Posts for goldenband

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Posted: 2/2/2015 2:06 AM
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goldenband
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Jeez, I don't think MK Mythologies is that bad -- I thought it was a decent 2.5D platformer, with some good ideas and some bad ones. I got modest enjoyment out of it, though I haven't yet gotten around to finishing it (I completed Very Easy and Easy, which end about halfway through the game).
Posted: 2/1/2015 8:35 PM
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goldenband
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I can't say I'd want to watch the whole thing at normal speed, but I'm glad it exists. (It helps if you're a tennis game fan and have played this one.) If an existing rule that prevents this from being accepted, then I suggest we create a tier for sports and board games. Research is a higher priority for me than entertainment; being entertained is fine, but I'm more interested in TAS as a form of truth-seeking.
Posted: 2/1/2015 8:07 AM
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goldenband
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ReyVGM wrote:
It's not really an ending, it just says Champion after you get all 45 symbols.
Thanks for the screenshot. I assume the game continues after that? I tried playing for a bit to see how far I could get, but once it started throwing manholes on every screen I threw in the towel.
Posted: 1/18/2015 5:59 AM
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goldenband
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ReyVGM wrote:
Bumping with new info. The game doesn't actually end where the TAS video ends. The goal of the game is to achieve the rank of champion. Every 3 fights, you get a symbol on the lower right, every 5 symbols you move on to the next set. After 45 symbols (or 145 fights), you reach the rank of champion. Just thought I let you all know in case someone wants to make a proper TAS.
Whoa, that's a trip. Do you have a screenshot of the ending?
Posted: 11/22/2014 11:28 PM
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goldenband
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One of my favorite underrated TAS genres -- golf games played to perfection. Awesome stuff.
Posted: 11/8/2014 3:21 AM
Post subject: Hana no Star Kaidou (花のスター街道)
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goldenband
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Following Patashu's suggestion, I thought I'd start a thread for this Japanese game and notorious kusoge. There's an existing TAS at Nicovideo: Part 1 - Nicovideo | Nicovideo Viewer Part 2 - Nicovideo | Nicovideo Viewer I don't speak anything but the most basic Japanese so I'm not sure if the script file is available, but I'm guessing not. Still, given the obscure gameplay, the Nicovideo TAS would give someone (not me!) a huge head start on putting this one together.
Posted: 11/7/2014 12:42 AM
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goldenband
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Here's a TAS of Hana no Star Kaidou (花のスター街道) for Famicom: Part 1 - Nicovideo | Nicovideo Viewer Part 2 - Nicovideo | Nicovideo Viewer I don't speak anything but the most basic Japanese so I'm not sure if the script file is available, but given the obscure gameplay (see Hardcore Gaming 101 for details) this would clearly be an aid to anyone else attempting it.
Posted: 11/4/2014 3:42 AM
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goldenband
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On the SG-1000, I'd love to see a Chack'n Pop run -- especially a pacifist run that gets the no-kill bonus for every level. The SG-1000 version is dramatically superior to the NES port, and it even has an ending!
Posted: 11/4/2014 3:41 AM
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goldenband
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This game is one of a few cases where the SG-1000 version totally flattens the NES version. Pretty hard to take this one after playing it on the SG-1000, which controls better, sounds better, and even has an ending! Unfortunately the Nicovideo TAS is really superior to this one (assuming it's legit, of course). It's both faster and more entertaining, making good use of death abuse and invincibility item drops.
Posted: 10/30/2014 2:15 AM
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goldenband
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This is pretty much the only TAS that literally makes me laugh out loud when I just think of it, let alone watch it. And it's even become an in-joke in my house -- every so often I'll turn to my wife and say "Oh no! Own goal?!" if one of us does something amusingly klutzy or self-defeating. It's a wonderful thing.
Posted: 10/28/2014 12:24 AM
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goldenband
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I found this run completely entertaining, but then again (1) I know and even like the game, and (2) I watched much of it at 1.5x normal speed via YouTube's speedup feature (which has been a godsend, BTW, especially for verbose video reviews and other spoken-word content). Anyway, nice work!
Posted: 10/28/2014 12:14 AM
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goldenband
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I read the first few pages and have only skimmed the last few, but: - I like Coins = best time and Moons = most entertaining, with Stars being used for featured runs that offer both. "Vault" is pejorative, if only mildly. - Much as I like to be entertained ("Oh no, OWN GOAL?!"), entertainment is not necessarily a high priority for me on this site. I'm much more interested in seeing human ingenuity in action. In other words, the site means more to me as a repository of world records and optimal strategies (some of which I can implement myself in normal gameplay!) than as a source of entertainment. A golf game TAS with 18 aces? Yes, please. - The notion that this site caters mainly to people who want to make TASes themselves is incorrect, I think. I have no plans to do one, and TAS runs get plenty of attention/linkage on gaming forums, in part because of the strategies they offer. More people are paying attention than you might think. - For that reason: it's valuable to have non-optimal runs that achieve their goals through behavior that resembles normal gameplay, rather than hitting the RESET button at just the right time or (much as I enjoyed that SMW total control video) sending tons of bogus controller inputs down a multitap. So no-glitch runs, etc. will and should always have value (i.e. be included), even if they're boring. - - The biggest determinant of interest in a given TAS may often be whether a person has played a game, not the quality of the run. I normally won't watch an RPG TAS if I haven't played the game myself, because of not knowing what's going on + spoilers. Obviously that inevitably favors the Final Fantasy games and so on. But I'd still like to think the site's core purpose has more to do with exploring terra incognita -- finding the limits of games famous and obscure -- than flattering casual gamers' existing tastes. - I've thought for years that speed and accuracy should mean automatic inclusion, no matter what anyone thinks of the game itself or the entertainment level for casual viewers (most runs are at least interesting if you know the game well). I don't know when the "entertainment above all else" policy changed, but I'm glad it did.
Posted: 10/5/2014 4:10 PM
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goldenband
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If you save all the hostages in all the levels, I think you may get a weapon upgrade (laser) against the final boss, Mr. Mimi. Or, at least, that's what happened when I just did a (victorious!) playthrough on real hardware: I unexpectedly got a laser against Mr. Mimi, and that's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for why. (There's a claim here that you get the upgrade if you beat Minosaur without dying, and that you get fireballs if you used lasers and vice versa. But that's obviously not true based on the TAS -- and on my winning playthrough of the game, I lost a life or two against Minosaur and had to finish him off with my regular weapon, but still got a laser vs. Mr. Mimi.) If my theory is correct, it probably wouldn't save enough time to improve the TAS, but is it worth looking into? There are only a handful of skippable hostages early in the game -- the rest are already required, I believe.
Posted: 9/30/2014 5:29 PM
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goldenband
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FODA wrote:
As I've mentioned 6 years ago, the game has a weird bug when you exit the screen, it shows a lot of garbled blocks. I didn't find anything there, but if someone wants to test this game, that is something to look into. I don't really remember, but I would say the way to get to the garbled blocks screen is to teleport to a platform that is too high on the screen... Or maybe the platform to the left near the rocket.
I found myself curious about this too. It's hard to imagine there isn't some way to exploit that unintended door (the one near the rocket) to gain an edge or break the game somehow. But I suppose it depends on how tightly coded the game otherwise is. BTW I enjoyed the movie/run. It makes me glad that TASVideos has the Vault since I think it'd be a shame to have left this one unpublished. I love humorous or astonishing runs as much as anyone -- sometimes I'll turn to my wife and say "Oh no! Own goal?!" to crack us both up -- but for me, perfect play is entertaining enough in and of itself.
Posted: 4/28/2014 6:01 AM
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goldenband
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This is one of my favorite TASes on the site. It's like watching an incredibly skilled team of crack ninjas descend upon an enemy stronghold and raise perfectly coordinated hell. In other words, it's the NES version of action-movie perfection. :D
Posted: 4/28/2014 12:44 AM
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goldenband
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Excellent, looking forward to seeing how this goes! I beat Traysia a few months ago, and while it's deeply flawed and buggy as hell (what were they thinking with those laggy movement routines?), I did get some enjoyment out of it.
Posted: 4/13/2014 2:02 AM
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goldenband
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I can't offer any substantive help, but I'm enthusiastic about this! I wrote the Sega-16 review of Toys, and actually think the game had some potential -- but there wasn't enough to the first three levels, and the fourth was basically a bad Atari 2600 game, à la Activision at their least inspired, masquerading as a 16-bit title.
Posted: 3/28/2014 12:52 AM
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goldenband
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Since Star Control II was ported to the 3DO, this would be a great reason for someone -- alas, not me: I don't have the skills -- to start opening up the brave new world of 3DO TAS-ing. :D
Posted: 3/27/2014 11:19 PM
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goldenband
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Tub wrote:
In GTA San Andreas, there's a mission where you need to find a person in one of three ambulances. No matter which ambulance you check first, it's always the wrong one. Pretty tame example, but fits your "dead end" definition.
Aha! Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about -- not situations where the odds are against you or the computer has an unfair advantage, but where the game actually forces a negative outcome in a situation where there's an illusion of randomness ("fixed" games of chance) or free choice (multiple paths, first choice always fails). Think of a Concentration game, for instance, that reconfigures the board so that your first N picks are never a match. (I suspect Alfred Hitchcock Presents on the 3DO might do this in order to make itself unwinnable on Hard, but probably that's just a grumpy impression.)
Posted: 3/27/2014 7:57 PM
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goldenband
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Rubberband AI and insane CPU abilities are definitely unfair, sure. But I was angling more for situations where the CPU "fixes" the outcome, rather than just having abilities that the player doesn't. I'm especially interested in games that pretend to use a RNG or give the player a choice between multiple options, but where in reality you're forced to fail or make the wrong choice. The Bastet game mentioned on that TVTropes page is along the right lines -- it always gives you the worst piece for whatever situation you're in -- but at least that's overt about its cheating.
Posted: 3/27/2014 6:43 PM
Post subject: Which games have been caught cheating?
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goldenband
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Just out of idle curiosity, in the process of TASing, have any games been caught in the act of cheating? That is, are there games that: - deterministically force losing conditions in games of chance (e.g. if you choose rock, the CPU gets paper); - when faced with branching paths, automatically make the player's first choice a dead end; - weight RNGs against the player under certain conditions (as if Tetris were to intentionally withhold straight lines when a Tetris is possible); - have a UI for games of chance that turns out to be completely unrelated to the outcome (e.g. a slot machine where the displayed reel images have nothing to do with the actual location of the elements); And so on? I'm talking about things that go beyond simple unfairness, and cross into outright fabrication or "fixing" the outcome of a game event. (Obviously invincible opponents in key story sequences in RPGs don't count -- though sometimes those can be broken too, of course.)
Posted: 3/3/2014 10:21 PM
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goldenband
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It'd be really nice to see someone take on The Punisher on Expert, the highest difficulty mode, which is required for a good ending. There's some question about whether it's even possible to beat the game at all in 1P on Expert (there's a playthrough on Youtube but it apparently uses cheats).
Posted: 1/17/2014 6:45 PM
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goldenband
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There are 4DO and FreeDO, which both have source code available. Not sure about the deterministic part, though, or which one is more accurate at this point.
Posted: 1/17/2014 6:06 AM
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goldenband
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Patashu wrote:
Is there an emulator for TI-99/4A?
Several of them, yeah. I'm not 100% up to date on what's out there, but I think Classic99 is the standard. In the second link I posted, one of the forum members posted a Youtube video where he used the debugger in Classic99 to study and hack the program. (Link to that post here, or here's a direct link to the video on Youtube.)
Posted: 1/17/2014 5:48 AM
Post subject: TAS on the 3DO?
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goldenband
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Has anyone made any attempts at a TAS for the 3DO? I can think of at least one game (the abysmal Alfred Hitchcock Presents) that I'd love to see TAS'ed, as I suspect the timed Concentration game it includes is unbeatable by a human because of a serious programming error: the timer doesn't stop counting during disk access, nor the FMV scenes that play when you make a match. The lower difficulties are doable, but the highest difficulty seems just about impossible -- you just don't have enough time. But maybe a TAS could do it.
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