Submission #6763: link_7777's NES Rollerblade Racer in 04:14.71

(Link to video)
Nintendo Entertainment System
baseline
BizHawk 2.4.0
15308
60.0988138974405
11620
Unknown
Rollerblade Racer (USA).nes
Submitted by link_7777 on 5/27/2020 10:47:52 PM
Submission Comments

Rollerblade Racer

Rollerblade Racer is a game where you race through a number of courses on rollerblades and eventually take on the Super Rollerblade Challenge, if you have what it takes.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.4
  • Win the Super Rollerblade Challenge (20000 points)
5000 points are required in order to enter the Super Rollerblade Challenge. Finishing with 10000, 15000, and 20000 gets you 3rd, 2nd, and 1st place respectively. You do still see a credits screen for finishing as low as 3rd place. Initially I ended with fewer thank 20000 points and intended to make 1st place a part of the goal choice, but when I went back to improve the score I also found improvements that allowed me to reach 20000 points without losing time.

Controls

  • Up - accelerate
  • Down - decelerate
  • Left/Right - move left/right
  • B - crouch to skate down stairs or curbs
  • A - jump
  • A+B - Helicopter jump
  • select - skate backwards

Strategies

The basic strategy is pretty straight forward, get to the max speed (896 in a 2-byte value at 0x4AE) and keep it. Achieving the required score means doing a lot of jumping, and you do lose some speed each time you land. Generally your speed goes down to 888 and then back up to 896, and it seems this is high enough to avoid losing time.
Normally jumping at full speed (backscratcher jump) nets you 75 points, but we can get a big head start on points in the Neighborhood stage by doing helicopter jumps. The idea behind the helicopter jump is that it takes more air time to execute and therefore must be done over a curb or stairs. The Neighborhood curb is the only curb that seems to work, but it also only checks if you cross over, so we can jump up, down, or even just out over the curb and back. Since the helicopter jump is good for 300 points this gets us a good start. The other main sources of points are from jumping over barrels and for time remaining on the clock at the end of a stage.
The RTA run uses a strategy at the beach to move to the left sidewalk, and while this is much easier it also loses time since it takes much longer to get up to the max speed.

Stages

  1. Neighborhood
    • Helicopter jumps for points
  2. Barrels
    • There are barrels
  3. City
    • Backscratcher jumps for points
  4. Cones
    • There are cones
  5. Beach
    • The hard way is slightly faster than the easy path on the left
  6. Half-Pipe
    • There are half-pipe tricks, but it isn't worth stopping
  7. Park
    • Avoid all of the things
  8. Super Rollerblade Challenge
    • This is just a combination of the barrel, cone, and half-pipe stages. Also we make sure to get enough points for 1st place.

Improvements

  • The game doesn't have direct lag, it captures input on every frame, but it looks like maybe there is some variability when there are more enemies. Perhaps if there really is lag there could be something to optimize there.

Thanks to:

  • The TASMania team

Screenshots:

1243, 6497, 7809, 11791, 14609, 15374

feos: Judging...
feos: Replacing with an improvement.
feos: Replacing with another improvement.
feos: Super Rollerblade Challenge is not an extra level, it's just a way to get the credits. If you don't get 5000 points by then, you still have to play through that level, and you get this screen instead.
I don't have much to say about this game, indeed it feels like Paperboy, with some jumps that arguably make it less boring, but not a lot more complex and elaborate. There was no feedback, and votes weren't too enthusiastic. Seeing how Paperboy got rather low rating, I can't imagine this game doing much better when published.
Accepting to Vault.
fsvgm777: Processing.
Last Edited by adelikat on 11/4/2023 2:37 PM
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