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Story:

Ms. Pac-Man is a 1982 maze arcade game developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Midway. It is the sequel to Pac-Man (1980), and the first entry in the series to not be made by Namco. Controlling the titular character, the player is tasked with eating all of the pellets in an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing “Power Pellets” will cause the ghosts to turn blue and flee, which can be consumed for bonus points.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is very similar to that of Pac-Man. The player earns points by eating pellets and avoiding monsters (contact with one causes Ms. Pac-Man to lose a life). Eating an energizer (or "power pellet") causes the monsters to turn blue, allowing them to be eaten for extra points. Bonus fruits can be eaten for increasing point values, twice per round. As the rounds increase, the speed increases, and energizers generally lessen the duration of the monsters' vulnerability, eventually stopping altogether.

Other Versions

The Genesis, Master System, and NES versions, by Tengen, and the Super NES version, by Williams Electronics, took a few liberties. They featured four different sets of mazes: the original arcade mazes, bigger mazes, smaller mazes, and "strange" mazes. There was also a Pac-Booster option that let players make Ms. Pac-Man move much faster which was only available in the original arcade game from a maintenance menu. These versions also allowed two people to play simultaneously, with player 2 as Pac-Man. The game ends at level 32, with an intermission where Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man say good-bye.

Movie Goals:

  • Emulator Used: Bizhawk 2.3.2
  • Starts from New Game File
  • Uses 1 Player In a Multiplayer Game
  • Uses Hardest Difficulty (Crazy)
  • Maze Selection (Arcade)
  • Starting Level (1)
  • Aims for Fastest Completion
  • Uses Pac-Booster for Faster Movement (always on)
  • Reaches "The End" Screen/Credits

Noxxa: Rejecting due to various routing/optimization issues that have been noted in the submission thread.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6715: Technickle's SNES Ms. Pac-Man in 20:25.43
Spikestuff
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So why did you choose to not use coop? Old (completed video) "Mini" Example: Link to video For posts about the Normal Map layout on the NES version that also used coop. Also I nuked the branch since "Crazy" is a difficulty and it shouldn't be mentioned. And "All Boards" is incorrect. Since it's a set amount of boards used in the Normal layout. You're not doing Random/Big/Mini in the same input file.
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EZGames69
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I agree with spike, why did you not use co-op?
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Post subject: 1P Vs. 2P explanation
Technickle
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I didn't use Co-op because I figured that 1P would suffice. I tested the 2P variation a little while ago today, and noticed that the screen might constantly move up and down, when sharing space between two players, and sometimes the game would desync, not constantly, but sometimes when sharing a 2P mode.
nymx
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Spikestuff wrote:
So why did you choose to not use coop?
Same here, I like the 2 player version much better; however, I don't think that should negate having two categories for this game. Perhaps two categories could be submitted, since I am interested in seeing the potential times for both? abstaining from voting for the moment.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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Coming from an arcade perspective, Pac-Booster feels pretty much like a cheat option to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with enabling it, but I'm not personally interested in such a run.
Spikestuff
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Ok. I'll pretend the game doesn't have 2 player for the fun of it. Did you know that you can go through the Williams Entertainment and Digital Eclipse splash screens actually faster? No you didn't that's why I wrote that. You managed to get past the Ms. Pac-Man screen sooner. Menuing is also shocking. You press Left to change the difficulty to Crazy but you didn't press Left to go to "Always On" instead you took the long way around. You're eating ghosts which is slower than actually avoiding the ghost in this version of [Ms.] Pac-Man. You also shouldn't be backtracking half the map. And if you think I don't know what I'm talking about. I whipped these up they're a bit half-assed since it's Solo and not Coop. Level 1: Level 2: You can have fun comparing Technickle's Level 1 and 2 while I have it compared to mine. And lastly. Your map maze routing should be similar or identical when TASing to the difficulty level. I write that since that's 100% the case in Coop, but a bit more lenient in Solo. --- For anyone at home wanting a comparison with Co-Op thrown in on the SNES version: Edit: Threw up an encode as well on the submission text.
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nymx
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Ok...so an encode finally showed up for this run. Now I can vote. Before I saw Spikestuff's effort, I noticed some routing issues...not to mention that eating ghosts are not a time saver. Now, I scrolled down and saw what Spikestuff did. This only confirms that I see it as un-optimized. As for entertainment...I started off with Meh at the beginning, but it started growing slowly. Since I played this game a TON in the arcade, I see a small enough of entertainment to vote yes now.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Post subject: Could you do a high score run as well?
GamesFan2000
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I'm voting yes for this particular run, but that's not the point of this comment. When it comes to the old arcade classics like this one, I like thinking about how to optimize the score across the entire course of the game. Since this version of Ms. Pac-Man has a defined end to it, I would love it if you decided to do a run where you went for a theoretically perfect score.
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Voting 'no' because the routing looks very unoptimized
CoolHandMike
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Seems strange to vote for yes on this given the known large improvements possible. I would say the author should delay/ cancel this until the improvements are added in. Holding off voting for now.
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
Spikestuff
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CoolHandMike wrote:
I would say the author should delay/ cancel this until the improvements are added in.
Since you did bring up the author. The author is very busy working on a Coop run instead and is completely fine with this run despite all the issues against it. No, I'm not making that up. (Update: There it is.) The same author is also an author who has on their submissions currently sitting at 2/2/2 (Rejects/Canned/Published). (Not to mention the elephant in the room on one of them) The same author who sometimes doesn't respond when things are fishy with their work, the author is also currently having net issues if you look at the Top Gear submission... that's why I made the temp encode to show what I mean on the issues. However, they were logged in after my comment about the issues on this TAS and didn't respond to it or decide on what to do. There's too many issues with this solo TAS as I've already pointed out. Delaying it won't help it. A Cancellation or a Rejection is better suited for it. This has to be redone from scratch- which technically they're already doing with a Coop TAS.
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