Submission #8044: DrD2k9's NES Venice Beach Volleyball in 01:38.95

Venice Beach Volleyball

TAS Notes

• ShesChardcore found that serving on the last possible frame yielded an ace serve every time.
• I discovered that serving on the first possible frame also yields an ace serve every time. EDIT: Actually the first few possible frames.
• The Crab....and RNG Manipulation
  • The Crab is based on frame count RNG. If the framecount is in a certain range when a point is awarded, the crab will steal the ball and the player will be able to serve earlier.
  • I varied timing of serves as needed to make sure the crab would show. Even when delaying a serve was necessary, the crab shortened the time getting to the next serve enough that the delay was warranted.
  • Further, how far the crab had to travel was also manipulable. Delaying the hit on the serve by a frame or two changed the opponent's motion. It was often possible to get the ball to stop directly when it hit the feet of the opponent instead of bouncing by them. Doing this with aimed serves allowed for very brief thefts by the crab and further decreased time until the next serve.

Improvement Possibilities

• • There is a little crab that occasionally pops out and steals the ball after some points. This seems to coincide with the shorter wait times to serve the next point.
• If I or someone else can figure out what triggers the faster serves/crab. Improvement may still be possible.
• I feel that this run is very solid now, but I won't say that improvement can't be made if someone finds even better service options for RNG manipulation and Crab thefts.

Attribution

• I did not include ShesChardocre as author on this submission as all the gameplay inputs were done from scratch. If the judges/staff feel that ShesChardcore should be added to this submission, I am ok with that.