Whenever you watch a movie or TV series, or play a video game, check its http://tvtropes.org page.
A few years ago, I would have definitely recommended TV Tropes, but unfortunately, the site fell victim to bowdlerisation. They started being very careful to not offend advertisers, making everything lighter and softer. This ruined many of the best pages. So I would say that the site jumped the shark.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
This run is great and it looks very optimized, so it definitely gets a yes vote from me.
As for the hack itself, I would put it below SM74 in terms of quality, which already has a published TAS. Despite that, I liked this TAS more because the current SM74 publication uses the old ROM without the fixed warps, which significantly hurts the entertainment value. This makes it tough to compare the two. Also, Star Road is an even better hack than SM74.
Overall, I would argue that it would be justified to have publications for all three hacks, Star Road, SM74 and Green Stars. But if I had to decide between SM74 and Green Stars, I would go with SM74 (and please, SM64 TASers, make a new version with the fixed warps ROM!).
I can't speak for other hacks that would deserve publication, since I haven't played them.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I could help with German translations, but I'm sure there are plenty of others that can help with this language as well. Just let me know if you need some help!
Technically, Greek is my second language, but I definitely wouldn't be of any use with it, as my knowledge in Greek writing is awful. Also, I don't think Greek is a top priority.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I love the idea of this TAS, just showing all the fastest IL times possible. It's especially cool for a game like this, where the RTA records are hard to find because the community on speedrun.com is dumb and refuses to have IL's. I also appreciate that you guys went through the effort of TASing NTSC-U as well and described the differences.
My favorites were Fox's and Pikachu's platforms, as well as Link's targets. The whole TAS was very entertaining, so it gets an obvious yes vote from me!
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Something that people need to realize is that a completely "free" market is just as utopian as a completely planned economy. A truly "free" market does not exist and aside from a few very radical libertarians, no one even wants one.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
If this should be published, I'm in favor of CtrlAltDestroy's idea of publishing this to the Vault, as a "bad port" of a game that's not recommended for TASing. A PAL warpless run shouldn't be published at all because it would show much less cool glitches (not even the ground clip) even though it's faster, and a warpless walkathon on PAL is just not possible due to 4-3.
But that's not how the vault works. If enough people find a TAS entertaining, it will always go to moons, no matter what version was used. Looking at the responses in this thread, as well as the voting, it would definitely go to moons.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I won't even try to go into the precise definition of "socialism", those terms are a mess to work with. A lot of people still use it to describe their politics, which can range from the "socialist" party of France with their neoliberal free-market politics, all the way to radical parties far left of your average social democrats. For example: The social democrats of Switzerland, who completely avoid the term "socialist", are way more on the left than any mainstream party in Europe who call themselves "socialist".
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Okay, I'm going to throw in some food for thought:
Whatever decision is made here will set a precedent that will be applied to other runs. So, what do we want to happen when a faster PAL version with different glitches is submitted for:
SMB warpless
SMB warpless walkathon
SMB maximum coins
?
Do they get all rejected because they're PAL? Do they all get new branches? Do they all obsolete the existing NTSC runs?
Ok, let's assume this submission here will be published as a separate category. Next, someone makes a "warpless" TAS on PAL that is just as optimized as the current NTSC TAS. That category is significantly longer and would be able to show off the PAL-exclusive tricks even more. For that reason, one could argue that the "warpless" PAL TAS should obsolete the regular PAL TAS, as it shows more content. You can compare that to how the first "warpless, walkathon" obsoleted the regular "walkathon".
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
People on the left that try to defend any totalitarian regime that happened to use the terms "socialism" or "communism" are incredibly frustrating. I consider myself a socialist and yet, I have absolutely no problem admitting that the Soviet Union or even the regime in Venezuela are nothing but dictatorships. I just don't get it.
This really seems to be mostly a problem of the left. I can't remember hearing a neoliberal of today defending the Pinochet regime in Chile (please, if I'm wrong and people actually do that all the time, feel free to correct me).
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Thank you so much for doing this as a separate version. So many sites just force a mobile-friendly design on you, which makes the experience worse for everyone with a device larger than a phone. That practice should be banned!
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
It's not uncommon for PAL games to, for example, have faster movement due to the developers trying to compensate for the lower framerate. If those differences are interesting in a TAS, why should it matter what causes them? After all, PAL versions are official releases, not some random romhacks. I don't think we should just blindly follow the rule against PAL, no matter what.
Besides, it really is debatable if it even makes sense to say that NTSC is preferred in the first place, when compared to identical other releases. But that's for a whole other topic...
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
As for that abovementioned last part, usually if the NTSC version allows for a faster completion, the PAL version is generally ignored (unless it's different enough to warrant its own category). But what happens when the PAL version is faster, as is the case here? Shouldn't it, if we were consistent, mean that it ought to be preferred over the NTSC version?
It should be noted that the classic NTSC/PAL difference mostly applies to games up until the 5th gen (and partly the 6th). As soon as PAL60 is an option, it's much harder to make an argument why we have to use NTSC no matter what. This rule will get challenged the more we move on to newer systems.
But even with the current rules, I highly doubt that anyone is going to reject, for example, a Twilight Princess TAS using the nearly identical PAL version to save a few seconds with the German language.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
To me, the choice to publish a movie always boils down to one basic question: Will this run make the site better or worse? Publishing this movie alongside the NTSC branch would clutter the site with a mostly redundant run and potentially set a bad precedent. Obsoleting the NTSC branch would nullify the version of the game that most of this site's users first played. And rejecting this run would disregard the effort that went into it and the nontrivial new tricks that are included. The controversy is compounded by the run's enthusiastic response from viewers and the author's own viewpoint on what should be done here, as well as his status as the author of the NTSC run.
The PAL publications of Blaster Master, Rygar and Mario Bros. certainly didn't make the site worse. What is the difference in this case?
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Hypothetical: If this were any generic game, would we have this much of a debate over it?
Most of the "any generic games" don't change physics in the PAL port, but just run slower, so another game that does what SMB does for the PAL port could certainly get this debate as well. That the game in this case is one of the most popular games ever made is not creating the debate, just making it louder.
It's definitely not the case that a PAL TAS could suddenly become a viable new category for all games. An example I'm very familiar with is Diddy Kong Racing: All PAL versions are literally the same game as their NTSC-U counterparts, just with a lower framerate. But if we take something like Luigi's Mansion, where the developers deliberately made the PAL version more difficult for the NG+ mode, then we can talk about a separate category.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Rejecting a TAS that is so well made and has received so much positive feedback would simply be unfair towards the author.
Well, obsoleting a perfect TAS that nobody could improve for 8 years just because the game works faster and with one extra glitch on the Europe version is also unfair with the author, which happens to be the same person. And he said he doesn't want this to obsolete NTSC.
I personally see no real difference in SMB compared to Super Mario World, where you could do several tricks and timesavers in the PAL version that are not possible in NTSC. The only thing is that the PAL run will still has a slower finish time. So if this SMB run will be published because it has different physics, then so should PAL ALttP and SMW and so on.
If this gets a publication, that doesn't mean that every PAL version will. It just means that people found this particular TAS interesting enough on its own to warrant a publication.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
It's nice to see some unique tricks in an SMB TAS. I was definitely entertained, so that's a yes vote! And thank you, HappyLee, for taking your time to optimize even a more obscure category like this!
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
They warp to the last Krazoa, which is right before the final boss. If you have to play that far, there is no way for this method to be faster in a run that starts with a clean memory card.
If the glitched NG+ at least offered some unique gameplay, an interesting NG+ TAS might be possible. But as it stands, it's really just an any% that is mostly reduced to the first and the last visits to Krazoa Palace.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
To repeat what I said in the thread at Speedrun:
"As far as I understand, this isn't really a legit way to beat the game. All it does is copy information from an existing file to a new one, but without counting the setup time for the second file. At best, this can be considered a glitched NG+."
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Console timing sounds like the best way to go. We shouldn't care about having a slower time than the previous publication, that happens all the time on this site.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.