang-gliding, and crouch in generic places to open up new places in a cave.
It is often claimed that it says on the title screen "This game is made by a man who hates video games", although the NES version's title screen does not say that. Maybe the Famicom version?
About the run
A Top 10 list (of ridiculously hard games) on GameFAQs introduced me to this game. I never bothered playing the game, but researched it and discovered a Youtube video that showcases a bug in the game that allows one to beat it in 5 minutes. I set out to make a TAS based on that video. The only thing holding me back was the karaoke singing, where I figured out that, when the microphone is not available, pressing Up+A on the second controller sets the second controller A button to sing.
The bug is a scroll glitch that allows you to go out of the normal boundary. To trigger this glitch, walk away from the boundary, then jump in the opposite direction just before it starts scrolling again. The airport is located near in memory to the treasure room, which is where you win the game. In order to go from the airport to the treasure room, the glitch must be used 3 times.
However, to win, a certain old man must be beaten up. Basically, address 0x5C3 is a flag indicating whether or not the old man has been beaten up. By introducing 3 NPC sprites, I managed to beat up the man without him going to the blank paper scenario.
To get the man to show up, you must first buy alcoholic drinks, drink twice but refuse a third, and confirm that you want to sing karaoke. Then you sing karaoke. You have to sing three times correctly (it's really wishy-washy, all you really need to do is get address 0x680 to be at least 61), then select the bottom option (quarrel), beat up some NPCs and wait for the old man.
In this run, the money for the drinks is obtained by crouching at the plant early in the game.
At the ending, if you wait long enough (about 4 minutes), a secret message pops up that translates as "Why take this game so seriously?"
mmbossman: It's raining people!! What a strange game, which would normally be pretty boring, but knowing a little bit of the history behind it makes it rather entertaining to watch. Accepting.
ccfreak2k: Processing.
adelikat: The hash in the movie file does not match the good dump but syncs on it, so I catalogged it as the good dump