sgrunt

I'm sgrunt, now effectively retired from the community, formerly your friendly neighbourhood senior publisher from 2010-07-08 - 2012-05-06, formerly the admin assistant from 2010-03-14 - 2010-07-08 and a normal publisher from 2009-11-30 - 2010-03-14). I also once did a fair amount of coding for the site and the occasional bit of database maintenance.
I've been around since mid-to-late 2007 (lurking for a fair bit prior to joining the fora), though this includes a year-and-a-half gap from early 2008 to late 2009 where I wasn't particularly active in the community.
I prefer to watch games more than I play them, and help other people create runs rather than do so myself; that might explain why people think I am a dedicated enough grunt worker to be in charge of publications.
I have had encodes published for the following platforms:
  • NES
  • SNES
  • N64 (generally not capable of encoding for this platform)
  • Wii (case by case)
  • GB/GBC
  • SGB
  • GBA
  • DS
  • SMS/GG
  • Genesis/32X
  • PSX (more likely to work with PSXjin)
  • PCE/PCECD
  • Arcade
  • DOS
  • VBoy
I have encoded runs for the following platforms:
  • Lynx
I suspect I am capable of encoding for the following platforms, but have not done so with a run presently:
  • GameCube (no submissions)
  • Sega CD (almost no submissions)
  • Other platforms supported by Mednafen (almost no submissions)
I have not attempted encodes for the following platforms, though if you are interested in having me encode for one of them let me know:
  • Saturn (lack of submissions)
I suspect I am not capable of encoding for the following platforms:
  • Windows (as I am a Linux user, and Hourglass doesn't play nicely with Wine or VMs)
I have a short attention span, so TASes of fast-paced games (a natural combination anyway) score highly in my books. I like seeing the game abused in ways that are unexpected, especially where glitches come into play. I also have a soft spot for the games I played a long time ago (but then again, who doesn't?).
In games where there's a difference, I usually prefer 100% completion to any%, unless there is a very large difference in time between the two with no substantial effect on anything else (not necessarily including a different ending).
Repetitiveness grates on me heavily. As such, many platform games get boring extremely quickly for me.
Although I'm not much of a TASer, certain games have caught my attention enough to warrant runs.
Published runs
This movie has been obsoleted!
Obsoleting Movie
Published on 12/9/2009
Metroid completed using just one item: the morphing ball.
Uses a game restart sequence (Up+A on second controller) to save time in backtracking.
This is an improvement of around five seconds from the previously published run.

This movie has been obsoleted!
Obsoleting Movie
Published on 12/23/2009
The Sonic games for the Sega Master System and the Game Gear are much less well known than their Genesis/Mega Drive counterparts and have a reputation for being quite challenging, especially in handheld form. You'd never know this from the speed Sonic blazes through the game here.
Unlike later 8-bit Sonic games, there are significant differences in levels between the SMS version and the Game Gear version; here the latter is used primarily for faster boss fights.
If you like this run, also check out the run for SMS Sonic 2.
FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING: This movie features rapidly flashing lights from 16:58 to 17:26 and from 19:14 to 19:25, which may cause epileptic seizures for those affected.

This movie has been obsoleted!
Obsoleting Movie
Published on 5/3/2010
Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine (1991) is a part of the popular Commander Keen saga, developed by id Software. It is a direct continuation of the previous episode, in which Keen has learned from the Oracle of Gnosticus IV that the evil Shikadi plan to blow up the galaxy with their doomsday device, the Omegamatic (It slices! It dices! It causes a 100,000 light year-diameter quantum explosion!). Naturally, he sets out to sabotage the machine and stop the Shikadi.
Using a series of glitches, Keen completes only four stages to get to the end game, only one of which takes any significant length of time, and destroys the Quantum Explosion Dynamo, the core of the Omegamatic in the impossibly short time of 2:42. In the process, he manages to inadvertently prevent the Shikadi from accomplishing their escape (though you have to watch the ending very closely to figure out that this has happened here).
Although this is not the first submitted DOS movie, it has the distinction of being the first to be published, thanks to use of the recently approved emulator JPC-RR.

This movie has been obsoleted!
Obsoleting Movie
Published on 11/28/2010
Without warning, the forces of Blue Moon mount an assault on the nation of Orange Star. Only Orange Star's new advisor, in collaboration with Orange Star's commanding officers, can stop them and get to the truth behind this sinister plot.
At least, that's what they'd normally do if they weren't capable of just magically compelling their opponents to surrender at the sight of them.
Using a glitch in the design maps mode of the game, this run completes the game impossibly quickly by forcing opponents to yield, allowing instant wins in the campaign missions.
Game:
Advance Wars

Genres:
Strategy
Video Downloads:
Compatibility MP4
Emulator Replay:
VBA-rr v22

Other runs
None at the moment; keep an eye on the queue, though!
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HomePages/sgrunt last edited by Samsara on 8/21/2023 6:06 AM
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