CoolHandMike: After looking over this and considering the goal sadly this will need to be Rejected. The issue is that the goal is not different enough from the standard fastest completion. The only noticeable route difference is that the fire flower is acquired. If we consider the other branches for Super Mario Bros. for NES there are lots of different goals that really change how the authors go through the game. This does not meet the goal criteria, even if I think the optimization is ok although there are a couple issues. I was considering Playground, but again the goal is also not different enough. If the author of this submission wishes to submit another tas for Super Mario Bros., please ask for advice about the goal first. This could point the author in a good direction and prevent wasting the author's time. In summary this was a good effort though for a submission, but the goal was not different enough from fastest completion.
Other than merely obtaining the fire powerup (and using it to dispach a few enemies where it's not extra beneficial to kill in this manner), this run doesn't appear to offer anything significantly different in general gameplay from the baseline run. Therefore, in my opinion, obtaining the powerup is effectively just time wasted, as its acquisition doesn't benefit the run in any meaningful way. If it was worthwhile to have the fire power (by either being faster than a small mario run, or by offerring a significant difference to the overall gameplay experience) then this branch might be worthwhile.
Further, the time of this run is about 40 seconds slower than the baseline run. Simply obtaining the powerup doesn't take that long; so either there are unnecessary inputs at the end of the run that didn't get truncated correctly (I didn't check), or it's evidence that this submission lacks known optimizations that are present in the baseline run.
In my opinion, this run shouldn't be accepted for publication.
Joined: 5/5/2025
Posts: 33
Location: 🇺🇸 United States
DrD2k9 wrote:
Further, the time of this run is about 40 seconds slower than the baseline run. Simply obtaining the powerup doesn't take that long; so either there are unnecessary inputs at the end of the run that didn't get truncated correctly (I didn't check), or it's evidence that this submission lacks known optimizations that are present in the baseline run.
I think most of the extra 40 seconds is blank input, but I did notice a few optimization issues during the run such as slowing down on some staircases.
Other than merely obtaining the fire powerup (and using it to dispach a few enemies where it's not extra beneficial to kill in this manner), this run doesn't appear to offer anything significantly different in general gameplay from the baseline run. Therefore, in my opinion, obtaining the powerup is effectively just time wasted, as its acquisition doesn't benefit the run in any meaningful way. If it was worthwhile to have the fire power (by either being faster than a small mario run, or by offerring a significant difference to the overall gameplay experience) then this branch might be worthwhile.
Further, the time of this run is about 40 seconds slower than the baseline run. Simply obtaining the powerup doesn't take that long; so either there are unnecessary inputs at the end of the run that didn't get truncated correctly (I didn't check), or it's evidence that this submission lacks known optimizations that are present in the baseline run.
In my opinion, this run shouldn't be accepted for publication.
Yes. Around ~35 seconds are blank inputs after I complete the game (idk how to fix it) thus I put the title as 4:57.300 since that would be the correct RTA time.
About the Fire powerup, You're right, Its just that I assumed that since there is a speedrun category for the same thing, making a TAS for such category would make sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVPm0oioBww&ab_channel=Niftski
Thank you all for expressing your opinion on the viewing experience. Sadly due to my potato laptop, I couldn't remove the pink pixel at the left side.
If there's more that worsen the viewing experience, let me know to make those mistakes in case I ever submit a TAS again 👍
Further, the time of this run is about 40 seconds slower than the baseline run. Simply obtaining the powerup doesn't take that long; so either there are unnecessary inputs at the end of the run that didn't get truncated correctly (I didn't check), or it's evidence that this submission lacks known optimizations that are present in the baseline run.
I think most of the extra 40 seconds is blank input, but I did notice a few optimization issues during the run such as slowing down on some staircases.
The staircase slowdown on 8-2 I'd assume you're talking about is due to unfortunate placing of enemies (the spiny thrown by lakitu). The thing is, due to the European Version's (PAL) faster acceleration, the spiny does not have time to fall lower. If you run as fast as possible you will hit it and lose the fire mushroom. So unfortunately we have to slow down. Although, it looks like I slowed down too much, it is the closest by the frame you could slow down for it to fall.
This does not look like a bad tas at all. The main issue is the goal since the only real difference is picking up the fire flower. In the future you can truncate the file by right clicking in TAStudio on the frame after the last input and selecting "Truncate Movie".
Joined: 5/5/2025
Posts: 33
Location: 🇺🇸 United States
I was thinking that, the optimization is pretty good here, the goal might be the issue because it does not offer much different gameplay from being Small Mario.
Is there some reason why the Fire Flower Mario for PAL is its own category and why is it speed run? Trying to understand what it brings that is unique about it from the standard speedrun.
Is there some reason why the Fire Flower Mario for PAL is its own category and why is it speed run? Trying to understand what it brings that is unique about it from the standard speedrun.
I can’t find that this goal is a common category at all (PAL or NTSC).
It’s not one of the category extensions on speedrun.com
They have stage 1-1 as fire Mario, but not a whole game category.
Quickly searching YouTube i found only a handful of fire Mario whole game runs. (Note: Small fire Mario runs are much more common)
