Well, the North American release of Lufia 2 is hardly a centerpiece of quality SNES programming. The game already had an abnormal amount of glitches added to its localization. Actually surprised a glitched run took so long. The Level 0 glitch had been a widely experienced glitch since it had been released in the states.
Yes for the vault. Very well accomplished for its goals.
Obviously not entertaining enough for the mainline site, but the author was obviously only aiming for the vault anyway.
Yeah, this is "rappin' grandma" bad.
Serious competitor for Bubsy's infamy there, what with the seemingly imporportionate amount of effort into animating Rex over making the rest of the game. Bubsy still takes the cake because he never shuts up that announcer fellating the player with that cheesy "Radical!" is just as bad.
Good run though. Skateboarding and fire-breathing (and clipping) made the run worth watching.
Voting yes and hoping that the XBLA or PC versions will be emulated someday to replace the GC version, because I'm always sad that the story was removed from the GC version.
Aww, really? All the contemporary reviews at the time dodged that omission in praising the game on GC. I owned this game since it came out and never knew!
Should most of the game end glitch runs be vault tier?
Yeah, I'm sorta of the same mind on this. I can see some game end glitch runs being entertaining simply because the glitch itself is so visually bizarre, but most of the time they seem strictly vault-worthy. This run is no exception.
Astounding on a technical level but not really entertaining to watch.
Also, I forgot that the PC Engine version is attached to the second game so that would be impossible to duplicate--at best it would just start the Book 2 portion.
The sequence breaking between chapters 2 and 4 & 4 and 6 are seriously entertaining. Worth the time spent watching for that alone. The game is thoroughly glitched in those moments, especially chapter 3. Wow! Glad you able to skip much of what would have been scripted tedium. Mario doesn't even need to collect one of the stars!
I found the glitched "climax" of chapter 2 absolutely hilarious, including the long second ticking timer. Just made chapter 3 look even more glitched.
EEssentia wrote:
One thing I'd like to see for sure is a run that doesn't abuse peril status since it makes battles boring.
Disagree. A lot of very interesting planning goes into making sure Mario is at exactly 1 HP several times. Very interesting considering it's something that would be rather difficult to exploit in a non-TAS speedrun.
Also, this only affects some of the bosses. Who wants to see Mario struggle on regular enemies? Which also have plenty of interesting timesaving strategems too.
It's certainly an arbitrary limitation like that to impose on a run that is already over 4 hours long. I don't think the entertainment/length trade-off would be as good as you think.
Most enjoyed the "can't wait to be king" because it was kind of a bitch to play back in the day. The monkey puzzles, the poor platforming on the animal heads (esp. the hippos), that ostrich nonsense. Ugh!
The game actually gets much easier past that dreaded portion so I was particularly glad to see that section smoked.
Optimized well, but yeah the entertainment is certainly on the dull side overall with how much of the game that can be bypassed with that flying glitch. Though it's hard to say that a more normal playthrough would be an improvement.
Also, if this gets accepted to the vault would True be willing to take another crack at getting an updated run of Somari submitted. I actually kinda preferred that run despite how awful the game looked at times.
God, those rings really drag this down. This TAS does its best to make them more entertaining, but they still take up over half of the viewing time. They are easily the worst thing about this game or at least near the top.
My favorite part: The portion where Superman picks up Darkseid like a hunk of wood over his head, flies around for a munite before throwing him, Darkseid then taunts Superman as if nothing happen, he goes down after some punches, gets Ko'd, then Superman "dies" while the screen flashes "Superman Wins!"
As an aside, is it possible for the beta rom to be a contender for a future TAS? It's a much more brief game and there's quite a bit of differences between the finished game and the prototype. Most significant is that there are no rings, which strongly suggest they were tacked on at the last minute to pad out the game length and possibly to forgo programming any map/mission markers in the final product.
Borderline "yes" here. Very well optimized and got bonus entertainment for trampling the soldiers and route management. My attention was held up to the end.
The game, unfortunately, gets monotonous in its linear progression and repetitive attack patterns. Had the run been much longer, I would have voted less approvingly.
I also agree with others that while the technical optimization is very good in finishing this game as fast as possible, the entertainment is lacking. While the main glitch is interesting at first, it does get repetitive and actually detracts from it in terms of movement and gameplay variety. It also doesn't help that the game overall is on the bland side.
Voting for vault publication. I don't think this one should obsolete the currently published Moon-tier run as that one is a true pacifist run unlike this one and is currently the more enjoyable of the two.
I don't see anything in the rules that makes alternate game modes ineligible as long as they fit the rules for proper game goals.
I also found this rather repetitive, but I found it well optimized and suitable for vault publication.
I'm voting for vault publication. Seemed well optimized with well thought out routes and damage/health management. However, the platforming levels and the final sequence are probably the only potentially entertaining portions. The bulk of the game has too many straightforward minigames that are either too simplistic or too limited in gameplay.
At first I though the first stages were unnecessarily miniature, then soon realized that the TASer is making a mockery of the game by abandoning his giant mech for 95% of the game and jumpkicking and shooting his way to victory by his own puny self.
A pretty interesting game to TAS with only the last stage dragging some, but that's made of for somewhat by the change in gameplay. Well optimized overall. Yes vote.
I actually preferred the non-garbled version in terms of entertainment, seeing Kirby fight and interact with the "Ending Credits" bosses and enemies that are only meant for show. I had no idea those on display during the credits sequence were actually programmed to be fightable.
The garbled version has its own WTF gamebreaking element to it, but the novelty of clearly seeing Kirby screw around with the end credits enemies is just unreal.
I'd like to see them both published, but I'm fine with whatever decision the judges make on this matter.
I give it a somewhat weak yes. The Gameplay itself is well optimized and entertaining, but does get a bit bogged down with lengthy cutscenes through the first half. The main character also has a laughably slow regular run speed which is thankfully offset by the dashes and grappling hook.
I have to agree that the voice acting is absolutely terrible aside from the main protagonist which is only less terrible by comparison. The 90s had some very bargain basement video game voice acting, especially console games like this. I'm guessing they just had some programmers recording all the lines in a day and couldn't afford even Z grade professionals.
I'm happy to see DKL finally get a full run as well. It wasn't exactly a favorite of mine, but I owned it back in the day and found it to be the best of the GB DK games mostly due to the game having entirely new stages and game worlds and not just remakes of the SNES stages like the sequels had.
This run was very well optimized and used a few entertaining time-saving glitches too. Yes vote from me.
Excellent use of glitch abuse, route planning, and luck manipulation. Also a pretty entertaining run throughout. Yes vote.
Also, apparently the Krauser knife fight QTE had to be edited out of the Youtube video for odd copyright reasons. However I can't imagine that being all that interesting anyway, just a cutscene with minimal input.
This game is comic gold. It's a piece of crap on every level, yet has enough funny animations and decently paced actions make it interesting to watch. Yes vote.
I agree with c-square that adventure games like this and earlier ones can make great TAS's. It's not super-linear like KQV and SQ in particular has a lot more humorous charm that still entertains. I can think of many adventure games that could work as entertaining TAS's and hope this is the first of many.
Yes vote from me.
