Horrible music, and all you do is walk left. By the looks of it, the enemies don't even attack you; you get to choose whether or not you engage them, or just walk past them. I thought this was one of the crappy games from Action 52 until I looked it up and learned that you can free soldiers from rocks and trees... so I guess there's slightly more to this game than walking left the whole game. Of course, if you stop to free good guys, you have to listen to that horrible music that repeats every 10 seconds that many more times. Regardless of how well optimized it is, it's definitely not entertaining.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
Awesome job, once again!
I knew that you were going to get some major air on the three consecutive jumps in Red Canyon I. I knew you were going to do something cool with the long section of jumps and magnets in White Land I. I have hit the jump on the other side of the massive chasm in White Land II (by going into the first jump too slow), but I had forgotten about that, so that second jump was surprising. But what was absolutely shocking was the huge shortcut in Port Town I, which you didn't talk about at all in your Twitch video!
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
I love this! I've always missed watching Board the Platforms and Break the Targets getting pwned in the normal TAS. Failing them always seemed contrary to the absolute mastery that was shown off in the rest of the run. I guess these challenges didn't seem important enough to warrant having a 100% run that completes them and an Any% run that skips them. Seeing them beaten with every character is much better anyway!
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
Personally, I find a racing game TAS where you come in second (even if this is overall faster) to not be very entertaining. The main entertainment for me is to see by just how much the AI is left behind.
Well done TAS, but I voted no.
You can't actually leave the AI behind. Unlike Mario Kart, where you can see where everyone is on the track and even lap opponents, in F-Zero the AI cars are always a short, fixed distance behind you (the "rubber banding" everyone was talking about), so they overtake you if you make a single mistake, even when they couldn't possibly keep up with you based on your top speed and theirs. 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. This game is all about beating the track, not the AI.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
This was the first SNES game I owned, other than Super Mario World. I played the crap out of this game until I had beaten every league on Master. It's a real treat for me to see it analyzed and pwned so thoroughly.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
I forgot to mention that I enjoyed your commentary in the Twitch video.
Out of curiosity, how different would a run in Master difficulty be, or would there be no noticeable difference in a TAS? That would, of course, require start from a save state.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
Making the timer go faster was just a way for arcade operators to make the game harder. The only advantage to dipswitch 7 for TASing is that there would be less time to tick off at the end of levels.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
I'm not sure why there's so much confusion about what a good ROM dump is. Good means that the ROM was copied successfully from an unaltered source. It's a bit-perfect copy of the original.
As for the question of there being more than one good ROM dump for a given game, usually that only happens if there was more than one version (i.e. v1.1 fixes a bug that was present in v1.0), or if the game was released in more than one region (NTSC 60 Hz vs PAL 50 Hz, for instance). It's not okay to use a good dump from one region in a machine for another region -- using a PAL ROM in an NTSC console/arcade machine will artificially speed up the game. Other than that, you're generally free to use whatever version makes your TAS the fastest, i.e. using v1.0 because you can exploit a time-saving bug that was removed from v1.1, or using the Japanese version because the text scrolls faster than the US version.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
I agree that initializing the RAM other than the way it would be initialized on a console is like using a Game Genie code. This run is not console verifiable. Do we want to have "emulator-only" runs? And if you can do that, where does it end? Can you put arbitrary code in RAM that will cause the game to instantly jump to the victory screen?
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
I love the map version of this video! It would be cool if the floor shaded where BJ has been so you can see just how much of the levels can be skipped, but that would just be icing. Very impressive.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
I remember your first TAS of this game, and I can't believe it's been 10 years! At that time, the idea of TASing a game as big as Dragon Warrior IV seemed insane to me. A bunch of RPGs have been TASed since then, but I still love DW4. Great job on improving the run this much!
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
That was the most amazing TAS I've ever seen. I love that you incorporated some of the most popular memes from the site, like Color A Dinosaur and Shinespark. The best for me, though was the sudo joke at 3:22. I totally burst out laughing. I'm in a network operating system class and we're all getting tired of being told that we can't do something after forgetting to type sudo. Great job!
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.
Just a lot of one-sided battles with little in the way of exciting combos, other than the one 2 player fight with Ken. I didn't find it very interesting. An example of something I find interesting: Daigo Umehara down to 0 health, pulling off a full parry against a 15 hit Super Art followed by a counter attack and KO. You have to show off something "super human" like pulling off a full parry or an impossibly long combo. Choreographing an entertaining fighting TAS is an art. This looked too much like a science.
TASing or playing back a DOS game? Make sure your files match the archive at RGB Classic Games.