(Link to video)
This submission is for the Sega Master System game Rocky, a boxing game loosely based on the films. It has only 3 bouts, and no story whatsoever

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.8
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates the AI pretty heavily
  • Unfortunately, no epic 80s training montage

Comments

This game contains 3 fights from the Rocky film franchise. Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, and Ivan Drago. There isn't really a plot to speak of in this game, so I made my own.
Rocky has entered a world championship boxing tournament in downtown Philadelphia. When he arrived, there was no parking available so he double parked on South Street. He has 4 minutes to win all 3 bouts and get back to his car to avoid getting a ticket.
As far as boxing games that aren't Punch-Out go, this one is not terrible, though it is short. The AI has some weaknesses you can exploit, and we do so heavily.
Past that, there are also training events before each fight. Train successfully well and you'll gain some punch power, punch speed, etc. The problem is that each of the training modes take 45 seconds to complete and don't confer enough benefit to offset that time cost. The middle one is absolutely brutal for RTA runners, having to maintain a 7hz or better mash for 45 seconds. Yikes.

Apollo Creed

Creed is not very aggressive, so you can walk him down to get into range. When you throw 3 straight "normal" punches your next punch will be a powerful straight, an uppercut, or a hook to the body depending on distance and button combinations. The uppercut by far does the most damage and Creed is susceptible to it. We back him into the corner, manipulate him to block so we can close into uppercut range (which is very close) and lay into him until he goes down.
You can win via knockout (opponent's health is low enough when you knock them down) or TKO for 3 knockdowns. TKO is faster because you have to deal with less "counting." If they get up at 6 and you knock them down for a KO you're sitting through 16 "counts" as opposed to 11 or so going the TKO route. The third knockdown doesn't trigger the get up cutscene.

Clubber Lang

Lang is a pain in the ass. Uppercuts are very hard to perform on him so we stick with body shots and straight punches. We intentionally miss a few punches in this fight to line up positioning better, as well as being cognizant of the knockdown timer (basically manipulating their health to be where we want it for the knockdowns.)

Ivan Drago

Drago is amusingly the fastest and easiest fight in the game. He is very aggressive which is also his weakness. By blocking appropriately we can get into position for the uppercut spammage pretty easily and he goes down with relatively little effort. Other non-uppercuts are mixed in when necessary to keep the chain of hits going.
And with that, we won the world title, didn't get a ticket for double parking, and celebrated in victory with Adrian.

GoddessMaria: Claiming for judging.
Samsara: Resetting to New, as there has been no judgement activity on this submission in several months.

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: Unlike the RTA WR, this TAS skips all training sessions. This would allow to bulk up more power for Rocky, which would allow to beat the second and third matches faster. However, that also results in an overall longer movie, so that would ultimately be a sub-optimal strategy for a fastest completion TAS (aka any%). However, I also want to note that we may consider passing the training sessions as a form of additional challenge, and thus applicable for 100%. There is an obsoleted TAS that does that.
Accepting as improvement of the current fastest-completion publication.

EZGames69: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7715: ShesChardcore's SMS Rocky in 02:55.64
Alyosha
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https://tasvideos.org/3589M It looks like your first fight is faster, so maybe you can improve the other 2 from there, but you certainly don't need to do the training sequence.
ShesChardcore
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Alyosha wrote:
https://tasvideos.org/3589M It looks like your first fight is faster, so maybe you can improve the other 2 from there, but you certainly don't need to do the training sequence.
Wow, I swear I searched to see if anyone had submitted this before I started it. Thanks for pointing that out. I don't know how I missed this. Must be getting old haha. I'll look into the training skip. Thanks for the heads up!
ShesChardcore
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Requesting a judge replace the current file with this improvement: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638003308700524371
Patashu
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Might be worth including in the notes what the differences are between training vs no training (in case anyone ever looks at this again??)
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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. ---- [4996] SMS Rocky by ShesChardcore in 02:55.64
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Joined: 11/24/2012
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when the trainer/coach hit the mat during the down part, do you know if the hit speed is random? if you can manipulate it might be fun to make him hit the mat very fast ahah