Cell Runner (Compute's Gazette)
Not for the faint of heart or slow of hand, this frantic game puts you smack in the middle of a futuristic nightmare. Your survival depends on speed and concentration.
The article for this game can be found on page 52 of Compute's Gazette Issue 39 (September 1986)
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 43rd TAS from this series.
Another game that interested me enough to type in. I thought imagery, in the magazine photo made the game look like magic. I was in for a surprise, when I saw the playing field change so radically, every so often. Now that I have TASed this, it puts itself in the same category as other...being extremely unfair and unplayable at higher levels. Again, I never knew what would happen at the end of this game...which was fun to discover, but ended up being very boring.
Previous Compute's Gazette submissions include (In order of submission):
Game Difficulty and Ending
This game ends after beating 40 rounds. I never realized this, until DrD2k9 point it out to me. Man, have I been looking at too many of these magazines to remember anything about any game!
Effort In TASing
I really didn't like TASing this game, because hard effort gets destroyed easily. You see, the cycle of patterns comes around very frequently within certain frame ranges. So i was never able to get the patterns I wanted...over and over. I did start off writing a BOT, but it failed...after seeing that I could never force the cells to line up the way I wanted. So this game has sever limitations and can crush any optimizations that are fought for.
I have been hanging onto to this TAS for month, basically because I didn't know how to end it or classify it. Now that I do, I went through this game a final time with great frustration. I eventually off optimizing levels 31 through 40 to cut about 21 frames. That should tell you just how ridiculous this game is to work with.
Human Comparison
Couldn't find one.
ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: Accepting for publication.
despoa: Processing...