This is the NES port of the first M&M, the game that spawned a huge series of first-person RPGs and provided the universe for the Heroes spinoff series. In this run I use an item glitch to get the important items ASAP, skipping several go-get-the-key quests.
  • Emulator used: fceu-0.98.15 (FCEU 98.16 reportedly desyncs)
  • Abuses Programming Errors
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates Luck

Explanation of the glitch
If you press button B on a blank space in the main character's equipped list, the last (6th) item in the backpack list changes. The item ID is reduced by 1. The Useless Item, what you get for using all the charges on a plain item, is FF, and the two key items of the game happen to be FE and FD. This glitch is also used to get a high-value sellable item from junk, a flying carpet, and a King's Pass.

Walkthrough
Reading this section should answer most questions that come up.
  • Started a new game, named the main character, and took 4 members from the inn to fill player 1's inventory with clubs, help with fighting, and unlock stuff. I skipped character 2 because I only needed 5 chars total and I wanted the knight and robber close to the top of the list.
  • Stepped on a monster tile and made sure it was sprites, because only they drop gems. They also are made to drop a trivial item which I glitched into a pricey item. Without weapons equipped, only the main character and Sonja can strike enemies for damage.
  • Paid the leprechaun a gem for travel to Dusk.
  • Sold the cash item, bought two Magic Oils (2 x 1000), used one to give the other exactly 2 charges.
  • Glitched the Useless Item (first oil) into an Eye of Goros.
  • Recharged the EOG twice, since I need at least 6 charges on it.
  • Glitched the Useless Item (second oil) into a Key Card.
  • Bought a Skill Potion (600), left town, and glitched it into a Flying Carpet.
  • Flew to C1, got the Merchants pass.
  • Glitched Merchants Pass into Kings Pass and got another Merchants Pass. You need both.
  • Flew to E3, got and gave the briefest password, and entered the castle. The password is not valid until you hear it. DEEM is 17 frames faster than the next fastest possibility, SOUTH.
  • Confronted false Alamar. I needed the Passes to get through the doors.
  • Gave the answer to the soul maze; the inner santorum is now enterable.
  • Completed the 5-part astral plane sequence with the help of the Eye of Goros and keycard. The place is full of invisible walls.
  • I have to leave town but the guard won't let me out for my own good since I'm still level 1. The fastest way out is to leprechaun to another town and walk out from there.
  • Flew to B1. I'm already in B1 but it's still faster to fly to the other side of the map. Entered the gates for the end sequence.

Other observations
  • Stepping forward or backwards takes about half the time of turning left or right.
  • You cannot walk backwards through doors or soft walls.
  • There was a combat square less out of the way in town but I could not get it to give me an encounter with just 1 or 2 sprites. I tried hundreds of frames.
  • It's possible to make a no-damage run but waiting for the frame when the both enemies miss might take awhile.
  • Sometimes the lower window is made to scroll closed then open before displaying text. This wastes time. You can skip the animation by button pressing but sometimes the window partially closes anyway, no matter what frame you buttonpress.

Truncated: Tentatively accepted, assuming we can get the subtitles to work well. You are welcome to contact me if you want to help.

adelikat: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1418: Dammit's NES Might and Magic in 08:07.72
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Quite a well thought-out strategy you got there, I couldn't think of any possible improvement to it, other than the password part: while you seem to have chosen the smallest letter count, is it also the shortest possible word to type in (as in, with the letters close enough to each other to save time scrolling through them)? On the other hand, it was rather dull to watch, especially considering a lot of boring menu navigation and such, even though it was short. So I think I'll vote meh. Anyway, give or take, I like your thoroughness. Do you have any other projects currently?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 12/6/2006
Posts: 16
Always nice to see a potentially long RPG done in 8 minutes...but I wasn't really understanding all the strategies...plus my unfamiliarity with the game doesn't help matters either. I can't vote yet, but I'd probably still give this a yes because you really did a great job planning this out.
Emulator Coder
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 563
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Well that has got to be one of the most anticlimactic endings to an rpg i've ever seen :P The planning and execution were spot on, even though this isn't really the most entertaining run. However, if storybook-style games have been accepted and published , such as Deja-vu, Shadowgate, or The Uninvited, you can't really hold the fact that this is menu based against the run. Let me be the first to vote yes on this.
Player (81)
Joined: 9/16/2006
Posts: 63
I absolutely could not get it to play without desync shortly after making the Eye of Goros.
End of Line
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Trask wrote:
I absolutely could not get it to play without desync shortly after making the Eye of Goros.
I had the same problem, but it turned out it was because i was trying to play this in FCEU 98.16. Use 98.15 and it should play fine.
Player (81)
Joined: 9/16/2006
Posts: 63
Heh, yeah. Just came back to edit my post saying that. Watching now. EDIT: Man, that ending. Was entertaining enough to keep me watching it and any game broken that well deserves a yes vote.
End of Line
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Maximus wrote:
However, if storybook-style games have been accepted and published , such as Deja-vu, Shadowgate, or The Uninvited, you can't really hold the fact that this is menu based against the run.
Well, it doesn't really matter if they've been accepted; the fact is that I don't like watching furious menu action half the time of the run. It just isn't interesting to me as a viewer, hence the vote. The strategy, however, is indeed great.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Experienced player (574)
Joined: 1/11/2007
Posts: 103
Edited the submission to address the points raised. Not planning any other projects at the moment. This is my first TAS (and in fact this is my first post). Needless to say I learned a lot about efficient and inefficient TAS technique making this. I want to ask Maximus while he's here, any chance you could include multiplex/demultiplex functionality to your editor? I inadvertently had P1 controls overlapping with P2-4 and it would be nice to demux and clear the unnecessary data.
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Dammit wrote:
I want to ask Maximus while he's here, any chance you could include multiplex/demultiplex functionality to your editor? I inadvertently had P1 controls overlapping with P2-4 and it would be nice to demux and clear the unnecessary data.
I'll add it to the list. Try to keep posts relevant to the thread though, derailment seems to piss people off ;)
Experienced player (611)
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 612
The run itself seems to be absolutely well done but I can't say much since I've never played the game. The game itself isn't that bad to watch but it's also not that good either, kind of a neutral point here or there as well as good and bad points. Well I believe this deserves my yes vote as it's a well executed run and not too bad a game title.
Twisted_Eye
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Well this sure made me want to get back to work on AD&D Pools of Radiance. A very nice game to look at and play, it seems, and you sure knew exactly what to do to get this game beat as quickly as possible. I had to read the full submission text to understand what you were doing and to better guess why, since I've never played the game, but after that, it was all good. Nice glitch, excellent planning, and very short, especially for this type of game. I give it a yes.
Player (84)
Joined: 3/8/2005
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I have no idea what was going on in this whole run. It's too scary. It seems to be played well, but It is also boring. Since I don't know the game very well, I'm not sure what to vote but after reading the submission text(i had to for this one) I'm going to give it a yes vote to be publlished. Nice job.
Post subject: #nesvideos, please watch me :(
adelikat
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I always enjoy glitches, especially ones that drastically shorten a game and there is no doubt that the planning is very good. This game is completed much shorter than a normal playthrough. The comparison to the storybook runs (de ja vu, shadowgate, etc) is a good point though. What I like about De Ja Vu in particular, though, is that there are multiple ways to select items and navigate, leaving many possiblities for planning each room. There isn't that element here, but it does have a good amount of luck manipulation (which de ja vu does not). The problem is that the game is cool in every way except that it is visually unpleasant to watch. Unfortunately that is an important detail. I am not sure how to judge this one yet. More feedback from viewers would be much appreciated.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Joined: 11/16/2006
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I agree that while this run is very well planned out and beautifully executed.. It is also very boring to watch and in my case, due to my utter hatred of menu based/first person games, downright irritating. I would've preferred a lot more fights-there wasn't even a final boss or anything..wtf! I still have to give you credit for the work you did though, so I vote meh. The downsides of the run are exclusive to the game itself.
Joined: 12/26/2006
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Location: United States of America
The run was very well planned and optimized. This is certainly one of those "not for everybody" movies, but as a movie targeted to those who have played through the game, to be published with a recommendation to read the author's notes, I vote YES.
Editor, Experienced player, Reviewer (967)
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Just throwing this suggestion up here, adelikat and I have discussed it before: I think the problem with this movie is that you will not realize what's so cool about it unless you read the explanation in the submission. This can be fixed, if the explanations for what's happening are placed in the subtitles. I would like to accept this if this can be guaranteed. If not, then I'm pretty sure this will end up having a very low entertainment ratio.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
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Truncated wrote:
Just throwing this suggestion up here, adelikat and I have discussed it before: I think the problem with this movie is that you will not realize what's so cool about it unless you read the explanation in the submission. This can be fixed, if the explanations for what's happening are placed in the subtitles. I would like to accept this if this can be guaranteed.
That a very good idea, and I say: if that's what it takes, then make it happen!
Joined: 11/16/2006
Posts: 66
That would be a very good idea; watching someone cycle through menus isn't fun for anyone. If you at least had something to read while it was happening it would make the video more tolerable, but still not entertaining imo.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
I'm just going to reiterate my opinion for emphasis. Not every movie is going to have the large target audience of something like Super Mario Brothers 3. But this movie is well done; the run itself and the glitches used would be very interesting -- and I think entertaining -- to those who have played the game and can understand what the author is doing. So I'm all for publishing this movie, albeit with the understanding that the target audience would be smaller than for most other videos on the site. Also, I think that the subtitles are an excellent idea as well.
Post subject: Re: #1418: Dammit's NES Might and Magic in 08:08.72
Experienced player (574)
Joined: 1/11/2007
Posts: 103
So I just noticed this has been put on approved.
Truncated wrote:
Tentatively accepted, assuming we can get the subtitles to work well. You are welcome to contact me if you want to help.
Who's "you"? Is it me? Should I be writing up subtitles?
Editor, Experienced player, Reviewer (967)
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>Who's "you"? Is it me? Should I be writing up subtitles? Yes, "you" in the context of the submission is the submitter. You are in no way required to help out, but you know better than any of us when what happens in your movie. Just providing frame numbers for the things in your bullet list would be a great help. We can handle formatting the info after that.
Experienced player (574)
Joined: 1/11/2007
Posts: 103
I made a text file formatted sort of like the .srt subtitle files. I can't attach anything on the board so here is a link. http://rapidshare.com/files/17836968/subtitles.zip.html I realized while making these that subtitles could easily be abused, for "editorializing" the movie. (I of course didn't do this.) It raises the question whether the duty of making them should fall on the submitter or someone else, for future movies. Anyway good luck encoding.
Active player (432)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3516
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
I was looking forward to vote on this submission but when I replayed the run, I realized its one of those games which I really dont like. So I'll refrain from voting however I've noticed its been accepted so congrats.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Editor, Experienced player, Reviewer (967)
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Dammit: thanks for helping out, it is much appreciated. I will see what we can do with it. >I realized while making these that subtitles could easily be abused, for "editorializing" the movie. (I of course didn't do this.) It raises the question whether the duty of making them should fall on the submitter or someone else, for future movies. Yes, they can be misused. Supplying extra subtitles has been an option for a while, but very few (noone?) has taken the opportunity to use it, I think all extra subtitles so far has been added by the encoder. They are not used "as is" without checking and editing them, in any case.