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The Control Deck Test Cartridge. Obviously "fast play" isn't an issue here - as you can see by the last several frames of the movie, the entire thing could be completed in about 10 seconds.
The real hook of this movie is the music that is inserted into the input test. I wrote a program that converts a text file containing the notes to play and append the appropriate input onto the end of an fmv file. Due to frequent nesmock use, you'll have to specify acc=8 and bc=0 in the FCEU movie playback dialog, as this information was lost.
The seven songs played are, in this order:
  • A simple scale, up, then down twice as fast
  • Mary Had a Little Lamb
  • Chopsticks (meant to show off the two-note chords this is capable of)
  • Ode to Joy
  • Row, Row, Row Your Boat
  • Au Claire De La Lune
  • Rain, Rain, Go Away
At this point I was at a loss for songs that were short, operated in only one octave, and didn't require any sharps or flats; otherwise I would've included more.

The Program

The program I wrote is fairly simple, and also very unsafe due to lack of time to clean up the bleeding edges. The format is simple. It loads the file and looks for an integer, then two characters. The integer represents how long it will play the note (due to many botched-up chainsaw surgeries done on the code, it does not actually correspond to a number of frames, but comes pretty close), and the two characters represent what notes to play (A, B, C, c, D, E, F, G, or anything else for nothing). The two notes are played at the "same time" by rapidly alternating between them. One note is sustained with a simple auto-fire.

Notes

  • The rerecord count should be much higher - probably somewhere between 60 and 70 - because each time I ran the music-inserting program, I had to take a fresh copy of the fcm-turned-fmv to append to, which theoretically counts as a "rerecord."
  • At times, a song had to modified to fit into the one octave alotted. This occurs in Chopsticks (a few notes were removed) and Ode to Joy (a note was moved up an octave to fit into the range).
  • The notes are somewhat choppy because of how they have to be sustained.
  • The same concept used to play two notes could probably be extended to three or even four notes, but the more notes you do, the less "at the same time" they sound. Besides that, it's more trouble on the person composing the textfile because every available note that isn't being played is another x that needs to be manually typed out.
  • It's probably possible to make the single notes sound a bit better by using a two or three frame auto-fire, but this would have made writing the program more difficult. As it is, the program itself cannot determine whether it's playing one note or two, since it's all the same to how it outputs them.
  • If only player 1 and 2 played different octaves...

Happy April Fool's Day

In the immortal words of Upthorn, April Fools Day submissions should be:
1. Unique
I'm pretty sure I'm the first person to come up with the concept of injecting music into an input test, and if not certainly the first person to do it.
2. Funny
Obviously depends on your definition of funny. I don't really think it's funny per se, but it's certainly entertaining - I made it and have watched the whole thing through about 50 times while testing the various programs involved, and I still have yet to get sick of it.
3. Performed on April 1st
Pretty sure 7:08 PM 4/1/07 local time (GMT -6 D) qualifies.

Truncated: Despite the good votes, we have come to the agreement that this movie will not be published. See topic for details.

adelikat: This has been unrejected for reconsideration to the Alternative tier, due to more relaxed goal choice rules
FractalFusion: Re-rejecting for reasons brought up from this post onward.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1504: curtmack's NES NES Test Cart in 01:31.68
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Yes vote. There is no better example on this site of using wait times to entertain the audience.
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This was pure genius. Definitely a yes.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
JXQ
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I'm not able to get the file from the zip, but I wanted to let you know that if you change position 0x08 from 02 to 12, it will stop asking for those 2 values on the movie play screen.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
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Wow, that was really something novel. I vote for publishing it as a concept demo.
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upthorn
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Nice. This really was an original concept. I'm voting yes.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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This was amazingly nice to listen to, heh. My congratulations on creating the perfect April Fools movie.
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Original, and it's kind of cool that you turn something as mundane as a controller test into a music maker!
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What a wonderful originality it is that playing Beethoven's symphony on NES! Hoho,so much pleasantly surprise on April 1.
Just Run
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This is a very cool demonstration. voting yes.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
JXQ
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I'm still not able to pull the file out of the zip after downloading from Firefox or IE. Does anyone else have this problem or is it isolated to just me?
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
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I had the same problem, winrar was able to extract it though.
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Thanks for the comments. As for the zip file, I used 7-Zip, Deflate64 algorithm, which might for some stupid reason not be compatible with the Windows XP built-in tool. In any case, thanks, Xkeeper.
...?
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YES!!!! I'm entertained
Sorry, my english is really bad...
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${bother_to_vote}. If you know the test cartridge, you know it can play eight notes with the different buttons, and the arpeggio technique is familiar to anyone who knows a thing or two about chip music. For me there was nothing interesting in this submission. (And for the record, I didn't know about the test cartridge). I think this submission has had enough publicity by now, does not need more.
AnS
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I DID like watching this movie, so I voted Yes. But as for publishing... I hope author would consider cancelling this submission. The idea isn't novel, although realization is. And there's no need to make AVI - I don't think someone who can't find ROM will enjoy such type of movies.
adelikat
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I pretty much agree with everything Bisqwit said. It was cute, but I don't think it should be published.
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om, nom, nom... blech, stale!
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I just dug this up from Gruefood Delight, I'm always happy whenever I find entertaining movie like this. Even though it has been gruefood for 2 years, I don't hesitate to vote yes!
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Hey, this has come back! I'm glad to see this again. I still have little idea what's going on now, but I'm sure this TAS deserves to be appreciated.
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This is a TEST cart and not an actual NES Library title or romhack of a game. Despite there being a clear defined ending... that is still irrelevant as this is NOT a game. Please let this be swallowed up and forgotten as the bad joke it was. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
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I remember this submission. It's nice, but unfortunately it does not satisfy the requirements of Vault. It's not a game, and it doesn't reach the end as fast as possible.
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It's impressive that this was done by a bot, but the result isn't very impressive. From a TAS standpoint, anyone could have done this. Plus, it's not even a game, as MKRF said, just a test ROM. I don't think this should be published, but it's a good movie for Gruefood Delight, since I was just thinking about coming back to watch this after a few months.