Sega Tetris, from Japan.
This TAS predates emulators.
You see, the game always generates the same 1000 piece looping sequence from poweron with a clear nvram. (the pieces are supposed to be truly random, you see)
It also gave a 10X bonus for line clears that emptied the field completely.
So what the japanese players did was map out the sequence, and work out how to score bravo after bravo to most efficiently max the score counter in the smallest number of line clears.
The tool in this case was the piece sequence list. No "legitimate" player could possibly max out the score that fast. BUT, armed with the tool of foreknowledge of all upcoming pieces, the hardcore japanese players would max out the counter much faster.
It would be tagged "aims for fastest time, abuses luck".
Because of the way the random generator worked, this is one case where luck could be abused in real time.
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Interesting piece of trivia
though I don't think that counts as a TAS. In the literal sense it is because it used "tools", but not in context with which the term is really used (replaying a sequence of input ).
My point is that a very basic TASing technique (luck abuse) was used long before emulators existed.
And I'm pretty sure nes tetris collects entropy during gameplay. Usually people messed with the cart by playing super mario brothers most of the time and abusing turtle stair.
I'm talking specifically about the NES competition cart, which combined several games and ended with a modified Tetris. It was modified, of course, so that luck wouldn't impact the players' results -- since each player was supposed to be playing the competition for the first time, the fact that it used a fixed seed shouldn't have been an issue. But as I recall, someone managed to get a sneak peak (or was able to watch a competition that was happening a day or so before the one they were scheduled to be in) and figured out the piece progression from there.
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That's not luck manipulating/RNG abuse, because there's no luck involved. All pieces go out in a set pattern.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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This sounds like trying to recite pi out to a thousand decimals. Sure it seems random and it's hard to do, but it's not an exercise in luck manipulation, only rote memorization.
BTW, dibs on "Memorize Pi" for the x-box 360, available Christmas 2011
Actually, the competition cart seeds the RNG based on your score in the mario section, and then collects no more entropy.
Sega tetris instead walks through a fixed seed list after every game.
Either way, the seed can be changed through player input.
Back on May 19, 1984, history was made at CBS by a man who showed how successful you can be if you just pay attention.
Having watched Press Your Luck since it premiered, Michael Larson, then an unemployed ice cream truck driver from Ohio, came to the conclusion that the swift, seemingly random flashing lights that bounced around the Press Your Luck board were hardly random at all. By taping the show religiously and pausing the tapes, Larson discovered that there were just six light patterns on the board. With this bit of knowledge, he practiced at home while watching the show and realized that he could stop the board wherever and whenever he wanted, if he just had patience.
Yup. videotaped episodes and freeeze framed them to work out all the spinner patterns so that he knew the safe times to stop and gain additional spins.
Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs.
Manipulates luck.
Abuses programming errors. (regardless of sequence picked for the game, there were safe times to try, even without foreknowledge of the arrangement chosen for that episode)
Abuses programming errors. (regardless of sequence picked for the game, there were safe times to try, even without foreknowledge of the arrangement chosen for that episode)
It's questionable if it was a programming error or simply lazy/incompetent programming. (I'm betting it was the latter.)
you say tomayto, I say tomahto. :)
(lazy and incompetent programming often leads to errors)
I consider a programming error something that was made by mistake rather than deliberately (regardless of how crappy and incompetent that deliberate implementation might be). It's not an error if the program works exactly as designed.
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Warp, nobody here cares about that distinction but you. If someone says "programming errors", I'm sure you know what they mean by it. Putting enough effort into every post to prevent you from jumping on every little thing that isn't worded properly hinders productivity. Please encourage productivity by suppressing your need for optimal semantics. That's how I see it, anyway.
Also, I know this is going to sound hypocritical due to the above paragraph, but I don't think the Sega Tetris "TAS" described by zaphod is a "TAS", since actual real-time gameplay was necessary. That sort of run is simply an unassisted speed run, considering you have to play it in real time. This sequence mapping is the similar to the route mapping that's done by the players of Speed Demos Archive. It's not like andrewg got his 5-minute SMB run on his first time playing those levels, only knowing the game's physics mechanics.
There's a difference between knowing a level and knowing a random sequence.
A speed runner would walk up to the arcade, plunk in their quarter, start the camera, and play.
That's what in my opinion makes this a proto-TAS.
From a speed running perspective, those superplays from the poweron pattern are cheating, removing part of the challenge of the game.
A speed runner would walk up to the arcade, plunk in their quarter, start the camera, and play.
Most speed runners reset until they are lucky. You reset until you have the 1/50 chance that a special item appears or you reset until one of 50 pseudo random boards appear. Where is the difference?
Warp, nobody here cares about that distinction but you. If someone says "programming errors", I'm sure you know what they mean by it. Putting enough effort into every post to prevent you from jumping on every little thing that isn't worded properly hinders productivity. Please encourage productivity by suppressing your need for optimal semantics. That's how I see it, anyway.
Last time I checked, expressing one's opinion about a subject was not forbidden, nor even a faux pas, but in fact a completely normal form of social interaction between people. You are seeing something in my post that isn't there.
Also, I know this is going to sound hypocritical due to the above paragraph, but I don't think the Sega Tetris "TAS" described by zaphod is a "TAS", since actual real-time gameplay was necessary. That sort of run is simply an unassisted speed run, considering you have to play it in real time. This sequence mapping is the similar to the route mapping that's done by the players of Speed Demos Archive. It's not like andrewg got his 5-minute SMB run on his first time playing those levels, only knowing the game's physics mechanics.
I do not consider it a tool-assisted performance either, for many reasons: Tools are not being used to do the run (unless you consider the human brain a "tool", which in this context is usually not), the run is not repeatable by independent parties (because there is no keypress sequence file) and there is room for human imperfection, among others.
A speed runner would walk up to the arcade, plunk in their quarter, start the camera, and play.
Most speed runners reset until they are lucky. You reset until you have the 1/50 chance that a special item appears or you reset until one of 50 pseudo random boards appear. Where is the difference?
Right, but that's fair on a HOME game. speed running on an arcade machine itself is a whole different matter. An honest console player can just keep resetting til they get it right. An arcade game player has to put in the coins unless they own the machine.
