Sonic Pinball Party is a Game Boy Advance game made by Sonic Team. It features pinball boards based of Sonic Advance ,Nights into Dreams, and Samba De Amigo. The story of this game follows that Sonic enters a pinball tournament to defeat Eggman to save the animals.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: vba-v24m-svn461
  • Aims for the fastest completion

Comments

  • Opponent 1:Knuckles
This mission requires that you get 10 Million points. Defeating Eggman simply is enough to beat the stage. I just use some bumper tricks to get it in a few shots.
  • Opponent 2:Possessed Tails
This mission requires 15 million points to win. Defeating Eggman, the clear bonus and some easy loops on the next board was enough to suffice.
  • Opponent 3:Possessed Amy
This mission requires that you beat the boss on the next board. Optimizing the Ideya Capturing and the dualzing in few shots took some challenge to Optimize
  • Opponent 4: Metal Sonic
This mission require that you clear all the Sonic boards up to X-Zone. Probably the most demanding of the opponents. There was quite a bit of luck manipulation and frame specific shots that needed to be made given the predicament that the ball sometimes can face.
  • Opponent 5: Eggman
After beating Metal Sonic the game congratulates you with a false victory. Eggman appears to make his last stand to beat you. This mission requires you have more points within the time limit. With the physics leaning towards making you fail even more in this stage. Along with little to no Ball Saves.
Overall this was an interesting game to TAS
Note that this is the improved movie file that syncs on ROM mentioned: [dead link removed] Please replace as soon as possible

feos: Replaced the submission file by Author request.
FractalFusion: Replaced submission file again to fix input ending.
FractalFusion: Well done although the response is less than desired. Accepting for vault.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15585
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3775: Cooljay's GBA Sonic Pinball Party in 22:36.40
Player (133)
Joined: 5/21/2012
Posts: 75
Location: Cary, NC
This was made using a hacked ROM and loses 125 frames at the start to skip the hack intro. It looks like it syncs with the good ROM, but IMO you should edit out the first 125 frames and resubmit. I'll have a quick encode for a good ROM using what I have semi soon.
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1113)
Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217
oneeighthundred wrote:
It looks like it syncs with the good ROM, but IMO you should edit out the first 125 frames and resubmit.
You (Cooljay) can also fix the file and request replacement.
Cooljay
He/Him
Active player (397)
Joined: 5/1/2012
Posts: 468
Location: Canada
Ilari wrote:
oneeighthundred wrote:
It looks like it syncs with the good ROM, but IMO you should edit out the first 125 frames and resubmit.
You (Cooljay) can also fix the file and request replacement.
If I may ask. What is the name of the movie editor for VBA ?
Player (133)
Joined: 5/21/2012
Posts: 75
Location: Cary, NC
OK, I can't get a good encode out of this right now because it desyncs with the good ROM around frame 16000 (in the Amy/NiGHTS stage). I'll try again when an edited version is submitted. I think there may be several versions of this too, so a CRC or MD5 of the ROM you used would be helpful.
Cooljay
He/Him
Active player (397)
Joined: 5/1/2012
Posts: 468
Location: Canada
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v3ww156rge3rygt/PinballPartyFixedCJ.vbm Fixed the movie file. Used TAS Movie Editor. Changing the ROM name to the correct one as well
Player (133)
Joined: 5/21/2012
Posts: 75
Location: Cary, NC
Editor
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
If the Stage Clear Bonus sections weren't so boring, it would be great. Meh from me. Yea for beating down this game.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 6/6/2004
Posts: 223
Stages 4 and 5 were able to get 15 million points in a single zone thanks to bonus time, so why did it take a second zone in order to finish off stage 2?
Cooljay
He/Him
Active player (397)
Joined: 5/1/2012
Posts: 468
Location: Canada
Mr. Pwnage wrote:
Stages 4 and 5 were able to get 15 million points in a single zone thanks to bonus time, so why did it take a second zone in order to finish off stage 2?
With some better luck manipulation I managed to bump it just down to that stage now. Here is the new movie with the improvements added https://www.dropbox.com/s/69kwjc1kc160sh6/PinballPartyImprovedCJ.vbm
Joined: 12/19/2010
Posts: 126
i agree w/ hegyak, the game on it's own is really nice, but the stage clear sections are slightly too long, so meh for me
live life
Player (21)
Joined: 6/2/2011
Posts: 35
Location: Chicago, IL
as someone who has not played this game, this was unfortunately not very entertiaining for me. I fully support vault publication though
If at first you don't succeed, load your savestate and try again
Active player (309)
Joined: 8/21/2012
Posts: 429
Location: France
I have to vote meh for entertainment, but I also considered the "no" option :p It started ok and quite entertaining, but it became repetitive quite fast. It's mostly because of the game which is that way (to watch). I can't comment on the technical side of the run. I've never played the game, so I don't know if other strategies can earn more points, if everything is done the fastest way, etc...
Joined: 3/3/2010
Posts: 87
I'm going to have to go with a "Meh" too. The way I see it, while it is fairly well done, there are still some areas that could be improved: Some of the shots before Eggman appears could probably be managed better. Perhaps nudging at a different time will place the ball closer to the optimal launch position. A little more variety in shots taken during the Metal Sonic stage clear bonuses could up the entertainment a bit more. Perhaps not going for the bonus all the time since score isn't a concern on these stages? During the final round, is it possible to get Multiball started during Casino Night and still have enough points to beat Eggman without clearing the stage? Or maybe clear out the stage at the last second? This would cut out another Clear Bonus segment during what is a timed portion anyway. Just a couple ideas. I have no way of knowing if these are going to be any more efficient, but they wouldn't hurt the entertainment side of things.
Cooljay
He/Him
Active player (397)
Joined: 5/1/2012
Posts: 468
Location: Canada
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5hq4jheus5fgsi/PinballPartyImprovedV2.vbm The multiball Section has now been added to Casino Night Instead As for the Eggman shots. They were fairly optimized. Given nudging will sometimes be ignored in hopes of avoiding dropping the ball down the hole, and other times it will do a good job. Bumper shots are very frame specific, and require certain situations to launch the right way. Regarding the Metal Sonic stages the loops were just to distinguish a TAS from a real time player. Since it will be more difficult to get loops and skill shots that many times in a row.
Joined: 3/3/2010
Posts: 87
Hmm. I'm not sure if it's because I'm using a slightly older version of VBA, but the new file stops before the ending dialog is complete. Also, is it possible to create larger combos during the Metal Sonic stages? I think that would distinguish a TAS from someone with good reflexes a lot better than the same basic combo over and over, and would be more interesting to watch. One last thing. During the Nights stage, I noticed on one of the Ideya shots that you hit the flipper just before it looks like it's going to go in, just to take another shot at it. Perhaps a little better manipulation could make this step unnecessary and speed things up a bit? Or does it affect the following shots too much?
Cooljay
He/Him
Active player (397)
Joined: 5/1/2012
Posts: 468
Location: Canada
I swear I implemented the game ending input. Looks like it didn't register. It has now been fixed. https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7by5zlntgq054i/PinballPartyFixed2.vbm
Editor, Expert player (2073)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
For me, the movie still stops before clearing the dialog.
Cooljay
He/Him
Active player (397)
Joined: 5/1/2012
Posts: 468
Location: Canada
FractalFusion wrote:
For me, the movie still stops before clearing the dialog.
I fixed it in the post above yours with the movie file linked In any case I did another one that was checked multiple times to be sure https://www.dropbox.com/s/20vv566b7mb1nhf/PinballPartyFixed3.vbm
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15585
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2260] GBA Sonic Pinball Party by Cooljay in 22:42.59
Active player (410)
Joined: 10/4/2015
Posts: 99
Nice run :) I'm not sure if you know, but you can use the R and L bumpers to tilt the table. This might let you make some shots that you had to take a few tries to line up.