Powerball (Compute's Gazette)
This outstanding arcada-style game's moving obstacles, special features, and different game screens will keep you thinking and moving fast. Certainly not your ordinary version of Breakout, where this is very addictive, and contains a variety of features such as capsules and slivers--and ten different screens to master.
The article for this game can be found on page 46 of Compute's Gazette Issue 47 (May 1987)
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 34th TAS from this series.
This game fell within a number of magazines that I never was able to purchase. I believe the situation was due to my subscription ending and I not knowing that it did. Later on, I would start getting them from a magazine shop. By that time, I never knew anything about this game. What a great game this was and I surely missed out on playing it in my youth.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
Game Difficulty and Ending
This is a game that provides 10 different layouts to conquer. There is no difficulty selections, or any other options. Once a player has gone through all 10 unique levels. the game repeats again without any increase in difficulty. The real effort is trying to complete each of the progressively challenging screens.
Effort In TASing
This game was completely addictive for me to TAS. It took me about 2 months to complete. After the first round of TASing, I learned an amazing amount of tricks and strategies to further improve it on my 2nd attempt. Even with all that, my knowledge still increased and prompted a 3rd round of TASing, which lead to me getting highly frustrated. Yet, I prevailed and now I'm able to deliver a movie that I'm highly satisfied with.
BOTing
This game presented some very unique BOTing opportunities. Basically, I used two different methods. One for forcing the "Grey" blocks to green and the other to force the "Capsules" to spawn as I needed them. The only part of this game that wasn't BOTed, was the routes and strategies. In my opinion, BOTing the routes and strategies would take an impossible number re-records to optimize any screen, due to the constant change in RNG affecting everything that happens on the screen.
BOTs Used:
- Brutus: Used to force short frame spans for both Capsules (power ups), Slivers (making them spawn and move in a direction that I desired), and turning Grey blocks to green.
- Splotch: Used to change the cycling of RNG for large frame spans. This was mainly used to spawn a capsules that was in a rare situation to show.
Human Comparison
Couldn't find one. Sorry. :)
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Looks really cool, accepting.
despoa: Processing...