(Link to video)
Submission Text Full Submission Page
This is probably the best Super Mario Bros. romhack ever made. This is a Metroid based game, so it's not a linear game, you have to explore all zones to get items that will help you to beat the game, such as Space Jump, Ultra Fire, Technical Fire and more.

Games Objectives

  • Manipulate luck
  • Glitch abuse
  • Complete the game as fast as possible

Movie Comments

Death Abuse

At the very start of the movie, i lost 4 lives intentionally because later on the run, when you take the first and only item, you have to go back at the Area 1 to finally get your way to Area 5 (last Area of the run). This is the fastest way to enter the Area 5, otherwise i had to travel through the pipes to another section of Area 1 and finally to the Area 5, losing time.

Area 4 Water Section

This was probably the hardest section to optimize, on the first section of water i slow down a bit to get a good enemies RNG, the enemy that i need is the Green Fish to get to the top of a platform faster.

Space Jump

This is the first and only item that i need to finish the game as fast as possible, Space Jump is basically a double jump, you can do a second jump in the air, this makes the gameplay so much easier and it's needed for a glitch later on the run.

Death to Area 1

This game has a Continue system, if you passed to another Area (this saves your progress automatically) or if you hit the Save Block and then take a Game Over, you can continue with the items that you got. After taking the Space Jump the only thing to do is go back to Area 1, but first you have to save your progress, the fastest way to save and then take a death is getting your way to Area 2.

Wrong Warp Glitch to Area 5

As you can see on the run, there's a Wrong Warp that is needed to reach Area 5 as fast as possible, this Wrong Warp works exactly the same like SMB1 4-2 Wrong Warp, manipulating On-Screen X Position, then entering the pipe the game thinks that you take the previous pipe and takes you to the Area 5. Space Jump is needed to do this Glitch since there is no wall to perform the screen manip, doing the double jump at the very top of a ceiling pushes you to the right side.

Bowser

This Bowser has 32 HP, but his attacks and movements are not so different to the original game. You want to Fire the Balls as close as possible to Bowser, that way the Fire Balls dissapears faster and you can shot faster. This game requires you to beat the game with some Keys to unlock the Best Ending but this run literally didn't take any Key, so that's why the game shows you the Bad Ending defeating Bowser, but not rescuing the Princess.

fsvgm777: Replaced movie file with one that removes some unnecessary jumps (and also corrects the re-record count). The total time remains unchanged.
Memory: Judging
Memory: Optimization looks fine.
So while on the surface this run appears ok entertainment-wise, the goal choice was a source of controversy. In my opinion this run doesn't really beat the game. The differences between good ending and bad ending are as follows
Bad ending:
  • No true final boss
  • Gets ???'s above Mario's head and asked where the princess is
  • No completion time nor completion percentage
  • After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to have all your previous items and progress. This is identical to a game over.
Good ending:
  • True final boss
  • Rescues princess and gets a "Thanks for playing"
  • Completion time and completion percentage are displayed
  • After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to lose all your items but have invincibility.
In my opinion there is a lot to suggest that the bad ending isn't really beating the game. To me it's a similar case to Igavania games where there is a clear fake ending of sorts. The fact that it is functionally identical to a gameover solidifies it for me.
Apparently the game does suggest you go to the final area before you get enough keys to get the true ending, but to me this doesn't really change things. As I see it, that could just mean they intended the bad ending as a sort of like half-way point for the game. The other indicators are just so much stronger.
However, we don't exactly have clear rules on this so admittedly one could argue that under the current rules there is nothing strictly prohibiting this. However, there is another problem.
The main thing this branch has going for it that true ending does not have is the wrong warp used, and I really don't see that alone as enough of a difference. Given that this is a romhack, it must be moons worthy in order to be accepted.
Rejecting.

Memory
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nymx wrote:
The part that I have concern over, is something that I haven't heard from anybody else, not even in the submission text. At 4:17, the TASer slows down to jump multiple times against a platform. This will need explanation...otherwise, I would immediately recognize this to be unoptimal. This is possibly a trick for RNG manipulation, but as I have discovered in so many different games and situations, there has to be a way to minimize this.
This is to manipulate Mario's position in order to perform the wrong warp, I believe.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
nymx
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Memory wrote:
nymx wrote:
The part that I have concern over, is something that I haven't heard from anybody else, not even in the submission text. At 4:17, the TASer slows down to jump multiple times against a platform. This will need explanation...otherwise, I would immediately recognize this to be unoptimal. This is possibly a trick for RNG manipulation, but as I have discovered in so many different games and situations, there has to be a way to minimize this.
This is to manipulate Mario's position in order to perform the wrong warp, I believe.
Ok...that's good with me then. I figured that so much good work had been performed, it wouldn't be just a random oversight.
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
Memory
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nymx wrote:
This is an interesting category. On one side, it satisfies the condition of "Beating The Game", which is made clear by the ending, yet some parts of the game is cut. HappyLee states that it should be an any% category, based off of the stated goal of "Bad Ending", which I agree with.
He kinda contradicts himself here by also saying:
HappyLee wrote:
It's necessary to point out that this branch should be named "bad ending any%", because Mario won't have the chance to fight the final Boss and rescue the Princess with this strat, doesn't count as really completing the game.
If it doesn't count as completing the game it's not acceptable, so I'm really not sure what he's saying here.
"nymx wrote:
On the note of excessive jumping, I do not have a problem with it as I see it only demonstrates how crazy the player can move about. Among all the posts, their seems to be division on the chosen "play around"; however, I'm not sure why Baddap1's effort is being singled out for criticism over the run of HappyLee...where I see existing play around, which is nice.
Afaik this was a problem with the original version, not the version we have now. EDIT:
Fortranm wrote:
From what I see in the video I posted earlier, getting a good ending makes you invulnerable when you hit continue afterward.
Is this just from getting a good ending or is there anything else?
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
nymx
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Memory wrote:
If it doesn't count as completing the game it's not acceptable, so I'm really not sure what he's saying here.
I've been thinking a lot about this situation and it is very tough. One thought that I had on the situation is the keys are there for a reason, to get through the game. If you don't have them all, then it terminates early. Just because you didn't loose all your lives and HP, doesn't mean the game was completed successfully. So I would ask, what was the intention behind the coder of this hack? Gaming progression can come through many different challenges presented throughout a run. Perhaps this was one elements that must be achieved in order to continue on? I am drawing a blank on other games that may have similar situations. I'm am leaning now on the side that most SMB games always saves the princess. This run doesn't do so....maybe it should follow suit in the same manner. After all, when we think of Mario...he always gets the girl at the end of the run. Isn't that what we expect?
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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nymx wrote:
One posting stated that this was an improvement over the existing publication, which I do not agree. For one, it does not collect all the keys, which "True Ending" does. This can show significant time differences between the two for routing and various other strats, thus...the current publication and this submission have two different completion goals. The true ending is met by http://tasvideos.org/1336M.html.
I agree with this, this is not an improvement to the published movie since they are two different categories/goals, this is way shorter than Best Ending run.
nymx wrote:
The part that I have concern over, is something that I haven't heard from anybody else, not even in the submission text. At 4:17, the TASer slows down to jump multiple times against a platform. This will need explanation...otherwise, I would immediately recognize this to be unoptimal. This is possibly a trick for RNG manipulation, but as I have discovered in so many different games and situations, there has to be a way to minimize this.
This is explained in the submission text as ''Wrong Warp Glitch to Area 5''
nymx
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nymx wrote:
The part that I have concern over, is something that I haven't heard from anybody else, not even in the submission text. At 4:17, the TASer slows down to jump multiple times against a platform. This will need explanation...otherwise, I would immediately recognize this to be unoptimal. This is possibly a trick for RNG manipulation, but as I have discovered in so many different games and situations, there has to be a way to minimize this. This is explained in the submission text as ''Wrong Warp Glitch to Area 5''
Thanks. That was the only part that I couldn't relate in your movie to the text.
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
Memory
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Memory wrote:
EDIT:
Fortranm wrote:
From what I see in the video I posted earlier, getting a good ending makes you invulnerable when you hit continue afterward.
Is this just from getting a good ending or is there anything else?
Double checked by replaying HappyLee's run and it appears that getting true ending is all that is needed for invulnerability upon "Continue"... but it also appears you no longer have space jump. This seems further evidence to me that the bad ending is a sort of fail state. EDIT2: So updated summary of bad ending vs good: Bad ending:
  • No true final boss
  • Gets ???'s above Mario's head and asked where the princess is
  • No completion time nor completion percentage
  • After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to have all your previous items and progress.
Good Ending:
  • True final boss
  • Rescues princess and gets a "Thanks for playing"
  • Completion time and completion percentage are displayed
  • After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to lose all your items but have invincibility.
This seems to be a "You're not done yet keep playing" but I would like some additional opinions.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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This ending looks like "you've half-completed half of the game". It's not a "you failed entirely" kinda thing, but not a definitive "you won" either. Even though I really like the glitch, and this is probably the only branch it can be showcased in, half-completing half of the game is not enough. The audience is unsure too.
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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We don't allow the bad ending for Aria of Sorrow: Even the warp glitch activates the good ending. Same thing with other IGAvanias, we only allow the true endings for them. This run looks like the same thing to me. Something that was brought up on Discord is that since the game tells you it's an ending, then it counts as one, and thus should be allowed. To that, I bring up NieR: Automata. Assuming that the only requirement for an ending being acceptable is that the game calls it an ending, then in the far future when Automata becomes TASable we could theoretically have 26 different branches, 21 of which being deaths, gags, or just "oops, you walked in a different direction during a critical moment!" Each one of these "endings" is explicitly marked as an ending, they all display a credits sequence (technically), but I think everyone would agree they're not acceptable on the site. Acceptable endings are always going to be a case-by-case basis, but I think a decent general guideline is to look at the ending's intent. The gag endings in Automata aren't intended to be legitimate endings, the bad endings in IGAvanias aren't intended to be a conclusion to those game, and this ending is more or less just saying "Ya fricked it! Try again!" The game even lets you keep your items after this ending in the same way that it does when you get a normal game over. If an ending more or less just tells you to go get a better ending, I don't think it should be acceptable. It's a great run, but this ending doesn't look like valid game completion at all. I'm hoping that warp glitch can be routed into an acceptable category.
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I think this run is fine to accept. You get to see a different Area-5 than in the Best Ending run, meaning it offers unique content, and it is an ending of a sort.
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Samsara wrote:
We don't allow the bad ending for Aria of Sorrow: Even the warp glitch activates the good ending. Same thing with other IGAvanias, we only allow the true endings for them. This run looks like the same thing to me.
Counterexample: [3507] SNES Clock Tower by ruadath in 01:53.46. Although you can argue that Clock Tower has an ending list that gets marked after you get each ending. I think the cases for the Castlevania series are generally not comparable to this one because of the routing in those games. It's not that "even" the warp glitch movie activates the good ending because the warp glitch lets you bypass the bottleneck that gives you a lesser ending altogether. The same goes for all other IGAvania games. Some of you might want to bring up the OoE movie, but the "bad ending" in that game gives you an actual game over screen instead of ending credits. (The same happens in PoR, actually). The fundamental difference between those IGAvania games and this one regarding the endings is that, those are actually more linear in the way that the bad ending triggers are usually literal choke points that block you from proceeding to the second half (or the last third) of the game, and even when they can't be skipped over with glitches, they usually don't require the player to do too much to proceed, at least not too significant for the time span of those movies. In the case of this movie, the player gets to the very end of the game and is only blocked off from the second phase of the final boss; to get the good ending, the player would need to do a lot more and the movie length would be more than 3 times as long, as we already know. I think a much better case for comparison here is Sonic 3: * [2741] Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles by Aglar & marzojr in 26:53.06 * [1387] Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles "Sonic, 100%" by marzojr in 55:48.80 You don't get to enter the true final stage unless you get all crystals emeralds; not to mention the "try again" screen after the credits, as per tradition of the series.
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Let's take a look back at this:
The submission text wrote:
This game has a Continue system, if you passed to another Area (this saves your progress automatically) or if you hit the Save Block and then take a Game Over, you can continue with the items that you got.
Memory wrote:
After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to have all your previous items and progress.
This sounds like the exact same situation to me. The game hasn't been completed, the fact that you keep all your items when you continue is proof of that. The game is literally treating this "ending" the exact same way it treats a game over. Comparing this to Clock Tower and Sonic 3 isn't really fair, because the "bad endings" in both of those games are actual established endings that actually complete the game, with other endings more or less being rewards for doing different things. The reason the IGAvania comparison works is because of the intent of the "ending" sequences. The scale of what you need to do to unlock more content VS what content gets unlocked doesn't matter, because that isn't what's being compared. What's being compared is the precise sequence where you understand that the game is "ending". PoR and OoE specifically give you Game Over screens, meaning that the intent is perfectly clear: They're not endings, they're Game Overs. Reload to a previous save where you keep all your stuff and go do it right this time. It's the equivalent of reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book, finding the quickest way to die, and calling that the end of the book. That's not what CYOA intends: It intends for you to go back to the start with the knowledge you've obtained and try again, now that you know that if you try to jump over the spike pit on page 115 then you'll fall in and get penetrated on page 69.
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This IGAvania analogy still falls short. IIRC, you still unlock all extra materials in HoD and AoS by getting the worst endings (even by dying during the true final boss fight in AoS, yes). Even the worst ending in DoS rewards you something since it unlocks the Julius mode, but I digress. "The scale of what you need to do to unlock more content VS what content gets unlocked" should matter because that determines how different a bad ending run could be from a good ending run.
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By that logic, you're saying this run is even less acceptable, since the already unacceptable IGAvania "bad endings" count moreso as actual endings (i.e, unlocking postgame features) than this run's "bad ending", which... Again, is really no different than the game's usual game over screen, just packaged differently.
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This state of failure is not a state of an actual completion compared to other games. (Also vote is Meh, but I don't think that part is relevant at the current time.)
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Samsara wrote:
By that logic, you're saying this run is even less acceptable, since the already unacceptable IGAvania "bad endings" count moreso as actual endings (i.e, unlocking postgame features) than this run's "bad ending", which... Again, is really no different than the game's usual game over screen, just packaged differently.
This is precisely why I'm leaning against accepting this. Having a cool glitch is one thing but honestly I don't think that should be enough for having a branch. One could easily design a goal for almost any game in order to showcase a unique glitch. Having said goal be acceptable I feel should not just be based on that. What if some other category gets the glitch? It's not very forward thinking. EDIT: Just double checked, getting a game over + hitting continue starts you at the beginning of the game with all previously obtained items. Exactly the same as this bad ending.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Memory wrote:
EDIT2: So updated summary of bad ending vs good: Bad ending:
  • No true final boss
  • Gets ???'s above Mario's head and asked where the princess is
  • No completion time nor completion percentage
  • After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to have all your previous items and progress.
Good Ending:
  • True final boss
  • Rescues princess and gets a "Thanks for playing"
  • Completion time and completion percentage are displayed
  • After returning to title screen, hitting continue you seem to lose all your items but have invincibility.
This seems to be a "You're not done yet keep playing" but I would like some additional opinions.
The differences between the bad and good ending, as well as the similitudes between the bad ending and the regular game over state, all gives the idea that the bad ending is just an alternate game over condition, and the game can't be considered as beaten there. Additionally, part of the audience showed disappointment for the goal chosen, which in my opinion is also a factor that should be taken in consideration. Despite all the in-game behaviors took in consideration, there isn't technically anything that objectively points out if the developers actually intended the bad ending as a game over condition or as something else, for example as a non-full completion notice. It may seem arbitrary to rely on feelings for defining where to draw the line, but sometimes it may be unavoidable, especially for glitched endings: just how much of the credits roll needs to be showed? And how much corruption? The audience reception is moreover determinant in this case, because we're dealing with a ROM hack, which means that it can't be accepted for Vault. So in the end I see both technical and entertain reasons why this submission shouldn't be accepted.
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Memory wrote:
EDIT: Just double checked, getting a game over + hitting continue starts you at the beginning of the game with all previously obtained items. Exactly the same as this bad ending.
For reference, this exact same thing happen if you complete the game with 8 Keys (Good Ending), it's not like this game tells you exactly that ''you didn't complete the entire game, play it again'' because this is a thing even for the original game (pressing Start at the ending you come back to the title screen).
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Baddap1 wrote:
Memory wrote:
EDIT: Just double checked, getting a game over + hitting continue starts you at the beginning of the game with all previously obtained items. Exactly the same as this bad ending.
For reference, this exact same thing happen if you complete the game with 8 Keys (Good Ending), it's not like this game tells you exactly that ''you didn't complete the entire game, play it again'' because this is a thing even for the original game (pressing Start at the ending you come back to the title screen).
That's not true though. Hitting continue from the good ending grants you invincibility. I checked. EDIT: You also lose all your abilities after good ending if you hit continue.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Not all bad endings are all equal.