I'm back! This time around, I beat 44 waves of Joust, because that's when it stops getting harder. It has 90 waves in total, after which it simply loops to wave 1,and after 40-ish wave its waves start looping content-wise.
With 2 players, the only 2 things to care of are: killing the last enemy in a wave ASAP, and picking the eggs ASAP. RNG exists, and can mess things up a bit, but with 2 players it's still a breeze.
I tried to never use similar strats (except when the only strat is to stand around and KILL), and also to end input ASAP.
I like how it ended up. My favorite waves in this run are 25-30.
For the old submission, refer to here, for Game Resources on this game refer to here.
I dedicate this run to dwangoAC and someone else.

Nach: It took a while till we could work this out, but finally, an acceptable Joust submission. Great play, good feedback, accepting for Moons.
Note: On more capable platforms (DOS perhaps?), additional waves need to be played, see discussion in the thread.
feos: Will publish...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4485: feos's NES Joust in 06:52.55
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Are there any important differences between the (U) and (J) roms?
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7 enemies on most rounds. I'm guessing the eighth would be the pterodactyl, if you ever actually allowed him to spawn?
Spikestuff
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I'd say it's more fitting to complete Wave 45 (Egg Wave) rather than just staying there but that was your choice.
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Dimon12321
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That was cool though I don't understand the point of this game. Like Survival mod in Doom or Max Payne 2 :-) Yes vote
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Post subject: Re: #4485: feos's NES Joust in 06:52.55
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Good run in terms of technique, but fairly boring and repetitive to watch. Should be in the vault imho, therefore voting no.
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verry good yes for me
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This would've been so easy to simply stay in one place or so every round, but the diverse strategies used made it fun. Yes vote.
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YES!!! Finally, Joust! This is the best take i've seen of this game, for sure.
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Looks optimal (checked up to ~13 waves, all last enemies killed as fast as possible and egg route is optimized with subpixels/speed). Yes vote.
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Spikestuff wrote:
I'd say it's more fitting to complete Wave 45 (Egg Wave) rather than just staying there but that was your choice.
I did consider it, but 1) it would look 100% similar to all the previous bonus rounds, and 2) I won't be able to end input so early. There's actually my personal 3) seeing how eggs become enemies is a better post-movie situation than seeing all enemies normally spawn once again.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Post subject: Level 45 is completed by this TAS!
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feos wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
I'd say it's more fitting to complete Wave 45 (Egg Wave) rather than just staying there but that was your choice.
I did consider it, but 1) it would look 100% similar to all the previous bonus rounds, and 2) I won't be able to end input so early. There's actually my personal 3) seeing how eggs become enemies is a better post-movie situation than seeing all enemies normally spawn once again.
I'm not sure what you two are talking about, level 45 is completed around 10:50.00 (and a surprising number of pterodactyls on level 45 are slain in the process). You may want to fast-forward a bit, though. :) The game over screen occurs around 11:40.00. Yes vote - this *was* entertaining, and I really enjoyed how you took advantage of the free time you had. I am, of course, biased, but I'm thankful to see a Joust run that is likely to be accepted. Great work.
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
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Daemn I didn't even watch that far!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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For a repetitive arcade game, this was surprisingly entertaining. There's some good synchronized work with the two players! I agree that stages 25-30 are quite good. The game still drags on a little bit for me, too much to give this a Yes vote, but it's a pretty high Meh. One thing, though... I didn't notice much of a difference between the later stages and some of the earlier ones. You said that the game stops getting more difficult at level 44, but it almost looks like the game stopped increasing difficulty much earlier than that. What's the difference in the later stages?
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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Right, I didn't mention it explicitly, but the sheet I linked explains that difficulty is increasing by changing the type of enemy to spawn. There are 4 of them: 3 ostriches and a ptero. The ostrich type changes throughout those 40 waves, increasing the amount of the strongest ones. Ptero only spawns if you take too long.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Does the audience agree based on the chart that after 44 waves, it loops: http://seanriddle.com/jwaves.html
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Nach wrote:
Does the audience agree based on the chart that after 44 waves, it loops: http://seanriddle.com/jwaves.html
It doesn't (assuming that chart's accurate). Looping begins at 61 (first loop without Hunters spawning), and then 61-65 are repeated with two different configurations of platforms. eg, 61-70 = 71-80 = 81-90 etc, but for enemy spawns, 61-65 = 66-70 = 71-75 etc That said, the only difference between the enemy types are speed (and points), which is pretty negligible when they're killed immediately after spawning.
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The chart is for the original version, on the NES it's sightly different. Simply watching the above encode tells that wave 41 is when all weaker ostriches stop spawning (except for eggs), and it doesn't seem able to ever spawn more than 7 ostriches, even during the egg waves.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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So basically NES version is crippled (due to limit of how many enemies the system can handle at once?) and loops sooner?
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This is exactly how I see it. Back then (before heavy mapper abuse was invented gosh was it long ago) NES was that limited, and it was maximum it could give. 9 active objects including the players.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Okay, that's good enough for me.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Post subject: Movie published
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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. ---- [2728] NES Joust "2 players" by feos in 06:52.55
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I'm guessing that even if you went to 90, there wouldn't be any sort of indicator that it's over. PS: It'd be cool to see a Vs TAS where two TASers make their inputs at certain intervals.
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
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After wave 90 it goes to 1 again. And yes, there's no ending (AFAIK).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Don't expect these tactics to work if you try to TAS the arcade. its' nearly impossible to get it to spawn one right under you. also there are levels that start with pterodactyls on the arcade version. they can trivially be defeated right off the bat though, even unassisted. also in the arcade the shadowlords HAVE SPAWN INVINCIBILITY LIKE YOU DO so even if ones DOES come up near you it will just wait for you to move away before becoming active.