The truly sad thing is this could easily have been the definitive version of spelunker. THe two button control scheme is perfect.
But they made the controls really unfair to make up for what they toned down. The atari original played much better.
But Japan is for th emost part only aware of the NES version.
I think the original 8 bit one needs more love, especially in Japan.
The best example of the difference between the two is that on the original versions you can jump off a ladder or rope every time by holding the button first, then tapping the stick. If you are jumpin gto another rope you should let go the stick, release the button, then pres it again if you need to jump again. With practice it becomes second nature, and you will be jumping nimbly from rope to rope to platform and back.
Also, the falls that are less than a man height in the NES version are more like twice your height in the original. You can fall at leas 1.5 times your height and not die, and in fact have to.
Pinball Illusions, like the originals of pinball dreams and pinball fantasies, used their own engine, coded by digital illusions.
Illusions has it's own engine, totally different from pinball dreams and pinball fantasies. I feel the engine is a step back in feel compared to pinball fantasies, but it does allow for up to 6 ball multiball, where the earlier engines were single ball only.
Frontline designs did the pc version of pinball fantasies, and they NAILED it. In fact it's better than the amiga version.
Most of 21st century entertainments 2d output is on the spidersoft engine, which suxx0rs. But not all. 2d Slamtilt pinball is good.
PS: if you liked pinball illusions, you will LOVE True Pinball for PSX. but only play on real hardware, on a big screen crt tv. It's pinball illusions... in 3d! and it feels BETTER.
How are the games unfair? In the sense that a shot is impossible because the game simulation is overly digital? I mean, that's going to happen at some level no matter what because your framerate is limited. Or is it that the physics aren't even a good quantized approximation of reality?
I'm talking about the former.
Literally one pixel is too early and the next one is too late.
Depending on the game setup, a shot can be totally impossible to make from a trap by any means, because of extreme quantization error.
A few pinball games go through the extra effort to make sure this happens as little as possible, like pinball fantasies. Having higher resolution helps, as well as subpixel accuracy (game resolution higher than display resolution). Spidersoft games have no subpixel positioning at all as near as I can tell, while pinball fantasies absolutely nailed it.
Other games cheat by applying a random factor to increase the number of possible trajectories off the flippers. This has the annoying result of making the shot possible to hit sometimes and completely impossible to hit other times.
Deathwarping is NOT a glitch.
yes the game design is really is that screwed up.
This is the fastest intended route through the game, believe it or not. It's just performed better than most people can.
Pinball Fantasies (DOS version) will probably be a very easy TAS.
I say this because in my experience playing real time, you don't have to do transition shots with that game. I've NEVER felt that the game robs you of your shot because one pixel was too early and one was too late.
The SPidersoft pinball games, on the other hand... Definitely need transition shots for those games.
I have a lot of experience with PC pinball. The following games I consider good ones.
Amiga version of pinball dreams ONLY! PC version has crappy spidersoft 2D engine, worse layouts. The amiga one plays like the real tables the games are based on. I can loop the center ramp on steel wheel till the cows come home just like i can on the real bad cats table it was based off of, and with the same flipper position (right in the middle of the left flipper).
Pinball Fantasies (PC)
Slamtilt pinball (original 2D version only, 3d version is transition shot city)
These games have great feel, and i felt it was my fault whenever i missed a shot.
EVERY OTHER 2d PC pinball game i've ever played has robbed me of shots.
This includes all of spidersofts 2d output (pinball dreams, pinball dreams 2, pinball mania, pinball wold, etc.)
The most notable NES game i know of that actually needs 4 screen is Gauntlet (tengen). I'm sure there are others, though.
Mapper 99 is almost like mapper 0, except for the extra 8k of CHR ROM, and the bankswitch to swap between the two banks.
I'm not sure if implementing this bankswitch breaks any normal mapper 0 games. That said, vs games also have dip switches to read, and tend to parse input differently, hence the different mapper. But if using mapper 99 for mapper 0 games works in every case, then i see no reason not to merge them.
Strangely enough Vs. Castlevania appears to use the same mapper as the original game, except of course for the added dip switches
The special feature in Shantae is simply that the game adjusts it's palette to look better on a GBA if it detects that it is played on one.
Apparently without this enhancement it looked terrible on real GBA hardware according to the game authors.
So the enhancement doesn't actually use any features of the hardware. it's just a branch in the code.
That said, they apparently did throw a couple of things in which may or may not be useful for TASing, but they could all have easily existed in the GBC game itself.
Well the fact is the reset input often CAN be hooked.
In fact i know of a few 8 bit computers that actually let you disable hardware resetting through software. This feature was put in as an aid to copy protection. And we all know that X-men on the genesis DOES happen to hook the reset button.
Just because games don't usually hook reset doesn't mean it's not possible for them to do so. While i can't say for sure that hooking reset is possible on all consoles and computers it's definitely possible on some.
This puts save corruption under the category of abuse of programming errors.
Also note that there is a long standing tradition of save corruption on real hardware in the case of pokemon games. It's been used many many times to cause glitches and clone pokemon.
Also not all consoles give the user access to the reset line by default (mostly portable consoles don't seem to have working reset buttons). Using buttons not available to the player does seem like cheating. In the case of pokemon RPGs, i think we can let this slide a bit though, as save corruption seems to be considered legit by the pokemon community, at least as a means of obtaining event only pokemon.
Hitting the power switch is non deterministic on console, and will never be anything close to accurate. On real hardware you can cause a brownout by very rapidly toggling the power switch, and cause all manner of strange glitches that cannot possibly be replicated in an emulator. Electrical delays most likely render any possible results in an emulator impossible to replicate on console.
Grounding the reset line generally has well defined effects. Simply tripping an NMI has even more well defined effects.
So the reset button qualifies as input, but the power switch does not.
While the reset button in emulators doesn't have the precision, of it were pressed at the same time in real life,the same result should happen.
THis is not the same engine at all.
As for which is first, i suspect that there is room for both. SO there will be two paths. the ages first path, and the seasons first path. After both are done a decision can be made if one is noticably faster or more entertaining.
I believe this movie should be published. it in theory should be possible to modify the movie to sync on real hardware, if it doesn't sync already.
While it plays back properly due to emulation inaccuracy, it performs nothing that wouldn't work on the real console.
I think "reprograms the game" is a more accurate category description for this run.
Honestly, nothing is corrupted, and no flags are adjusted. instead, in game actions are used to create ASM code inside RAM, and then this code is jumped to. WHile it's not exactly a buffer overflow, it takes over the game's code like a buffer overflow exploit would.
The creation of a glitched category means that the glitches used beat the game much faster than the un-glitched way, but a run without the glitch shows more skill and is more entertaining.
There is no separate "glitched" category for mega man and super mario 64 because even though the game is completely broken, the movie is very entertaining.
Hmm.
If the run deterministicly desynchs, then either the bot or the emulator is at fault, and it needs correcting.
If the run is inconsistent on the real console then it's either the fault fo the console itself or the bot.
Unitialized ram does NOT set itself to zero or FF automatically, unless it's a part of the consoles boot routine. Depending on how long it's been without power, it can either be near the values it had last (if you just pressed the reset button or flicked the power switch off for only a second), or random bit noise if you've left it off a while.
I can't speak for the NES, but this was an issue on the commodore 64 computer and other 8 bit machines, where as piracy protection the randomness of uninitialized ram was tested, and the game crashed if it saw a pattern placed there to help the freezer cart recognize what needed compressing.
Only videos you own the copyright for or have permission are eligible for monetization.
TASes are not, event though you have gotten the invitation. At least according to the guidelines.
The only reason rank 4 is even required is to get that rocket launcher and keycard seven, both of which are actually required to win. it's also intended to be a requirement to get the required number of explosives to destroy the computer (16), but we all know how that goes, even without tool assistance.
I agree that the original TASer is correct in that there's no reliable criteria to exclude just those two ejections, and allow the ones that aren't broken.
On the other hand it's incredibly obvious that those routes aren't intended.
On the third hand, there are other routes not intended that do not even abuse ejections.
So the "as intended by the programmer" test is too restrictive.
Personally i would have not performed those two skips, and just filed it under speed/entertainment tradeoffs. The skip in these cases showcases much less skill.
To get some more Amiga feeling to it. Or maybe because it's made of polygons, so it's too advanced for SNES to handle. You can notice it slows down at times, and only runs at an average of 20 FPS maybe. It could also be because the original Amiga version had loading screens, so they were too lazy to edit them out, or they didn't know how to do it.
A TAS of the original Amiga version could be better, it has better sound, resolution (maybe), and it doesn't have slow-downs, so it would be faster. But maybe there still isn't a good Amiga emulator for TASing? Strange, considering that it's older than SNES. Some things are better in this version though (music).
The music was most likely done because there wasn't enough room for all the digital samples the original had. I agree it is a big improvement, though.
In my opinion, the new PC version of the game, with the SNES versions additional music, would be the definitive version of the game.
I remember this game fondly.
The guard that you are supposed to drop the green ball on it's head CAN in fact be killed in real time.
It requires very clever shield and blast use, but he CAN be defeated. you also have to jump the grenade he will roll when you shield yourself, and land behind the shield, but close enough to blast through it.
I never realized that you were supposed to drop the ball, so i killed him the hard way. :)
Go try it someday.
you can see it done in this speedrun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLHxf4wt1Ro
Wow. this new route turned the skip from boring back to entertaining, and now looks more diffiuclt to do in real time.
While i still miss the older skips that were all doable unassisted, this has much better WTF factor than the movie it obsoletes.
I'm not entirely sure enemy kill order is everything.
There's a swooping bird a ways into level 1 that has a strong tendency to drop crowns when killed repeatedly and nothing i do before i reach it seems to make a difference.
it's visible at the 50 second mark, and i'm very surprised it didn't get killed.
I believe the bubbler challenge would go as follows.
If you (or whoever) is going to do something so unlikely to get accepted here, you might as well break one more rule to make the challenge more extreme and simplify the rules: Start the game with a level 3 Nemesis and 1 max HP, and never switch weapons (and, uh, level it up immediately in the Last Cave and Hell, if you get that far). (example) (save file)
The thing is the bubbler is actually a pretty effective weapon at level 3 when used properly but is somewhat challenging to use. With manual rapid fire, it has the longest range of anything short of a charged spur shot and appears to have no shot limit at all, and with the button held down you get the handy bubble shield.
I'm not entirely sure it would make an interesting TAS, as clearly any TAS not using the machine gun is obviously very suboptimal.
Actually, a normal pacifist run might be interesting though. It would be slower, but it would showcase a LOT of skill. The bosses that summon other monsters would be very problematic, as we may have to keep them alive instead of killing them for powerups.
I believe the bubbler challenge would go as follows.
Only bubbler may be used, except on enemies immune to it AND required by the plot. If you don't have the bubbler you may use another weapon, but only if the enemy must be fought(the door mimic, destructible blocks in your way, most bosses, etc.). The first jellyfish juice must be used to collect the bubbler ASAP.
I think just for the sake of playability going hog wild with the polar star in the area with the jellyfish should be allowed when collecting the first juice (but only the first one). Unless you are a TASing god and can kill the big one without killing the other stuff. :)
All other optional weapons must be skipped. This includes the missile launcher, machine gun, snake, nemesis, Whimsical Star, and Spur (i'm not sure about the fireball). I suspect the blade is not optional.
After collecting the bubbler, you may use the experience dropped by enemies killed with it to level up other non optional weapons, should one be needed to destroy something immune to bubbler level 3.
Curly will of course use her machine gun, and later the Nemesis if you get into sacred grounds. There is no way to avoid using either one.
Unless pixel himself says it's official, it's not.
And I think he doesn't consider it official, since it has one translation error.
The password for the hideout is supposed to be the games title, written backwards. The translators missed that fact, and thus we have "Litagano Motscoud" instead of "yrotS evaC"
Original title.
洞窟物語
Romanji for original title
Doukutsu Monogatari
romanji for password.
ri ta ga no mo tsu ku dou (you have to keep the syllables unreversed)
This confused the poor translators, so they just left it untranslated.
It is otherwise a superb translation.
This was very impressive, and is one of the greatest TASes on ths site. While it doesn't sequence break much or use heavy glitch abuse, it shows inhuman skill and speed very well.
The official english translation for wii DOES have "yrotS evaC" as the password.
I know people were disappointed at "Oh, yeah!" instead of "Huzzah!" though...