Submission #6587: adelikat's NES Monopoly in 00:29.53

Nintendo Entertainment System
baseline
BizHawk 2.3.2
1775
60.0988138974405
2981
Unknown
Monopoly (U) [!].nes
Submitted by adelikat on 1/4/2020 3:33:23 PM
Submission Comments

Completion time

This movie aims to bankrupt the CPU player in as few frames as possible, unlike other movies which aim for lowest input frames. From power-on to bankruptcy, this movie is 766 frames faster than the published movie. However, it is also 27 frames faster in terms of input. This is not the lowest number of frames possible, that would be this movie by FractalFusion. That movie is faster in input frames but much slower in terms for the actual ending. Here is a chart to help:
MovieInput FramesCompletion Frames
Acmlm18022779
Hero of the day16943793
FractalFusion16255971
adelikat17752013

Strategy

This movie utilizes trades, a glitch, and a new innovation I discovered to bankrupt the CPU. An interesting note is that this is the first monopoly submission that does not depend on "stacking the deck" on the community chest or chance cards.

The Glitch

In a trade, a player will set up the trade that they want and click "Yes". At that point the other player has a chance to say "Yes", "No" or set up a different deal. If they say "Yes", the trade is done and final. If the CPU is the first to say yes, you have the option of menuing out of the trade and doing things such as mortgaging properties. However, there is a glitch/oversight that if you mortgage a property and return to the trade, the CPU will still be set to yes! (This also works against human players, if you want to be savage. And not have friends). Monopoly speedrun strats then involve offering a trade to a CPU that's a bit too high for them, causing them to counter by adding a new property from your list or more money then saying yes. This is generally a bad deal for you, but if you can mortgage all the properties, you end up with the advantage.
The innovation that is the basis for this movie is rather simple. Set up a trade that the CPU would agree to, then simply click "No" instead of "Yes"! The CPU will immediately then say Yes to the deal. At this point, you can do the mortgage glitch. In normal play, this is completely breaking as you can set up an even trade of many properties of the same color (The cpu will always agree since they see this as even), then mortgage all your properties.

The setup

If you receive a mortgaged property in a trade, you must either unmortgage it or pay a 10% tax immediately. So the strategy is to set up a trade where the CPU has no money, and only mortgaged properties, at which point they will be immediately bankrupted.
To do this I set up where I go first. Then I roll a 12, 12, and 4 (but not 2+2 as that would go to jail). This gets me both utilities and a red property. Ollie will agree to nearly $1200 for both utilities and as much as $300 for a red. So I set up a trade of these 3 properties for $1500 and then do the mortgage glitch to immediately bankupt him

Possible improvements

  • Another route I tried was to stack the chance deck to have an "Advance to nearest railroad" card. Then do 12 + Electric Company, 10 + Chance card that advances to B&O Railroad, 5 + Water works. This has better odds since 10 is much more likely than 12, and 5 is much more likely than a non-double 4. However, the sound and animation on the card made this overall slower
  • There's always a chance to get less delay frames to get the desired result, however, I tried a variety opening menu setups that can yield a different RNG. This one is surprisingly few delay frames overall (about 12).

Is this movie an improvement?

That's surprisingly complicated here. Yes it is faster in input and completion times. However, the controversy might be that the published movie is a "Pure" movie that does not exploit the CPU . That strategy would work in any version or even over the board, if given sufficient luck (or cheating). This is potentially important as this noob suggests.
However, I would argue in favor of this movie. It exploits a glitch (always nice), and exploits this specific version of monopoly and its nuances (otherwise, why do NES monopoly as opposed to any other version).

Nach: This movie is faster than the published run, and the audience also found it entertaining, therefore it should be accepted to Moons. However, this movie is slower than other submissions going purely by frame time, which opens up some questions regarding whether this beats existing records or not.
We've always allowed players to end their input wherever they wanted, as long as the game eventually completes without further work. However, how do we handle a trade-off when one submission is faster than the other using one benchmark but is slower in the other?
The author of this movie is arguing here that the fastest end time should take precedence over faster input time. For this other movie, the author is seemingly arguing that fastest input time should take precedence over faster end time. In fact there, the difference is over 20 minutes! You cannot have it both ways.
Looking at how we've handled things on the site previously, we've never allowed an improvement that only improved by ending input earlier. That is not considered an actual game-play improvement. However actually playing the game differently to allow it to end sooner while using more input has not previously been handled to my knowledge.
One reason to prefer shorter input is because it can be more objectively measured. Less input is clear. While determining which has the earliest ending requires viewers to measure the point they consider the game to be completed. While this is less objective, there generally is consensus about where this point is in most games.
Seeing the discussion thread here, as well as some other cases where this was discussed in the past, it appears the majority of our viewers prefer the earlier ending over less input. This is even more apparent when the earlier ending is more entertaining. We even have a case where a longer movie frame-wise which did nothing other than add a few frames to reach the ending sooner obsoleted the earlier movie. In this case here, the whole game-play to the end of the game is actually faster. Therefore, I am accepting this, and considering it to beat existing records.

feos: Pub.
Last Edited by adelikat on 11/2/2023 1:28 PM
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