Submission #7784: SpaceColonizer's NES Family Feud in 06:58.81

Game objectives

• Emulator used: FCEUX v2.4.0
• Objective: Have the Player-1 Family Win $20,000
• How To Achieve: Play four perfect games that earn you $5,000 each.

Question Seeding

• Whenever starting a game of family feud, a "seed" gets selected. At the start of a run, this happens when either the One-Family Game or Two-Family Game option is selected.
• Once the seed is determined, the 5 Fast Money Win (FMW) questions are locked in. There is a list of 400+ possible question and the 5 FMW questions will be a consecutive series on that list.
• The seed also effects which standard questions can be the first question. There are 8 possible first questions from a list of about 400+ options. The 8 possibilities are consecutive on that list. NOTE: the FMW and standard questions use different lists, although there are some common questions between them.
• The second question will be from one of the 8 questions on the list immediately after the first question, and so on if further questions are needed.
• After winning a FMW and choosing to continue for the 20k, a new seed will be determined.
• A perfect game seed is one where you can get 2 100-point questions in a row, followed by a Fast Money Win where it is possible to get 200+ points with only one set of answers. Not all perfect game seeds are created equal. Fewer/Shorter answers are ideal for speed.

Answering Standard Questions

• Each standard question has 3-12 answers. They can be answered in any order, but Player-1 should answer the top answer first during the buzz-in.
• Answers often have multiple ways they can be given. For Example: ENGINE/MOTOR and CAT/DOG/PET.
• Answers need not always be fully spelled. For Example: STRAWB can be submitted for STRAWBERRY. Numbers must be fully entered. US States can use their two letter postal abbreviation, i.e. CA for CALIFORNIA.
• To answer a question as quickly as possible, determine the minimum number of inputs needed for each answer. This is not always the answer with the fewest letters because of how the keyboard can be navigated. The game takes a little longer to decide if an answer is valid when not fully spelled, so for TAS purposes it is usually just better to fully spell a word.
• Sometimes a question with more short answers can be faster the one with fewer long answers.

Answering Fast Money Win Questions

• Each FMW questions has 2-12 answers. One answer for each questions in a first round then if the points from those answers don't get 200+, an additional answer per question in a second round.
• Answering all #1 answers will not always get 200+ points depending on the seed, forcing a second round.
• When a 200+ point first round is possible, it is sometimes faster to answer a few lower point answers if they can be entered faster. So long as the combination of points reaches 200.

Interesting Things About My TAS

• Since I sometimes had to wait several frames to get a perfect seed or question, I was able to "add" those extra frames to earlier parts of the run without losing overall time. So you'll notice I sometimes spell out family names instead of selecting just a single letter. The player-1 family is the ABBA family, and there is a WAX family at some point. I also would sometimes linger on an question/answer longer so that a viewer might get more time to read them, although things still go by so fast it doesn't help much.
• There are no repeated questions in the run. That is deliberate. I recall from when I made this that there was going to be a repeated question, which would have been faster, but I decided to make the TAS have all unique questions. Not sure exactly how much extra time that cost.