This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1473: georgiek's NES Joe & Mac in 09:55.42

Voted no, I stopped watching around the third or fourth boss because it looked so bad. There isn't much of a TAS look to this, you move very carefully at times like you were afraid of being hit, you miss loads of shots for no reason, your attacks on bosses are inconsistent (sometimes you shoot once, sometimes twice, sometimes quickly, sometimes spaced out) and you take damage for no apparent reason yet there are some waits that look like they could have been avoided by accepting damage. Be consistent on when you take damage, make sure your attacks are optimal and generally tighten your movements because right now it looks like you played this in realtime.

This game was on the NES? Had no idea. The boss fights look very unoptimised. Heck, the plant boss alone you waste time hitting that small plant and don't even defeat it. So many missed/wasted shots; I'd find it hard to believe they were all for a purpose (ie: luck manipulation). A good start, but needs much work. And preferably try a version of the game that has more than one music track.

Hi georgiek, congrats on a first submission. With that said, here's some (hopefully) constructive criticism. There is a massive amounts of missed shots throughout the game, which detract a lot from making this look like a TAS. You also take damage for seemingly no reason in level 2 (from the plane bomber), but then don't take damage in level three where it could have been useful (instead you chose to attack the angry plant thing on top of the walkway right before the boss for 5 seconds). The first boss fight was rather dull, you could have chosen to get closer to him, or if not, try doing something more than just standing and jumping. The third boss fight was HIGHLY unoptimized, due to damage taken, shots wasted on the smaller plants, missed shots, etc. Similar comments for the 4th boss fight. The fifth boss was a little better, but still needs some work. Anyway, these should be enough suggestions to keep you going for a while. I suggest you redo this, spend about 4 times as many rerecords as you did, use frame advance to make sure that all shots connect and have a purpose, and I bet you can shave this to under 9, possibly under 8 minutes. I didn't have any knowledge of this game before, but was amazed to see that the entire SNES version (which happened to be my first submitted, and subsequently cancelled, TAS) has the EXACT same levels and bosses, they're just about 3 times longer. I think this one makes a much better choice of game since it's so much shorter, but it has a ton of work to do on it.

This game was on the NES? Had no idea.

My thoughts exactly. I looked up the game at a multi-console listing source and I have a Joe & Mac Caveman Ninja alright...but on GENESIS. The only Joe & Mac games I saw on NES were bad/overdumps, but weren't titled Caveman Ninja.

There is a good dump of the game for NES, but you're right, Caveman Ninja isn't part of the title. I think they tacked it on to the second generation games on the 16bit consoles. EDIT: Caveman Ninja is the name this was released under in Europe.

I really liked this game.. on SNES. The NES version is horrible.

You should start a thread in the appropriate forum, and post WIP once in a while, you would get feedback, and maybe other will find tricks that you where not aware of. That's a good thing to do, and Welcome to the forum :)

georgiek, you may want to cancel this submission since it's obvious what the outcome will be. A cancel looks better for your track record and saves our judges some hassel.

I didn't have any knowledge of this game before, but was amazed to see that the entire SNES version (which happened to be my first submitted, and subsequently cancelled, TAS) has the EXACT same levels and bosses, they're just about 3 times longer.

How can they be exactly the same if they're three times longer? Do you mean that everything moves thrice as slowly?

The platforming sections do nothing for me, the gameplay looks very sloppy, and the bosses look like they could be completed several sections faster than what they are. I don't even TAS games and this looks bad in my eyes. No vote.

I didn't have any knowledge of this game before, but was amazed to see that the entire SNES version (which happened to be my first submitted, and subsequently cancelled, TAS) has the EXACT same levels and bosses, they're just about 3 times longer.

How can they be exactly the same if they're three times longer? Do you mean that everything moves thrice as slowly?

Exactly was the wrong word, they have very similar layouts/themes and bosses. It looks like the programmers took the NES game, said "Well this looks good, and we don't really want to think any harder about making a new game, so lets just make the levels a little longer, spice up the graphics, and shove this baby out the door!" There were a couple new levels in the SNES version, but overall, it was just a longer and prettier version of the same game.

It looks like the programmers took the NES game, said "Well this looks good, and we don't really want to think any harder about making a new game, so lets just make the levels a little longer, spice up the graphics, and shove this baby out the door!"

The arcade game was before both versions, and the NES game was made by a different company (acting under license).. so it's more like "Well, that NES port sucked, why don't we make ours closer to the arcade version, which we also created?"

I did a test-run of the first stage of this game today, and by using a different strategy on the boss, I managed to beat it 415 frames (6.92 sec) faster. Here it is. I'm not 100% sure that my strategy on the boss is the fastest one, but I don't think it can be improved much more (if anything). You might also want to take a look at how I played the level - as you saw, I killed more enemies, and didn't miss any shots. Around frame 1350 I kill both the bird and the dinosaur, a very hard thing to do actually, even with frame advance, but it looks pretty impressive. :) So, when you redo this, make sure that it's at least as fast as my .fcm on the first stage, and try to keep the entertainment level up on the levels too. Good luck!

om, nom, nom... blech, stale!