Final Defense (Compute's Gazette)
They've finally broken through. In "Final Defense", the hundreds of enemy ships are approaching by sea, and an equal number of tanks are convergin on you by land. You're the last defender, and before they take you, you must wipe out as many of them as possible. If only you could hold on long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
The article for this game can be found on page 33 of Compute's Gazette Issue 78 (December 1989)
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 80th TAS from this series.
This was an issue that I remember very well. I only typed in the other game in this issue, called Circuits. Because "Final Defense" was the name, I never really gave it a second though. Too bad...this turned out to be a really good addition to this series.
Game Difficulty and Ending
There are 10 levels of difficulty. "0" is the easiest, as there are no enemies to shoot against. Starting with Level 1, you start to see enemies. This TAS is played on Level 9, where almost all ships shoot back, as opposed to a few in the easier levels. As for the ending, it is clear...fly the mission, shoot as many ships and tanks as possible, and then land.
Effort In TASing (Not BOTed)
This game had a few details to figure out. For one, its an auto-scroller, so i was forced to create a maximum-score run. So this posed a problem of manipulating RNG to force all the ships and tanks to be within reach of me shooting them.
As for the landing, there was a bit of "Balancing" speed and landing to stop the aircraft as soon as possible. Before landing, there was so much speed you could reduce by. So you would basically have to slow down at a certain point so that the landing strip came up the quickest. Afterwards, you had touch down quickly and then manual decelerate.
I figured everything out on my first full run-through. Afterwards, I created the version you are seeing now....where all ships and tanks were destroyed, thus giving us a maximum score run.
Human Comparison
Here is the only video I could find of this game. It accurately shows how difficult it is to shoot all enemies.
Just note...the gamer choosed Level 0 at first, which doesn't really show anything. The next run, Level 1 is chosen where you can see what the game has to offer.
DrD2k9: Claiming for judging.