Batman: The Caped Crusader is an action adventure title for the Commodore 64 with presentation resembling that of a comic book. This TAS beats Joker's campaign.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.3.0
- Takes damage to save time
- Loses time to make the TAS viewable
Walkthrough
You must defuse 10 bombs to save Gotham, fight Joker and resque Robin. The game presents a big location that features 112 zones (comic pictures where you can act) and 21 obtainable items. Unfortunately, the TAS doesn't show Joker's mansion and the circus' insides.
At the beginning, you have to obtain a Gas mask to avoid poisoning in the sewer. Without putting it on, you health will drain quickly. Also the sewer is completely dark (excepting 2 adjecent rooms). Since I had to spend 80% of the TAS inside it, I think it's more reasonable to turn the Flashlight on and let people see what's going on. Besides, the Flashlight is placed at the same room as Gas mask so I spent no time looking for it.
Then, you have to cross all the sewer to find the Wire cutters. After that I turned around and went back to defuse all the bombs. If you sketch a map of the location, you'll notice that it has a branch structure. It has no shortcuts, so you have to cross it all again to find and defuse the bombs.
When all the bombs are defused, you make the real Joker to appear within the certain area. When you get out of the sewer and face the area with the note "Roll up! Roll up!", there are 3 zones at the left from you and 4 zones at the right. This is the area where Joker can be, but he usually spawns at the 4th zone at the right. I managed to make him appear 1 zone before it. He looks like a regular enemy (you can face up to 2 Joker-like enemies at the same time somewhere wthin the circus area) so you have to know he's the real one. After you hit him 9 times, he drops a Rope which you must use to rescue Robin. You use it and the game is passed. Where is Robin? How to get there? Does Batman know he must save him? It doesn't matter! You just use the Rope and you somehow rescue him.
Some unshown facts:
1. You can't use any health-restoring items without the False teeth. You can't even drink Cola without it.
2. There is a Toilet roll you can use if you pick up something undesirable =)
3. There are at least 4 items that do nothing useful. You just increase your game completeness percentage that affects nothing but your pride.
Like in Penguin campaign, there is a type of enemy that stuns you for a moment if you walk past him. I had to lose some time to make him tear me least possible times. Like adelikat, I had to use a cracked version of the game.
I don't know what's wrong with the cursor inside the inventory. I can't move it left normally. When it's in the right part of the screen, by pressing Up, it teleports way left. It's the only way to offset it left. I think it's a problem with the game. Some kind of an error inside the cracked game or what. Nevertheless, I found no other decent cracks.
feos: Nice run, everything seems legit, just like the currently published movie. Cracked version was allowed because there's nothing else available. The game is split into 2 parts, and all the dumps seem to also be separated.
The route makes sense, the items are required to beat the game, and flashlight is a micro trade-off that only costs a few frames, but makes a lot of sense, since most of the game is going through the sewers. Completion point is correct, after it you just reset your game. Optimality seems to be fine, you just walk around and use items.
Mouse pointer navigation is bugged in this version of the game, but redoing it with a version that doesn't have this bug would require redoing everything from scratch, and it might not be as fast anymore, so it's not required.
Note: If it turns out to be faster that way, this movie won't be considered obsolete if a new submission just uses a version without the pointer bug. There have to be actual gameplay improvements.
The game is a slow-paced 2-dimensional maze that's impossible to follow without knowing the game, ad there's no real action going on. Screens fading out is a nice feat, but the unfairly small viewport causes you to just give up and forget about understanding what you're seeing.
Accepting to Vault as a new branch, since this game (originally) consists of 2 independent quests.
feos: Make the branch match the manual (and the box cover).
feos: Enough time has passed, let's pub.