Sonic Pinball Party is a Game Boy Advance game made by Sonic Team. It features pinball boards based of Sonic Advance ,Nights into Dreams, and Samba De Amigo. The story of this game follows that Sonic enters a pinball tournament to defeat Eggman to save the animals.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: vba-v24m-svn461
  • Aims for the fastest completion

Comments

  • Opponent 1:Knuckles
This mission requires that you get 10 Million points. Defeating Eggman simply is enough to beat the stage. I just use some bumper tricks to get it in a few shots.
  • Opponent 2:Possessed Tails
This mission requires 15 million points to win. Defeating Eggman, the clear bonus and some easy loops on the next board was enough to suffice.
  • Opponent 3:Possessed Amy
This mission requires that you beat the boss on the next board. Optimizing the Ideya Capturing and the dualzing in few shots took some challenge to Optimize
  • Opponent 4: Metal Sonic
This mission require that you clear all the Sonic boards up to X-Zone. Probably the most demanding of the opponents. There was quite a bit of luck manipulation and frame specific shots that needed to be made given the predicament that the ball sometimes can face.
  • Opponent 5: Eggman
After beating Metal Sonic the game congratulates you with a false victory. Eggman appears to make his last stand to beat you. This mission requires you have more points within the time limit. With the physics leaning towards making you fail even more in this stage. Along with little to no Ball Saves.
Overall this was an interesting game to TAS
Note that this is the improved movie file that syncs on ROM mentioned: [dead link removed] Please replace as soon as possible

feos: Replaced the submission file by Author request.
FractalFusion: Replaced submission file again to fix input ending.
FractalFusion: Well done although the response is less than desired. Accepting for vault.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3775: Cooljay's GBA Sonic Pinball Party in 22:36.40
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This was made using a hacked ROM and loses 125 frames at the start to skip the hack intro. It looks like it syncs with the good ROM, but IMO you should edit out the first 125 frames and resubmit. I'll have a quick encode for a good ROM using what I have semi soon.
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oneeighthundred wrote:
It looks like it syncs with the good ROM, but IMO you should edit out the first 125 frames and resubmit.
You (Cooljay) can also fix the file and request replacement.
Cooljay
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Ilari wrote:
oneeighthundred wrote:
It looks like it syncs with the good ROM, but IMO you should edit out the first 125 frames and resubmit.
You (Cooljay) can also fix the file and request replacement.
If I may ask. What is the name of the movie editor for VBA ?
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OK, I can't get a good encode out of this right now because it desyncs with the good ROM around frame 16000 (in the Amy/NiGHTS stage). I'll try again when an edited version is submitted. I think there may be several versions of this too, so a CRC or MD5 of the ROM you used would be helpful.
Cooljay
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/v3ww156rge3rygt/PinballPartyFixedCJ.vbm Fixed the movie file. Used TAS Movie Editor. Changing the ROM name to the correct one as well
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If the Stage Clear Bonus sections weren't so boring, it would be great. Meh from me. Yea for beating down this game.
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Stages 4 and 5 were able to get 15 million points in a single zone thanks to bonus time, so why did it take a second zone in order to finish off stage 2?
Cooljay
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Mr. Pwnage wrote:
Stages 4 and 5 were able to get 15 million points in a single zone thanks to bonus time, so why did it take a second zone in order to finish off stage 2?
With some better luck manipulation I managed to bump it just down to that stage now. Here is the new movie with the improvements added https://www.dropbox.com/s/69kwjc1kc160sh6/PinballPartyImprovedCJ.vbm
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i agree w/ hegyak, the game on it's own is really nice, but the stage clear sections are slightly too long, so meh for me
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as someone who has not played this game, this was unfortunately not very entertiaining for me. I fully support vault publication though
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I have to vote meh for entertainment, but I also considered the "no" option :p It started ok and quite entertaining, but it became repetitive quite fast. It's mostly because of the game which is that way (to watch). I can't comment on the technical side of the run. I've never played the game, so I don't know if other strategies can earn more points, if everything is done the fastest way, etc...
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I'm going to have to go with a "Meh" too. The way I see it, while it is fairly well done, there are still some areas that could be improved: Some of the shots before Eggman appears could probably be managed better. Perhaps nudging at a different time will place the ball closer to the optimal launch position. A little more variety in shots taken during the Metal Sonic stage clear bonuses could up the entertainment a bit more. Perhaps not going for the bonus all the time since score isn't a concern on these stages? During the final round, is it possible to get Multiball started during Casino Night and still have enough points to beat Eggman without clearing the stage? Or maybe clear out the stage at the last second? This would cut out another Clear Bonus segment during what is a timed portion anyway. Just a couple ideas. I have no way of knowing if these are going to be any more efficient, but they wouldn't hurt the entertainment side of things.
Cooljay
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5hq4jheus5fgsi/PinballPartyImprovedV2.vbm The multiball Section has now been added to Casino Night Instead As for the Eggman shots. They were fairly optimized. Given nudging will sometimes be ignored in hopes of avoiding dropping the ball down the hole, and other times it will do a good job. Bumper shots are very frame specific, and require certain situations to launch the right way. Regarding the Metal Sonic stages the loops were just to distinguish a TAS from a real time player. Since it will be more difficult to get loops and skill shots that many times in a row.
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Hmm. I'm not sure if it's because I'm using a slightly older version of VBA, but the new file stops before the ending dialog is complete. Also, is it possible to create larger combos during the Metal Sonic stages? I think that would distinguish a TAS from someone with good reflexes a lot better than the same basic combo over and over, and would be more interesting to watch. One last thing. During the Nights stage, I noticed on one of the Ideya shots that you hit the flipper just before it looks like it's going to go in, just to take another shot at it. Perhaps a little better manipulation could make this step unnecessary and speed things up a bit? Or does it affect the following shots too much?
Cooljay
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I swear I implemented the game ending input. Looks like it didn't register. It has now been fixed. https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7by5zlntgq054i/PinballPartyFixed2.vbm
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For me, the movie still stops before clearing the dialog.
Cooljay
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FractalFusion wrote:
For me, the movie still stops before clearing the dialog.
I fixed it in the post above yours with the movie file linked In any case I did another one that was checked multiple times to be sure https://www.dropbox.com/s/20vv566b7mb1nhf/PinballPartyFixed3.vbm
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. ---- [2260] GBA Sonic Pinball Party by Cooljay in 22:42.59
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Nice run :) I'm not sure if you know, but you can use the R and L bumpers to tilt the table. This might let you make some shots that you had to take a few tries to line up.