Highlights
- Heavy glitch abuse
- Major skip glitch
- Uses hardest difficulty
- If published, this would be the 8th shortest TAS on the site!
- Genre: Board
Difficulty Choice and Board Size
To showcase the full time-saving potential of this game's glitches, I went with the hardest difficulty, Skill 3, and the largest board size, 10x10, which would normally yield the longest games. These selections aren't very meaningful in practice because with glitches, this same exact TAS time can be achieved with any difficulty or board size selection.
Glitches Used
The "Illegal Move glitch" involves intentionally making an illegal move on your turn, then quickly making a legal move before the Illegal Move text disappears. When this happens, the game will think the computer has just taken its turn, and will even award the computer with 1 point despite never placing a disc. So if this glitch is performed on move 3, by the end of the turn, the game will think 4 discs have been placed and it is move 5, despite the board looking like 3 discs have been placed and it is move 4. The game is now in a glitched state that we can take advantage of.
In Reversi, the first four moves must be played in the central 2x2 square. So if the game thinks it's move 5, that means the rest of the board is already open for play, despite there being only 3 discs on the board. This is the major skip glitch used in the TAS, which I'm calling "2x2 skip". I can now play what would normally be considered an outright illegal move to flip over the computer's only disc, leaving the computer with no legal moves, and ending the game instantly. The result is confirmed a win for the player due to the jingle that plays. An alternate jingle plays when the computer wins.
There are other glitches going on with disc placements. If you try to place a disc while the cursor is in between squares, the disc will sometimes be placed at the nearest legal position laterally to the left or right. This "horizontal snapping" was used for the third and fourth disc placements.
To top it all off, the final score reads 4-1, despite the computer player having no discs on the board, which I find funny.
Improvements?
It's doubtful there's a faster game to be found, as this is the only sequence that does all of the following:
- Black goes first to take advantage of the "2x2 skip", and plays in the default square
- No consecutive moves are diagonal from each other due to greater cursor travel time
- Moves 3 and 4 are on the same row horizontally to take the fullest advantage of "horizontal snapping"