The game

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a game released in 1982 for the Atari 2600 based on the movie with the same name. The objective in this game is for Indy to find the ark of the lost covenant. Interestingly this is the first ever movie liscensed video game.

Technical details

Ark manipulation

There are 16 possible locations for the ark, as determined by address 0x000C, and each frame during opening screen increments the location. I manipulated the ark into the closest possible location, which is one mesa from the one you teleport to (note: you can't manipulate the ark to appear on the mesa you teleport to, that requires a mesa location of 0, which can't be manipulated).

Black Market

When going to the black market, I need 3 gold. 1 to bribe the guy, (Yes that weird blob is a person) and 2 to buy a shovel (shovel's are expensive!)

Frame rules, timer, and the long wait

This game has a global clock, by which many things depend. For instance, to see the map, you have to wait for the "sun" to light up the map room. This can take several minutes. In fact, this is about 50% of the time of the best unassisted runs (which run about 7 minutes). Since I have the power of tool-assistance, I don't need a map, I know where the ark is, so I can avoid this 3+ minute frame rule, whew!
However, the treasure room operates on a lengthy frame rule as well. I did the best planning I could to minimize the frame rules, but it is unavoidable due to getting the Chai (which looks like a uh...sailboat?). This item I can trade to a merchant at the market to get access to the black market. Even with a 25 second wait this is a big shortcut. The alternative is to use the ankh to teleport to the mesas, then go all the way down (which is time consuming), into the map room, through the thieves cave. This also costs you the ankh, so you can't teleport into the mesa room from there, so you have to go back to the market, then go all the way back down using the hourglass. This process is about 25 seconds longer overall. The down side is a rather lengthy amount of time just waiting.
Treasure room logic - if you grab just gold, you leave and go back to the jail room outside of a jail cell, however, if you grab a treasure item it sends you back to the jail cell, where you must have a gun or a whip in order to get out. This necessitates why I have to get one more gold after the long wait. Even though I have plenty of time to get it during the wait, I must drop the whip in order to have everything i need to complete the game from then on (your max carrying capacity is 6 items). And I can't drop the whip before getting a treasure else I'm stuck in jail. (There is a way out of jail but it involves falling into the marshes and dying, which is way slower than just picking up one more gold before I leave).
Note at the end, I only have the required shovel to dig for the ark. Awesome item planning don't you think?

The Mesa

To go from mesa to mesa, I have to use the grappling hook. By grappling hook I mean the hourglass icon clearly. And by grappling, I mean a dot that moves around the screen in a diamond pattern, clearly. This was some fun logic to TAS, getting it to widen in such a way to get to the next mesa quickly using the most counter-intuitive "grappling" logic I've ever seen.

Ram Addresses

  • 0001 Screen Num
  • 0002 Frame Counter
  • 0003 Seconds (64 frames
  • 000A B Button presses
  • 000C Ark Location
  • 0012 Last Pressed, Controller 2
  • 0044 Num Items
  • 0049 Player X
  • 0052 Snake Y pos
  • 0037 Inventory Slot 1
  • 0038 Inv Slot 1 - Secondary sprite
  • 0039 Inventory Slot 2
  • 003A Inv 2 Secondary Sprite
  • 003B Inventory Slot 3
  • 003C Inv 3 Secondary Sprite
  • 003D Inventory Slot 4
  • 003E Inv 4 Secondary Sprite
  • 003F Iventory Slot 5
  • 0040 Inv 5 Secondary Sprite
  • 0041 Inventory Slot 6
  • 0042 Inv 6 Secondary Sprite
  • 004F Player Y

DarkKobold: Judging.

turska: Accepting for publication in the Vault.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3724: adelikat's A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark in 01:34.60
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Congrats on the first second A2600 submission adelikat. Now do Pitfall and we basically have all the games there are. Oh well, yes vote here.
NitroGenesis
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I found this less entertaining than E.T. Walking is not fun. Voting no.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
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I'll give this one a no. Just too boring to watch.
Post subject: Re: #3724: adelikat's A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark in 01:34.6
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Voting no because of bad game choice.
Warepire
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While a little more interesting than E.T. it was still immensely dull. Voting no for game choice.
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It's atari, not a lot of exciting games on there, voting meh.
I think.....therefore I am not Barry Burton
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And now we can check off another AVGN reviewed game on the list.
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If this is published, the encoding should be redone; the inventory is hidden by the TASVideos message. As for the actual run, I'm voting meh. This run appears very well optimized and shows lots of variety in a short period of time. However, Atari 2600 games are just too primitive to be speedrun-worthy in my opinion, even when considering that this one is probably the most complex. By the way, I don't understand why you stay completely stationary during the waiting period. I thought the playback stopped working and had to double-check. I think you should re-do that part to dance around a little if possible.
henke37 wrote:
And now we can check off another AVGN reviewed game on the list.
He didn't... yet. That's the movie he's working on.
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NitroGenesis wrote:
I found this less entertaining than E.T. Walking is not fun. Voting no.
Totally agree. No vote. Also, it's hilarious that none of these apparently 12 Yes voters have shared why they voted Yes (scrimpeh didn't even give a reason), while most the Meh and No voters had good reasons why this run should not be published. So what they're implying is that there is no reasoning behind their decision to click the Yes button and leave. If you all want this to be published so badly, why don't you post why? Otherwise, it won't get published.
mklip2001
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Ok, I found this better than E.T. There is a bunch of walking, but there's some semblance of dodging and of action, I guess. It's still pretty incomprehensible to the casual viewer what's going on, though, and not in a good way. I figure this is a Meh or a Yes, and I can't make up my mind between the two. It would definitely be a Yes if you had any clue at all as to what the things on the screen are. It really seems like Pitfall might be the only redeemable Atari run. (Dig Dug could be fun to see a few stages, but it wouldn't be fun to actually finish, if that's even possible.)
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.
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CoolKirby wrote:
NitroGenesis wrote:
I found this less entertaining than E.T. Walking is not fun. Voting no.
Totally agree. No vote. Also, it's hilarious that none of these apparently 12 Yes voters have shared why they voted Yes (scrimpeh didn't even give a reason), while most the Meh and No voters had good reasons why this run should not be published. From what they're telling us, there is no reasoning behind their decision to click the Yes button and leave. If you want this to be published so badly, why don't you post why?
I just did vote yes and let me tell you my reasons: 1.- It's short enough 2.- If you actually played atari games you'll know lots of them didn't even had an ending and just loop until you lose, so finishing one of them is already neat. 3.- It's atari, you can't really ask much to it on graphics, sound and appealing. YES I do know some games were really fun to play on the atari but again most of those games didn't had an ending and that's why they were fun. 4.- Finally, at least most of the movie is not an ending sequence http://tasvideos.org/1145M.html So yeah, those are my main reasons.
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Zavalix wrote:
3.- It's atari, you can't really ask much to it on graphics, sound and appealing.
I don't find this much of an argument considering how early-era MS-DOS games are routinely downvoted because of their (cga/ega) graphics and (speaker) sound.
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So you voted Yes purely because it's an Atari 2600 game with an ending, and because the run is short? You don't even care about entertainment, the most important factor in deciding whether or not a run should be published? Sure, these are a great technical achievement, but there are more interesting Atari games like Pitfall that don't make terribly boring runs. If a run puts people to sleep, it shouldn't be published on this site.
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CoolKirby wrote:
So you voted Yes purely because it's an Atari 2600 game with an ending, and because the run is short? You don't care about entertainment, something we're supposed to consider when voting?
I care about fun but then again some of those fun games were infinite loops so it's impossible to "finish them" (unless you get a 99999 score like in Tetris I guess) and the fun ones that DO had an ending might get boring once you knew how to finish them... so let me remind you that these games were the first of their genres so if you compare them to the nes, snes and so on you'll find them terribly boring (even sometimes I do).
CoolKirby wrote:
Sure, these are a great technical achievement, but there are more interesting Atari games like Pitfall that don't make terribly boring runs.
I agree and actually you can say the same thing for every console available, it has its great games and horrible ones. So in resume, I DO think this game is terrible, incomprehensible and tedious after hours of running around without knowing what the hell you're supposed to do; but looking how it got raped and finished within minutes is simply amazing. So instead of just saying "this game sucks because I don't understand what is going on" (which happens on runs with heavy glitches) I think you should consider that at least it has screen transactions and that it's a really short movie (yes, I do consider it being short as a plausible reason mostly because how can you get bored within 30 seconds unless you have ADD or something).
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SmashManiac wrote:
henke37 wrote:
And now we can check off another AVGN reviewed game on the list.
He didn't... yet. That's the movie he's working on.
He did. I think you are mixing up ET and RotLA.
adelikat
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I think AVGN's review of this game should be a prereq for this TAS.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Demon_Lord
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I liked this run enough to vote yes. I found it well done, the game seems to have some challenge, and things aren't that repetitive. I don't care if the game isn't pretty and uses technology nearly as old as I am, I found it enjoyable and that's what's important to me.
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I didn't understand what was happening at all.
Working on: Legend of Legaia, Vagrant Story
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I suffered as a child to play this. Spent hours on it. Never once beat it. The last 10 seconds of the run, don't do justice to how painful that scenario is, using the grapling hook on the Mesas... Oh god, the horrors. Had to vote yes.
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Post subject: Re: #3724: adelikat's A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark in 01:34.6
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I found this quite hilarious. It's one of those "so bad, it's funny" things. I couldn't understand most of what was going on (as I watched first before reading the submission text). The music is well done considering the technology. It reminded me of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtiAP8xMSPo). The only thing I recognized was Indy and the snakes. And the intro/outro looked like Indy had some sort of spring shoes which were contracting........... Yes vote.
TASVideoAgent wrote:
This is an automatically posted message for discussing submission: #3724: adelikat's A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark in 01:34.6 <li> 000C Grail Location
Should be Ark, not Grail.
Post subject: Re: #3724: adelikat's A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark in 01:34.6
adelikat
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KwyjiboPrime wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
This is an automatically posted message for discussing submission: <b>#3724: adelikat's A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark in 01:34.6</b> <li> 000C Grail Location
Should be Ark, not Grail.
Heh, good call. Wrong movie ^_^
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In response to the various questions of why to vote yes for this game, and a reason why I voted yes: Try playing this game on your own: it is obscenely difficult. The speed and ease this TAS presents in defeating the game make it worthwhile to me. This game also has quite nice graphics and music for the 2600, if that's a cocern for you.
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Riddim wrote:
In response to the various questions of why to vote yes for this game, and a reason why I voted yes: Try playing this game on your own: it is obscenely difficult. The speed and ease this TAS presents in defeating the game make it worthwhile to me. This game also has quite nice graphics and music for the 2600, if that's a cocern for you.
Obscenely difficult indeed! I was never able to finish this as a kid... and even with a guide a few years ago... I still was unable to quite polish it off. To think... we grade games as "Nintendo Tough", but there are times like this where Atari Tough could even be used. :) And yeah... the graphics weren't too bad for everything that was covered in this game. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
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I think that the question of whether to vote yes or no on this is difficult. Are we comparing TASes of Atari2600 games to all other TASes, or are we comparing them to what Atari2600 has to offer? Do Atari2600 games get any better than this? If this game represents the average Atari2600 game (rather than being one of the worst ever made for it), I think it should be placed on that context, or else we won't publish any Atari2600 TASes at all. Of course I know/have seen approximately 0 games for the Atari2600 (I think I once saw a playthrough of Pitfall, but that's all). Therefore I cannot judge if this is an average game for that system (and thus should be judged as such) or if it really is one of the worst games made for it. Hard to vote without having such knowledge.