(Link to video)
Hello. This is DJ Incendration. This beats Adelikat's TAS by 3:28.36, and the current TAS on YouTube (as of the day this was finished, April 16, 2021) by 8.47 seconds, in a few unexpected ways. The times are now as follows:
  • Ken Barryhill 1: 07.25
  • Lisa Hick: 16.97 (was 17.61)
So, it turns out that getting your star right away is a bad idea because it's slower. Since you have to throw a normal punch in phase 3 anyway, it's faster to get your star then.
  • Jeko Knight 1: 32.48 (was 33.25)
Phase 3 uses a max-damage uppercut to slightly speed up the fight from Adelikat's TAS.
  • Disco Kid: 42.00 (was 1:00.99)
It's funny that the fastest time on this fight is a couple frames away from the fastest time for the fight this one was based on. You can land stars every time, by holding Up and Start at the right time. These stars also deal more damage.
  • Doc Louis: 53.48 (was 57.82)
By getting knocked down, we are able to gain two free stars each time. There is no other way to do so, except waiting for the round to end.
  • Zelda: 57.48 (was 1:42.82)
Unlike Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NTSC and PAL) and Punch-Out!! (NTSC), you can land jabs without having one blocked. This saves a lot of time, since we don't have to worry about the number of hearts we have.
  • Rick bruiser 1: 46.48 (was 1:01.00)
I improved this fight twice. The first time, I just improved a few things in phase 2. On March 20, however, I found a faster strategy for the whole fight. After his guard speeds up at 30 seconds into the fight, it is possible to land unstunned jabs, even when they don't counter one of his punches. This is used to reduce the time between punches in phases 2 and 3. This strat also saves some frames real time, compared to the old submission.
  • Jeko Knight 2: 31.48 (was 58.82)
Like Honda 2 in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, you can throw max damage uppercuts. These saved a ton of time through the fight. My improvement (from the 9:37 TAS) is thanks to a re-ordering in phase 2, resulting in having a star for phase 3.
  • SW7 Destroyer: 42.25 (was 53.82)
As stated by Adelikat in his submission, stars into his dance deal more damage than stars while he is doing nothing. With lots of luck manipulation, SW7 throws these dance jabs almost immediately.
  • Rick Bruiser 2: 58.61 (was 1:07.00)
Unlike NTSC MTPO, you can land star punches into rolling jabs. This is frame perfect, but saves a few seconds.
  • Ken Barryhill 2: 55.25 (was 55.82)
At first, I thought that swapping the order in phase 2 from the original TAS saved time. However, I was wrong.
  • Nick Bruiser: 44.25 (was 1:05.61)
Like Sandman in Punch-Out!! featuring Mr. Dream (PAL only), you can land unstunned jabs for a free 5 damage. Also, star punches deal less damage after the first punch of a stun, so I have to either not stun him at all, or do an extra punch.
  • SW7 Destroyer 2: 32.97 (was 38.48)
Well... I stumbled on this 1-second improvement (over the current TAS) by accident. I lost some real time, but saved about a second in-game.
  • F.A.S: 45.61 (was 1:37.25)
F.A.S has an instant knockdown, but it requires you to get knocked down. When Mac gets up, I do a few things to trigger the instant knockdown as fast as possible (while getting hit to set up for phase 2.) In phase 2, I intentionally get up on 9 so that he'll get up on 1.
  • Total time (in-game): 9:26.56
  • total real-time improvement from Adelikat: 3339 frames

Special Thanks:

Thanks go to McHazard, Zallard1 and mPap for showing me what to do and making this improvement possible. Also, thanks to Adelikat, Phil, and Summoningsalt for their TASes, speedruns and tutorials that helped me get into this series. Enjoy!

Other comments:

The Punch-Out!! fanbase has grown throughout the past 11 years, and strats have been improved a ton. I made a bunch of improvements since I first said I don't see any more, but with this Rick and SW7 improvement (3/20/22) I really don't think any more can be made. In the discussion thread, I asked if I should TAS the game in the Pal mode of FCEUX. However, I found out that the game is called Turbo because of faster music and Mac. Punch-Out!! (featuring Mr. Dream) (PAL) was used to make this hack, but the NTSC version of MTPO is used to patch this game. While playing Pal games on NTSC is not allowed, playing the game in PAL mode takes the whole "turbo" idea away. For these reasons, I am starting to think I should leave the TAS the way it is. Enjoy the run! Also, I have tested more thoroughly to confirm that this is as low as it will go. New userfile here: UserFiles/Info/637834326088739094

feos: I know nothing about the original game or its hacks, but let's just jump right into it. Judging...

DJ Incendration: I've decided to cancel this submission. I wanted to see where it would go, but it's not looking that great. While I couldn't find any more improvements, I found that people didn't think it was different enough compared to the original MTPO. I was hoping the community had enough fans of the game who thought this hack was different, and that this TAS could be published. I am sad to say it doesn't seem like it. Canceling.

DJ Incendration: Uncanceling due to the fact that this submission's verdict could help improve site rules, as pointed out by Adelikat in the discussion.
feos: We're back!
feos: Setting to Delayed until we figure out if we want to improve the rules and how.
feos: We finally agreed on the new rules for hacks, the gist is that it should just be a decent quality hack and not a clone of an official game on the same platform (or rather its tiny tweak). Being present in well-known databases helps to make sure there's a community that cares about preserving that hack, because we can't publicly preserve them.
This hack features new gameplay and is well done, also it's presented on https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1630/ so it will survive for a while. Replacing the file and accepting to Standard, since the Moons requirement for hacks is no more.

despoa: Processing...

Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1093
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
I'm not too familiar with the original game in the first place and it doesn't help that this hack just looks visually unappealing, along with some adolescent language. It also kind of rubs me the wrong way to see fights against women in this particular style of game. It works in regular fighting games, where everything just comes off as more of a fantasy setting, but not here. I can't say much about the quality of the gameplay and how it compares to the original, but for the reasons stated above, I will have to vote "no". I don't like this hack and 16 minutes of it is a long time, even if the gameplay is optimal.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
andypanther wrote:
I'm not too familiar with the original game in the first place and it doesn't help that this hack just looks visually unappealing, along with some adolescent language. It also kind of rubs me the wrong way to see fights against women in this particular style of game. It works in regular fighting games, where everything just comes off as more of a fantasy setting, but not here.
I completely agree with all of this, but... As adelikat said, this is a good opportunity to improve our rules and possibly set a new precedent on how we handle ROM hacks going forward. We had some staff discussion about this submission, namely the nature of MTPO as a game and how it relates to hacks. Entertainment in a hack is often derived from noticeable and unique differences from the base game, and MTPO as a concept does not allow for that unless you're deep enough into the game to know what could have changed. If you're unfamiliar with MTPO fight patterns, you'd have no idea they were different in Phred's. There's almost no way to find an MTPO hack unique as a casual viewer, and that can and probably already does apply to a lot of other games as well. I did end up voting No because of the hack's presentation, but I'm also left wondering if even a perfectly-presented MTPO hack would be able to be published under our current rules. We're essentially requiring universal appeal for projects that are explicitly niche, and not everything is capable of breaking into the mainstream, and looking at it from a Judge's perspective, that doesn't seem fair at all. It's almost like we're rejecting for game choice again, and that's absolutely something we want to get away from. We're already making a lot of major updates to the rules, perhaps this is a good opportunity to figure out what the overall site wants out of ROM hack submissions and how we can better accommodate them.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11268
Location: RU
Samsara wrote:
It's almost like we're rejecting for game choice again, and that's absolutely something we want to get away from.
Indeed. When we want majority of regular viewers to have enjoyed the movie, we need game mechanics to be clearly comprehensible and fun, or we need the game to be popular enough so more people could relate to it. That is essentially our Moons requirement. But when it comes to hacks, anything that's less known or less obvious risks to get ignored or disliked by general audience. This situation feels very similar to how the site worked before tiers. Moons requirement was kinda universal, and games that couldn't meet it were rejected, even not hacks. Vault was meant to provide room for technical achievements that have speedrun record value, because the demand was kinda high: for every Vault-ish game there was some niche audience that would watch and enjoy even the least obvious and the most monotonous gameplay, as long as they have personal relation with that game, or the genre, or anything else objective or subjective. The tier system teaches us that niche audience should not be ignored. We want people to make high quality movies, to push games to their limits. The more productive people we have around, the more creative freedom they have, the better the net gain is. If you're only into some insanely popular franchise and hate all the rest, people who used to TAS Vault-ish games may contribute to something very entertaining within your favorite franchise some day! And technical expertise is a great thing in and of itself. Sharing experience and ideas, generating something unique on variety of levels. So no, we do not want niche audiences to feel outcast. We don't want them to have to split away. If we want to be future-proof as a site, we want to embrace variety of tastes.
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.
Player (50)
Joined: 4/1/2016
Posts: 285
Location: Cornelia Castle
I think that even if things don't look different to the casual viewer who doesn't know much about the regular patterns of the opponents, they should be published IF they are known by the TASers and speedrunners to be different. Here are some examples of hacks that should and should not be publishable in my opinion: should be publishable: All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros. (not really a hack, but it changes 8-4 and adds additional worlds and SMB2J mechanics, so I'm counting it as such) Difficult? Punch-Out!! (changes every opponents pattern and makes it so one hit sends you down, all in all more difficult than MTPO. People who don't know the original patterns may or may not recognize the patterns are different in that hack) should not be published: Drag Race Autoshift (Dragster hack, only makes it so the game shifts for you. Can do some interesting stuff, but it doesn't change really anything.) Super Mario Fantasy Adventure (Final Fantasy hack, only adds Mario elements while keeping everything mostly the same)
DJ Incendration Believe in Michael Girard and every speedrunner and TASer!
Editor, Player (67)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1041
Samsara wrote:
If you're unfamiliar with MTPO fight patterns, you'd have no idea they were different in Phred's. There's almost no way to find an MTPO hack unique as a casual viewer, and that can and probably already does apply to a lot of other games as well.
Maybe I don't understand what you mean by fight patterns, but most, if not all, of the enemy moves that I saw in this run were already present in the original MTPO. The fights that stood out to me were the King Hippo and Mike Tyson variants, which may have been because Little Mac took damage. For me to find an MTPO hack entertaining, it will probably have to make significant changes to the base game that do not allow you to defeat each enemy in 30 seconds. Possible examples:
  • Get rid of the star mechanic.
  • Give the enemies new moves that the player cannot manipulate away.
  • Allow Little Mac to move around the ring, like people do in actual boxing.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Player (50)
Joined: 4/1/2016
Posts: 285
Location: Cornelia Castle
Well, for the moving around the ring, there's Power Punch 2, which is a separate game on its own. I'm not sure how I'd take away the star mechanics or anything like that, but that would be interesting. It seems less fun to me, though. I like to see fights over quickly, and removing that would make each fight significantly longer, even going as far as the third round for Bald Bull 2.
DJ Incendration Believe in Michael Girard and every speedrunner and TASer!
SMBistic
He/Him
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Interesting
MESHUGGAH
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Posts: 1349
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Well... With only the knowledge of SummoningSalt videos and watching adelikat's old TAS back in the day, I started the video and than started skipping content and watch the fighters. Never played the game so the only thing I saw was custom fighters while the game being the same. I went to google to find a website straight from 2001 with worse than Space Jam webdesign, so I'm just going to say: - I think this hack has very little changes to offer alongside the original game - I don't see any technique being different, it's like the same TAS with differently looking enemies I get a feeling this hack is mostly cosmetic with very little if any other changes made. Obvious no vote. Side note: I've also read the submission text albeit don't know what did it said about NTSC or PAL.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
ViGadeomes
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Judge, Active player (303)
Joined: 10/16/2017
Posts: 456
Location: France
I thought about a suggestion during a discussion on Discord a while back and forgot to post about it here so there it is : A solution (atleast for the moment) for this movie would be to accept (a) TAS(es) of the most popular hack of each official game into Standard without taking into account its entertainement. Would matter as well its differences from the original game if it's a problem. Then, we would accept any TAS of other hacks of the same game into Moons like we do now.
Player (50)
Joined: 4/1/2016
Posts: 285
Location: Cornelia Castle
I actually like that solution.
DJ Incendration Believe in Michael Girard and every speedrunner and TASer!
Player (26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
ViGadeomes wrote:
A solution (atleast for the moment) for this movie would be to accept (a) TAS(es) of the most popular hack of each official game into Standard without taking into account its entertainement.
By what standard are you going to choose the "most popular hack"? And what if popularity changes, and some other hack becomes the most popular? What if popularity changes often? This is not hypothetical, by the way. Romhacking.net lists about 450 romhacks of SMB, and about 60 for each Mega Man game and the NES/SNES Zelda games; the site for VVVVVV lists about 1000 homemade levelsets for that game. Which one of these is the most popular?
ViGadeomes
He/Him
Judge, Active player (303)
Joined: 10/16/2017
Posts: 456
Location: France
Radiant wrote:
ViGadeomes wrote:
A solution (atleast for the moment) for this movie would be to accept (a) TAS(es) of the most popular hack of each official game into Standard without taking into account its entertainement.
By what standard are you going to choose the "most popular hack"? And what if popularity changes, and some other hack becomes the most popular? What if popularity changes often? This is not hypothetical, by the way. Romhacking.net lists about 450 romhacks of SMB, and about 60 for each Mega Man game and the NES/SNES Zelda games; the site for VVVVVV lists about 1000 homemade levelsets for that game. Which one of these is the most popular?
This is a good point, we could choose what standard we take and then the most popular by this standard at the time of the submission should be accepted into Standard but I see that even then, it can leads to problems... I can't think about a proper definition of such hack that could fit here and wouldn't contradict the Standard definition, so it's only a WIP.
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. ---- [4656] NES Phred's Cool Punch-Out 2 Turbo by DJ Incendration in 15:59.82