(Link to video)

Game objectives

  • Emulator: Gens Rerecording v11c
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Uses easiest difficulty
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors

About the Game

The game is based on the 1940 Walt Disney's animated musical fantasy film, based on the children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is story about anthropomorphic piece of wood which dreamed to become a real boy.

About graphics

Graphics is so beautiful.

About the Run

I never played this game earlier, but when i saw it in workbench two weeks ago i immediately loved it. After few days of research/testing i found that many things can be improved and soon decided do my own TAS instead of helping to previous author.
This movie is 1 minute and 33 seconds (5598 frames) faster over last (rejected) submission by gamerretro2. Improvements come thanks to better routes planning, sequence breaks, small shortcuts, usage of damage boots and heavy luck manipulation (a lot of luck manipulation), besides many time was saved just thanks to more precise optimization.
Unfortunately in this game still there are two long sections - dancing sequence, and auto scroller level at the end, these two sections nearly identical unassisted gameplay. But despite of these disadvantages, i hope this run still can be entertaining enough, because all others levels are quite interesting for speed run (particularly for tas), at least i enjoyed optimise them.

Stage by stage

Road to school

Jiminy Cricket

All butterflies have random generated starting position. I focused on the first butterfly. (How soon you be able to do first hit). Between best and worst first butterfly pattern about 40 frames difference. I used input of first level to set up the best pattern.
After getting damage butterfly become invulnerable for some time and fly fast in opposite direction. Butterflies choose fly to right/left (depend from which side you strike them) usually with negligibly small vertical component ~+/-15 degrees. However possible to manipulate and force butterfly to fly up/down, it allowed to kill the first 2HP butterfly faster.
Second butterfly 3HP is enough straightforward. Level have fixed end point, no matter where you finish level, shortly after you kill last butterfly you lost control and game will auto-walking to this point. So at fight with the last 4HP butterfly is significant to finish as close to end point to minimise time of traveling to it.

The Puppet Theatre

Pleasure Island 1

Balloons are a bit random, so it is possible to manipulate them and get (a bit) more lucky sequence for jumping. Also color of first ball can be different. I choosed red.

Pleasure Island 2

At railway i found two time saving shortcuts one big = 13 seconds and one small about 2 seconds. Small shortcut is easy to execute, but big one is enough tricky. Problem is that if Pinocchio is fall down during some, soon time dark screen will kill him even if he reach another wagon. But if while falling Pinocchio will collide with obstacle Deadline of "dark screen of death" will be extended and it this extended time is enough to reach another wagon before dark screen and to do sequence break. At firework i saved a lot of time (even more than on railway). Goal of battle at firework is to collect 6 items as soon as possible. After each fireworks exploded item can appear or not appear. Obviously with luck manipulation 100% result with 6/6 success can be done, it not hard for TAS; Real problems start when you try to choose WHICH 6/6 pattern is the best? Between ultra-super-mega-lucky 6/6 pattern and average 6/6 pattern a few hundreds of frames difference. It was real nightmare to choose best one. Besides guy below also can't be ignored, his behavior is random as well and this bastard can extend end of level up to 100 frames if he decide to start new animation cycle when all 6 items was collected (do not be worry, he not did it).

Pride Rock

New route to reach the top faster. Last hit to boss should be done while standing not while jump ~10 frames to decrease auto walk distance to the precipice. (During rotation while standing on the ground Pinocchio is moving forward without input when control on him is lost.)

Underwater 1

Quite interesting level. When Pinocchio will collect 5 seashells he will fall to the bottom. Seashells are random so tas-player can choose where strategically best to do it (or not do it at all). Upper route is the fastest almost to the very end of level.

Underwater 2

Inside sea monster

Escape

Pinocchio paradox

Pinocchio says: "My nose grows now".

Suggested screenshots

  • 2641
  • 22706

Honorable mention


feos: There is a guideline about selecting the hardest difficulty, and for this run, it is indeed applicable, but it can be bended in a positive way, just like the cheat restriction guideline can be. So, while the Ninja Gaiden 3 run done on an easier (Japanese) version got bad feedback and was rejected, Gunstar Heroes was done on easy and then obsoleted by a hard difficulty version. This is what I'm doing here, since the audience didn't have a real problem with using easy, but the next run for this game (if it's done) should be on the hardest difficulty, and would obsolete this one.
Accepting to Vault.
sheela901: Processing...

Skilled player (1436)
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Tangent wrote:
I can't imagine easy is an acceptable difficulty. Shouldn't that have been looked into before you started? --- Just because there was one obvious reason to reject the previous run doesn't mean there might not be more.
I admit, in criticism about choice difficulty there is logic. But what's done is done. Enjoy it as it is :) Or not.
Tangent wrote:
And why would you care about comparing your times to something that was clearly so suboptimal?
True, it was clearly suboptimal, however it was not hopelessly bad. So at least at testing phase, such comparison was useful. For example his dancing level have exactly the same amount of frames as i have (6786 frames). When i saw it i immediately stop pointless testings in this level and moved to the next and saved some time (i mean my own free time). Besides, if you try to play Level 2 with savestates you will see that at least minimal effort should be done to beat gamerretro.
Dimon12321 wrote:
I think it's possible to improve the fight with butterflies!
gamerretro2 wrote:
yes but it's verry hard
He said truth. After all, i saved about 280 frames here, but it was not easy.
MUGG wrote:
So did anyone look into glitches? Such as "left+right" / "up+down" / "Die while collecting health" / "Die while reaching level end" / "Pause while reaching end" ...
I tested them, but there are no useful glitches. Btw fun fact, in this game you need to get ridiculously many damage before dying, woody terminator is very survivable.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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A bit boring of a game, but I didn't feel the need to skip part of the video so I will give it a yes.
Joined: 3/9/2009
Posts: 530
You say the comparison is useful, but if this is accepted, then what's the comparison for obsoletion? We can't compare times because harder difficulties are obviously going to take much longer, so what? Best guess? First run on hard automatically obsoletes this? All runs for this game must be on easy and thereby not play a significant chunk of the game? A branch for easy and a branch for hard? Those are all terrible ideas, particularly if done in the interest of accommodating a fairly unremarkable run that was apparently done in a week or two.
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I played the gameboy version as a kid (and it pretty much was like a port of this Genesis version). I didn't know better when I was a kid, but now the gameboy version looks like a pretty bad port. Toy Story's gameboy port also is terrible beyond belief, not even having any music... I found one thing on gameboy: While Pinocchio is standing on the ground and turning around he is invincible. He can be knocked back by damage a little but it doesn't deplete his health. I'm now going to investigate the Genesis version a little further.
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@Tangent
Walt Disney Productions wrote:
Link to video
Sorry i was being lazy to search english version, so here approximate translation of dialogues. Geppetto says: Now it is well optimised. Cat says: Meh. Fish says: Meh. Jiminy Cricket says: Good. Very good. Epic sad face:---- Jiminy Cricket says: Well, you will never please everyone. ---
MUGG wrote:
I'm now going to investigate the Genesis version a little further.
Good luck! I would be glad to see another
Tangent wrote:
fairly unremarkable run
for this beautiful game :)
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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your level one is unoptimised i won 4 frames
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gamerretro2 wrote:
your level one is unoptimised i won 4 frames
Post the files of your improvement, then! (.gmv)
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gamerretro2 wrote:
your level one is unoptimised i won 4 frames
Nope!
TASVideoAgent wrote:
I used input of first level to set up the best pattern for level 2.
Actually i waited that someone finally asked about this "suboptimality" of level 1 :) RNG manipulation is the main thing in this game. Sometimes faster to sacrifice a few frames in one level to save much more in next one. ---
mamuuuut wrote:
gamerretro2 wrote:
your level one is unoptimised i won 4 frames
reading these make me feel strange lol, you are a troll for sure!
If he not a troll, he still just a naive newby. In case if he said truth, and these 4 frames improvement in level 1 are real - it is mean absolutely nothing. I intentionally did some "harmful" changes in input of Level 1 to get good pattern for level 2. For example, if someone interested, they can try to delete 1 frame between (frames #791-815) in my movie, in this case level 1 still will be ok, but butterflies pattern in level 2 will be already not so good.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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gamerretro2 wrote:
your level one is unoptimised i won 4 frames
reading these make me feel strange lol, you are a troll for sure!
ACE is my raison d'etre!
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no is not a troll
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Re: inaccurate poll. Indeed, people love to use it the old way, so they vote on "Should it be published?" no matter what, in many cases. We developed a suggestion that solves this problem. If Vault stops existing as a tier, and instead there are Coins (or Records), Moons and Stars, where all any%/100% runs simply go straight to Coins/Records, and all side branches go to Moons, there is no longer any room for borderline cases and depending on subjectivity in the area of "vaultable" runs. Right now, the poll gives a hint on what tier to move the run to, and if it's "unvaultable" and poorly received, reject it. The judging system would remain exactly the same, but there would no longer be need to determine what tier to put an any%/100% run to. So returning to the poll question, "Should this be published?" would start making sense again, because the viewer would be supposed to be able to figure out 1) whether it's an optimal run, and 2) if it's a side goal, is it entertaining enough for Moons. If you feel interested, please join this thread: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15928
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.
Personman
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Oh my goodness I am in love with this run. I guess I can sort of understand why people were bored by the rafting segment, which goes on for a rather hilariously long time, but the rest of it is just non-stop whimsy and delight! A thing I liked about it especially was that I often had absolutely no idea what exactly was under player control, or what the goal was, and the sections seemed to have no relationship to each other, and there was almost no interface at all, so it just felt like watching a very surreal cartoon with neat music. Thank you for this.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
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Personman wrote:
Oh my goodness I am in love with this run. I guess I can sort of understand why people were bored by the rafting segment, which goes on for a rather hilariously long time, but the rest of it is just non-stop whimsy and delight! A thing I liked about it especially was that I often had absolutely no idea what exactly was under player control, or what the goal was, and the sections seemed to have no relationship to each other, and there was almost no interface at all, so it just felt like watching a very surreal cartoon with neat music. Thank you for this.
Thanks for such positive comment! Even if you sole person who love this run, it mean that i did it not in vain :)
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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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. ---- [2710] Genesis Disney's Pinocchio by Archanfel in 10:09.13
Joined: 3/9/2009
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I disagree with the reasons given for the verdict. The difference in Gunstar Heroes is almost entirely the usual changes in difficulty. Fewer enemies, weapons do more damage, etc. In this game, you basically skip 3 out of 10 stages. Gunstar Heroes also changes in plot and dialogue (such as it is for an action game like that) between difficulties. That run on easy was also accepted over a decade ago, so I question its relevance since the site and the standards have changed a lot since then. Was "always play on hardest" even a rule back then? Furthermore, the majority of the votes were before it was pointed out that so much of the game was skipped by it being on the easiest difficulty, and I'm more than willing to bet that most people still are ignorant of that. I don't see the logic in using audience ignorance of the game and its mechanics as a justification for player ignorance. And it seems really weird to me to put it in the Vault with the knowledge that the run that would obsolete it will be significantly slower than it due to actually having to play the entire game, not just 70% of it.
Noxxa
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I notice that sheela901's encoder logo (at least on YouTube) refers to the nonexistent site "http://TASVideo.org", instead of "http://TASVideos.org". There's a subtle, but important difference there. The same issue also seems to appear in the encodes for [2700] Genesis Duke Nukem 3D by Dimon12321 in 20:03.75 and [2708] NES Shinobi by MESHUGGAH in 07:36.41.
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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Tangent wrote:
I can't imagine easy is an acceptable difficulty.
Tangent wrote:
I disagree with the reasons given for the verdict. I question its relevance since the site and the standards have changed a lot since then. Was "always play on hardest" even a rule back then?
Probably it was not best precedent, but i think that this judgement decision is correct. Even more, i see no problem if in future for another game made by another person, in similar situation (with wrong choice of difficulty level) the same verdict will be done. Don't get me wrong, obviously hardest difficulty level is still the most preferred. But sometimes {rarely} other difficulties can be accepted too. And it is not a tragedy. Note: I say it not because it is my own movie, i say from my abstract feeling of truth.
Rule wrote:
Where a game has multiple difficulty levels, it is preferred to play on the hardest difficulty level.
I thought (and still think) that word "preferred" mean only "highly recommended", not "that failure to observe this rule is absolutely forbidden" = "always play on hardest". So i believe that this rule is not strict. Before i started i already expected potential problems with accepting, but nevertheless i decided to take extra risk and to make submission which ignore recommendation about preferred choice of difficulty. And my bet - won. During making this decision i was guided by another rule, main rule, rule with the highest priority.
Rule#1 wrote:
You must think outside the box.
Good judge (i mean judge-human, not robot) must always remember that sometimes rules are just an box. P.S.
Tangent wrote:
fairly unremarkable run
Nope, thanks to sheela901, now it is movie with first 60fps YouTube encode, which made it a bit remarkable :)
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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Archanfel wrote:
...
You seem to find constantly invoking divine providence and calling me a hater instead of addressing my points cute. I find it exceptionally obnoxious.
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Tangent wrote:
We can't compare times because harder difficulties are obviously going to take much longer, so what? Best guess? First run on hard automatically obsoletes this? ... Those are all terrible ideas.
feos wrote:
Gunstar Heroes was done on easy and then obsoleted by a hard difficulty version.
Tangent wrote:
That run on easy was also accepted over a decade ago, so I question its relevance since the site and the standards have changed a lot since then.
Ancient time is a very weak argument, because there are much more newer examples, for example you can read verdict from year 2014 to this movie:
Mothrayas wrote:
Note that a run on Hard 1 difficulty would be able to obsolete this run, as per the Guidelines, even if it would end up slower than this run.
And then try to compare it with current verdict:
feos wrote:
This is what I'm doing here, since the audience didn't have a real problem with using easy, but the next run for this game (if it's done) should be on the hardest difficulty, and would obsolete this one.
Checkmate.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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Shadow Dragon is not comparable. It has the exact same stages with the exact same sets of enemies on all difficulties. The difference is that they have higher stats. That characteristic of a higher difficulty has always been a noted exception and has never been in question or debate, and is absolutely not what is happening here. The difference between the difficulties does not include skipping 30% of the game. And using the standards of acceptance from literally the dawn of the site as precedent is absolutely questionable. There were not particularly defined rules or standards at all then, so you're appealing to literally nothing. If you actually want to debate this any further, stow the smug bullshit. It's not cute. It's grating.
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Sorry if i accidentally was exceptionally obnoxious, i just tried to dispel your arguments, as cute as i can. Yes, i like funny pictures, if it is a crime - i'm a criminal. But all what i wrote as text was pretty serious. (Even "checkmate". It is figural expression which means that i gave you compelling argument.)
Tangent wrote:
If you actually want to debate this any further
No thanks.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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Tangent wrote:
If you actually want to debate this any further, stow the smug bullshit.
What's wrong with you, dude?
I wrote:
There is a guideline about selecting the hardest difficulty, and for this run, it is indeed applicable, but it can be bended in a positive way, just like the cheat restriction guideline can be.
I fail to imagine that this point can be misunderstood. To make sure it's not, I'll explain: - higher difficulty is used to make the run look more impressive - cheats are avoided to make the run look more impressive - looking impressive is an expectation - looking impressive is not an absolute factor - looking impressive produces enjoyment - enjoyment is an absolute factor! - annoyance is what can overweight it Summing up, there's too little annoyance and too much enjoyment in this thread to spoil it with picking a single expectation, absoluting it, and rejecting in spite of everyone's impression. The above is exactly what causes my decision. Argue with it please, don't argue with how valid old decisions are or how comparable certain runs are. Argue with the driving principle. PS. Archanfel's examples only tell that accepting a lower difficulty to be obsoleted by higher one can be done, is legit and is a common practice for such cases. Still case-by-case, but still legit. Deal with it.
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.
Noxxa
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feos wrote:
There is a guideline about selecting the hardest difficulty, and for this run, it is indeed applicable, but it can be bended in a positive way, just like the cheat restriction guideline can be.
While I agree with the judging verdict for this movie in general, I don't think it is right to compare difficulty modes to cheat codes. Selecting the hardest difficulty is a movie guideline - we do accept runs that don't do this, although it is still much preferred that it be done, and movies that do adhere to the guideline can obsolete movies that don't. Avoiding cheat codes however is a rule, and generally movies that use cheat codes without a particularly good reason are swiftly rejected. The GT code run, for example, was accepted because with the cheat code came a completely unique route to the other Super Metroid runs, and culminated with an arbitrary execution glitch that was practically unheard of prior to its submission. A similar thing goes with other runs using cheat codes (see this post by nitsuja in 2011 for a good sum-up of cases where using cheat codes was acceptable). We don't accept runs with cheat codes just because of being flexible with the rules; we accept them because they do something completely unique. Difficulty changes like in this run do not do something completely unique, so they are not really comparable. Bottom line: The cheat code rule is way different from the difficulty guideline, so they shouldn't be compared. The Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon example looks to fit the same mold as this one, though, so you can use that as an example instead.
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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feos wrote:
...
What's wrong with me, dude is trying to make a point and getting 'hilarious' pictures and "checkmate" back in response. And if you're going to cite entertainment as a reason for its acceptance over a run that completes the entire game, then why did you put it in the Vault where "Entertainment value has little to no significance"? Should I add "lol i win" and a hilarious picture of a cat now, or would you find that condescending?
Samsara
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Tangent wrote:
I'M BEING A NITPICKY ELITIST FUCK AGAIN, IGNORE ME
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.