due to the recent submission of Donkey Kong Jr on A7800, I figured I would look to see if any other version of this game could be TASed. the one I could probably do easily is the Coleco vision one. I could not find the Adams computer version which apparently contains an extra level, and I'm not sure if bizhawk emulates it. so for now I did the original version.
Now for whatever reason, this version of the game has out of order levels. on a first playthrough, you play levels 1 and 4 from the NES versions, but once you beat level 4, you then play level 1, 2, then 4. It's unclear why this is the case, so I just decided to play two loops just to play the 2nd level.
I was able to determine that jumping is faster than normal walking, and I was also able to determine that RNG can be manipulated by pressing the jump button while climbing on vines. Some RNG behavior however I was unable to change, I don't mind if someone else wants to look into it.
CasualPokePlayer: Claiming for judging.
CasualPokePlayer: Replaced file with improved file, and trimmed input to the last unique level.
CasualPokePlayer: Execution seems sound, nothing obviously improvable.
Now this game is an has an interesting question on where its end is. The game's "loop" doesn't follow the NES versions as the submission text notes. Originally this submission did "two loops," however these "loops" were not actually using proper loop point. The actual loop the game goes through is level 1 -> 2 -> 1 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1 -> 3 -> 2. This order can be found at offset 0x4FB of the ROM (and changing the data there will cause the loop to change).
It gets even more interesting! After a loop completion, the difficulty will increase by 1. This difficulty is capped to 5. Note the game gives the option of 1 to 4 for the starting difficulty here. This submission picks 4, so it would only need to complete the loop once before the hardest difficulty is unlocked (and obviously, it would need to complete the loop again for "completing" the game with the hardest difficulty).
Of course, as one can see, there's only 3 unique levels within this loop, all of which are completed after the 4th round (with the first level getting a repeat). Per our rules, an endless game such as this may end once all unique content is completed, which this submission satifies. Also per our rules, a future submission may be able obsolete this by simply completing the loop twice, as to reach a point where the game's difficulty cap is hit.
With that said, accepting.
despoa: Processing...