Lets try this again...and again (movie file updated since submission)...
10-Yard Fight for NES
American Football...kind-of. There are major differences in this game depending on what version you are playing.
The North American release of this game plays much like a standard game of American Football with both offense and defensive play during a set time frame; winner being the team with highest score when the time runs out. Four difficulty levels are available to choose from at the beginning of the game.
The Japanese version, however, has a completely different goal. This version is high score based; more like the arcade release. Score increases with progress down the field, touchdowns, kicked PATs, and remaining time on the clock when the touchdown is scored. Another major difference is no option to select difficulty at the beginning; the game moves through the 4 difficulties as its normal progression to the hardest level (Super Bowl). Each difficulty level involves a first and second half. Scoring a touchdown ends the half and moves to the next. As each half ends as soon as a touchdown is scored, the game can be progressed through without regard for the time on the clock. Thus it is able to be speedrun.
Objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.2.1
- Beat the Super Bowl as quickly as possible.
- Aims for Vault (But now contains more entertainment than the previous submission!)
- This submission is an attempt to help complete the TASmania project.
TAS Comments
- The primary limitation to progress in this game is the
runningcrawling speed of the players.- A rough calculation of running speed yields the players run speed at 19-20 seconds to run 40-yards.
- For comparison, professional NFL players (wide receivers/running backs) average 4.5 to 4.6 seconds per 40-yards and that's from a standing start, not already moving at top speed.
- Vertical running speed is unaffected by L/R movements as long as 'Up' is also held on the directional pad during lateral diagonal motions.
- Uses some really fancy footwork to avoid tackles through the first few halves. (explained more later)
- Uses the same strats used by RTA speed runners to avoid being tackled in the latter halves.
- Pausing/Un-Pausing the game stops musical ditties in various places which speeds up action of the game. These are performed frame perfect as soon as possible in all instances.
- Once the 2nd half of the Super Bowl is beaten, the game restarts the Super Bowl and loops. After the final input of this TAS, one half worth of time needs to run out in the restarted Super Bowl to reach the 'Game Over' screen.
TAS Speed strats not (currently) used in human runs.
Through the first few halves of play, there is a counter-intuitive strategy used to speed up the run. While the quickest way to get a touchdown is to run the kickoff back for the TD, it's actually the slower method of progressing through the first three halves of play.
Running out of bounds on the kickoff forces you to run a play from scrimmage. This does result in a slower touchdown, but it also initiates the timer to countdown. This results in less time on the clock when the touchdown is finally scored. This reduction in time left yields less time spend counting up the score. The time saved in this countdown makes up for the lost time going out of bounds.
Unfortunately, this only works for the first three halves of the game. Starting with the 2nd half of the college game, it's faster to use the human RTA strats to get the touchdown. Entertainment will mostly take a big dive at this point in the run.
Publication Eligibility
Is this run eligible for a Moon tier publication? Maybe more so than it had been before.
Is this run Vault eligible? I would argue that it is.
- This run utilizes very precise movement strats in the first three halves to avoid being tackled that would be near impossible to accomplish in a human run...at least consistently.
- It is the fastest known current time for the game.
- Unless more glitches are found that would somehow speed up the run, I don't foresee any potential improvements. (Though this has already been proven incorrect twice before.)
- In my opinion, the fastest known run (that is not obviously sub-optimal) of any non-trivial game should be vault eligible regardless of how closely RTA runners can come to matching the final time. This run is not as close to RTA records as the previous submission
- In my opinion, the fastest known run (that is not obviously sub-optimal) of any non-trivial game should be vault eligible regardless of how crappy the game itself is perceived to be.
- It will help complete the TASmania project.
Special thanks to Arc and Chamale for their strat ideas.
Noxxa: Replaced movie file with an improved version.
Noxxa: While normally an American Football sports game would fail to qualify for the Vault per its rules on sports games (specifically on fixed-time sports), this particular game with its touchdown goal rather than time goal and some reasonable precision requirements can qualify. That said, it still is quite slow-paced, repetitive, and has little of appeal visually or aurally. Accepting for the Vault.
feos: Pub.