Goals:
  • Aims to kill everything
  • Aims for best score
  • Aims for perfect in every stage
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Getting the best time for the above goals
  • Promote this game
Final score is: 169300
Movie stops at 53126 frames
My first NES run ever. I liked Gumshoe when I was a kid. Never managed to run it through however. This game is SO hard.
Throughout the run you will probably notice that I don't manage to kill some of the enemies. This is because the hit box is out of range.
Plot:
Mr. Stevenson is an ex-FBI agent turned detective. He receives a ransom note from Mafia boss, King Dom, who has kidnapped Stevenson's daughter, Jennifer. Stevenson must collect the five Black Panther Diamonds within 24 hours in order to see his daughter again.
For more info about the game, check Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumshoe_(video_game) or use google.
Game play:
This is a semi auto-scroller. Stevenson is always moving to the right unless he bumps into something, he then faces left until he lands on the ground, or if you push the trigger to shoot him again.
Shooting is the way to make him jump.
I also find a cool glitch while making this run. Don't read ahead if you don't want the spoiler.
I found that one can travel through solid walls. I haven't experimented much with it at all. I don't even know if it saves time. It just looked cool so I left it in the movie for entertainment.
I do admit that the final boss could have been smoother, and also some movement improvement is likely possible.
Anyways. Hope you like this run anyways.
Cheers

mmbossman: It seems that light gun games don't make the most entertaining TASes. Rejected due poor viewer feedback.

adelikat: Accepting for publication to the Vault

Brandon: Publication underway.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2065: Highness's NES Gumshoe in 14:43.98
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Forgot to state that I used fceux-2.0.2.win32 to make the run. Ran it under wine since I lacked the interest to install and compile libs etc for the native linux support. :)
Player (120)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
This was interesting, yes vote here. I too was wondering about cutting out the horrible black flashing. So I wrote a little Lua script. Basically it watches RAM to determine the frame before it blanks out, gets a screenshot, then pastes that screen shot on to the subsequent "flashing" frames, while also increasing the speed to eliminate "stutter". However, I set it to a fixed number of frames for each shot, so sometimes flashing still comes through as it lasts longer. If one could find a reliable RAM address for "done flashing" this could be eliminated. I found some addresses that worked for the first level but stopped working later :( So, any other potentially good Zapper games?
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Skilled player (1402)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
Hmm, maybe I should just stop watching zapper TASes. I'm interested to see them but they just don't do it for me. Again, I don't think the TASer is at fault here, but the game. Going through the wall was somewhat nice. The game however was WAY too slow, but this wasn't even the main problem. This TAS looks just like it's supposed to be played. Nothing really inventive or surprising (except maybe that wall thing), and it just looked like nothing special happened. I can see that the game is very hard to play for real, but it looks like that's just because of the way it's controlled. If tapping the A button made him jump, it might be possible to do something like this TAS in real time. I'm sorry, but I'll vote no.
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Nice lua script alden. Thanks. Wonder if it's just better to skip the frames entirely? Not sure. :D
Player (120)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
That was my original intention... previous versions of Lua have a super fast speed mode that stops the emulator drawing to the screen at all, which would effectively "skip" the frames. Unfortunately it is not in FCEUX yet. There's probably some other way to do it I'm not thinking of...
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Active player (250)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
I had considered TASing this game a while ago just for fun (I didn't think it would get accepted to this site), but it seemed that while recording was possible, re-recording wasn't... did this TAS have to be made in FCEUX, or would there be a way (that I missed) to do it in the old FCEU? EDIT: Just watched the video and my vote is no. I'm pretty sure that when Stevenson jumps, the game lags one frame, and his jumps are not optimized (too many extra jumps). Also, I'm not sure the 100% goal is good for this game -- levels 1 and 2 can be at least twice as fast since you can skip the desert area in level 1 and the huge skull area in level 2 if you purposefully miss some balloons. I think the 100% only adds to the movie's repetition, but doesn't add entertainment. Also, I think the boss fight could be faster at the end.
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Well.. To me it is very much harder to collect all the balloons if I play in real time. Knowing that it is harder it also adds entertainment value to me when I collect them all. About repetitiveness I think it's the other way around. Missing some of the parts in the game is not adding up to the 100% run, thus I miss my goal, and hence it decreases entertainment value from the stated goal. And as stated, this run is not for fastest speed, because it has other goals that comes first. If it was a run for speed then skipping parts of levels would be a great idea.
Experienced player (822)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
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Poor game choice, plain and simple. I agree that an any% run would probably be more entertaining than this movie, but still probably not entertaining enough for publication. Voting no.
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Twisted_Eye
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Posts: 629
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I'm not finding these new light gun runs very entertaining :/ Also, this run's final boss battle didn't seem to be done very well, from a complete Gumshoe-ignoramus' point of view
TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... blech, stale!
adelikat
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Should zapper games be vaultable?
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
adelikat
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Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3585)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4738
Location: Tennessee
I guess so!
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Cool. Even forgot that I've made this one. :D
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2189] NES Gumshoe "maximum score" by Highness in 14:43.98
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Wouldn't this technically count as a 100% run since it collects everything? Also, despite the seizure inducing flashes, it's somehow more watchable than Front Line. Not sure how that work.