Submission Text Full Submission Page
25 minutes and 57 seconds of duration
18077 rerecords
Around 7-8 days of game play
2 Players use the same chracter (Max)
Played at hardest level (Mania)
No death
Takes damage to save time
Uses glitches
Max Move List:
Regular combo - B repeatedly Hammer punch - Hold B and release
Slide - Forward, Forward, B
Mule kick - Hold B and press C (repeatedly if desired)
Knuckle bomb - A
Thunder tackle - Toward+A
Jumping hammer punch - C, then B
Drop kick - Left+C or Right+C, then B
Elbow drop - C or Left+C or Right+C, then Down+B
Flurry - Hold From front, Toward+B
Bear punch - Hold From front, B
Brain buster - Hold From front, Away+B
Jumping throw - Hold From front, C or C+Left or C+Right, then B
German suplex - Hold From behind, B
Atomic drop - Hold From behind, C or C+Left or C+Right, then B
1.STRATEGIES TO OPTIMIZE THE 2 PLAYERS SPEEDRUN:
1-Combo Glitch: This can only be performed in two players mode. To perform this, both players must surround two o more enemies and hit them in a kind-of simultaneous way, if it is done in the right way, the enemies will receive a lot of damage dying in most cases or just getting fatally wounded. This is only recommended to use when at least two enemies have long bars or when there are bunches of minor-health enemies. The main hitting ways to perform the Combo Glitch are:
Punch-Punch
Punch-Elbow Drop
Punch-Brain Buster
Elbow Drop-Elbow Drop
The Punch-Punch way is apparently the most powerful Combo Glitch, however, after performing this, one or both characters can sometines freeze, and to regain movement, they must be hit by enemies or by themselves. It is convenient to use it with long bars enemies.
The Elbow Drop-Elbow Drop way is very useful to annihilate crowds.
The Stage 6 is filled with Combo Glitches.
2-Extended Combo: Not as powerful or quick as the Combo Glitch, but can be useful in some cases. To perform this you need a enemy (Galsias or Donovans especially) or your own companion, hit you while you perform the last moves of the regular combo, this will result in a quick barrage of punches that can annihilate enemies in a jiffy.
See the Stage 1 Knifer and the Stage 2 Boss.
3-Block Glitch: Only compatible with Barbons or Zamzas. To perform this, you must attack them with the Thunder Tackle and make them block. With his trick you can remove bars quickly. The enemy sometimes can be knocked down, to avoid this, your companion should intervene and hit the enemy in a way that forces him to keep standing up.
The Stage 3 Boss is a good example of this.
2.GAGS:
If you hold your companion from the back and you jump, once in the air, the companion can perform "land" moves which results in some impressive and weird glitches, really they are not very useful, hence normally we use them in segments where the timer is off, just to make the audience laugh.
3.IMPROVABLE PARTS:
There are many parts that can be improved, the main reasons:
  • We didn't make some enemies appear the quickest possible.
  • We couldn't avoid some "avoidable" enemies (for instance some bikers in Stage 2).
  • We didn't use the Glitch Combo in some segments that really required it, or just we did it late or in a non-effective way.
  • We wasted time because due to screen reasons.
  • We wasted time purposely in some parts to make the speedrun more watchable.

Truncated: I will reject this run. These are the reasons:
  • It uses a cheat code to play the same character. This is not OK with the rules. If it was used for entertainment, for a limited period of time, that could be alright - see for example the Mortal Kombat 3 run. (We have an explicit section in the rules to allow codes which makes the game harder, so that one is OK. It is also given by the game.)
  • You aim for speed but admit you executed some sections slowly, or traded speed for entertainment.
  • Poor viewer response. About half of the people didn't like seeing two Max players. It's just more of the same as the 1-player run. This is by far the biggest reason.
  • On the up side, there were lots of interesting glitches and tricks. Like many people suggested, these would be very nice to see in a playaround movie aiming for entertainment.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15629
Location: 127.0.0.1
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Looks good overall, but I'm curious - is there any reason why you used two Max characters instead of someone else? I would have liked to see a bit more variety in the moves used, and I know each character has a different skill set.
mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
Pretty awesome! A 2p run definitely could show off more, especially with the glitches. Also, there was pretty much constant action. I thought two uses of Max was still cool, since his character is so comical. However, the quality of this run is definitely inconsistent. If I recall correctly, you guys had a slower boss fight for Round 1. You miss a combo glitch in Round 5 on two fat guys before pulling it off on some enemies immediately following. Also, most of the big fights of Round 8 (Bear Jr., Shiva, and Mr. X) were a little disappointing, since they didn't really use 2-player strategies and just involved repeated Brain Busters. On the other hand, some rounds were totally full of awesome (Round 6 definitely), and the run still looks great. Yes vote.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Mitjitsu
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 4/24/2006
Posts: 2997
I have the same feelings as the two posters above, but the action was so non-stop, I'd probably need to watch it a couple of more times to make sense of what I just saw. Yes vote.
upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (392)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Given that both players using the same character requires a cheat code and diminishes entertainment compared to two players using different characters, I would argue against this submission being published. However, I have not yet watched it, so I am not yet voting in the poll.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Qlex
He/Him
Joined: 2/25/2006
Posts: 193
Location: Available
That was like going to the theater. The kiss at the end was the only thing missing. I thought I would have been laughing my bass off all day long. Anyway it sure doesn't look extraordinary by technical means, but all the jokes with the two Max made my day. The two together look so oppressing! When I saw the 1 player mode, the final elevator stage I was like "How is Max surviving?!". On the contrary, about the 2 player mode at the same scene I thought "...How is the elevator working?!". Absolute Yes vote.
Joined: 10/16/2006
Posts: 174
I honestly don't know what to vote for this movie. And I never thought I'd say that when considering the possibility of a 2p SoR2 run. Like others have said, the action was good and the minor glitches are funny and even though the two players are the same character it's still entertaining, I still have to question why two Maxes? The general concensus seemed to be that Max and Skate would have made the most entertaining run. You'd still be able to perform the glitch where you can do massive damage to multiple enemies, but at least there would have been two movesets to enjoy instead of just one. I'm sure that having two Maxes is faster overall, but in a 2p run for a game like this, I would imagine that entertainment is way more important than time, especially since there is already a 1p run that focuses on speed. I think I'm going to wait a bit longer to see what others have to say before I vote.
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 1/18/2008
Posts: 663
upthorn wrote:
Given that both players using the same character requires a cheat code...
Yes, but there are many games already that have allowed cheats that only change character look / selection.
upthorn wrote:
...and diminishes entertainment compared to two players using different characters,...
This is not only somewhat subjective, you said you haven't even seen the run yet. Watch the run first before declaring this.
true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried
Former player
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 375
Impressions through stage 3: Oh, it's the 1P max run, only there are two of them now. Yawn. Stage 4: Oh, I see, insta-gib glitch. Huh. Stage 7: I hereby christen thee "Handshake of DOOOM" Stage 8: Throwing the boss over and over again? Uh, no. (edit) In conclusion: Needs less Max. Current run feels like a 1P Max run with a second Max spliced in to make big crowd fights marginally faster, but less interesting.
PCachu
He/Him
Joined: 10/1/2009
Posts: 166
The more you loved SoR2 in your misspent youth, the funnier you'll find numerous points of this run. And I all but worshiped this game back in the day, so I came close to horfing up a lung at times. Alien Head Pong and the Handshake Of Doom come immediately to mind. Yes get, but at this point I'd also gladly Yes any 2-player SoR run with at least one less Max, regardless of relative speed. My understanding is that Synchronized Thunder Tackle isn't going to be proposed as an Olympic event until at least the 2020 Games.
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Using the same character twice is, sadly, not particularly entertaining and doesn't add much to the game over and above having one player. If there were larger time savings, I might be able to let that slide, but I think that using two different characters would show off the game better. Also:
Submission text wrote:
There are many parts that can be improved, the main reasons: [...]-We didn't use the Glitch Combo in some segments that really required it, or just we did it late or in a non-effective way.
Why submit the run with known improvements? I can't support publishing a run where there are improvements of this nature known at the time of making it. This game deserves a two player run, but it deserves a better two player run than this. No vote, but with the recommendation that you improve upon this run (preferably with two different characters for variety's sake).
Former player
Joined: 11/8/2009
Posts: 29
Toothache wrote:
Looks good overall, but I'm curious - is there any reason why you used two Max characters instead of someone else? I would have liked to see a bit more variety in the moves used, and I know each character has a different skill set.
Max is by far the most efficient character, in speedrunning and watchabilty terms. In a speedrun with Max and Axel/Skate/Blaze, Max would do the whole work and the other character would be a mere shadow of him, only being in charge of helping to do the "Handshake of Shadow." A 2 player speedrun without Max would be extremely slower because neither of the three remaining characters lack of powerful moves.
mklip2001 wrote:
However, the quality of this run is definitely inconsistent. If I recall correctly, you guys had a slower boss fight for Round 1. You miss a combo glitch in Round 5 on two fat guys before pulling it off on some enemies immediately following. Also, most of the big fights of Round 8 (Bear Jr., Shiva, and Mr. X) were a little disappointing, since they didn't really use 2-player strategies and just involved repeated Brain Busters.
The quickest way to defeat Shiva and Mr.X is to repeat the Atomic Drop till they die, actually I also find it boring but is the only plausible way, with any other methods it would be much slower and even more boring, the main reason is that these bosses are incompatible with normal Combos or Combo glitches. The first Boss yes, it can be done better with strenuous work (many rerecords). As for the two fat guys in stage 5, if you mean the ones appearing in the boss, there is no need to kill them, they are used to kill the boss with the combo glitch tactic.
upthorn wrote:
Given that both players using the same character diminishes entertainment compared to two players using different characters.
Honestly, I don't think it is the case.
sgrunt wrote:
Using the same character twice is, sadly, not particularly entertaining and doesn't add much to the game over and above having one player. If there were larger time savings, I might be able to let that slide, but I think that using two different characters would show off the game better. Also:
Submission text wrote:
There are many parts that can be improved, the main reasons: [...]-We didn't use the Glitch Combo in some segments that really required it, or just we did it late or in a non-effective way.
Why submit the run with known improvements? I can't support publishing a run where there are improvements of this nature known at the time of making it.
When someone does a Speedrun, normally has the feeling that some parts could be done better, and we cannot spend eternities in replaying segments, besides, we had no previous speedruns to use as reference to see possible strategies. By the way, I don't think this run can be improved at all with other characters...
mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
bestiajerules wrote:
mklip2001 wrote:
However, the quality of this run is definitely inconsistent. If I recall correctly, you guys had a slower boss fight for Round 1. You miss a combo glitch in Round 5 on two fat guys before pulling it off on some enemies immediately following. Also, most of the big fights of Round 8 (Bear Jr., Shiva, and Mr. X) were a little disappointing, since they didn't really use 2-player strategies and just involved repeated Brain Busters.
The quickest way to defeat Shiva and Mr.X is to repeat the Atomic Drop till they die, actually I also find it boring but is the only plausible way, with any other methods it would be much slower and even more boring, the main reason is that these bosses are incompatible with normal Combos or Combo glitches. The first Boss yes, it can be done better with strenuous work (many rerecords). As for the two fat guys in stage 5, if you mean the ones appearing in the boss, there is no need to kill them, they are used to kill the boss with the combo glitch tactic.
Thanks for the response. If you say that is the best way to beat Shiva and Mr. X, then I'll believe it (though it's a shame... I would've loved to see a better Bear Jr. fight too). As for the fat guys in Stage 5, I mean two fat guys before you fight another Barbon-type enemy. These guys look like they had to be killed before you could move on. If it takes a lot of work to improve the first boss fight, it looks better if you do that work. A great TAS is not easy to make. You said that you two made this run in about a week... that actually sounds pretty fast to me. I do think it looks great, but it doesn't have quite the same polish as your previous 1-player run. I'm actually fine with a run with 2 Max characters. It is a little repetitive, but I think I was really kept amused by the sheer amount of carnage going on at once. You guys also did a pretty good job with the entertainment during points where it didn't waste time. I do think a run with two different characters shows more variety, but if it makes the fighting so much more one-sided, I would agree that it's not worth the variety.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Joined: 6/20/2008
Posts: 150
I agree with the general sentiment that there's not nearly enough variety in flow in this movie. You know what I want? A "No Max" run of this game, preferably 2P. There's some interesting arrangements accomplished in this run, but they happen (and, with two Maxes, rather need to happen) too frequently to consistently entertain even marginally. Technically, this is a good TAS. In entertainment terms, this is about par for the course, unless you've already seen any of the other Max 1P runs on the site in which case this is actually pretty boring (and I have, so it is). Not real excited about this run. Voting Meh, but primarily because I can't justify to myself voting No. And now I have to go watch the Streets of Rage 2P run for some good Axel/Blaze action to cleanse the palate.
honorableJay
He/Him
Joined: 8/18/2008
Posts: 104
Location: Albany, NY
I'm gonna vote meh on this one too. A few funny scenes, but it does feel too much like a carbon copy of the 1p run. Just like some of the other guys here, I'd like to see a no-max 2p run.
Joined: 1/11/2010
Posts: 1
Using Axel, Skate or Blaze would be definetly slower and less entertaining, supposedly Speedruns are connected with quickness... Anyway we can try to do a "Non Max" 2p Speedrun, but the movie could get longer and longer and many stunts would disappear... PD: To choose the same character we had to resort to cheats, but in all speedruns in the site, cheats are al so used to activate the mania difficulty mode.
BigBoct
He/Him
Editor, Former player
Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
Location: Tiffin/Republic, OH
You guys clearly know what you're doing, but I just wasn't entertained by this run. I don't know why not. Meh vote.
Previous Name: boct1584
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (980)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
Location: Sweden
I am probably the hugest SoR2 fan here (but you know that already since you took the moves list from my FAQ). It's obvious you have a very good technical understanding of this game. My opinion of this movie is that it contains way too much Max, and too much Atomic drop. You should let at least one character be someone else... Skate is a good idea (can keep up with the scroll speed). You don't need to aim for time. Aim for entertainment and variety. There are lots of other cool stuff you could do. Like kill all the bikers. Or trigger all the jets on boss 6 just because you can handle it. Do some double throws. Let the crazy stuff stay, like escaping from Max's atomic drop with a headbutt from Skate. And the Vehelits ping-pong. Overall, I don't find this to be publishable material. Please consider taking peoples' comments here into consideration and making a new, completely awesome run.
Former player
Joined: 11/8/2009
Posts: 29
Truncated wrote:
I am probably the hugest SoR2 fan here (but you know that already since you took the moves list from my FAQ). It's obvious you have a very good technical understanding of this game. My opinion of this movie is that it contains way too much Max, and too much Atomic drop. You should let at least one character be someone else... Skate is a good idea (can keep up with the scroll speed). You don't need to aim for time. Aim for entertainment and variety. There are lots of other cool stuff you could do. Like kill all the bikers. Or trigger all the jets on boss 6 just because you can handle it. Do some double throws. Let the crazy stuff stay, like escaping from Max's atomic drop with a headbutt from Skate. And the Vehelits ping-pong. Overall, I don't find this to be publishable material. Please consider taking peoples' comments here into consideration and making a new, completely awesome run.
Lol, I didn't know the move list was yours, I think I just found it in google and I copied the first hit I saw. We didn't kill all the bikers or didn't activate the Jets for time reasons, when we started the speedrun we decided to prioritize the time over the entertainment, although in some parts we decided to do the opposite, Vehelits is a good example, with the sword we could have killed it faster, but we left the ping-pong because it was more watchable. After ending stage 1 we considered the possibility of canceling the movie and start a new one from scratch with glitches, stunts and gags but inevitably slower, but we assumed it would have been immediately rejected. In closing, we knew it was "illicit" to make a speedrun with two Maxes, but for a fastest time it was arguably the best choice, we also thought that his moves and glitches would offset the same-character selection.
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
Being a violent old dinosaur who actually likes brawlers, my interest is very much piqued by the idea of using two of the same absurdly overpowered character to wreck the game. YouTube/DM/archive.org/Viddler encoding, anyone?
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I think that it's worth revisiting this movie with an explicit goal of trading time for entertainment. My reasoning is that the existing 1P run does a good job of being fast at this game while making it obvious that being fast at this game is hard. It's not going to be significantly harder to be fast with two players, so a fast 2P run actually looks less impressive than a fast 1P run. On the flipside, there are always opportunities for playing around when there are two players -- check out the Streets of Rage 1, Gundam Heroes, and River City Ransom movies for examples.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (980)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
Location: Sweden
>After ending stage 1 we considered the possibility of canceling the movie and start a new one from scratch with glitches, stunts and gags but inevitably slower, but we assumed it would have been immediately rejected. We have plenty of playaround movies not aiming for speed (but still being reasonably fast). Many of them are fighting games, for example Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series. So you do not need to worry about immediate rejection.
fruitbane
He/Him
Joined: 3/28/2005
Posts: 216
This game is long enough, and the tactics repetitive enough, that I think the 2 player run should be completely about glitch exploitation and entertainment. As long as you are abusing the hell out of the game and it's fun to watch I'm sure you'll get a shot. On this one, however, I have to vote "meh". For all the skill involved it just gets old really quickly.
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
I would favour having this (or a more optimised version) obsolete the one player movie and the publishing a future entertainment run in a second category. A two player entertainment run would probably be faster than the one player run and having a slow speed oriented run and a faster entertainment oriented run seems somewhat silly. I would personally like to see the one player speed category stay in addition to the two two player movies, but that might be too many (though I guess it depends on what the potential future entertainment movie looks like).