(Link to video)

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Gens Rerecording v11c (then converted as BizHawk 2.3 movie file)
  • Uses hardest difficulty
  • Heavy glitch abuse
  • Major skip glitch
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
  • Genre: Platform
  • Colors a dinosaur

About the Game

Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition is a side-scrolling platformer developed by BlueSky Software and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis 1994. It is the sequel to Sega's previous Jurassic Park video game, based on the film of the same name. In this game, you also can choose between Dr. Grant and the Raptor. Dr. Grant is able to complete game much faster than Raptor due many heavy glitches.

Paleontology

Before we start, world-famous paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant would like say a few words about dinosaurs represented in this game.
  • Pteranodon (meaning "toothless wing" in Greek) is a genus of pterosaur that included some of the largest known flying reptiles, with wingspans over 6 metres. They lived during the late Cretaceous geological period. More fossil specimens of Pteranodon have been found than any other pterosaur, with about 1,200 specimens known to science, many of them well preserved with nearly complete skulls and articulated skeletons. By the way pteranodon were pterosaurs, not dinosaurs.
  • Gallimimus is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago. Gallimimus is the largest known ornithomimid; adults were about 6 metres long, 1.9 metres tall at the hip and weighed about 440 kilograms. As evidenced by its relative Ornithomimus, it would have had feathers. Many of the vertebrae had openings that indicate they were pneumatic (air-filled). The neck was proportionally long in relation to the trunk. The hands were proportionally the shortest of any ornithomimosaur and each had three digits with curved claws. The forelimbs were weak while the hindlimbs were proportionally long. The head was small and light with large eyes that faced to the sides. The snout was long compared to other ornithomimids, although it was broader and more rounded at the tip than in other species. Gallimimus was toothless with a keratinous (horny) beak, and had a delicate lower jaw.
  • Dilophosaurusis a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived during the Early Jurassic, about 193 million years ago. The genus name means "two-crested lizard". At about 7 meters in length, with a weight of about 400 kilograms. Dilophosaurus was one of the earliest large predatory dinosaurs, though it was smaller than some later theropods. It was slender and lightly built, and the skull was proportionally large, but delicate. The snout was narrow, and the upper jaw had a gap or kink below the nostril. It had a pair of longitudinal, plate-shaped crests on its skull, similar to a cassowary with two crests. The mandible was slender and delicate at the front, but deep at the back. The teeth were long, curved, thin, and compressed sideways. Those in the lower jaw were much smaller than those of the upper jaw. Most of the teeth had serrations at their front and back edges. The neck was long, and its vertebrae were hollow, and very light. The arms were powerful, with a long and slender upper arm bone. The hands had four fingers: the first was short but strong and bore a large claw, the two following fingers were longer and slenderer with smaller claws, and the fourth was vestigial. The thigh bone was massive, the feet were stout, and the toes bore large claws.
  • Compsognathus is a genus of small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. Members of its single species Compsognathus longipes could grow to around the size of a turkey. They lived about 150 million years ago, during the Tithonian age of the late Jurassic period. Compsognathus had highly developed senses and quick legs; had 68 sharp, slightly curved teeths.
  • Velociraptor (meaning "swift seizer" in Latin) is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 75 to 71 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period. It was a bipedal, feathered carnivore with a long tail and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on each hindfoot, which is thought to have been used to tackle and disembowel prey. Velociraptor can be distinguished from other dromaeosaurids by its long and low skull, with an upturned snout. Velociraptor (commonly shortened to "Raptor") is one of the dinosaur genera most familiar to the general public due to its prominent role in the Jurassic Park motion picture series. In real life, however, Velociraptor was roughly the size of a turkey.
  • Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur that first appeared during the late Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous period, about 68 million years ago. It is one of the last known non-avian dinosaur genera, and became extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. The name Triceratops literally means "three-horned face". Bearing a large bony frill and three horns on its large four-legged body, and possessing similarities with the modern rhinoceros, Triceratops is one of the most recognizable of all dinosaurs and the best known ceratopsid. The functions of the frills and three distinctive facial horns on its head have long inspired debate. Traditionally, these have been viewed as defensive weapons against predators. More recent theories, noting the presence of blood vessels in the skull bones of ceratopsids, find it more probable that these features were primarily used in identification, courtship and dominance displays, much like the antlers and horns of modern reindeer, mountain goats, or rhinoceros beetles.
  • Tyrannosaurus is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. It is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

Level by Level walkthrough

Aviary

To fly with pteranodon? No thanks.

Savannah

Not so easy to ride on unbroken gallimimus. It suddenly turn to be real rodeo show from Jurassic Park. At first Dr. Grant almost fell and hung on the tail at very last moment. And then he ride i wrong direction. This way is possible to overflow X-position address and exit from level much earlier than intended.

Cargo Ship

Used zip under the ladder to skip major part of level. During zip glitch is important to interrupt zip at very last frame to be able make a jump from intermodal containers without delay. This level is short, but tricky to optimize because it very laggy.

Hidden Ruins

The only one normal level where Dr. Grant is able to demonstrate his jumping skills. Optimal movement system is constant jumping and shooting. Shooting is necessary to maintain max speed in air. Jumping cause a lot of problems. All jumps at full speed have same size, so optimal path is very limited, and you can't simply to run a little bit between jumps to adjust position (or will lost many frames). If Dr. Grant will get a hit in the air it will stop him, so such jumping movement require careful enemy behaviour manipulation to avoid all hits. Also if shoot too many times game can lag, so needs to doing it a right frames to avoid lags.
In the middle of level used help of Raptor to get a zip to skip part of route.
Ride triceratops at the end.

River Run

Dr. Grant is not big expert at boating in strong currents. He fall down on the first waterfall... Dr. Grant miraculously survived after such dangerous falling and finally reach calm water. What can go wrong now? Oh no... it is tyrannosaurus!
END

Regarding entertainment tradeoffs

This is superhuman playing session, it mean having fun in progress. So movie includes a few small speed/entertainment tradeoffs (about 1 second in total): One non necessary jump to hung on the tail of Gallimimus in Savannah. 1 frame to take additional chocolate item in Hidden Ruins. Also at very last frame of River Run if make turn boat in normal direction is possible to stopped input 6 frames earlier, however this possibility was ignored becouse of Dr. Grant consider that moving backward is looking cooler.

Possible improvements

I suspect that in Hidden Ruins can be somehow to manipulate Raptor to get a zip earlier. Advanced strategy is to shot him in air to make him fall down on correct platform with no extra jump required, i managed to do it many times, however after it i was not able to activate zip, if this is possible - up to 100 frames can be saved.
Difficulty can be changed to hard 1 frame earlier, even if we don't see it on screen.

Special thanks

XTREMAL93, Sk1pBaSe, Reanymation

Suggested screenshots

566; 759; 1820; 2398; 3426; 5139; 5811; 6246; 7232; 7273; 7305; 8045



ThunderAxe31: Judging.
ThunderAxe31: Replacing movie file with a version converted for BizHawk 2.3. All inputs are unchanged.
This movie uses the known RTA zips for beating each level astonishingly fast. The techniques are correctly applied and optimized, which puts this run out of the league of RTA attempts, as of the current knowlege for this game.
While this game is presented as an enhanced version of Jurassic Park for Genesis, it does feature such difference in both aesthetics and gameplay that it should be considered as a different game under any circumstance.
The audience reception was very welcoming, so this submission is accepted for Moons.
feos: Pub.

upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (388)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Alyosha wrote:
It’s very disappointing that TASing emulation hasn’t kept pace with the incredible progress of emulation as a whole. I guess it’s to be expected since just making an emulator itself must be much more rewarding then all the laborious work of adding robust TAS tools. I certainly wish there was an lsnes equivalent for genesis, but who would do it? If it hasn’t been done by now I think it’s unlikely in the future. Heck, I was hoping for a TAS capable CEN64 by now, but no such luck. I know BizHawk isn’t a workable solution for everyone , but out of curiousuty what is keeping cam hacks from working ?
Technically, the only thing keeping camhacks from working on BizHawk is that nobody has written them into BizHawk. More specifically, though, the fact that nitsuja wrote game-specific tools into emulators to support TASes he was working on is the only reason that GBA and gens got camhacks at all. That said, because those emulators didn't have any kind of supporting framework for making camhacks, reading/writing arbitrary memory values, drawing on the emulator screen, all the hacks were put together in a somewhat slap-dash manner with an emphasis just on getting something working, and required the emulator to turn on, or off, any game-specific hacks. If there were a well-documented, pre-existing framework for hacks to detect the game being emulated, activate and deactivate at run-time, read and write game memory, etc, they would be much easier to write and distribute. I understand that APIHawk was meant to accomplish this, but it isn't well maintained or documented. I'm hoping to de-rust it, write documentation for it, and port the gens Sonic tool suite to it after I finish my current TAS project.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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GJTASer2018 wrote:
Then you, sir, have missed THE ENTIRE POINT of why this website exists. Console verification has always been the ultimate objective for tool-assisted speedruns and this website:
tasvideos.org/ConsoleVerifiedMovies.html wrote:
Since they started, tool assisted speedruns were designed to make it theoretically possible, given super-human abilities, to recreate them on an actual console.
First: your quote says more like this is side effect. It wasn't main goal. Main goal was to show superplay. Second: I would accept arguing for console verification if we would be closer to console verification of genesis runs. But for now, both gens runs / bizhawk (genplus-gx) runs should be altered to make them sync on real console. This means that both of them not accurate. And for console verification it's not so important which one is "more accurate". You need "just" accurate one - which we don't have yet.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Expert player (3535)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2732
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upthorn wrote:
I understand that APIHawk was meant to accomplish this, but it isn't well maintained or documented. I'm hoping to de-rust it, write documentation for it, and port the gens Sonic tool suite to it after I finish my current TAS project.
Cool! Good luck with that and I look forward to seeing what you are able to accomplish.
Editor, Emulator Coder, Site Developer
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Posts: 1108
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upthorn wrote:
Technically, the only thing keeping camhacks from working on BizHawk is that nobody has written them into BizHawk.
I investigated the feasibility of rewriting the sanic camhack tools in lua for BizHawk once and quickly gave up. The code was a giant ugly mess of junk and I didn't really have the heart to get into it...
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Posts: 652
Fun run, thanks for making it. LOL'ed at the water "fall", and boating backwards. Yes vote!
Post subject: possible improvements?
Judge, Skilled player (1289)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
Archanfel wrote:
Here’s approximate attempt for advanced strategy for Hidden Ruins zip, where i failed: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1598113624/Advanced%20strategy%20for%20Zip%20in%20HR.gmv In theory around 100 frames can be saved here, if it is really possible. If anyone can succeed i will be glad to add him/her as co author.
Are there any news about this? Did anyone try to make an improvement?
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Post subject: convert movie file?
Judge, Skilled player (1289)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
Since this movie syncs perfectly on BizHawk, I could replace the movie file of this submission with a .bk2 conversion. This is not a requirement, and the decision is up to the author. Archanfel, do you agree?
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Post subject: Re: convert movie file?
Skilled player (1436)
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Since this movie syncs perfectly on BizHawk, I could replace the movie file of this submission with a .bk2 conversion. This is not a requirement, and the decision is up to the author. Archanfel, do you agree?
I am ok with replacement, though i think it would be even better to keep both movie files - original .gmv and .bk2 conversion. (In some publications i saw that is possible to have two alternative movie files links. Like this one for example.)
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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It has happened a few times in the past, but to host both it requires editing the database manually, as there's no interface for this kind of thing. What if the Gens version is just kept in userfiles for whenever Nach is around to add the file to the pub? Though I'll need to wait for him to even agree to do it here. Before it's published it can't have both files, and I'd really prefer encoding this on hawk.
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.
Skilled player (1436)
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feos wrote:
What if the Gens version is just kept in userfiles for whenever Nach is around to add the file to the pub? Though I'll need to wait for him to even agree to do it here. Before it's published it can't have both files, and I'd really prefer encoding this on hawk.
Yeah i agree with that variant. Replace it now and use hawk version for encoding. Later, after publication if Nach would so generous he will add alternative link for original movie file.
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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So who's gonna host the Gens version until then?
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.
Skilled player (1436)
Joined: 11/26/2011
Posts: 655
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feos wrote:
So who's gonna host the Gens version until then?
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/51595735241062972
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. ---- [3835] Genesis Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition "Grant" by Archanfel in 02:39.84
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Notes: I didn't add the major skip glitch tag, because here it's just clipping out of bounds rather than corrupting the game engine from the inside. And for this game, this approach will most likely be the default way to tas it. Also, I used my own preference for the screenshot, and put all the suggestions as a gif instead, because they were too cool.
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.
Skilled player (1436)
Joined: 11/26/2011
Posts: 655
Location: RU
Since you added branch "Grant" for this movie would be logical to also add "Raptor" branch for [1480] Genesis Jurassic Park "Raptor" by Cpadolf in 02:31.03 becouse both these games has exactly the same choise of characters. P.S. Do not forget to ask Nach to add original unconverted submission file to the pub.
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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Nach has been asked.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.