In this game you play as the Lasagna-loving, Monday-hating title character as he spends a week searching for his co-pet Odie while their owner Jon doesn't help in the least.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: fceux 2.1.6 with TAS Editor
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Forgoes time saving damage
  • Genre: Platformer

General Game Description

A Week of Garfield is a 1989 Famicom exclusive based on the comic strip character Garfield. In the game you play through levels which take place on each day of the week on your search to find Odie. In total this results in 9 levels with an individual level for Monday through Friday and then two a piece for Saturday and Sunday. Within each level there is between one and three room that must be moved through. In each "room" you must collect a key icon which will unlock the door at the end and allow you to move to the next room or level. In addition to the keys there are also a group of power ups that can be gathered which help upgrade your character through the surprisingly difficult levels. In this run I manage to beat the real time world record, held by biggyboy, by a little under 4 minutes.
As I said this game is surprisingly hard for the relatively slow pace and simplistic plot and graphics present. Playing the game without dying, which results in a game over since they only gave you one life, let alone not losing any health. At times the screen is nearly filled with enemies and requires frame specific movement to avoid taking damage. As such I made the stylistic choice to not lose any health throughout the course of the game. This does result in some time lost but I cannot imagine it is more than 2 seconds. I made this choice because the 1-2 seconds saved is less impressive in my mind than traversing the minefield of enemies using glitches in hit boxes to take no damage. If you want to follow along with the health management it is RAM value 0318 but it will be as exciting as looking at the number 10 continuously for 8 minutes.

Items

In this game there are nine items that can be gathered including the keys. For some reason the programmers decided that it would be the best decision to place them essentially randomly throughout the levels and make them invisible so you have no idea where they are located. In addition to that the hitboxes in this game were not programmed in the best so even if you do move over the item box there is still a solid chance that you will not cause the item to appear, leading you to believe that it is not actually there. Finally, once the item is finally made visible you have to pass over it again to collect the item resulting in a very frustrating game.
In total I gather 3 of the 9 items that are possible in the game. The key is collected on each level so that you can progress through the game. The shoes are collected many times throughout the run due to their speed boost affects. A projectile which I am told is a hamburger is also collected which has 5 ammo. This weapon looks like a ball and is thrown in a upward arc which then falls, hits the ground, splits into multiple projectiles and shoots off in many directions. This weapon is the only one collected in the game because it is the most powerful and can hit enemies located at any X or Y coordinates. The other items in the game are not collected as they would not save time.
Thankfully Acmlm wrote a lua script which displays the location and type of each item on screen at all times removing the annoying search that normally would occur. (Note if you watch the run with the lua script you must change 0xB9E0 to 0xB8E0 on the second Saturday and Sunday levels. I may try to fix this later but I wouldn't plan on it.) Additionally with TAS timing I was able to in almost all cases only have to backtrack for one or two frames to collect the items, so I was not slowed down like would occur in a realtime run.

Movement

Movement in this game is simple in theory but can become difficult in practice. Regardless of walking on two legs, walking on four legs or jumping through the air you default X-Velocity is 1 pixel per frame. Upon collecting the shoes power up all of the styles of movement double in speed to 2 pixels per frame, severely cutting down on completion time.
As stated above enemies are frequently on screen and their movement is aggressive and their path is recalculated every frame. While travelling you have a few options to deal with these enemies. The first option is simply to avoid the enemies, but in most cases this is not a viable option as they are too aggressive and frequent to be avoided. A second option is to either kick or shoot a projectile at the enemies killing them before contact. A third option is to take damage and continue the level. This option is not used at any point in the game due to the goal of not taking damage and due to its negative results. If you do not collide with an enemy frame perfect you can be knocked back upwards of 18 pixels back in one frame which certainly slows you down. The final option is to abuse the hit box glitches present in game. The first result of this is that attack an enemy as you are entering the same hitbox as the enemy you are able to travel with them without taking any damage. A second result of this is what can be best described as a non-damage damage boost. What occurs here is that if you collide with an enemy in a pixel perfect manner while attacking you can receive a damage boost, which doubles your x-velocity for a single frame, without actually losing any hp. This is very much a TAS specific trick and is used frequently throughout the run.

Bosses

The bosses in this game are what around half of my rerecords were spent on as they are extremely random and difficult. The bosses follow the same rule as the other enemies in that their movement is nearly constantly calculated based off of your position but with the added trick that they can loop around the screen to avoid attacks. They also become difficult because each projectile can entirely vary in how much damage it inflicts based on when you shot and where you and the boss are located. If you hit the boss with the projectile before it splits apart it inflicts 8 damage to the boss and disappears. On the other hand if the projectile hits the boss after it has split it can do between 8 and 16 damage and doesn't disappear so it can get many hits in from one shot. You can also damage the bosses through the kick attack.
The boss fights become much more complex when the enemies damage boosts come into play as they can either kill or make a boss fight. When hit the boss receives a damage boost that depending on the position of the projectile, position of the boss and position of Garfield can result in a 1 pixel move so that the projectile can get multiple hits to boosts of 18+ resulting in a single hit. You then have to wait for all of the projectiles to disappear from the screen before you can fire again which makes this an annoying option. The ideal strategy is to fire a projectile so that the boss will be constantly knocked in one direction and then have your character attack from the other side resulting in a loss of 8 to 16 damage on each frame.
If there are any improvements possible in this run excluding damage boosts it will be in the boss fights. I am not sure if there are and they wouldn't be more than a second a piece but as it was the most frustrating aspect of the game I am sure there is a chance. To monitor boss life the RAM value is 0079 and you must get him to below 0 for him to die.

Glitches

Present in this run are a few visual and auditory glitches. The most blatant example is when the music suddenly changes to a much slower glitched out song. A few other examples are simply garbage data slowly progressing down the screen to fill it, though this takes place over only a few frames so would most likely appear as simply a discolored period rather than glitched data.
I am not 100% sure why these glitches occur but I am fairly confident it is due to the errors in the collision detection and the resulting "damage boosts" from the collisions as that appears to be when the glitches appear. The easiest way to induce this response is to use the weapon I use in this run to attack one of the baseballs. Doing this nearly always results in the glitch screen progressing down. In fact there are a few examples where if I fired a frame earlier than I did the game would glitch and then freeze. This is obviously not shown in the run as it prevents you from doing anything until you reset but it was an interesting side affect none the less.

Other comments

I hope you enjoy. I didn’t think it would actually have a following but it had been requested in both the NES and Famicom thread so there are apparently supporters.
Thanks to biggyboy and NitroGenesis for the WIP’s that helped me along the way.
Thanks to Acmlm for the lua script. There would not be a run of this game without this script.

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: The only thing that's clear in this instance is that the game is utterly terrible. Whether it makes for a good tool-assisted speedrun, however, is a different issue.
Because of the slow movement speed without the powerup shoes, a sizable amount of the gameplay is terribly slow, and the powerup itself brings the speed to halfway decent at best. The run is largely an example of "Run right for justice" as well, with the only thing that keeps it interesting being the surprisingly large range of enemies on the way, which are mostly simply bypassed. Well, and the inherent badness of the game itself. There are a number of laughs to be had out of Garfield's sprite alone. In my eyes, this doesn't change, however, that the game doesn't exactly look to be an optimal or even halfway decent game choice.
What took me by surprise, however, was the vocal support for the run. While there were some people who voted no for the lack of entertainment or TASlike aspects in the movie, which I do agree with to a certain extent, there was a significant amount of the viewer base which voted yes for the movie, exclaimed enthusiasm for the run and avidly defended the run. In fact, there is currently a vast majority of people who voted yes to the run.
If I were to reject it now, I would without a doubt have several tomatoes thrown to the face along with criticism about my judging capabilities and that I have no sense of entertainment, complaints about the site's direction of entertainment hampering publication of otherwise good movies, lengthy debates about the essence of entertainment and how it would apply to the judging process, and exclamations that the site is going downhill.
Currently, I see the best choice here is to go along with the opinion of the majority of the viewerbase. So I'll accept this run for publication.

Guga: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3638: goofydylan8's NES A Week of Garfield in 08:02.80
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Good job
Jungon wrote:
if I was to have a Tool-Assisted real life ... I'd.. I could abuse death, just to see if it saves time ..
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Requesting encode
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EDIT: I've seen it and my eyes are bleeding (didn't listen though). I vote No, but will upload a fast encode.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Editor, Experienced player (607)
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There was a lot happening on the screen most of the time, so this was pretty entertaining for me. Garfield should have gotten a better game though. Yes vote.
fsvgm777
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The TAS in itself is well done, but... the game is so bad, the music even starts glitching out during one stage (at least it did so for me in FCEUX 2.1.4a). Meh vote.
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Editor, Experienced player (893)
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Sure, I liked the run. I can see how the game can be difficult when played normally with all the stuff that is going on. Man, Garfield's walking animation... at first I figured Garfield finally got so fat that he could barely lift his feet off the ground. But then you see him get super speed and jump three times his height. So what's a man supposed to believe in any longer in this confusing world? So to put it short, "yes".
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I find the movie to be entertaining and technical the whole way through, good job! The boss fights are especially ridiculously looking and the way you toy around with multiple enemies on the screen while abusing the various hitbox glitches. It's unfortunate that a few days lack speedshoes for the most part but I think you did a fairly good job of keeping us entertained during those parts of the run. Yes vote. If anyone doesn't think that this looks impressive you should definitely try out the game in real time... it's way more difficult than what the TAS showcases here.
Dwedit
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The one thing I really hate about this game is how any sound effect in the noise channel kills the drums for the rest of the song. It shows of incredibly incompetent programming.
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Goofydylan must think I have something against him but I swear I haven't as I think this is one of the most horrible games I've ever seen. There was nothing, and I do mean nothing taslike in this movie. Strong no vote.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Active player (432)
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I am also quite speechless 10 people found this run to be entertaining.. Yes, entertainment is subjective but wow.. even that area must have some sort of limit.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
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Let's imagine it was rejected. Would ANYONE insist on putting this into a Gruefood Delight list? I'm sure no, because delight means the run has SOMETHING to show superhumanity. Here I liked bosses, but all the rest was just causing me to repeat: "WTF AM I WATCHING???" Is it really so much better than NES Home Alone 2?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
Let's imagine it was rejected. Would ANYONE insist on putting this into a Gruefood Delight list? I'm sure no, because delight means the run has SOMETHING to show superhumanity. Here I liked bosses, but all the rest was just causing me to repeat: "WTF AM I WATCHING???" Is it really so much better than NES Home Alone 2?
I really think you should try playing the game before writing it off as not super human. If you did and still don't believe that it is superhuman than I may have underestimated the real time skill of players. Also, while I cannot say if it is so much better than NES Home Alone 2 there is at least a large enough audience that it was requested in 2 request threads and had interest in its game thread. So there is an audience.
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Dodging enemies and smashing the bosses was cool. Voting yes.
NitroGenesis
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Having TASed this game before I can say this run is very high quality. Also, Garfield's animations are hilarious, especially the one after he gets hit by a tick.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
PJ
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Voting yes. I've seen biggyboy try to run this game many times in the past, and most of the attempts were disastrous. Anybody who thinks this TAS isn't superhuman certainly needs to play this game. The item collection in this TAS was really efficient, especially considering how finicky the hitboxes for those are, and the boss fights were very well done. Definitely an entertaining watch for me.\ Nice job, goofydylan!
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[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/62/whatanicearbuckleyouhav.jpg/][/URL] Garfield seems a bit to interested in Jon's.. er.. Arbuckle. Yes vote, I had a good laugh, and this was done quite well.
Warepire
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This game is so boring it put me to sleep. Very well done, but the entertainment is nowhere to be seen (most likely the fault of the game). Voted Meh.
Noxxa
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I personally thought it was painfully boring. The game does not seem to offer a lot of opportunity of showing superhuman, TASlike play. I voted no.
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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I wish this game would had stayed buried, poor Garfield got whacked in this game. Lucky he's gotten better game on the genesis. Voted meh, found it boring and ended up skipping most of the video.
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Despite having no visible glitches, this movie gave me Widget levels of joy. Very much yes. Awful game. If you just touch one enemy, you die and you have to start the entire game over again. Highly satisfying seeing the game trounced like that.
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sleeping, bad music, sprite porpotions bad, yes vote and was it me or was Jon more of a tard then he usually is.
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It seems the best argument that can be made for publication is "it's really hard in real time." For me, this doesn't change the fact that I'm essentially watching a long and uninteresting side scroller. I'm not sure how or when the precedent of "publish it even though it looks boring because oh man if you played it you'd see why this is so good" was established. I really think it's a bad one, simply because there's so many games out there that are hard to play and boring to watch that there's nothing special or unique about any of them. It seems almost hypocritical to say that we have standards for publishing and then give a pass to any game based on bad programming or controls. I'm sure this is fun to watch for people who have played the game, and I don't doubt that the run is a technical achievement, but I just don't see any way I can justify voting Yes or even Meh for uneventful side-scrolling from start to finish. It's on the judges to ultimately decide if this is a standard worth maintaining.
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Acheron86 wrote:
It seems the best argument that can be made for publication is "it's really hard in real time." For me, this doesn't change the fact that I'm essentially watching a long and uninteresting side scroller. I'm not sure how or when the precedent of "publish it even though it looks boring because oh man if you played it you'd see why this is so good" was established. I really think it's a bad one, simply because there's so many games out there that are hard to play and boring to watch that there's nothing special or unique about any of them. It seems almost hypocritical to say that we have standards for publishing and then give a pass to any game based on bad programming or controls. I'm sure this is fun to watch for people who have played the game, and I don't doubt that the run is a technical achievement, but I just don't see any way I can justify voting Yes or even Meh for uneventful side-scrolling from start to finish. It's on the judges to ultimately decide if this is a standard worth maintaining.
You are open to your opinion but I thought I would address your criticisms. First is 8 minutes considered long now a days? The average movie on this site is 25:42 long which is over 3 times longer than this run. I agree that it doesn't have the most interesting visuals on earth but there is some variety and a high level of enemies to avoid which adds some interest. You say that this would only be published because it is so hard to play in real time even though it is not entertaining, yet a few moments later you comment that you are sure that is is fun to watch for some people. Also they do not allow any game to have a pass, as can be seen by my submission history, but they do allow audience response to factor in and as you can see it has been generally positive. Finally... I am sorry that you believe this run would lower the quality of the site so much.
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goobydolya pls wy this wy garbeld abit too activ for a cat pls
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