Jackal is one of those games that suffer from lags. Thus using only one jeep can be faster than using two.
This movie is 3530 frames (58.83 seconds) faster than the obsoleted 1-player movie and 655 frames (10.92 seconds) faster than the published 2-player movie. I didn't submit it because I thought 1-player movies wouldn't be accepted if they were similar to published 2-player movies. moozooh said that I should let the audience judge it, and I realized that this could be accepted in a new category. At last, I decided to put it here and let you judge it.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCE Ultra 0.98.24
  • Uses only one player
  • Aims for fastest real time
  • Plays at the highest difficulty level
  • Takes no damage
  • No deaths
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Manipulates luck
  • Genre: shooter

FAQ about entertainment

I set such goals for the sake of entertainment: 1-player, hardest level, no damage/death.

Does the game let you select any difficulty levels?

No, but this game has a dynamical difficulty system. It's depended on what grade your grenade/rocket weapon is in. Generally speaking, the better weapon you have, the more enemy the game will be in. In order to play the game at the hardest level, one needs to upgrade his main weapon to the 4-way rocket.
With this set, I could create many explosions on the screen. I tried my best to avoid lags during explosions. However, I had to leave some enemy there at times or I would have got lots of lags.

Isn't controlling two players simultaneously more entertaining?

This is hard to answer. In my opinion, a 2-player movie will benefit from:
  • Shorter non-scrolling peorids.
  • More firepower.
  • More dancing
while suffer from:
  • Too many enemy there and thus lots of lags either to destroy them or not.
  • Too few enemy there and that one jeep (usually the latter one) can be idle.
One player can destroy as many enemy as two can and beat this game as fast as two can. So I don't think 1-player movies of this game is inferior to 2-player movies. So I decided to TAS the less laggy and faster-in-real-time 1-player movie.
However, I think this movie should be put in a different category if accepted, because this movie looks different from the published 2-player movie, as well as in fact that this movie aims for fastest real time, and the published movie aims for fastest ingame time.

But can't you still utilize two players while avoiding lags?

Yes, sucide can be abused to have only one jeep on the screento avoid lags, and the game-over player can "borrow" a life from the other to join boss fight, and then commit sucide again. This can be a faster way than this movie uses, but I deprecated it for the sake of entertainment.

Stage by stage comments

Stage 1

I skipped one flashing POW since taking him would cost me many frames. I got all the other 3 flashing POW's and set the difficulty to the highest level before the boss fight, so those boss tanks came out the fastest way.

Stage 2

A shortcut was taken. I made luck manipulation to reduce lags around the ramp area. You'll notice that one enemy coloumn "fell down" but it then mysteriously vanished.

Stage 3

Destroying parking enemy vehicles was likely to cause lags, so I left them there.

Stage 4

This stage is surprisingly hard to improve since enemy scatter here and there. I intentionally "missed" one shot right before the boss.

Stage 5

Now you'll see the true power of TAS! I managed to destroy all 4 gates in just one round, which is impossible without TAS power.

Stage 6

Lag reduction is the key to be fast. I spent more ingame time to destroy many enemy and I got faster in real time. Conveyor belts were glitched that I could go through it without being slowed down.
During fighting the giant tank boss, a lot of lags occured, but there was nothing I could do with them except for committing sucide and downgrade my weapon before the fight, which would violate my No-Death rule.

Other comments

Thanks to TheAxeMan, Xipo and others who made their Jackal speedruns that I used for comparations.

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here.

klmz: NesVideoAgent, it seems that you have got it desynced. I have no problems in playing it with either FCEU 0.98.15 or FCEU 0.98.28. I've removed the screenshots.

mmbossman: Accepting as an improvement to the current, 2-player movie. See clarification in the discussion thread for details.

adelikat: Processing.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2000: klmz's NES Jackal in 07:25.98
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Ran fine for me. What were that helicopter and the POWs for?
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There are two types of POWs. Regular ones are just for you to send to the helicopter for some scores, while flashing ones can uprade your grenade/rocket weapon up to 4-way when you pick up them, as well as add some scores and upgrade your weapon again when you send them aboard the helicopter.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
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Great submission. I've always been a big fan of explosions and big tires. Giving this a Yes Vote. Also, congratulations on submission #2000.
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Great improvement. However, I still think the fastest way to do this game would be two player: Player 1 has rocket + horizontal fire upgrade Player 2 has rocket upgrade only This would allow you to take out enemies fast without lag-inducing explosions, and would make boss fights 2, 3, 4, and 6 faster. Yes Vote.
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dave_dfwm wrote:
Player 1 has rocket + horizontal fire upgrade Player 2 has rocket upgrade only This would allow you to take out enemies fast without lag-inducing explosions, and would make boss fights 2, 3, 4, and 6 faster.
If you do so, the difficulty level will be set to 2 (the highest is 3), which will cause the first boss fight to be ~2 seconds slower because the 4th boss tank will come out ~2 seconds slower. However, since less enemies wil be spawned, lags can be less. (Hard to say that, since there is always one more jeep on screen, unless you abuse deaths and continues.) Boss fight 3 won't be over 0.8 seconds faster as you have to wait for the last "eye" to open to destroy it. In my movie, I had destroyed all the other "eyes" before the last one opened.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
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klmz wrote:
If you do so, the difficulty level will be set to 2 (the highest is 3), which will cause the first boss fight to be ~2 seconds slower because the 4th boss tank will come out ~2 seconds slower. However, since less enemies wil be spawned, lags can be less. (Hard to say that, since there is always one more jeep on screen, unless you abuse deaths and continues.) Boss fight 3 won't be over 0.8 seconds faster as you have to wait for the last "eye" to open to destroy it. In my movie, I had destroyed all the other "eyes" before the last one opened.
Hmm -- it may be possible then to use death and make the game faster (but at the risk of the movie looking sloppy)... In a 2-player run, you could: High difficulty for boss 1 fast spawn, kill player 1 Go on to next level. Or something like that.
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Enjoyable-- yes vote here.
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Good! klmz,you are the king of the FC world!
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
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I always seem to like runs of this game -- voted yes. I do miss the two player action though. Also, it would be interesting to see how fast you could go allowing death and with no limitations on difficulty or number of players, even if it might be "less entertaining".
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I enjoyed this, and vote yes. I don't believe that this game needs two runs, as the differences are not extremely noticeable. In my opinion, the two player run was the more entertaining of the two, since there was more action to watch, but this one does have it's moments. However, I don't believe that either run has pushed this game to it's limits. I think that a two player run which abuses death and simultaneously reduces lag would present the best of both worlds, and if one were to be made, it should obsolete this. Life and health are resources to be utilized in TASes, and I personally think that using suicides to improve time would improve entertainment, not decrease it. In any case, I am accepting this submission to obsolete the current 2-player movie, with the understanding that if/when a new 2-player submission occurs, it will be eligible to obsolete this movie.
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Post subject: Movie published
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1164] NES Jackal "1 player" by klmz in 07:25.98
NESAtlas
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I have created an Atlas Video for Stage 6! Link to video