This one was a long time coming.
Introduction
Quartet was a 1986 arcade game where Sega saw the success of Gauntlet and thought to turn that into a sci-fi side scrolling platformer instead. Normally allowing up to 4 players at a time, they can cooperate to complete the 32 stages before the game loops. This TAS uses a later revision, Quartet 2, for reasons that will be explained later.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9, originally a special old MAMEHawk build of BizHawk
- MAMEHawk core
- Lost rerecords in the conversion process and I don't think the one in the old file would be correct
TAS history
This input file has been sitting around and viewable for a very long time. I'm talking
over a year old at this point. I started and completed this when the only MAME core was being worked on by
feos. This old version was on an older version of MAME that didn't have the copy protection working for some Sega System 16 games, Quartet included. It also had stability issues, causing crashes and sound issues in TAStudio back in the time. Despite all those technical issues I persevered and completed what seems to be the first recorded MAMEHawk TAS in history.
Fast forward until later
CasualPokePlayer looked at the MAMEHawk development and helped to make a waterboxed core. This new MAMEHawk core is so much more stable and also more up to date. All you future MAMEHawk TASers are much luckier than me. Anyways, I converted my inputs between the old and new cores with a single modification of adding a boot frame at the start to sync. This is great as it definitely means Sega System 16 games run excellently in BizHawk.
Version notes
This uses "quartet2a" which is known in MAME as "Quartet 2 (unprotected)". The reason was that the old MAMEHawk core was started with a version that didn't fix the copy protection on Sega System 16 games. That protection affects the moving platforms in stages. Without that protection, taking a hit is mandatory to get past one of the stages due to those platforms not working. I used an unprotected version of Quartet to get around that, even though it did cost a few frames to select a character.
Mechanics and techniques
Character choice
For the single player run I used Mary. Her maxed out weapon hits bosses per frame while also being the narrowest ranged shot. The shot size allows for certain trick shots that would otherwise hit other surfaces. Character choice also slightly affects level start position and Mary has some favorable ones.
Stage completion
The goal of each stage is explained in the intro better than I can say. Anyways, it's to find and destroy the boss to get the exit key to complete the stage. There are 32 stages in a loop of this game and this TAS completes 1 loop as the game continues endlessly. Bosses speed up the more damaged they are so sometimes a boss kill is delayed to have them move in a more favorable position to pick up the key.
Short hops
I like to think of this as "doing the worm". Crouching and jumping out of it pushes the player forward in that direction slightly faster than just walking forward. More importantly this pushes the player further ahead in the screen as normally the screen scroll matches the player's walk speed. This can be used to get past some enemy spawns that otherwise have to be dealt with. The short hops also allows for making some gaps without bonking on the ceiling.
Weapon boosting
A player's weapon can be boosted by either picking up a Simon disc powerup in some stages or picking up the bouncing orb matching the player color that occasionally shows up. The color can by cycled by shooting the bouncing orb. Note that the power levels can loop so the boosts have to be avoided when the player's weapon is at maximum power.
Items
There are some items that can help with completing stages. Only the useful ones are mentioned.
- Speedup
- These boots increase ground speed of anyone who has them. This is beneficial up to the screen scroll limitations. There are certain floors that also give the same speedup benefits when walked on and do not stack with the speedup item.
- Jump high
- These springs boost jump height. These do not affect the height of the short hops. The increased height can help with skipping some ladder climbs.
- Shield
- This hexagon with an S provides temporary invincibility to enemies and hazardous obstacles. These are good finds for getting past areas quickly as long as they aren't too out of the way.
- Jet engine
- This jetpack allows the player to have 8-way flying around the screen. This does lose the benefit of speeding up horizontal movement with short hops and the boots so this is only used in stage 1 to take care of the boss that would otherwise be hard to reach.
- Shot power-up
- This Simon disc gives a gun boost without having to cycle the bouncing gun booster's color.
- Stops enemies
- This clock temporarily freezes all enemies in the stage in place and also temporarily stops enemy spawners from making more enemies.
- Destroys enemies
- This yellow jar is a screen clear that wipes out all enemies on screen. Destroying a boss has the same effect.
Hitbox disjointment
The crouching hitbox is weirdly different between facing left and right. This means that sometimes it's faster to get out of crawling out of a tunnel by turning around and doing a short hop to avoid the uncrouching animation. I discovered this very late in the run.
Crouching frame rules
Short hopping requires the player to be crouching for a certain number of frames. That count is related to some frame rule where the cutoff seems to be at certain frame intervals. I discovered this way too far in the run for me to explore fully but having this knowledge would mean a little less frames spent on crouching on every stage. This is the big potential improvement but enemy spawns could render that benefit moot.
Special thanks
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: I'm really shocked that nobody commented on this game. I thought it was a really good choice. It has good game play and excellent music.
In terms of optimization...the only thing I could compare with was a human run and I don't see any problems with this submission. Great job!
Accepting to "Standard" for publication.
