This topic is for the purpose of discussing #640: nesrocks's NES Rolling Thunder in 11:50.58

Wow!! And may I say it again? WOW! This was WHOLLY impressive! I've never seen the final stages be navigated so fast... and the final fight with 1 bullet regenning... TOO COOL! It's also amusing how you beat 4-6 1 game second faster then 3-1, despite more enemies and lasers after you ^^ Slick movements, FANTASTIC enemy usage, not a single shot wasted even when it looked like one may have... and some of those moves made this look like some kinda Martial Arts movie! [Crouching Panther, Rolling Thunder] [snicker] This DEFINITELY gets a YES vote from me! Thanks for doing this FODA, and showing us how it's done. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin

Wow, i'm mostly honored with Mr. Kelly R. Flewin's feedback, i didn't expect so much, thanks :) I just had a lot of fun making this movie.

you know what i'm voting =)

yea, there are only "yes" votes! hehe joking, i knew you'd like it ;)

OK, I have a few thoughts before offering a YES: -Did you consider/calculate obtaining the machine gun? I'm pretty sure it fires faster than the handgun. -Why not collect some ammo (or the machine gun) to better defeat the boss? When your ammo runs out, your rate of fire and the speed of your bullets slows down. In any case, this is very nicely done. This game is pretty damn near impossible to beat normally.

i didnt test getting the machine gun, sorry, you're right, it may be faster for the last boss (i dont know how many frames are lost by getting the machine gun, but i can test it now) took me 81 more frames to get to the last screen by getting the 40 ammo at the last door. i still have to kill a lot of enemies on this last screen and i only have 29 bullets left (machine gun), and 37 normal bullets oh it seems that geldra only shows up after i run out of bullets, let me test further... hmm weird, i got lucky on this submission, i'm trying with machine gun and he's having some unwanted behaviour, i'll just leave it as it is. (i have the machine gun, low on ammo, and he is appearing as i shoot my last bullet, but only at that part, not always, even with enemies on screen, they disappear, but still slower)

Hmm, this run is interesting, though I get the impression that I am better off watching it than playing the game. Say, does this game have some sort of plot? It looks like your girlfriend is captured by some wierdo space branch of the KKK...

Yeah, that's all I ever got out of it too. This really is a crappy port of the arcade game, so you're right about that. Capcom made a quite blatant ripoff of this game called Code Name: Viper, that's a better game than this port and would be a pretty good run as well... Except they replaced the space KKK and Nintendo nookie with a generic 80s drug war plot. That was pretty lame. -Josh

i still like this game a lot no matter that :P

Hey Josh, this is SSJHibiki from SRK. Where have you been? Haven't seen you on AIM :p By the way, nice time attacks!

Just watching this then.. This game is extremely well played. Voting yes for sure. Wait.. This has been here for 2 months and no one has accepted it?? Come on.. Accept it!! This is better then most of the games that got accepted already on the site. Especially alot more entertaining then that Donkey Kong.... Someone accept it! i want the .avi! Anyways.. great job FODA.

Boy was this game repetative. All the action is pretty much the same in every level (ok maybe some cool little extra monster here and there). It looked well played that's not the question here. I just wasn't entertained more than couple of first stages. I don't know, maybe I would feel more entertained if I had played this game by myself earlier but now it just wasn't entertaining to the very end. I will have to say 'meh'.

Yea i agree that it doesnt look impressive to ppl who havent played it. But if you play it on normal mode you wont go through the third level or so, and when you see that this was played on hard mode so quick, thats impressive.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [373] NES Rolling Thunder by nesrocks in 11:50.58

mkv?! Give me a break! Is there ANY rational reason for this?

mkv?! Give me a break! Is there ANY rational reason for this?

Other than it being a superior container format to AVI? This has been discussed so many times in so many different threads that this is becoming quite annoying. It's new technology, get over it already and adapt.

Never heard of MKV until now. It sounds good, it seems to work fine, but I still don't know why.

Other than it being a superior container format to AVI?

And what features is the video using from the mkv container format? Multiple soundtracks? Multiple subtitles? What?

This has been discussed so many times in so many different threads that this is becoming quite annoying. It's new technology, get over it already and adapt.

Using new technology just for the sake of using new technology doesn't make sense if it doesn't introduce any benefits (can you list the benefits in this case?) and causes many people to have problems viewing the video. Does it halve the size of the file? No. Does it give same file size but with much higher image quality, perhaps lossless? No. Then what is the reason to force lots of people to search for all the necessary codecs and install them, plus a player that can play the freaking mkv format? The mkv doesn't work in my system with winamp nor even with windows media player. The core media player (an almost completely unknown player to most people) is able to play it, but I am having problems with the soundtrack.

I would like to know why do people think the quality of this movie is bad :P

It doesn't look like many people think that the technique is bad, since all but 2 gave it at least an "above average" rating, but it doesn't seem like it's an entertaining game. I haven't watched it but I'll try to tonite to add one more vote in there. EDIT: It was pretty repetitive, and not too entertaining, although the random scenes of bondage were 'interesting'. I agree with most everyone else. It was pretty well done, but not very enjoyable to watch in spite of that.

actually the quality rating is pretty low. that gives me the impression that the movie is sloppy and badly planned (highly improveable). I'd like to see it being highly improved.

I think a lot of people have unintentional overflow from one category to another. If it's a boring movie to watch, it's hard to pay attention for the entire thing, which means that all the little details may be lost on the viewer, which may cause the technical score to drop. In a perfect world it shouldn't work like that, but unfortunately it does.

FODA, for what it's worth, yours is one of my more frequently viewed TASes. Rolling Thunder was one of my favorite arcade games in the mid-to-late 80s and is one that kept me coming back despite its ridiculous difficulty and punishing style. Rolling Thunder (NES) manages to be a lackluster port by virtue of Namco/Tengen somehow making the controls even stiffer and more unforgiving. However, the programmers did reasonably well with aesthetics. I can't expect too much more graphically from a 1988/1989 NES game, and even much of the music survives the transition relatively intact. Because it's such a "straight" port, absent the rampant "consolizing" from late 80s arcade translations, I'm kinda "seeing" the arcade version instead of the NES as you play, which holds value for me. Since I'm not playing, I'm not a victim of the terrible controls and am free to wax nostalgic in my mind. Of course this isn't a perfect process. Scenes where you fire two or three bullets in advance I'd fire about eight to hit off-screen enemies exactly as many times as necessary, but displaying half a dozen targets isn't exactly the NES' forte. Still, you manage to create tense moments. While watching most TAS videos there's not a doubt in my mind that the player is going to make it out alive, but I had concerns in areas such as nearly the entirety of Story 3 Area 5 where it seems that one of those bullets or bombs *has* to make contact. Technically, the game plays very well. I found the damage boosts especially thoughtful. Early in Story 3 Area 5, the hero survives all the projectiles but gets nabbed by a thug for a boost--and he makes it out by the skin of his teeth. Another tense moment is at 6:25 where you use a damage boost's temporary invincibility to avoid being shot. As an aside, it's great to know the damsel in "distress" had time to dye her hair blonde for her final bondage scene then back to black upon rescue. Maybe you could go through the game twice next time; this damsel looks like she could drop a few pounds while waiting. I conclude with a disclaimer that I may not have a pedigree taste in TAS videos since Altered Beast videos, the other gatherers of lowest ratings, are another favorite of mine.