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I was going to post that no way is this well-known and notable enough, but then I did some checks and turns out it totally is. Also, very good game by NES standards; I'll put this on my Steam wishlist immediately. Well done, yes vote.
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Not entertaining, so voting no.
TASVideoAgent wrote:
A "Hard" TAS would be a much more difficult, longer, and ambitious project which I simply don't have the time for.
I don't find this a compelling reason to use easy mode. "Surviving one hell of a gauntlet" would make this run actually feel like a superplay, which is what we're here for.
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Memory wrote:
Very unique game! Got a little repetitive at parts but I still really liked the TAS.
What's so unique about it? Looks like a straightforward Qix / Stix / Volfied clone to me.
The run spends more time on level transitions than on the levels themselves :) while technically impressive, I do not find this entertaining; I'd call this prime vault material.
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BrunoVisnadi wrote:
I do. I strongly disagree with the 2 star limit per game. If there are more than 2 awesome SM64 TASes, give this game more than 2 stars. If there are no awesome Atari TAS, don't give this platform any stars. Diversity is good, but obsessing too much about it results in givings stars to average TASes and negating stars to top tier worthy TASes.
Does it, though?
Can you give us examples of stars being given to average runs purely for the reason of diversity?
Personally I prefer for star tier to contain runs that many people haven't heard of, as long as they're excellent. I find this far more entertaining than starring, say, all Metroid runs; if I want to find all Metroid runs then there's a search function for that.
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Arc wrote:
feos wrote:
Are you saying diversity is a bad requirement?
A mediocre run should not get a star for the sake of diversity at the expense of a more deserving run, which was one of the primary purposes of my post. Ideally there would be kino TASes on all systems and in a variety of genres. But if that's not how the world actually works, you shouldn't pretend that it does. There should be diversity to the extent that it's actually deserved, but otherwise the emphasis should be on the highest quality. Affirmative action TASes only dilute the prestige of the star tier, and that's why I say to stop trying to fill arbitrary quotas and instead focus on respecting the greatest works and their creators.
feos wrote:
So far Arc suggests to overrepresent Mario, Zelda, Castlevania and MAGA Man even harder to fix that.
You are developing a pattern of intentionally misrepresenting my position because it is easier to attack than what I actually write.
Radiant wrote:
...that suggests that he probably should not be the new "star man".
I'm not surprised that you are worried about losing your current comfy relationship with the starman. You represent the flaw in the star system. TASes get a star based on forum shilling rather than someone who is dedicated to examining the pros and cons of every TAS and doing so without bias on behalf of what the whole community prefers. A few forum shills don't represent the whole community.
Memory wrote:
I think nominating your own movies is a bad idea tbh as well.
I didn't officially nominate anything. I objectively noted a list of some highly rated non-star TASes that the community as a whole appears to prefer over some of the worst stars. Is there really no one who finds it absurd that Coca Cola Kid has a star for the sake of diversity while the 3rd-highest rated TAS on the site does not?
I know you're just trying to offend me, but this post is so hilariously clueless that it made me laugh out loud :D
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feos wrote:
See, NES is overrepresented, and we want diversity. So far Arc suggests to overrepresent Mario, Zelda, Castlevania and Maga Man even harder to fix that.
And so far I don't see a lot (or indeed, any) people in this thread agreeing with him.
...that suggests that he probably should not be the new "star man".
That's hardly surprising. Regardless of how often people say that it's not (or not supposed to be), the Newcomers tag is effectively the tier above star tier.
Are you saying diversity is a bad requirement?
Personally I think diversity is good, and that all game platforms and genres should ideally be represented among Star tier (as well as Newcomers category) (by 'ideally' I do of course mean that a quality movie must exist). Arc suggests that the NES is overrepresented; I'd like to suggest that the Mario franchise and the Platformer genre are similarly overrepresented. Yes, I get that they're among the most famous of video games ever; I'd just prefer greater variety in the top tier.
As Warepire states, we really should not un-star Warcraft. It's from an underrepresented genre and platform, in addition to being an excellent run.
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nymx wrote:
At least with this version, you can see all of the worlds in their entirety.
Arguably, that makes it a 100% run.
Regardless, yes vote. And it's still funny how much a homebrew game manages to squeeze out of such an old system...
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So, a question about categories.
The most prominent platform in the "computer" category is DOS. For quite some time now, the TASvideos site has had a separate movie page and forum for this platform. Perhaps it would be fitting, as of next year, to have a distinct category for "Best DOS TAS"?
For comparison, the last three years have seen 23 DOS runs, and 17 runs for Windows, C64, and MSX combined. In other words, about 60% of runs in the "computer" category are for DOS. This is comparable to the N64 category, which has 22 runs in the past three years.
So I'd like to hear if people think this is big enough for a split as of next year.
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Dwedit wrote:
Anyway, I wonder if anyone would want to do the max score challenge? As far as I know, there is a limit to the game's score.
Yes, I believe there is. Points are given for items and killing enemies, and each level has a finite amount of each, and it is not possible to repeat levels. This would arguably count as a 100% run.
That said, it strikes me that it would be fairly dull to watch. You'd have to backtrack almost literally everywhere, and the game just isn't flashy enough for that.
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Well, I can see where the judge is coming from, as the runner's explanatory text is very negative about the game itself. It's pretty obvious that this is not a good game. However, the Vault contains numerous runs for bad games, including but not limited to Cheetahmen and E.T.
The judgment suggests that playing the game is trivial (which basically means "poor game choice"). But it shouldn't matter how easy it is to finish the game. The question is if completing the game as fast as possible is trivial. I can think of numerous games where getting to the end isn't all that hard; for instance Clock Tower is pretty easy if you know where to go, and indeed the TAS is only a few seconds faster than the RTA. But it is faster, and many games that are easy to complete can still surprise you by being TAS'ed much faster than expected.
As the runner wrote a lengthy explanation of what he did, and followed it up with a second post explaining where optimization matters in this game, there is clearly much more to this run than, as the judgment suggests, "just a matter of adjusting few jumps". Simply put, having numerous instances of frame-perfect timing makes a run impossible to duplicate without TAS'ing tools, which means the run is not trivial. And hence, assuming no optimization flaws turn up, it should have a place in the Vault.
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Dwedit wrote:
I think this one is the jankiest out of the three games.
Frankly I think this entire trilogy is pretty bad compared to other DOS platformers from its age (e.g. Commander Keen, Titus the Fox, Gods), and its only saving grace is that it has VGA graphics, if rather garish ones. I played this as a kid and found it pretty crappy even then. That the company called itself MEGAgames and spent a lot of time dissing the competition doesn't do it any favors, either :P
(to be fair: they got better, and two years later they were releasing One Must Fall and Tyrian, which are genuinely very good games)
Anyway, that's me bitching about the early days of Epic. It's always fun to see a bad game get destroyed by a thorough TASing, and where the game is poor quality the TAS is decidedly not. So voting yes.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Indeed, if we exclude the playarounds with the hopping and the camera, it gets really impossible to distinguish it from an unassisted play.
I disagree; this run looks very different from an unassisted play video.
I'd agree that this game is pretty boring to watch and clearly made for children. But that makes it prime Vault material, as the main reason behind the Vault was to get rid of "poor game choice" as a rejection criterion. "Easy" is not the same as "trivial".
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Well, I had been curious about the Enigma table for years, but not curious enough to actually buy it. Kudos to Epic for trying something highly original with computer pinball that would be highly impossible at a physical pinball table. Although the resulting table doesn't look particularly flashy or particularly fun.
But that's the game. The run is solid, so yes vote.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Also, if we decide to change the rules in order to accept this run, then we would automatically also be forced to accept a lot of runs done on very bad educational games like SNES Mario's Time Machine, just because 1% of the gameplay is non-trivial.
I'm not sure why you feel that any change to (or interpretation of) the rules that would make the site accept this game also necessitates the site to accept every other educational game, such as that Time Machine. I don't think anyone is calling for that. It is entirely plausible to conclude that one educational game has sufficient non-trivial gameplay and another does not.
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adelikat wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
This entire topic then begs the question: Does the term 'educational' actually aid in determining a degree of triviality for a more concrete rule? It seems to have created more confusion than anything.
I think this is worth seriously considering. Note that it is the degree of confusion that I'm specifically concerned as problematic. Not the fact that this specific run was rejected.
That's a good point. It is clear from this thread that some people consider this a math game with some secondary action, whereas others consider this an action game with some secondary math.
But the question that should be asked (and in general, not about this game in particular) is if it's worth making a distinction in the first place between "math with action" and "action with math". This distinction appears to distract from the underlying issue, i.e. that the vault is looking for "games" "completed" in a "non-trivial" way, regardless of what tags or categories can be applied to these games.
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Nach wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
I don't recall the exact circumstances of writing the rule or who was involved in it besides me, but I do know it came from this submission, which in its topic was nearly universally derided and the concept that it had to be published to the Vault was considered a joke by many in the thread.
That said, I don't think it was a new rule even then anyway - the Vault blanket-bans games that aren't considered serious games, and educational games are rarely considered serious games to begin with. The explicit mention of educational games would have been more of a clarification.
adelikat and I when discussing the vault rules for the site (on IRC) decided we did not want Sesame Street games published. IIRC, it was implied by something else we wrote on the site, but wasn't explicitly called out till you added your two words to the vault page. I further clarified it with the two lines I added the other day.
We definitely do not want non-serious games published, which is typical of those geared for education as the primary control of the game. The question for judges is not whether we are going to alter or enforce this rule, but whether the game in question is not serious due to its primary focus on education or whether the game is a serious game and just has some educational elements thrown in.
Thanks, this clears things up. As I understand it, this is not a blanket ban against educational games in general, but a ban against educational software that is shoddily put together and/or lacking in actual gameplay (i.e. "not serious games"). And it's an unfortunate fact of life that the vast majority of educational software is shoddily put together and/or lacking in gameplay.
To draw a comparison: the site doesn't have a blanket ban against ROMhacks, but the unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of ROMhacks are dime-a-dozen pieces of junk (e.g. SMB but the sprites replaced by Sonic). The result is that runs of almost all ROMhacks are unpublishable, but occasionally a rare gem comes along which does get published (e.g. Rockman Minus Infinity) and the same happens with the occasional educational game (e.g. the aforementioned Carmen Sandiego and Bible Studies games).
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Warp wrote:
That would eliminate all puzzle games as well. How much damage can you take eg. in Tetris? In the same vein it eliminates all sports games as well, for the same reason (even though sports games were just recently added to the acceptable categories).
That's a fair point. For any game where you can't actually fail, doing it as fast as possible may still be a TAS-worthy challenge. The criteria of whether the player can take damage and/or die appears to be neither necessary nor sufficient for accepting or rejecting any runs.
