Introduction
The Three Stooges was first an Amiga game developed in 1988 by Incredible Technologies and published by Cinemaware. It's essentially sort of a board game where the Three Stooges must earn enough money to save an orphanage from being taken by the banker. While it's limited in gameplay, it's a visually nice game with a lot of love put into it. This is a port by Beam Software published in 1989. While there were some cuts and changes that are probably due to technical reasons, the core gameplay is mostly intact.
There are three possible regular endings for this game. The minimum amount needed to avoid a bad ending is $5,000 to save the orphanage. The next threshold at $10,000 will also repair the orphanage. The best ending at $20,000 will also get the Stooges married. This TAS aims to get the best ending by earning the required cash through a lot of RNG management.
Game info
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8, NESHawk core
- Goes for the best ending
- Manipulates a fair amount of luck
Luck manipulation
The first part of luck is that there seems to be a seed depending on when the main game is started. This is started on the first frame since it's reasonable enough to work with and figuring out a good RNG seed throughout an entire run is a bit out of my wheelhouse at this time. The second part of luck is that RNG advances when it's needed.
These are affected by RNG from what I know:
- Hand movement when selecting an event
- Doctor minigame item drop directions
- Oyster minigame cracker and oyster spawns
- Waiter job pie spawns and customer ducking
- Maybe the Stooge dodging during the Stooge pace
- Trivia questions
- Money space amounts
- Safe space outcome
- Banker space outcome
- Mystery space outcome
Event spaces
The game works like a board game where you have a moving hand and where it stops, whether by itself or by player input, determines the outcome. The hand gets faster as time goes on but there is a space to slow down the movement. From what I can gather from the Amiga version the spaces are at least set for a certain amount, but I'm not super certain if that applies to this port as well.
Events played
Boxing match
This minigame is based on the short "Punch Drunks". In this, Larry's violin breaks and he must rush to get a radio that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" so that Curly goes into berserk mode and wins the match. The layout of the stage is static and quick. RNG does nothing to this event. This makes for a pretty easy $800 when reaching the end during round 3. This does not include the part of the short where the radio plays a different song and Larry hijacks and crashes a truck through a wall to play "Pop Goes the Weasel".
Doctor job
The minigame that gets played the most in this TAS. This minigame is based on the short "Men in Black", no relation to the sci-fi film franchise. In this, the Stooges follow on their three-person bike behind a doctor to rush into the operating room. For every second remaining on the timer when the end is reached after 20 halls? $15 per second remaining is awarded. The doctor's also dropping medical tools which grant an extra $5 per pickup. However, the direction of the item drops are RNG based and sometimes are unobtainable without massively slowing down or crashing into other patients, which loses a lot of time. This has the best time/money ratio but has some variable payouts due to RNG.
Trivia game
The player is asked questions about the real life Stooges. Apparently a lot of this info was in the manual so the player probably doesn't have to be a superfan if they have that. Every question answered correctly is worth $200, for a possible total of $600. A pretty decent time/money ratio.
Money space
This space gives free money when selected. The payout ranges between $100 and $1,000 inclusive. Usually the best spot to take unless the RNG means that selecting another space has a much better payout.
Safe space
A safe is dropped on Curly, which isn't shown on the NES for probably technical reasons. Then there are two outcomes: either earn $500 for returning the safe, or pay $1,000 for breaking the safe. This space is selected when there is a payout but a big gamble in real-time.
Banker space
Either the banker taunts the Stooges or takes money from them. This space is a detriment and to be avoided in most cases. This is only technically landed on in this TAS through the Mystery space since the other outcomes were less than ideal.
Mystery space
This space either works as a Money space, Safe space, or a Banker space. This does roll the RNG a bit more than just the money space. Landed on when the space has a good outcome.
Mouse trap space
This space will take a finger away, then event selection restarts with the same options. The 4 fingers on the cursor work like extra lives. Once all fingers are lost, the game ends and the ending is determined by the amount of money the Stooges have earned. This is done at the end of the TAS since it's faster than entering a short event space.
Events skipped
Oyster minigame
This minigame is based on the short "Dutiful but Dumb". In this minigame, Curly must eat the oyster crackers before the very fresh oysters get to them first. This is a fairly slow minigame until there's one cracker remaining. $10 is earned for every cracker and $50 is earned for every bowl emptied by the player. The number of crackers per bowl goes down for each one eaten by the oysters. According to the RTA notes on SRC, the possible payout per minute is $900 which is both very dependent on the RNG giving ideal cracker spawns, and also not great in the time/money ration for this TAS. Not shown is the end of the cracker eating contest where Curly pulls out a gun to shoot the thieving oysters.
Waiter minigame
This minigame isn't based on any particular short. In this minigame, the Stooges serve the pies by throwing them at the customer's faces. They have 30 pies and for every pie that lands on the customers' faces $10 is earned. If every pie is thrown, not necessarily connected, the payout is doubled. There's RNG in when the customers will duck or throw a pie of their own. There's also a bit of RNG that can be slightly manipulated for when the next available pie can be tossed. The minigame is very slow and has a reduced payout compared to the Amiga version, where there are 69 pies and every successful hit rewards $15. Overall, getting the maximum $600 would take too long.
11 August 2022 EDIT: This was pointed out to me by streamer Terror Van in Discord. The waiter minigame does pay out more the farther along the game is. This means the payout can be more lucrative but the other problem of the minigame taking a fair amount of time still stands. This could still be a new potential point of improvement, though.
Stooge space
The player controls Moe and enacts some slapstick antics. Every successful hit on Larry and Curly reduces cursor movement, and every unsuccessful hit or unsuccessful dodge increases cursor movement. Useful for real time play for hitting the desired events, but this TAS takes advantage of cursor speed.
Pointer space
All this space does is waste time. This is ignored since there are available events that earn money.
Possible improvements
- A possibly better starting RNG seed by waiting some frames before getting into the game proper could be done.
- The Doctor minigame could be used to manipulate the RNG by avoiding some pickups and affect later events throughout the run.
- A different selection of minigames could be faster with regards to maintaining some RNG for other spaces.
Ending notes
Special thanks to
this review by Shot97 which is how I learned which Three Stooges short the minigames were referencing, as well as some info about the Amiga version.
slamo: Claiming for judging.
slamo: Your writeup is quite good, it looks like you've put a lot of thought into efficiently gathering money. This is much faster than any unassisted run as well. The ending choice is preferred and might supersede any other ending choice due to having the exact same content. Accepting.
