I think the main appeal of this game is the absurdity of the premise. It fits nicely into the "So bad, it's good" category of games that are more entertaining than they should be. That iconic "Pepsimaaaan!!" shout is also particularly catchy.
I missed the other two interview segments and the Super Monkey Ball run, but was absolutely floored by the Super Dram World 2 run. Masterjun truly is a master at making these runs happen.
Thanks again to dwangoAC for sacrificing your time (and everything else you give) to present these runs at these events.
I was really looking forward to seeing the explanation segment. Too bad about the audio during most of it. Hopefully the rest of your segments go better, but I've seen the audio guys mess up a bunch already, so I'm cautiously optimistic.
Edit: Looks like the YouTube video has all of the audio, but they put it at the beginning of the Sonic Advance 3 segment instead of the end of the DKC RBO segment. Hopefully they get that fixed later.
Todd recently appeared on The Ben Heck Show working with Ben on testing this on actual hardware. They even used Omnigamer's spreadsheet after trying to recreate Todd's inputs. They managed to recreate the 5.57, but by the time they finished the episode they still hadn't figured out how to get anything better.
The setup Ben made for the test was quite impressive, essentially creating a hardware-based TAS studio just for this game.
The technical prowess is good, but it just isn't interesting enough to get out of Vault tier as-is, and since this is an Edutainment title, it's almost automatically excluded from the Vault.
I would highly recommend that if you do want a movie of this game to be published on this site, try to go for entertainment first so it has a chance.
To be honest, while the run is very polished and has a lot of cool stuff in it, overall I felt that the delay caused by the blast mask recharging detracted from the run too much to earn a Yes from me, even with the attempts to make things interesting during these down times. Gave it a Meh instead.
I'm probably in the minority, though, so there's a good chance this will get published to either moons or stars.
I'm not sure if Vault would allow for this category, but it's likely a moot point.
It's impossible to gain any significant ground on them, which is why it was possible to drop to second by slowing down a little at the finish line.
While mostly correct, it's clear by the run of Death Wind 1 in this submission that it is almost possible to overtake the 4th place opponent, as we can see the Wild Goose in the distance as we approach the finish line. You can also catch glimpses of it in places while the times are being listed after Silence.
That does make me wonder, what happens if you pause glitch like the video Natt linked to but stop before crossing the finish line on the final lap? How long would it take for the other car(s) to catch up? I'm guessing the game's thread in the SNES section would probably be a better place for that question, though.
Just a little note: The last story in the game is from The Tigger Movie, which was released in 2000.
As for the run itself, kinda slow paced, but at least we get to see the credits this time.
No for entertainment, but I do hope it gets into the vault.
All in all, a nice little run, but there were a couple things that seemed counter-intuitive to me.
In particular, at certain points (level 5, mostly) you seemingly miss vertical jumps that look like they should have been makeable, only to jump again and make it from the closer position.
I'd really like to know the reasoning behind this before I cast my vote.
Edit: Just noticed that the other submission mentioned by Warepire explains these. So, incoming Yes vote.
I didn't expect that, that's so insane. Congrats MrWint!
By the way I'd like to play this movie on emulator, I've downloaded the right version of lsnes but how do I use it to play this movie exactly? I don't have much knowledge in advanced emulators like this one.
I've found that lsnes is a little picky about certain special characters in filenames, so make sure you check the name of the ROM. It helps to start the emulator in Gameboy mode using the appropriate shortcut. Open the ROM from the file menu, then open the movie file.
Note that once the movie gets to the main part of the payload that things may slow down unless you have a very high end computer with a lot of processing power per core, as it will struggle to keep up at these portions. It might be a good idea to dump a video with the emulator then watch that afterward if you want to see the results as smoothly as possible.
I think the most common expectation when someone sees the category "Game End Glitch" is that the glitch itself triggers the credits/ending sequence/whatever. While this does set the game into a post-completion state, it doesn't directly take you to the credits, which is what I (among others) have a problem with.
That being said, I understand your dilemma in deciding how to show that the game is in a "finished" state. I'm just not sure there is a good answer to this particular situation.
If another glitch could be found that did trigger the credits directly (buying a different sequence of packs, maybe?) then we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Due to the card packs I bought, the game now thinks it's been beaten. Something that you can do if you beat the game is that you can trigger the credits at any point by using the Konami code.
This raises an alarm bell in my mind. I get that the game needs to be in a certain condition for the credits to unlock with this code, but I think it would be more impressive if you could trigger the credits without using one of the most well known cheat codes in gaming history. It almost feels like a game where there's an option to run the credits from the main menu when it's done using a cheat code like this.
(Holding off voting for now)
Easy yes vote, glad you put that warning not to read the submission first at the top of the text.
Regarding console verification, would the GC's GameBoy Player be easier to work with for this, even with the increased load time and additional inputs needed to get into the game? Not sure if the difference in hardware (being based on the GBA's hardware, not the GBC's) would affect things either. It just seems that tapping into the Gamecube's controller port would be a bit easier than tapping into a GBC's controls.
If you know it won't be accepted because it doesn't complete the game, why submit it?
You could certainly post the progress on the game's forum thread and ask for assistance with the rest of the game if you're too frustrated to finish the whole game.
He does path to the tablet on the field on his own, but if you don't have the tablet from the castle grounds already, he suggests looking there and follows you there.
Either way, you do have to lead him back to the town once you have all three tablets.
Though, I must admit a certain level of frustration with Giles. Not looking forward to leading Thor around by the nose either.
At least Thor doesn't need to be led very long. Just from his spot in Voloh to the exit, then from where he stops on the field back to Voloh's entrance. It's the main reason for getting the tablet outside Phillips Castle before entering Voloh, otherwise you need to lead Thor to the castle grounds as well.
I'm curious about the encode of this.
The music is discordant in some places (like the castle levels)...
It appears that the default sync method in BizHawk (Clock Throttling, which should theoretically be more accurate) is causing distortions in the audio by speeding it up when it shouldn't. Playing the run with Audio Throttling set plays the audio correctly, and still syncs through the whole run.
Some elements of this game remind me of an old mac game called Slithereens. Particularly running around mazes with a body that can grow while avoiding enemies, but I can see that there are far more differences than similarities now that I've watched this.
The run is great, and the down times waiting for things to blow up are handled very nicely. I can also tell a lot of thought went into the timing of when to pick up the segments even if they were all together, like in some of the boss encounters. Easy "yes" from me.
I must say, I agree with the crowd at the end. I thought the game would never end. It's so slow, I'd hate to see a PAL version of this.
The run seems to be done pretty well, but the game itself is just not entertaining enough for me.
I am somewhat curious about the minigames mentioned on the main menu, though. What are they like? Could someone make an entertaining TAS out of them?
Those settings are part of the sync settings file in the bk2 format. The movie syncs without them though. To change this, unzip the bk2 and open the sync settings file. Change the filter value to the values you wish. I think 0 is off for both but you can confirm by testing or recording a movie of your own with the settings you want and then copying these to my sync file. Just be sure to set 4 active controllers.
Im not sure why these filters are in the sync settings by the way. They don't seem to desync anything I've come across.
Thanks, I was able to get the movie to play smoothly with these clues. And yes, 0 is off for the entries, though it took me a minute to realize that the settings for the other 3 plugins were also in there, which all had 0 for those entries already. It didn't help that the json parser in Notepad++ wouldn't spread out the list on this file for some reason.
Now that I've been able to watch it, I concur that this is an excellent run. Easy "Yes" from me, with yet another recommendation to Stars tier. Might not be TAS of the year (there's still 3 months left so anything can happen), but it's a strong contender for the title.
I seem to be having a technical issue with the movie: I can't seem to turn down Anisotropic Filtering and Antialiasing, which my system can't handle at 16x and 8x, respectively. This causes the game to run super slow with stuttering sound except in transitions.
And before someone suggests to upgrade my system, send me the money or the card to do so, and I will. Even then, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this problem.
Could you please provide a 60FPS encode (Upscale to 720p before uploading to youtube to retain 60fps)?
Given that the game runs at an unusual rate (70FPS according to the submission text), any recording that gets uploaded to Youtube will have an incorrect frame rate regardless. It's not as critical with this game, though, since the game isn't using frame tricks to simulate transparency like a lot of the classic consoles and handhelds did.
I'm sure the final encode when this does get published (and it does seem likely that it will) will have as close to the original frame rate as Youtube allows, though the downloadable encode will be even better for those of us who have a screen refresh rate of 70Hz or higher.