Human Rat Race (Compute's Gazette)
You're racing through a maze with a sack of gold..running, twisting, turning. Oh no! Another dead end. You retrace your steps and hear the clock ticking...six, five, four....You see a deadly drone on your left. Can you get past it? Barely. Three, two...You see the xist and your path is clear, or is it? You make a mad dash and escape with your gold just as time runs out. Is this is a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? No, it's "Human Rat Race", and exciting maze game.
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 70th TAS from this series.
Very clear memory of typing this in. I always loved typing in "Machine Language" games, but there was one problem with this one...it was meant for two players. Even though it is a two player game, there way a mode you can play to race to the other side with a challenge. Adding drones to spice it up!
Game Difficulty and Ending
At the beginning of the game, there is a menu that you can select different modes of play and how many drones are in your way. Here, I choose the maximum number of drones, 15. The ending is clear, as you must race to the other side...where you will hear a sound and a message, declaring "Blue" winner. Why didn't I play "Red's" side? Doing so slows up the game.
Effort In TASing (Not BOTed)
Surprising enough, this game wasn't just a simple maze solve...it also contained the common TASing techniques I've used in so many other C64 Compute's Gazette games. Some of those details are:
- RNG Manipulation: With all machine language written games, RNG is changed by typing keys or pressing a direction. This can immediately affect the reaction of non-AI enemies. This only works, because ML written games can call a ML Kernel routing that supplies a random value. This value can be changed, when interrupting the "tick" counter.
- Not Hold the Input: Unlike most ML games, this is the first one that I've seen where holding an input direction, actually slows up the game. So here, I found the optimal frame span to allow the cutting of a frame or two over one block of movement.
- Maze Manipulation: Most mazes drawn, almost follow the same patterns; however, there are variation in the left and right side that can help out. Before the maze shows, I can randomly type in characters or press a direction on the joystick to give me variations to test.
Human Comparison
Couldn't find one for this game mode. There are two, but I could only find "Grab the Gold"
nymx: Updated with a 7 frame improvement.
