Submission Text Full Submission Page
This is story about golden days of Robocop. At the time, he is finally released from his addiction to baby food and liked a healthy lifestyle. He has taken interest in athletics and learned about racewalking, long jumps and ice skating. Because of lack of ice, he tried to skate on asphalt with well greased heels. But he also not forgot about his duty and always ready to save city from bankruptcy.
  • FCEU 0.98.16
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Take damage to save time
  • Manipulate luck
This was only of NES Robocop games which I never played on real console. When I saw it in emulator, I found it very difficult, because movements of Robocop has very big inertia, and I has been unable to finish game even with save states. It's probably most fast-paced game of all Robocop-only games (not including Robocop vs. Terminator for SMD), so I decided that it's worth to try to make TAS of this game, and also see how it ends.
In order to finish level sucessfully, Robocop must collect enough 'nuke' and arrest enough enemies (touch them instead of shooting) or collect enough special objects (like hostages). If any of those tasks isn't accomplished, Robocop must be 'calibrated' before going to next level. Calibration is a shooting level similar to Operation Wolf, which ends after shooting of enough targets. It's always slower than collection of needed stuff, so it always avoided in this run. In some levels needed stuff is hidden into bonus-like sublevels, which is not necessary must be completed, so Robocop can die after collecting of enough stuff to exit from sublevel.
Horizontal movement of Robocop is slowdowns when he shoots, so it's usually faster to jump over enemies, but that is not always possible. Though Robocop has energy bar, some enemies and most of 'danger' background objects in some levels kills him immidiately. Other enemies is a 'solid', so Robocop can't move through them. Thus many enemies should be shoot anyway.
Luck manipulation is used for few times to get better timings of enemy shoots, platforms movements and energy walls. Unfortunately, most of moving platforms isn't random-based, so their position can't be manipulated.
There is no bosses in usual levels, only two dedicated levels with boss fights. In first boss fight Robocop must wait for some time before he will be able to attack boss. Second boss fight contains three phases. First time Robocop can shoot to any part of boss body, second time he must shoot only to boss legs, and last time he can shoot to anything but legs. In boss fight levels control mechanics is different than in usual levels. So, in second boss fight Robocop can move forward and backward while still face to boss, and also can shoot faster because of less delay between shoots.
Note about movie length. Movie ends when I press last needed buttons to make final damage to the boss. No more input is needed to see end screen of game. However, game waits for button to skip end screen, then hi-score screen will be shown, and when name will be entered, game goes to title screen. I decided that skipping end screen and entering name isn't needed actions to finish game, it's like pressing reset or power button after other games shows 'the end'.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15576
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1930: Shiru's NES RoboCop 2 in 11:20.45
Skilled player (1410)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
I also played this game on the NES. The game is very hard, and sometimes quite fast paced. Some planning is also required with the nuke collecting, so I think (although there are obviously games more suitable for a TAS) that this game definately deserves a published TAS. I see you planned out nuke collecting quite well sometimes in this TAS. You did some research on how much was exactly needed to collect, and then didn't waste any time collecting more than needed. Also otherwise there are no really apparent mistakes. I however also TASed the first level of this game. Jumping over enemies is definately faster than shooting them. I also collected the nuke at a few different places. At the end of the first level, I am about 406 frames (nearly 7 seconds) ahead of this run, which is quite a lot I think. Most time was gained on the bonus stage, where, since I collected nuke at other places, was able to kill myself instead of finishing it. In the 'overworld', I also saved more than a second. Here is the fcm: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/173576291/Robocop%202%20%28U%29.fcm Like I said, I definately think there should be a TAS published of this game, as I think it's entertaining and somewhat suitable for TASing. I do think this TAS can be improved by quite a lot, so I'm gonna vote 'meh'.
Joined: 3/9/2008
Posts: 17
Location: Russia, Moscow
Baxter wrote:
At the end of the first level, I am about 406 frames (nearly 7 seconds) ahead of this run, which is quite a lot I think.
Impressive, considering how much time I wasted to making this run. I cancel it then. I don't plan to redo this TAS, so I'd be glad to see anybody's else run of this game in future.
TASVideosGrue
They/Them
Joined: 10/1/2008
Posts: 2785
Location: The dark corners of the TASVideos server
om, nom, nom... blech, stale!