Posts for goldenband


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Post subject: TAS suggestion: Alpiner for TI-99/4A
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Anyone who knows the TI-99/4A has played Alpiner (gameplay footage here). Basically, the player has to climb a series of six mountains, culminating in Everest, while being besieged by various hazards and falling objects (rocks, ice, avalanches). If you have a voice unit, the game will warn you of hazards and hector you when you mess up. It's actually a pretty fun game, and when you finally clear Everest it's very rewarding. However, the game then loops, and midway through the second loop it gets a lot harder, to the point of unplayability. Falling objects come down at the player almost nonstop, and you have neither time nor warning enough to do anything about it. The manual claims there are three loops, for a total of 18 levels, but research has shown that the game doesn't actually end after the third loop, but just continues. Still, the manual's statement makes it clear that climbing Everest for the third time should be the "end" of the game -- even if the gameplay itself suggests that the designers meant the idea of clearing the 3rd loop as nothing more than a cruel joke. So I'm wondering if, with a TAS, it'd be possible to manipulate the game logic to allow these levels to be clearable. I don't have the TI-99/4A chops to take this on, but maybe someone out there has warm childhood memories of the system and wants to give it a shot?
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Awesome, glad I could help! :) Anyone up for the other scenarios? (Heh heh...)
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Gain Ground is one of my favorite Genesis games, and I enjoyed the TAS on Hard quite a bit. I was gratified to see you used Verbal aka Webad a lot, since he's my character of choice for 90% of the game. A separate run on Normal makes a lot of sense, since the character-rescuing dynamic changes everything. Actually, I'm not entirely sure that Normal is any easier than Hard -- the gameplay itself seems no different otherwise, and while in the long run you end up with more spare characters, having to build your army up from scratch means that you have to approach many of the stages with a totally different mindset. Anyway, looking forward to the 100% on Normal!
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Patashu wrote:
I approve of making Todd's Adventures in Slime World TASes shorter.
Heh, I figured someone would say something like that. :D It's ugly and tooth-grindingly difficult, but there's legit gameplay there. If you parse it through the lens of a mid- to late-1980s computer game (which is really what it is at heart), its flaws and frustrations are pretty much par for the course.
Aqfaq wrote:
Hi goldenband! Welcome to TASVideos! A very nice first post you got there. I totally agree with you.
Thanks! Long-time listener, first-time caller.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Unfortunately, this movie misses a major shortcut that would cut over a minute from the time, and which can easily be executed by a human in real time (I did it yesterday). At 0:36, if you climb the left-hand wall instead of continuing normally, you enter a small secret area. Shoot the left-hand wall in that room, and the exit is right across the gap (which you can jump across). There's no need to get the jetpack. Also, this movie (and future movies for Todd's Adventures in Slime World) should really be listed in the format "Todd's Adventures in Slime World (Suspense)", since each scenario deserves its own TAS. In Suspense, it might be that there's a way to jump off the icy walls and never have to deal with the fall at all; I think I remember managing an ice-wall jump at least once. BTW Arcade mode isn't that hard -- it's certainly challenging but not impossible, and it doesn't have the insane number of hidden monsters that are present in Logic mode. That said, I haven't tried for the secret exit, but I was able to reach the normal one with enough practice.
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