Welcome to The Great NES Video Game Character TAS Battle Tournament (Hopefully arranged by using just one simple Lua script!)
The idea is to take the player character sprites from two existing TAS movies and playback them simultaneously against black background.
Then watch the TAS heroes battle each other!
Hits are registered manually by observing the screen. Collision detection is pixel-perfect.
This tournament is the only way to find out who is the best NES game character!
Here are some ideas for general rules:
- If the character has multiple hit points, the amount of damage taken by a hit is the average damage taken from enemies in the character's own game.
- If there is a plausible reason to assume a fixed damage value, then it will be considered, case by case. For example, if the character has secondary attacks dealing twice the damage in his own game, it deals twice the damage from the receiving character's point of view.
- The character does not get virtual invulnerability time from hits in a battle. Only the "natural invulnerability periods" of the original TAS are accepted.
- If a character dies a "natural death" (in his original TAS during a shortcut), that death is not the same thing as losing the battle. The battle is lost only by getting killed by the opponent. So, fake death might be a good strategy in this tournament!
- If the input ends in both TASes before a winner is determined, both TASes will advance to the next round.
- If any of the TASes get obsoleted during the tournament, the new challenger will replace the current one and has the permission for a rematch, if the previous version of the TAS lost his battle.
- Rules can change during the tournament, when better understanding of inter-game battle mechanics is achieved.
Speculation:
I bet Mario benefits from his frequent jump attacks. If he and Samus survive long enough to battle each other, Mario might beat Samus easily, unless Samus manages to survive long enough to gain an Energy tank and some missiles. Small Mario might be able to avoid most of the shots, because he is so small. On the other hand, small Mario dies from one hit, so he would need to be careful with the upward shots that Samus makes while running under the bats near the beginning of almost any Metroid TAS. Anyway, Mario would be a good tournament winner candidate, because he jumps a lot, has two hit points some of the time and he also shoots fireballs. Any RPG with early encounter might also do well in the tournament. Lots of damage boosts with long invulnerability periods are good too.
One problem we have is that when Bimmy and Jimmy grab their enemies from heads, it might be difficult to tell, when they hit their battle opponent in this vulgar position. Oh, but they use mostly flying knees, so it does not matter. They might do well in the tournament, because there are two of them and they have lots of HP!
Hmm, if Megaman shoots a charged shot at the Deja Vu guy's hand cursor, would the hand die or deflect the shot? When the Deja Vu guy looks into the mirror, is his face vulnerable to attacks or is it just a mirror image? Would the Deja Vu guy die only when hit by Foot Soldiers thrown towards the screen as in some Turtles movie? Anyway, I'm sure these potential problems will not ruin the tournament. I'm sure we can find a satisfactory judgment for each battle, even though some guys like the silly off-screen Tetris God with his multi-personal Arkanoid ball-and-paddle friend will surely complain about our rules. In Tetris, I'd say the pieces deliver damage when they drop downwards and receive damage when hit with any weapon. For Arkanoid, I'd say that the ball is the weapon and the paddle is the character who receives damage.
Maybe we should just disqualify all games that don't have distinguishable characters and games that behave strangely during the battle? Well, only time will show what we do. Let the tournament begin!
The Tournament:
The battles are fought in alphabetical order, following the
NES game list, so the first battle of the first round is right here:
8 Eyes VS
A Boy and His Blob --> Winner advances to the next round!
The second battle would be:
The Addams Family VS
Adventures of Bayou Billy
After Zanac and Zen the Intergalactic Ninja have finished their battle, we start the next round.
Understood?
Good!
All the battles of the tournament winner will be compiled into a single AVI file, which shows a series of interesting battles and will possibly receive the innovative "TAS" of 2010 trophy, or maybe not.
Oh, I almost forgot! We need a Lua script for easily following the battles!
(I tried to watch some battle with AVI files side by side, but it's hard to tell whether Lolo actually hit the opponent with his egg-shot or not!)
I guess all the script needs to do is to run two TASes on top of each other simultaneously, displaying OBJ layer only?
Who can do this?
Also, who can guess the winner? I bet the winner is Mario from some of his many TASes, or the spaceship from Zanac who shoots lots of projectiles in almost any direction!
Also, remember that TAS means Take All Seriously! If you didn't already, NOW is the time to take this tournament seriously!
I used transparent window on top of another to see the first battle between 8 Eyes and A Boy and His Blob. It was a bit difficult, because the screen flickered a lot. Anyway, the winner was easily determined within the first few seconds...
This was supposed to be an interesting battle, because both teams had two fighters. The boy had his blob and the guy from 8 Eyes had his hawk. The boy had obviously planned to ram the rocket through his opponent from behind, but when the fight begun, the hawk immediately killed both the boy and his blob. The boy barely had the time to raise his hand for throwing the first jelly bean, when his arm was ripped off by the hawk. Then the blob died as the hawk made a furious dive through its soft body.
Winner: 8 Eyes
Style points: 7.6 for the fast double kill
Hmm, is it possible to run two roms simultaneously via Lua scripting or does it require more advanced programming? This would be easier that way. :)
This was the longest battle I've watched so far. After 5 minutes of avoiding each other, the guy from Faxanadu attacked from behind with his knife. I think Felix the Cat did not survive that one.
