Gordo 106 - The Mutated Lab Monkey is a game released on the Atari Lynx in 1993. The plot involves a renegade monkey, Gordo, that breaks out of a lab and frees all the animal captives....or something, yeah.
This marks the first submission for Atari Lynx. The motivation of this project was to complete my All Platforms Challenge. I went through the complete set of Atari Lynx games including homebrew games. This game represents what I thought was the most entertaining and publish worthy of the set. Thus it is my best attempt at completing the challenge!
To watch this on the emulator you need Mednafen 1.1.
Windows should use the front end provided in the download link. Linux users will have to compile. You MUST use revision 144 in order to play this file! Later versions are only compatible with .mc2 file format and only PCE
games.
You also need a lynx BIOS to run the game in the emulator. And it must be called lynxboot.img.
Basic Game Info
There are two items that Gordo can collect:
Apples - These are your weapons. You can throw them to kill enemies.
However, the throwing animation is slow, you can't throw while jumping, and most enemies take many hits to kill.
Bananas - This increases your health; a must have for this game!
The difficulty in real time of this game is absolutely evil. Half the enemies are almost the size of the screen and do tremendous amounts of damage. You invulnerability period is very short. If you get into a bad position surrounded by enemies you can be clobbered from full health down to death in a matter of 1 second! Those same enemies take 5-6 hits to kill which is a very long time because Gordo's throwing ability is quite slow. In almost every case an enemy is too close to you to kill it before it hits you. This means every enemy in the game requires either blowing through it by taking damage or repeatedly retreating in order to kill it.
Moves/Tricks
Double Tapping left or right will send Gordo into running speed where he flails his arms like a madman. The basic strategy of the TAS is to do this as much as possible.
Gordo's jump height can not be adjusted.
Health never refills! Health is the greatest resource in this game considering half the enemies are about the size of the screen and the hit boxes of everything is huge. So a big part of a TAS is planning the collecting bananas and where to take damage.
One way of conserving health is to take damage from a lesser enemy and use the invulnerability period to go through a more powerful enemy.
When running, Gordo can't get apples or bananas on the ground. However, if you jump on the frame is on top of one, he will grab it. Gordo also can't get items while he is invulnerable. This is the reason I sometimes stop
for seemingly no reason.
Gordo will stay running after jumping as long as you are holding right on the frame you land. This fact can be exploited to keep him in run mode even while moving in different directions or pausing to wait for events.
Summary
Takes damage to save time
Genre: Platform
Emulator: Mednafen1.1
mmbossman: Sorry adelikat, I too hope the site will have a Lynx run someday, but people seem to agree that this shouldn't be the first. Rejecting due to viewer response.
FractalFusion: Accepting for publication into Vault.
Joined: 2/20/2010
Posts: 209
Location: I'm in space
Again, I think adelikat did a fine job of TAS-ing a lousy game, and I think his goal of getting more consoles on tasvideos is a worthy one. That said, it seems clear to me that this (lengthy) debate has been reduced to the question of whether selection of a "lousy" game, and not necessarily a lousy TAS in itself, is enough to justify rejection of a TAS. I offer the following excerpts from the tasvideos 'guidelines' page:
http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html
* The game should give an impression of complexity; it should not be overly easy or straightforward.
* There should be enough variety to entertain. It should not have, say, 10% of it entertaining and 90% boring.
* It should not be a bad game in the first place, such that it distracts the viewers. (NES Front Line is then cited as an example)
Thus, tasvideos does recognize that some games are just plain "bad". If Gordo the Lab Monkey doesn't meet the above tasvideos standards (which I think is the case), then any TAS of it should be rejected.
Oh, play it cool. Play it cool. Here come the space cops.
* The game should give an impression of complexity; it should not be overly easy or straightforward.
Bye, SMB.
* There should be enough variety
Bye SMB
If it's demonstrably true that this is the best game on the console, maybe this movie should be a concept demo? That is, let it be known the publication is for archival purposes, rather than actual merit.
But both of them completed the game in the same amount of time, wich means both have the same "bad quality"...
Is it easier to vote No on a bad game choice just because it was made by a newbie? Never mind, I'm just wondering.
Of course it's always easier to dismiss the n00b as not being proficient at something.
If you were presented two videos - one with Michael Jordan hitting 25 3-pointers in 60 seconds, while another of some random guy on the street doing the same thing, and you were told one of them had video editing so that all 25 baskets are hit by both players (but you can't tell which has it and which doesn't), which are you more likely to assume has the editing?
I voted meh after watching the whole video. The run itself seems fine to someone such as myself that has never played the game. It's extremely boring though. There is almost literally nothing entertaining about watching this game.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
Really, is the game so horrible? The graphics are not very good, but they're really silly, which gave me a few chuckles. The music is not bad either, IMHO. Also, I can tell that the game is difficult and that adelikat's health management was really good. When it comes down to it, the biggest problem with the game is that it's just too long for the amount of variety it has.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically.
Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.)
Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html)
Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature!
Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
While I appreciate the run, it is your basic run right the entire time game. It doesn't do anything surprising. The jump physics makes the run look sloppy.
agreed
yeah yeah i'm an inclusionist to a fault
if it were an nes game submitted by a "nobody" it would probably be rejected (though i do not agree with that decision)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Was there anyone beside me who found this game scary? I mean, that monkey looks so weird (in a scary way) with his arms waving around, and the strange music doesn't make things better... It actually took me a while to see that it was indeed a monkey, at first it looked like... some kind of monster of something. Perhaps I have too wild of an imagination.
Hmm, well, as for the run itself, I decided to vote meh. I could clearly see that it was tool-assisted, and it was somewhat entertaining. However, I found it a bit too repetitive, and the music hurt my ears.
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
I enjoyed watching it, so I vote yes.
Anyways, as far as TASable Lynx games go, how about Todd's Adventures in Slime World? I've heard that it's considered the best game on the platform.
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
Wow, I figured Lynx wasn't TASable yet, since I hadn't seen any published Lynx runs. Apparently it has been for a while. Nothing wrong with this TAS though, other than entertainment. Publish to the Vault!
Wow, I figured Lynx wasn't TASable yet, since I hadn't seen any published Lynx runs. Apparently it has been for a while. Nothing wrong with this TAS though, other than entertainment. Publish to the Vault!
even, i found this game kinda entertaining
yes vote and go for a first lynx publication !
This is the first published Lynx run, correct? Shouldn't that be noted in the publication text, along with giving the movie a "notable publication" icon?
This is the first published Lynx run, correct? Shouldn't that be noted in the publication text, along with giving the movie a "notable publication" icon?
Forgot about adding notice to publication text. I'll add a note.
"notable publication" was replaced by "notable improvement", which doesn't apply here. There's "first platform", which I did give, but that flag lacks an icon...
Edit: Oh, it seems that I also forgot about bunch of other work for first publication. Done that too.
Gordo 106 - The Mutated Lab Monkey is a game released on the Atari Lynx in 1993. The plot involves a renegade monkey, Gordo, that breaks out of a lab and frees all the animal captives....or something, yeah.
There are two items that Gordo can collect:
The difficulty in real time of this game is absolutely evil. Half the enemies are almost the size of the screen and do tremendous amounts of damage. You invulnerability period is very short. If you get into a bad position surrounded by enemies you can be clobbered from full health down to death in a matter of 1 second! Those same enemies take 5-6 hits to kill which is a very long time because Gordo's throwing ability is quite slow. In almost every case an enemy is too close to you to kill it before it hits you. This means every enemy in the game requires either blowing through it by taking damage or repeatedly retreating in order to kill it.
Double Tapping left or right will send Gordo into running speed where he flails his arms like a madman. The basic strategy of the TAS is to do this as much as possible.
When running, Gordo can't get apples or bananas on the ground. However, if you jump on the frame is on top of one, he will grab it. Gordo also can't get items while he is invulnerable. This is the reason I sometimes stop
for seemingly no reason.
