Sega's equivalent to Kirby's Avalanche gets its own movie. We all know these games by now, clump together alike beans in long combo chains to chuck mess onto your opponent, and win by blocking up opponent’s screen. Well, just the third column will suffice
- Aims for fastest time
- Played on regular difficulty
- Manipulates luck
I say it manipulates luck, but it doesn’t manipulate as much as you’d hope for in a game like this unfortunately. You can’t manipulate the identity of each individual block, the first 18 or so (enough to fill half the screen) gets pre-determined by the frame you choose to start the level on; and by the time the random blocks actually do come along you should’ve cleared the whole screen by then anyway. Secondly, manipulation of your opponent is extremely limited. All of them (At least I assume all) have special strategies which they always use, some more obvious than others. What’s happening on your side of the screen will not affect them in any major way. It’s not like if your opponent sees you building up a giant combo, he’ll quickly try to stop you by immediately executing the one he’s building up or anything to that extent. He’ll just happily go about his business without a single concern for what you’re doing. The only way of altering what he’s doing is to chuck crap, but you why you’d want to chuck just a little bit rather than a whole screen’s worth I don’t know.
I chose to play it on regular difficulty as increasing the difficulty wouldn’t add to the entertainment value in any way. There aren’t more enemies to take down, they don’t require more bullets to kill, there aren’t any extra objectives; the only difference is the AI is increased. Unfortunately due to the lack of manipulation in this game no amount of tool assistance can overcome this factor. There’s nothing I can do to stop them from building their big combos, and so it’d just cause an overload of crap to be chucked on my screen, lowering the possibilities for myself to produce large combos and so slowing down the run and reducing the entertainment by a large factor.
But then again, if I’m going for speed then why not reduce the difficulty? Ironically that would slow me down too, as explained later
Level 1-24 seconds
First level, which you’d think would be the fastest, but no. There’s a real lack of effort put into the game from my current opponent, slowing it down. His slowness is bad for 2 reasons; firstly it means he’ll have less blocks stationed in the 3rd column, causing me to need a larger combo to fill up the whole screen. Secondly the game can only chuck a maximum of 5 lines worth of crap in one go. It’ll then patiently wait for the player to make a single move, and then chuck up to another 5 lines worth. Since it’s an early level, the player takes a while to make this additional move, causing the final blow to be delayed. Still very fast by real-time standards though
Level 2-23 seconds
This is one of the more obvious CPU strategies. Blindly fill up the first 2 rows as fast as he can, and only then start playing properly. Useful for filling up the 3rd row, and luckily this particular selection didn’t coincidently give him a good chance for a combo.
Level 3-23 seconds
Nice how the CPUs continue to dump stuff in the 3rd column, even when it’s obvious he’s in a lot of danger
Level 4-22 seconds
Again, another obvious CPU strategy. Fill up the end columns first and only then start playing properly. This causes a lack of beans in the third column, but luckily that doesn’t matter at all. Since 2 columns are already filled there isn’t enough room to chuck an entire load in one go, and so it saves the remainder for the next load instead, etc. This meant I didn’t need a big combo to overcome the emptiness of the third column
Level 5-22 seconds
CPU’s still pretty slow at this point; and still kindly placing the beans in the best places for me. Very generous
Level 6-21 seconds
For some reason I always hate playing against this guy, it feels so good to get his ass handed to him, and with the smallest combo of the whole run.
Level 7-20 seconds
Looks like I got him just in the nick of time. A little while longer and he could’ve done a magnificent combo there. The best time of the whole run.
Level 8-21 seconds
I would’ve thought at level 8 they would realise not to build up in the third column, but nooooo. Thanks a lot!
Level 9-20 seconds
Also taking only 20 seconds, but Level 7 is still many frames ahead. Only second best
Level 10-23 seconds
This level seems kinda slow now, especially after all those others, yet objectively it’s still an excellent time
Level 11-24 seconds
You can somewhat see the time patterns emerging now. Notice how the first few levels take the longest to complete; then a bunch of fast ones, and now we’re up to the harder stages the times are on the rise again. This corresponds to what I was saying earlier, how the regular difficulty creates the optimum completion times.
Level 12-22 seconds
This level has about the most manipulative move used in the run. Delaying one of the blocks for a split second stopped him from grouping together those reds at the bottom. Not quite enough crap to cover the whole screen, but that doesn’t matter. Luckily due to the way he was playing means that he created a nice little prison for himself, leaving no way to stop my inevitable victory.
Level 13-25 seconds
Don’t be fooled by the time, an early end to frame input means the block wasn’t falling at max speed, nor did it get instantly grouped upon its landing.
Total Game Time:4 minutes and 50 seconds
Truncated: Like many of the viewers, I think this is not different enough from Kirby's avalanche, and that we don't need movies for both. I will reject this movie.
Truncated: This has been unrejected due to our policy change on which movies we publish. This will be published in the Vault category.
