Hell yeah submitting this on an iPhone yall, technology is great.
Also yay first Vectrex submission
The game of Spike is very simple in concept, Spike’s girlfriend gets kidnapped and you must save her. You need to grab the key which spawns on the right side of the screen. The level it spawns at is random.
As Spike, you can change the placement of the ladder in 1 of 4 places, and once you reach the top you get Molly’s cage she’s in, and that can be moved too just like the ladders. normally if you climb a ladder when there's no platform, Spike will fall down, However there is one frame you can perform a jump on.
Every time you kill enemies, it reverses the direction of the platform movement.
This TAS plays until the difficulty loop stops increasing, here is a watch file with relevant information: userfiles/info/68504035602603986
Big thanks to Spikestuff for the help in finding the difficulty loop.

Samsara: Hi, literal Vectrex owner Samsara here. I apologize for my dirty Vectrex, now out there for the world to see because I didn't have the time to deep clean it before this submission came in.
As a literal Vectrex owner, the owner of a literal Vectrex, naturally it is my duty to judge the site's first Vectrex submission. This is literally why I came back. I have fulfilled my mission, and I am resigning from my position immediately not going anywhere, sorry, the site needs at least one (1) literal Vectrex owner at all times or else it'll explode. It's like Speed, except instead of Keanu Reeves, you just get someone who owns a literal Vectrex. Not a figurative or metaphorical one! I can't stress that enough. Literal Vectrex.
Alright, enough Vectrex signalling. I don't own Spike on my literal Vectrex,
Okay, seriously. Given that this is the first Vectrex submission, naturally I was inclined to take a deeper look at the optimization of this run. The main thing that jumped out to me was the fact that delaying entering the goal could actually affect the speed of the victory jingle, however in practice I was unable to get any improvements with this knowledge. The run as a whole looks well-optimized, and I can confirm that the difficulty is maximized via the WCH file, meaning that a submission that plays less levels cannot obsolete this one.
I am accepting this to Vault due to overall poor entertainment feedback, however I am also setting it to Delayed until BizHawk/the site parser correctly reads Vectrex submissions at 50FPS so that the movie is published with the proper time, because as a literal Vectrex owner I am obligated to ensure that it is treated correctly.
EDIT: The Vectrex framerate has been fixed and the submission now has the proper time. Setting to Accepted. Vectrex!
Vibri: Molly be like "Help. Spike". But they don't know I'm Vibri and not this "Spike" that they're calling out for.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6992: EZGames69's VEC Spike in 04:31.04
adelikat
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Voting no because this wasn't submitted by Spikestuff and not submitted on April 1st
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Post subject: I mean I'm voting NO regardless, cause lol "Entertainment".
Spikestuff
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adelikat wrote:
Voting no because this wasn't submitted by Spikestuff and not submitted on April 1st
I also didn't consent to this travesty of such messy inputs, I'm completely disappointed in this TAS and the point of "not April Fools" is the real tragedy. (claiming myself btw, if it wasn't obvious)
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+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
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While its a nice joke, and somewhat funny for the first few bit, it just becomes extremely monotonous and even 4 and a half minutes feels like a drag. Meh vote
I like to comment on submissions and look around the site. You have probably seen me before (if you have been around for a while) either on the site, Discord, or any other social media. I recently took up making temporary encodes for new submissions. Also, I never forget to greet Tompa wherever I find him! "when resyncing stuff sucks it's called Resuccing" - EZGames69 “If an emulator stops being accepted to the site it should be called an emuLAMEr” - EZGames69 "oh no discord, everything I say will now be logged forever, sdfsdf, time to hide" - Masterjun "just had to give therapy to a taxi with daddy issues" - psx Current Projects: Mother 3 (75% complete)
EZGames69
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It appears the time in the submission is wrong, the site seems to think the console runs at 60fps but it’s supposed to be 50fps.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Samsara
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EZGames69 wrote:
It appears the time in the submission is wrong, the site seems to think the console runs at 60fps but it’s supposed to be 50fps.
BizHawk is doing this as well (note Fps near the bottom): The proper time should read as 04:31.04. I've delayed the submission until either a fixed file is provided or the site parser is updated to reflect the 50FPS that VectrexHawk runs at.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
adelikat
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Do all vectexes run at at 50fps? Is this a site FPS issue, or bizhawk not providing the pal flag?
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Samsara
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It isn't a PAL thing. As far as I've seen, 50FPS is the best approximation for the Vectrex's "framerate" (modern Vectrex homebrew is optimized for 50FPS). VectrexHawk runs every Vectrex game (yes, I tested every single one) at 50FPS, at least, regardless of region (most games are tagged World or USA/Europe anyway), so at the very least it's a more accurate framerate than the 60FPS listed everywhere else.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
adelikat
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Ok, that’s an easy site change, I’ll make the update (will update bizhawk play movie dialog too while I’m at it)
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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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. ---- [4380] VEC Spike by EZGames69 in 04:31.04
Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343
I can max out the difficulty loop much faster unassisted. You see, difficulty is determined by score. and there's a glitch that can increase score very rapidly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qdX-R0-M6U naturally, under TAS conditions, the glitch can be set up a lot quicker, and abused to get the score much higher. The video i linked appears to max things out with two repetitions of the glitch, maxing it out on level ONE. this may be an illusion, but i'm pretty sure the actual dificulty depends purely on score, and the glitch is the fastest way to get score. the intermissions routine is separate, and gives up at a specific number of levels.
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Very clever, zaphod77!