Submission #8354: Darkman425's ZXS Stop the Express in 03:33.84

Stop the Express was a 1983 game by Hudson Soft. It was first developed for the Sharp X1 and later ported to other computers such as the MSX, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. This TAS is made with the ZX Spectrum port.

The goal of the game is to guide Nonta from the back of the train to the front in order to stop the runaway ITA Express. The Train Gang will try stopping our hero with throwing knives but Nonta can take them out by either jumping into them or capturing and releasing snake birds grabbed out of the air. Halfway through, Nonta enters the train and can no longer grab snake birds as ammo. In exchange Nonta can grab onto the handles lining the top of the train cars. Alongside the Train Gang, Nonta must also contend with obstacles such as poles that the train goes past, the gaps between train cars, and ghosts that are there for some reason.

This TAS aims to complete a single loop of the game by beating the two stages. This is a pretty straightforward affair. Releasing a snake bird takes time and isn't used in this TAS. Using the absolute minimum amount of ducking under thrown knives gives just enough leeway for Nonta to outrun Train Gang members in Stage 1.

Stage 2 has ghosts that can't be taken out. Train Gang members come from the left side which can either be jumped over or into. There's a small bit of waiting due to ghost placement and the orb at the end being in the way.

There's a thread on setting up RNG manipulation for ZX Spectrum games but I didn't try that since I'm rather inexperienced in microcomputer TASing. I'm also not sure how much it'd affect the ghost placement in the train at all.

The thread: Forum/Topics/24066

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: What is the world was the developer thinking, when they choose the control keys??

Well, you did "sucsess" complete this game.

Accepting to "Standard" for publication.

despoa: Processing...