Submission #3550: goofydylan8's NES Double Dare in 06:26.48

Double Dare is a 1990 NES game based around severely dated trivia and a collection of minigames. In this submission you get three runs for the price of one with the primary submission being a pure speedrun beating the fastest available version by 33.5 seconds, the second being a maximum score run, and the final being and all physical challenges run.

Double Dare is a game based on the classic Nickelodeon game show hosted by Marc Summers that aired from 1986 to 1993. To cash in on the franchise Nickelodeon asked Rare to create the game, and they thankfully accepted. The culmination of their work is this game you see before you.

For those of you who live under a rock (or even more so those of you who weren't alive to view this show, in which case get off my lawn as there was a Double Dare 2000) the rules of Double Dare are as follows.

There are two teams of two that try to compete to win the most money and prizes. The game starts with both teams simultaneously competing in a physical mini-game "Toss-Up Challenge" to determine who wins $10 and control of the board so to speak. The winner of the game is then asked a question worth $10 dollars and have a choice of answering the question or if they do not know the answer, or believe the other team won't know the answer, have the ability to "Dare" which means give the other team a chance to answer the question. This other team then has a chance to either answer the question now worth $20 or "Double Dare" the question back to the other team. Finally the original team has a choice to either answer the question, now worth $40, or do a physical mini-game called a "Physical Challenge" that was also worth $40. These physical challenges were normally repeats of the same game concept but with silly themes introduced and of course copious amounts of slime. This process continued for 10 questions, was followed by a second "Toss-Up Challenge" to determine who starts the second round, and then 10 more questions worth twice the amount present in the first round.

After the twenty questions were complete the team with the highest dollar amount was chosen to compete in the obstacle course which contained 8 mini-games that must be completed. For each of the games complete you won an extra prize like some badass Skechers Light Up Shoes, or some kickin' roller blades. If you were able to finish all of the games in the time limit you won a grand prize which was normally a trip but this was a semi-rare event.

The game followed the exact same process and thus for the plot just read the above. As stated above I beat the fastest run of this game [dead link removed] that I could find by over 30 seconds.

I choose to play the game on the hardest difficulty level which results in having far less time to answer questions (which doesn't matter since it never takes longer than a second to answer by far), the computer is much better at the toss-up challenges, and finally they are much more likely to answer questions correctly.

To win the game in the shortest amount of time you must manipulate the game to have the shortest Toss-Up Challenges and even more important to ask the shortest questions. The amount of time it takes for a question to be asked can vary by well over a second so it is integral to getting the best time to manipulate these questions. In the run I choose the exact correct frame to answer questions to prompt the shortest possible question saving a great deal of time. Manipulation of the Toss-Up Challenges follows a similar pattern except it is decided by the frame that you press start on. The absolute shortest mini-game selection is the Gorilla banana toss that is used for the second toss up challenge. The second fastest, about a second shorter, is the golfing mini game that is used first. The first Toss-Up Challenge is manipulated to be the golfing game because the hard difficulty results in the other team winning the Gorilla game if it is the first Toss-Up challenge.

Finally in the obstacle course there are a few control options present. To run you must alternate between pressing left and right on the D-Pad allowing for inhuman running speeds. This pattern is also present in most of the events to go faster through them. On events where you must climb up the same rule applies but you must alternate between up and down. Finally in certain cases after you finish a challenge but before you get the flag you can only walk using right on the D-Pad as alternating will cause you to stutter step.

After finishing the run I figured this game really deserved to be beaten so I went for a High Score run found here. This run is completed in 14 minutes 10 seconds which is about 8 minutes slower than the any% run. In this version an extra layer of complexity is added as in addition to manipulating the shortest questions you must also manipulate the enemies to Double Dare back instead of answering correctly. In many cases there is only 1 frame in roughly 20 where you can choose to dare and have the opponents Double Dare back due to the difficulty level being set to hard.

Other than this manipulation the run strategy is identical.

Finally to add some diversity to this run I decided to do a run that proves sometimes it is OK to be a brainless jock by answering zero questions and simply winning it all through brute strength as can be seen here. This run included the layer of complexity present through manipulating the opponents to dare but then added two more aspects to manipulate. First I had to manipulate the physical challenges to loop through all of the challenges before repeating for a second time. Second I had to work to find the ideal strategies to win each challenge in the shortest amount of time while attempting to add some form of entertainment during the stages where you must run around.

This run ends up being 22 minutes and 44 seconds which is an extra 8 minutes longer than the High Score run and 16 minutes longer than the any% run. This begins to be a long run but as it is under 30 minutes I felt was still short enough to be entertaining.

Yes this run is started as a April Fool's joke but remains on the feed as a legitimate, if unlikely, movie.

I doubt this would get accepted and am OK with that.

Possible Improvements: This game would be a prime example for someone to bot. For the activities at the beginning, middle and end have already been beaten to what I believe to be the fastest time so the only optimization is the combination of questions that end up with the shortest time. Manipulation of questions is entirely dependent on the frame you press A so cycling through all options would be ideal for a bot.

I edited out the majority of the submission text as the portion was being satirical of the site over the past couple weeks but no one found it funny and people were seeming to get upset with me for my ideas so it is easier to just delete it so I don't have to deal with defending a joke.

Thanks for watching.

FractalFusion: This game is mostly just a quiz show. Most of the run is boring, and the brief action sequences aren't much better. I'm rejecting the run.

adelikat: Unrejecting this submission for consideration into the Vault

adelikat: Accepting for publication to the Vault

Ilari: Processing