Arsene Lupin the 3rd and the Castle of Cagliostro is an obscure MSX2 game by Toho. Similar to Vampire Killer in structure, the player must collect two rings in each level before advancing to the next one before facing the antagonist. The run aims to complete the game as fast as possible.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: openMSX 0.8.1-dev12197
  • BIOS used: Panasonic FS-A1WSX
  • Aims for fastest possible time
  • Manipulates Luck
  • Takes Damage To Save Time
  • Genre: Platformer

Comments

Arsene Lupin is a short platformer by Toho in the vein of Vampire Killer. In each of the seven stages, you will have to find two rings and proceed to the exit. To do this, Lupin must jump, slice and shoot his way through a couple of assorted enemies, all of them out for his life bar. Just as with Vampire Killer, the stages are littered with all sorts of items, some of them useful, some of them less so. Sometimes, the containers they are in are invisible. As of this, finding the best route is important with these levels. The game is very choppy, its framerate is very unstable and a single enemy (or its projectiles) can add seconds of lag. As of this, many enemies are manipulated not to appear at all or not to throw their projectiles. Luck manipulation also plays a huge part in getting important item drops, since some of them are required for the route. Thankfully, manipulation is a lot more direct than in many other games, as you can use any key of the MSX keyboard to change the RNG. Also, the delay between your final influence on the RNG and an item actually appearing/an enemy appearing is very low (~10 frames). Enemy manipulation isn't always uniform, some enemies cannot be manipulated away at all, some spawn on a timer, others can't be manipulated away, but their spawn position and their behaviour can be manipulated and some enemies you will never see in this run. (You'd think that surprisingly, this game doesn't have any bats. It does.)

Movement:

Lupin's choppy movement makes accurate descriptions very hard to give. Jumping slows you down, so it often is more advisable to fall down a ledge than to jump. To shoot, you have to crouch and press space. While jumping, you can adjust your trajectory slightly, but not your height or your direction. If you hit the ground while swinging your sword, the sword will just disappear. Stair climbing speed is identical to running speed, but Lupin can get held up on the ends of the stairs. There doesn't seem to be a way to avoid this. The collision detection with the walls and floors is very messy.

Items I get:

  • Grappling Hook: You'll need one to reach many of the exits and ledges. You use it by pressing up+space. You automatically jump after using it, there is nothing I can do to prevent it. You can only use it in select areas of the level.
  • Vest: It makes you invincible for a short amount of time. I use it to get past the workers in Stage 4.
  • Stopwatch: It stops time, and the divers in Stage 6 from appearing.
  • Ammunition: I get one additional container in Stage 5 so I have enough for the final boss.
  • The rings: They unlock the exit
There are other items, but I never bother with those in the run, since I don't need any of them.

Tricks:

  • Pressing up+down in the right way will make Lupin drop through most floors. This is very useful, and allows a few significant shortcuts.
  • Some items can be obtained through walls. I use this in Stage 1 and 4 for massive shortcuts.
  • By waggling around enough, it is possible to get Lupin misaligned with the stairs. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a good use for this.
  • The final boss may be the most intricate thing about the game. He walks back and forth on the platform he's on, and usually fires bullets at you. As expected, I manipulate him not to fire any. To actually make him walk into the moving gears, you need to do a certain amount of damage to him (8 bullets and one properly placed sword wipe do the trick, it is impossible to avoid damage while hitting him with the sword), and then lure him into the gears. Otherwise, he'll just back and forth forever. He won't move if you're on the upper level, and being right to him makes him face right. I jump through him and run past him the first frame he falls into the grinder. Any frame earlier, and he'll stay on the platform.

Closing Comments

What a game to run. As short and simple as it is, it is unbelievably irresponsible and totally caothic. In the end, I'm glad to be done with it as to make room for more gainful movies. Between all the lag and inconsistencies within the game rules themselves, I wouldn't be surprised if this movie can be improved a bit, but I'm overall pretty satisfied with the end result. As usual, I'd like to thank Quibus, Vampier for their ongoing support, as well as the #tasvideos and #openmsx IRC channels. And, as always, I hope you enjoy watching the run.
~ scrimpy

DarkKobold: This run had poor feedback. Most of it seemed to be fixated on the 1/3rd of this TAS which is running across an identical screen. The few tricks did not seem to be enough to save it - and even the yes votes were weak, at best. Sorry, but this is just a bad game choice.

adelikat: Unrejected and accepting for publication to the Vault

Ilari: Uploading encodes and filling the form...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3350: scrimpeh's MSX Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro in 07:15.86
Active player, Editor, Emulator Coder (262)
Joined: 10/17/2010
Posts: 124
Crappy game, great TASing!
Joined: 2/6/2011
Posts: 130
I was going to vote meh due to it being not that boring but level 6 (3:57 ~ 6:00 run right for justice) kind of ruined it to me. Voting No due to game choice :c
Active player (432)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3516
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Voted no. Bad game choice and despite that, you couldn't do much to make it entertaining enough and the due to the game choice, you couldn't do a lot of tas maneuvers.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Twisted_Eye
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Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 629
Location: Seattle, WA
Yes it's short, but wow level six is an absolute slog to watch. What unbelievably boring game design. The run was well done, but I think the game choice prevents this from being anything but a tough meh.
Synahel
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Joined: 1/19/2011
Posts: 259
Location: France
Not a bad TAS, but maybe a bad game choice yeah. Stage 6 is really boring. I remembered the bad guy to be blond from the movie, but I may be wrong. The french text at the end is hilariously badly written. I'm still puzzled by this "Rien de service" sentence, and what they meant by it. I'll go with a weak Yes.
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 570
Location: 33°07'41"S, 160°42'04"W
I like this TAS, well planned and well executed. It lacks a bit on the entertainment side for a while, but it's definitely good enough to deserve a yes vote thanks to the other tricks used and the perfect gameplay. Also this game is inaccurate, as Lupin never kills, as far as I remember he never shot a gun towards a human being.
Dwedit
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Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
Since some of the rings are in hidden blocks, this looks like a "Guide Dang It" game.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 498
...Who the hell composed stage 7's sorry excuse for music? Shoot 'em in the face. Other than that and the boring stage 6, this was a pretty good watch, I think. Voting yes. (Lupin's running animation in particular is hilarious. Especially since he's not even running all that fast. :p)
Joined: 1/11/2009
Posts: 44
I wound up enjoying this more than I expected. This looks like it would be incredibly dull and frustrating in real time, but a TAS breezes through all the ridiculous invisible items and constant enemies. Stage 6 is like a cruel running gag on the player -- you expect it to end at every new screen, but it keeps on going and going until it's just absurd. Falling through the floors was nice, too -- is there no possibility of some interesting out-of-bounds exploit with that? Overall, I was entertained.
Editor, Experienced player (607)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
I have to agree with Zavalix. I found this somewhat entertaining until Level 6, and I stopped watching after just a minute and a half of that. Voting No.
Player (136)
Joined: 9/18/2007
Posts: 389
Well, it's really boring to watch 26 sections which look almost completely identical... Still voted yes, the rest was good enough.
mklip2001
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Location: Georgia, USA
The action outside of Stage 6 was alright but not that great. The guy's run is funny, and the music is catchy, but I'm not sure this is particularly publish-worthy. The complete anticlimax of a final battle also wasn't that interesting. I vote Meh.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Joined: 7/20/2011
Posts: 29
Fairly decent, except for Stage 6 where it looked like going from Paris to Rome on a very long bridge.
TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... *burp*!
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2158] MSX Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro by scrimpeh in 07:15.86