This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6743: link_7777's NES Space Shuttle Project in 54:30.01

Syllabus There is no known TAS precedent for this game. The movie must be examined from scratch. Nintendo officially licensed the game, which falls into the Action genre. The game is not trivial because even though it has some space shuttle cutscenes, stages within the missions require skill. After completing the sixth mission, the game has a clear ending, in which former US President George H. W. Bush appears. The current speedrun record according to speedrun.com is 56:44, timing from pressing Start to completing the final landing sequence. This TAS is more than two minutes faster, and so it satisfies the “not slower than” condition. Opinion The game has an intriguing premise that is unlike other games of the time period, and it is strong on audio/visual quality. But, because of the gameplay design—rather than any fault of the author—the movie is on the lower end of the entertainment scale. The main fault is the combination of the length and the repetitiveness of the shuttle launch and landing sequences. These sequences account for approximately half of the 54-minute runtime. They conjure memories of the infamous landing sequences from Top Gun, which has unanimous low entertainment ratings. The time spent in control of Astronaut Gamer is more entertaining. The least interesting of the astronaut mini-games is the six instances of fueling/boarding. It is a duller version of Elevator Action, in which the tension created by dodging enemies and navigating multiple elevators is replaced with simply beating the clock. But the three EVAs requiring construction of the space station are more interesting. The space movement is unorthodox and resembles the Moons-tier Solar Jetman, which is well-regarded specifically because of its physics. The three non-construction EVAs have more slow and steady straight-line movement, and so they are less interesting but still of some interest because of the exotic space setting. Even for the astronaut mini-games, Absolute’s game design didn’t provide the author with much opportunity to do anything other than complete the tasks in a straightforward manner. There is nothing readily available to exploit in terms of RNG, glitches, or shortcuts. The author demonstrates knowledge acquired from studying the instruction manual. The inputs are precisely timed in most cases. The author utilizes his extra lives. The movie properly ends on the last essential frame of input. The movie is very well-optimized. For the boarding stages, there is no U+D or L+R hyperspeed. Movement is timed to maintain acceleration. The oxygen and hydrogen have to be activated before gathering the crew. For the rescue on mission five, the CCCP station’s wing is solid material and requires a difficult curved path to go around. Movement immediately after the rescue is limited by the space debris. For the deaths on mission six, Astronaut Gamer needs to approach properly to get caught in the moving shaft—otherwise he’ll bounce off the wall. Death occurs when the shaft moves down. Thus, there are no easily spotted technical errors. A seemingly theoretical improvement is to get a faster security code at the start of the game. The code changes if the initial Start press is delayed. However, the numbers do not appear to really matter. While the numbers change, the input timing remains the same. For example, delaying Start by two frames means finishing the code two frames later. Thus, it seems that it cannot be done faster through RNG manipulation. As of this time, there is no other feedback to comment on. Overall, it appears that the author did the best that he could have with what the game offered. The author made this movie as part of the ongoing TASMania project, which began almost four years ago. He deserves special recognition for his outstanding efforts on that project. For the reasons stated above, this movie deserves to be Accepted into the Vault.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4205] NES Space Shuttle Project by link_7777 in 54:30.01