Posted: 9/5/2020 3:30 AM
Post subject: Tecmo Super Bowl
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thohan99
He/Him
Joined: 9/4/2020
Posts: 2
Location: Utah, USA
The human WR on speedrun.com is 7:38. I have second at 7:54. I'd be interested in doing a TAS just to see what can be done to optimize down as far as possible. It is basically a matter of keeping the play clock moving, which means avoiding tackles, getting one fast score, preventing the other team from having possession, skipping half-time, getting a favorable kickoff from the CPU (kick meter goes through 1-3 times), avoid cpu timeouts, go out of bounds at the precise end of each quarter, avoid lag, exploit glitches. Most of which is non-trivial for humans. I suppose the ideal situation would be to have the kick returner expend the entire quarter on a kickoff, and then have a RB that is sufficient to avoid tackles to also never get tackled. While the safety animation is shorter, it requires the CPU to have possession, so the ideal score would probably be a half-time or end-of-game field goal. Anyway, that's what I'm going to do. Any reason why this would be rejected? Thanks!
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Posted: 9/5/2020 7:19 PM
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DrD2k9
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Editor, Judge, Expert player (2221)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1091
Location: US
Arcade TAS of 2023 Exotic platforms TASer of 2020 First edition TAS of 2020 Gameboy TAS of 2020 Exotic platforms TASer of 2019 Computer TASer of 2017
The biggest deterrent when it comes to various sports games is that many of them have a clock that runs for a preset amount of time. Thus there's no real way to "speedrun" them from the standpoint of two runners competing for the fastest time; because no matter what is done in-game, the final run time can be matched fairly easily. This is one reason that it's difficult to get the TAS of a sports game eligible for vault publication. Moon tier publication would require a certain level of audience entertainment value for publication, but wouldn't be as restricted by the time factor. If you can prove that there are indeed methods to reduce the overall time of this game somehow and prove that it's not trivial to do so, there MAY be a chance it could be published in vault. But I think vault publication would be a very tough argument for Tecmo Super Bowl as it sounds like the only way to minimize time is to avoid clock stoppages. While it may not be exactly easy to accomplish (even in a TAS), the minimum possible time is still limited by the game clock. Thus, no matter what any TAS author chose to do in-game, as long as the clock never stops, the minimum possible TAS time will be achieved and is effectively pre-determined. Ultimately, the decision would be up to the site's judging team (of which I'm not part). So to answer your question as directly as possible: A TAS of Tecmo Super Bowl may be rejected as un-publishable in vault if it doesn't attain a high enough entertainment response from viewers of the submission to warrant publication in the Moon tier. EDIT: Please do not let this response deter you from TASing the game if it's something you want to do.
Posted: 9/5/2020 10:08 PM
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thohan99
He/Him
Joined: 9/4/2020
Posts: 2
Location: Utah, USA
Well, I'm having a heck of a time keeping Tim Brown from getting tackled on the kickoff, but that's just me. I came from a speedrun.com mentality where getting the fastest time is everything. Whether it is considered non-trivial in the TAS universe I reckon is something for others to sort out. That said, if it's just a Moon-type, that's fine. I reckon there will be some appreciation by anyone who has played TSB and much more by the very small sub-set who have speed-ran (speed-runned?) it. But, again, that's up to whomever it's up to. I'll submit it and we can go from there. Thanks for the reply!
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