Regarding what makes a run worthy of a star to begin with...
An excellent TAS is an excellent TAS regardless of what game is run or what system/franchise it's from. Popularity of the game/franchise
should have zero impact whether a run is deemed worthy of a star.
Will NES games (and games from popular franchises) be over-represented in the Star Tier if the 2-star-per-game limit is removed? Yes, possibly. But only because those games are more frequently TASed and many of those resulting TASes are truly excellent in quality.
It has also been suggested that Atari systems may never have 5% starred runs because of none of the games are star-worthy.
I
strongly disagree with this attitude. Firstly, no GAME should be deemed star worthy simply based on what game it is. The star tier isn't for excellent
GAMES, it's for excellent
TASes.
Further the excellence of any given TAS should ONLY be compared to other TASes of the same system, not to runs from other systems.
It would likely be hard to find many people agreeing that a given Atari run is more impressive than some of the NES or SNES runs that are currently starred. But that doesn't automatically make the Atari run in question any less excellent
for an Atari run.
Simply put, qualifying excellence should be based on the system the TAS is made for, not as a general comparison across all systems.
More thoughts: While
visual entertainment should absolutely be considered to add to the excellence of a run, I don't believe lack of
visual entertainment should automatically disqualify a TAS from being considered an example of excellent TASing.
It's completely possible for a highly sophisticated and technically excellent TAS to result in a run that isn't very entertaining to
watch from a visual perspective, but instead derives its excellence and any resulting entertainment value from the technical side of the TAS.
Let's be honest,
a TAS beating SMB3 in under 3 seconds derives its entertainment value from the technical attributes, not from simply watching it go directly from the intro screen to the end-game.
I guess the key question on this thought is; whether we (as a site) want the Star Tier to be a list of TASing excellence (Hall of Fame), or simply a list of the most highly
visually impressive runs(Hall of Entertainment). While there may be some overlap with various games qualifying for both situations, there's a major difference between these two perspectives in my opinion.
EDIT: For clarifiction and to prove that I at least read up on the current system: The current Star Tier guidelines emphasize entertainment over technicality, but also emphasize that technicality is important.
