So many choices to choose from.
I find
[2021] GB The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening "Playaround" by Bobmario511 in 40:22.78 to be the strongest candidate.
TASing is about providing massive entertainment, and showing off mastery of the game.
[2021] GB The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening "Playaround" by Bobmario511 in 40:22.78 is entertaining for almost every single moment of it. It's also packed with tons of laughs, and even won funny TAS of the year, not just a platform TAS of the year. At the same time, it was glitching out the game constantly, to the point you could barely recognize it, showing that the player could do whatever he wanted. It reaches our highest goals of TASing, act like you own the game, both in entertainment, and in bending the game's code to your own will.
There's some other great choices here too, but they only seem to have one quality or another, not all of them like
[2021] GB The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening "Playaround" by Bobmario511 in 40:22.78 has.
-----------------------
Some thoughts on other runs:
-
[1945] SNES Super Mario World "game end glitch" by Masterjun in 02:36.40 - Nice run, entertaining, nice amount of planning. However, it's really short. Other runs here show off a lot more what TASing is.
-
[1958] GBA Sonic Advance 2 by Mukki in 18:01.78 - Great run, very fast movement. Although perhaps not as much planning and game breaking as other TASs.
-
[2037] Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog 2 by Aglar in 17:51.60 - Nice run, but
[1958] GBA Sonic Advance 2 by Mukki in 18:01.78 was better.
-
[2098] Arcade Marvel vs. Capcom "Playaround" by SDR in 25:37.70 - Great run. Although as good as it was in its category, I don't find fighters can hold a candle in terms of raw TASing quality compared to the others here. You don't have the route planning, or the tough decisions other games have.
-
[2114] Windows RosenkreuzStilette "Grolla" by Bernka in 25:50.57 - Great run. Highly entertaining. Although doesn't seem to push the boundaries like some others here.
-
[2157] NES Battletoads "game end glitch" by MESHUGGAH in 00:56.94 - Nice run, shows off what memory corruption can do, is similar to
[1945] SNES Super Mario World "game end glitch" by Masterjun in 02:36.40. Although lacks a lot in entertainment, and
[2187] GBC Pokémon: Yellow Version "arbitrary code execution" by bortreb in 12:51.87 shows off better memory corruption.
-
[2187] GBC Pokémon: Yellow Version "arbitrary code execution" by bortreb in 12:51.87 - Boring run, but on the other hand writes all new code into the game. In terms of owning the game, this wins hands down, but it doesn't offer anything in terms of entertainment, and the payload could've been so much better. It loses a lot of style points in my eyes in terms of execution.
I'm not commenting on either Super Mario 64 run as I don't play 3D games.