Note: This C64 game was initially misidentified as an NES game because the site did not yet recognize Commodore 64 submissions (...which was sort of not the first time I've caused that problem either, but I digress). The issue has since been corrected.
C64anabalt is an official conversion of Canabalt for the Commodore 64 (in cartridge form). Canabalt is the game that defined the endless runner genre and has an awesome soundtrack that was extremely faithfully ported to the C64's SID sound chip. The game controls consist of a single jump button to alter the height of the player's suit-clad character (who runs right for great justice from an unseen terror at an ever increasing pace).
In this TAS, I run right while avoiding any obstacles that might slow the character down until the speed increases to its maximum (as defined by reaching decimal value 800 at system bus address 0019) at which point the building generation code can no longer keep up. As Aqfaq pointed out the player hit an average running speed of 111 mp/h (180 km/h). At the fastest speed high jumps have to be predicted because the landing point isn't even visible on screen. It's possible to slow down by hitting various different obstacles such as crates and chairs (which drops the speed from 800 to 550) but since this is a TAS and we're all about speed here I worked hard to never do that.
The building generation code can do a number of interesting things wrong, but the game holds up surprisingly well. Here are some of the patterns I noticed:
- The front portion of a building can go missing, usually in a stair-like fashion from upper left to lower right off the bottom of the screen
- An entire building, save for a small pillar at the very beginning, can go entirely missing, leaving empty grey space
- Layers of building consisting of rooftop, grey strips, window sections, and sometimes even portions of a crane can cause glitched sections that are either barely passable or completely impassable
- Immediately after one of these sections, there is always either an office building you can run through, a crane, a falling building, or a falling detonator (as in, whatever follows these glitched sections is always different than a normal building) Sometimes, glitched sections have the lower building portions replaced with glitched tiles
I originally believed that the glitched sections were completely impassable, but it *is* possible to manipulate different building sections into appearing by altering jumping patterns several seconds (read: several buildings) earlier. What I encountered the first time I worked on this game was a behavior where it appeared that the upcoming buildings could not be changed because I hadn't backed far enough back, and that lack of testing was largely due to the difficulties with savestates at the time (as in, the complete lack of them... :) I was very relieved to discover that I could always one way or another change the future building layouts to be passable, although I regret that some of the more interesting constructions can't appear in the TAS because they are impassable (often because a full-height office building with the windowed sections generated with the windows in an inaccessible place).
The game starts out at a reasonable clip but within a couple of minutes the speed maxes out and I keep it there for the remainder of the game until reaching the agreed-upon ending of the game when the distance counter overflows from 99999m to m000m. Along the way there are some very notable sections of incredibly tricky through-building maneuvers (although there are also long stretches of nothing interesting happening other than running very, very fast - how many energy drinks did this guy consume, anyway?) I like the area around 26,000 meters and several other points too numerous to mention where it's possible to go right through the glitched buildings, sometimes even leading directly into windows and office buildings. I'm also a huge fan of the very end of the movie where I do the seemingly impossible and jump clear over an office building you should normally only be able to jump through. I end movie input as early as possible on the final jump and the counter rolls over to m000m as the player character soars over the final office building and plummets to his inevitable death (although he makes a clean exit between the buildings, so I'm holding out hope he somehow survived).
I'd like to take a moment to thank paulko64, the talented Commodore 64 game designer who ported this game, for participating in the forums and providing valuable insight the first time I submitted this game. I'd also like to thank Saxxon for his contributions to the C64 core and his recent improvements to savestate handling, without whose efforts I'd still be violating site standards attempting to TAS this using virtual machine snapshots. Finally, I should note that my brother-in-law assisted in the making of this TAS in between family obligations over Christmas and finished most of the movie between ~20,000m and ~30,000m as well as ~70,000m to ~80,000m - it's always a success when new people can be introduced to the art of Tool-Assisted Speedruns.
Note: The Commodore 64 core of BizHawk is technically unfinished but thanks to the aforementioned efforts on the part of Saxxon it is now suitable for many purposes. Specifically, saving and loading a state will not crash or cause a desync as it did before, although as of 1.9.1 there is still an issue where it's possible to get savestates beyond the end of the movie. This should be fixed in the next release thanks to assistance from Adelikat; in the meantime, it's possible to work around the issue by recording a few minutes forward and restoring a much earlier savestate first, although I opted to compile from source to bypass the issue altogether; the movie syncs in 1.9.1, so have no fear.
So, go grab the freely-available ROM and give this faithful port of a great game a shot! I hope this run is accepted (even if it's Vaulted) as I think this is a fantastic port of a fantastic game that deserves the attention and I hope you enjoy this run.

Noxxa: Judging!
Noxxa: Delaying judgment pending proper site implementation of Commodore 64 movies made in (experimental) C64Hawk.
Nach: I added support, so undelaying.
Noxxa: C64Hawk is an experimental emulator, and is therefore prone to certain games or things not working, and the emulator is not guaranteed to improve. It does seem to work fine enough to run certain types of games, with usable movie recording and savestate functionality, so that movies like this can be made and played back. So essentially, it does conform to the basic standards of an emulator that can be accepted for publications on this site. It's similar to emulators like pcsx-rr and FBA-rr in that sense, in that games might not be guaranteed to run nor movies be guaranteed to be stable, but as long as the emulation and tools work to reasonable extent, movies using the emulator can be published to the site.
Bottom line: C64hawk movies are in a bit of a "try at your own risk" status, where games or movies might not work and emulation issues might put a halt to a run.
That said, accepting this run to the Vault. Viewer feedback was somewhat positive but the repetitiveness makes it fall short of making it to Moons, and the ending point as it is has been established as being the ending point for runs of this game.
Spikestuff: A certain lemon is providing the files. Publishing for the lemony encoder.

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The game starts out at a reasonable clip but within a couple of minutes the speed maxes out
Kind of sounds like difficulty stops increasing at that point. Though I can't find when exactly it happens. But after it's no longer any harder, ending input would be an artistic choice I guess, so can be arbitrary to some extant.
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.
Spikestuff
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Unless this game actually holds a true corruption state then no, don't be ridiculous feos.
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Nice run, yes vote. But i have question about very ending. May be is possible somehow manipulate to die exactly at 99999m, just before overflow to get "maximum score" category? I think it would be a way better than unremarkable .0027m final score.
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:
Nice run, yes vote. But i have question about very ending. May be is possible somehow manipulate to die exactly at 99999m, just before overflow to get "maximum score" category? I think it would be a way better than unremarkable .0027m final score.
Is it possible for the game to even end at 27m normally?
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jlun2 wrote:
Is it possible for the game to even end at 27m normally?
Even if not, 99999m is a lot cooler number. Why 27m? Why not 22m or for example 13m? Imho only two perfect options for ending - 99999m or 0m. All the rest variants not so impressive. (Still yes vote.)
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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feos wrote:
The game starts out at a reasonable clip but within a couple of minutes the speed maxes out
Kind of sounds like difficulty stops increasing at that point. Though I can't find when exactly it happens. But after it's no longer any harder, ending input would be an artistic choice I guess, so can be arbitrary to some extant.
I effectively already created a movie that ends when the game gets to its hardest difficulty when measured by game speed but it got shot down, perhaps largely because I had cheated with the emulator and because I phrased it as fastest kill screen (which turns out to not be completely true if you back up far enough). I would love it if there were a reasonable goal choice that was shorter as well but I can't come up with anything better. Thanks for your thoughts!
I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
AntyMew
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The tile generation glitching was entertaining enough for a while, but at some point it got boring. Meh vote :/ Encoding...
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I don't understand how an ending point for this run is different from #4310: morningpee's A2600 Seaquest "fastest 999999" in 01:39.80. Do explain. Furthermore,
previous submission's judgment note wrote:
As to what would make an acceptable category for an endless game like this - I'd be more inclined to think of a "maximum score" run to be the best way to run it, in the same vein as other endless games like Tetris. While the game's distance counter technically does not stop, it does have a maximum distance accounted for by the game, at 99999m. It would take much longer than this short run, so one would have to see if entertainment can be kept up over the course of the run. If it does, it would be great.
A score-based ending point doesn't fit into Vault (like I was told with insistence), even if it's a real point where the game ends.
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.
ars4326
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You know feos, after looking at most of the response feedback on here, it's clear that a shorter run would be the most entertaining choice. Personally, I also thought that the novelty started to run thin, after about the 3-5 minute mark. I think a shorter run would make the Moon tier, easy. And, going by the prior judgment, entertainment value in my view unfortunately diminishes over the course of the run. If it's possible to continue the dialogue about establishing some kind of arbitrary goal branch for Moons, I'd be all for it!
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Noxxa
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feos wrote:
I don't understand how an ending point for this run is different from #4310: morningpee's A2600 Seaquest "fastest 999999" in 01:39.80. Do explain. Furthermore,
previous submission's judgment note wrote:
As to what would make an acceptable category for an endless game like this - I'd be more inclined to think of a "maximum score" run to be the best way to run it, in the same vein as other endless games like Tetris. While the game's distance counter technically does not stop, it does have a maximum distance accounted for by the game, at 99999m. It would take much longer than this short run, so one would have to see if entertainment can be kept up over the course of the run. If it does, it would be great.
A score-based ending point doesn't fit into Vault (like I was told with insistence), even if it's a real point where the game ends.
For the Seaquest run, the primary issue for me was the branch of the run being one that violated Vault rules. This run does not have any branch associated to it. Also what I put in the Seaquest topic:
Mothrayas wrote:
I'm a bit on the fence about it - as I said, I find the "ending point" somewhat dubious, but it seems a fair amount of people agree it's a valid ending point. If enough people agree about the ending point, I suppose it can be put back to Vault without branch name.
For this game, I consider there to be a general consensus about the ending point, and the developer of the game himself explicitly said the five-digit border was the highest distance point that he accounted for, which makes it a valid ending point in my eyes. As for Seaquest, after I made the above post you had a debate with Nach and adelikat and some others about the ending point. I don't know what has come of that, if anything.
ars4326 wrote:
You know feos, after looking at most of the response feedback on here, it's clear that a shorter run would be the most entertaining choice. Personally, I also thought that the novelty started to run thin, after about the 3-5 minute mark. I think a shorter run would make the Moon tier, easy. And, going by the prior judgment, entertainment value in my view unfortunately diminishes over the course of the run. If it's possible to continue the dialogue about establishing some kind of arbitrary goal branch for Moons, I'd be all for it!
The problem is that there is no established ending point that I know of for any shorter run to be considered a legit category. "Fastest crash" didn't count.
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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Mothrayas wrote:
the developer of the game himself explicitly said the five-digit border was the highest distance point that he accounted for, which makes it a valid ending point in my eyes.
Well, yeah, its actually not score here, it's a gameplay cap. Explanation accepted.
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.
ars4326
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Mothrayas wrote:
The problem is that there is no established ending point that I know of for any shorter run to be considered a legit category. "Fastest crash" didn't count.
Could an argument be made for putting it in the demonstration category?
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
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ars4326 wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
The problem is that there is no established ending point that I know of for any shorter run to be considered a legit category. "Fastest crash" didn't count.
Could an argument be made for putting it in the demonstration category?
That could be a problem if more one button games get submitted, or mobile games becoming accepted.
Post subject: Movie published
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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. ---- [2759] C64 C64anabalt by dwangoAC in 21:25.22