A decently popular homebrew button mashing game from 2002. I always enjoyed this game and I love button mashing and pattern searching (i.e. Tetris hypertapping) so figured I would TAS it just to watch it get blown out of the water.
Not sure if this is of good enough quality for publication, but I always enjoyed the joys of button-mashing via TAS.
The game gets to a point of being unwinnable.
After my initial TAS, I went back over 100~ re-records and researched if the cycle of inputs would eventually fall "out of sync" and start the round on a blank frame, with the input being on the second frame, particularly due to the difficulty increasing and each round lasting more time (= more frames). I figured if a round lasted an odd number of frames (or even, vice versa), the cycle would go off sync and the blank & input pattern be thrown off. (i.e. starting a round on a blank frame and the input being second, i.e. a frame late) For this, I hand-input the cycle starting only on the first possible frame of each round (which was a lot more arduous than it sounds).
Turns out, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter and the result ends on exactly the same frame.
On the "last" level, the input speed of the CPU matches the maximum possible input speed of the NES, so the game continues infinitely. As such, I allow the round to be lost instantly to complete the TAS, and first and foremost overall, end the input earliest. However, I thought it may be of interest if the encode includes this struggle for a few seconds to make the point complete (although not count towards time and purely for encode purposes): https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638251688186469537
Additionally, here is a third userfile to prove my point about the cycle research: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638251689674849121
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Wow...good research. After reviewing all of your BK2 files, I realize what you mean about being unwinnable, and the fact of getting the cycle correct for each round.
The ending stops exactly where it needs to and optimization is perfect!
Accepting to "Standard" for publication.
despoa: Processing...