General
- Emulator used: JPC-RR r11.2
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes no damage
- Pacifist - doesn't even get a weapon!
- Ends with measly 200 score
About the game:
Castle Adventure is a game made in 1984 about a cloverleaf person trapped in a deserted castle, with monsters roaming around. You have to find a way to escape the castle by searching for clues.
You move around with the arrow keys (and diagonals on the numpad). If you manage to find a weapon (this run doesn't) you can attack enemies by simply moving into them. Similarily, you can pick up objects on the ground by moving into them. You can also type in commands with the keyboard, for example "LOOK DESK", "TAKE KEY", "READ BOOK", "DROP FLASK", etc. There are treasures to find and monsters to slay to increase your score.
This game has great nostalgic value to me, since it's the game from which I first started to learn English.
BIOS/OS/game versions used:
imageinfo report about game image used:
Type : HDD
Tracks : 16
Sides : 16
Sectors : 63
Calculated Disk ID : c0c24858ba012cd1bc72d027ca2e8c96
Comments section:
Entry: N/A N/A 2 /
Entry: 19900101000000 abf6d56cc767e47b47968b9935ecebfe 72960 /CASTLE.EXE
Entry: 19900101000000 10a65f63e8176917044d981d447a36e8 48512 /CASTLE.RAN
Tricks:
There are some bugs related to saving and loading games, but I don't think they are useful.
The game runs in some sort of loop, like most games. At the settings used in the movie, the game usually runs two loops per time unit, but sometimes three. The game reads one keypress per loop. Therefore it's important to always have at least three keypresses queued up. After each screen change or accepted command, the keypress buffer is cleared.
Monsters only move if you haven't moved this loop. Due to this it is possible to make them stay in place by moving constantly. There is one instance in the movie where an UGLY OGRE makes one move at the start of a screen, due to the boundaries between the time units in the emulator being in a poor location.
Run walkthrough
The movie is 20 seconds, of which the game takes about 17.5. The slowest computer speed was chosen, but the game still runs incredibly fast. Encoding it at half speed might be a good idea, to give people a chance to see what is happening.
This run gets the minimal set of items required to complete the game, in the following order:
- ♠ LAMP, to enter dark rooms
- § NECKLACE, to avoid the instant-kill water traps
- - WAND, waved to reveal the secret room
- τ KEY, to open the door to the cellar
and finally
- ß SCEPTER, found in the secret room, waved to open the front gate and end the game.
The first four can be picked up in any order, and all of them are needed to get the scepter.
Future full score run
A full score run might be interesting in the future. There are 8 monsters to kill (100 points each), and 13 treasures to collect (50 points each). Additionally you get 100 points for winning the game, instead of dying or giving up. This makes the max score 1550.
The interesting thing about this is that the inventory only holds 6 items. Treasures are counted as collected if you have them in your inventory when the game ends, or they have been dropped in the first room of the game. Some items are prerequisites to others (like the SCEPTER), and obviously you need to carry around the SWORD to kill monsters. This would need quite some route planning. The execution is pretty simple, luckily.
Thanks to:
- Ilari for helping me a lot with this peculiar emulator.
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