Tool-assisted movies (35)

Adventure is a first-party game released in 1979 for the Atari 2600. The goal of the game is to find the enchanted chalice and return it to the gold castle while avoiding the three dragons guarding it. It was the first action-adventure game, and also the first game to have an inventory, a continue system, and a widely-known Easter egg.

The game has three skill levels: Skill Level 1 has a small and straightforward map, Skill Level 2 has a bigger map and more elements such as a bat that flies around and takes stuff that it touches, and Skill Level 3 is basically Skill Level 2 but under a randomizer.

ShesChardcore plays Skill Level 3 and manipulates both the randomizer to get the best map and the bat to juggle items and deliver the chalice to the gold castle while the player character sits outside the castle gate and gets eaten by a dragon.

Adventure is a first-party game released in 1979 for the Atari 2600. The goal of the game is to find the enchanted chalice and return it to the gold castle while avoiding the three dragons guarding it. It was the first action-adventure game, and also the first game to have an inventory, a continue system, and a widely-known Easter egg.

Katistrofic2 improves his previous TAS by 2.6 seconds thanks to a new time-saving key juggling technique.

Barnstorming is an Atari 2600 video game designed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision in 1982. The goal of the game is to fly through barns, while avoiding windmills and birds. There are four difficulties, going from 10 to 25 barns; this run uses the easiest one.

ShesChardcore and MrWint improve the previous run by 11 frames through rigorous optimization. You can read MrWint's notes and ShesChardcore's notes for further details.

Basic Math is an Atari 2600 video game where you get to practice elementary mathematics with one or two-digit numbers. All four arithmetic operations are used here: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The game keeps track of how many problems you get right and shows your final score at the end.

The8bitbeast manipulates the game so that it gives him problems that can be solved with the fewest amount of frames necessary. For more information, you can read his notes here.

Boxing is a game for one or two players which is played from an overhead point of view. The game lasts for two minutes, and the player who can earn the most points in that time wins. The game also ends if a player earns 100 points in total, netting a knock-out.

You earn one point for a long jab and two points for a close power punch. Two difficulty levels are included which can be set individually for each player.

In this run, ShesChardcore and ViGadeomes manage to save two frames over the previous run by ViGadeomes.

Checkers is a video game based on the board game checkers. It was made for the Atari 2600 by Activision. What's notable about this version of the game is that the screen turns black when the opponent AI is computing moves to make against you, and given how fast the Atari 2600 is, a regular game can take nearly an hour to play.

Winslinator carefully chooses moves that minimize the amount of time the AI takes to compute its own moves in order to beat the game in record time. The strategy used here is not one that can beat the AI in the fewest moves, but one that can beat the game in the least amount of time. You can read the author's notes for more details.

There's a video that trims out the loading screens for those in a hurry.

Crazy Climber involves a crazy climber whose goal is to climb tall skyscrapers from the bottom while avoiding various obstacles and hazards along the way. At the top of the skyscraper is a helicopter that will bring the climber to the next building to climb.

In this run, DrD2k9 completes one loop of the game, which involves four different buildings to climb, in record time.

Doggone It! is a homebrew game for the Atari 2600 with a simple premise: a mailman named Hank does his job with delivering packages. The problem is that he has cynophobia, a fear of dogs. If one even just touches him, he drops any package he's holding and temporarily becomes paralyzed with fear. Thankfully, there's the Crazy Culvert Kitty, which can give Hank powerups that make deliveries much easier.

In this run, MrTASer completes all three unique stages in record time.

You can get the game here.

Dragonfire is a video game where you infiltrate into a dragon's castle and steal all of its treasure, all while avoiding its fire attacks. The difficulty of the game increases with every castle looted as the dragon itself gets more and more powerful.

In this run, ShesChardcore plays the game until the difficulty stops increasing. The white dragon is the hardest dragon and will be the only dragon available to steal from once beaten. The RNG was manipulated to give the most favorable layouts.

Eli's Ladder is one of the rarest games ever produced for the Atari 2600, and possibly the rarest edutainment game made for the console. It is a math-focused edutainment game where you help an alien named Eli climb up a ladder by solving very simple arithmetic problems.

yep2yel solves all the math problems in this game as fast as possible in this run.

Ghost Manor is as basic as Atari games get. The basic goal of this game is to save either the boy or the girl, captured by Dracula, by getting into the castle, going through mazes, and rescuing the other person.

The authors rescue the boy in record time.

Hangman is a simple guessing game that is usually done on pencil and paper. With a set number of blank spaces representing a word or phrase, you guess which letter appears in that word or phrase. Guess right and the letter appears in one or more of the blank spaces. Guess wrong and a stick figure body part is added to a noose. The game ends when either all spaces are filled or the stick figure is complete.

In this run, yep2yel, ShesChardcore, and negative seven work together to complete a single game of Hangman on the Atari 2600 as fast as possible.

Haunted House is a game developed by Atari in 1981. Set in a haunted house environment, one has to find three pieces of an urn and escaping as spiders, a bat and a ghost are roaming in the house.

ShesChardcore retrieves all pieces and gets out of there in record time.

Note: There is an instance of flashing lights which may trigger epilepsy in some viewers at 0:16 in the encodes.

Jungle Hunt is an Atari 2600 game where an unnamed explorer must venture through the jungle and rescue his love interest from being eaten by cannibals. Watch him swing across vines, avoid crocodiles, and jump over boulders as he saves the girl of his dreams.

Winslinator decides to play the game at the hardest difficulty setting until the game can no longer get progressively harder, which takes three loops to do, and does it in record time.

Krull is a video game adaptation of the science fantasy movie of the same name for the Atari 2600. The story is your typical "prince saves princess" plot, but in space. As for the game itself, it has five stages that very loosely reenact the plot. The most notable gameplay element is the final stage has you rescuing the princess "Breakout-style" while also fighting the final boss.

ShesChardcore completes one loop of this game in record time with a few deaths and movement quirks done to save time.

"Fly the Wind Raider from the workshop of Man-at-Arms to Castle Grayskull -- 30 treacherous miles guarded by the evil warriors sent by Skeletor!" - Bullet point from the game's box

Masters of the Universe - The Power of He-Man is a two-part game, the first being a side-scrolling shooter, and the second being a top-down action segment. The game came with a He-Man comic book!

The8bitbeast defeats Skeletor with the Power Sword in record time.

"Fly the Wind Raider from the workshop of Man-at-Arms to Castle Grayskull -- 30 treacherous miles guarded by the evil warriors sent by Skeletor!" - Bullet point from the game's box

Masters of the Universe - The Power of He-Man is a two-part game, the first being a side-scrolling shooter, and the second being a top-down action segment. The game came with a He-Man comic book!

ShesChardcore and The8bitbeast save 4.94 seconds over the previous run by The8bitbeast by improving the final boss fight with Skeletor.

For the Atari 2600 is Math Grand Prix a racing game where you answer math problems in order to move your car so you can beat your AI-controlled opponent. There are nine game levels to choose from, which are difficulty levels that determine the arithmetic operations for the problems you're gonna encounter and the size of the numbers being calculated.

ShesChardcore completes this game on Game Level 9 as fast as possible by manipulating the game to give equations that require the fewest inputs to answer and to make sure the opponent moves as slowly as possible.

Othello is a board game that is a modern variant of Reversi. It looks similar to Go with its checkered board and black and white pieces, but it's completely different.

In this run, Winslinator plays a perfect game of Reversi that fills every space on the board with their pieces as fast as possible and leaves the AI opponent with none.

Othello is a board game that is a modern variant of Reversi. It looks similar to Go with its checkered board and black and white pieces, but it's completely different.

negative seven saves 7.31 seconds over the previous "maximum score" run through extensive research and development, the most notable being the usage of a modern Othello AI engine and pitting it against the Atari 2600 AI. You can read the author's notes here for all the details on the efforts put into the run, including the creation of a custom Atari 2600 emulator.

Pepsi Invaders is a reskin of Space Invaders that was privately commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company. According to legend, only 125 carts were made and distributed to various Coca-Cola executives, making it one of the rarest video games of all time. The main difference between this game and vanilla Space Invaders is that you can only shoot one bullet at time, as the trick to having two bullets on-screen at once doesn't work in this game.

Nevertheless, ShesChardcore manages to work around this disadvantage and complete a single level in record time.

Peril is a homebrew game for the Atari 2600 where you pilot a helicopter armed with guns. Your job is to go into a dangerous labyrinth and destroy the RoboKing and its guardians.

With precise and tight movements, MrTASer and nymx collaborate to complete the game in record time.

You can get the game here.

This is the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders, the classic game where you fight to defend your planet from a rectangular array of descending aliens.

g0goTBC clears one wave of aliens systematically, improving on the previous movie by 0.8 seconds.

This is the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders, the classic game where you fight to defend your planet from a rectangular array of descending aliens.

KiwiCracker and ShesChardcore clears one wave of aliens systematically, improving on the previous movie by 0.57 seconds through the use of a new technique that changes the size of the ship.

Death Star Battle is loosely based on the events of the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Your task is to destroy the Death Star before its construction is finished. You start the task outside the shield perimeter of the Death Star, where you have to combat different imperial vessels and avoid the death ray while waiting for an opportunity to slip through one of the random openings in the energy shield. After reaching the Death Star, you must reduce its structure up to the point where you can hit the core. In the following destruction of the station, you must avoid collision with the Death Star's debris.

This is an 11 frame improvement over the previous movie thanks to better maneuverability facing the Death Star.

Viewers who have photosensitivity problems may want to avoid watching as there's a high amount of flashing visuals during gameplay that can become uncomfortable to watch.

Steeplechase is a horse racing game where you do hurdles against three CPU-controlled opponents with your horse. While this may sound simple enough, it's actually a little more complicated than that once you play the harder game levels. Don't think that just by not missing a single hurdle means you can win a race at the hardest level.

For this run, ShesChardcore has analyzed the game mechanics enough to not only beat the AI at the hardest level, but also set a record time.

From Wikipedia:

The player(s) takes control of the DC Comics character Superman, who must repair the bridge destroyed by Lex Luthor, capture Luthor and his criminal underlings, enter a phonebooth to turn back into Clark Kent, then return to the Daily Planet in the shortest amount of time. To slow Superman's progress, Kryptonite has been released by Luthor. If hit by Kryptonite, Superman loses his abilities to capture criminals and fly. To regain them, he must find and kiss Lois Lane.

This is a 30 frame improvement over the previous run, thanks to a faster change of crossing over to the next screen instead and initiating the pause demo glitch to warp to the end. That is all.

SwordQuest: EarthWorld is the first in a series of adventure games released for the Atari 2600. The games came with comic books that explained the plot of the games and contained clues needed to progress. Those that manage to solve the cryptic puzzles would then have a chance to submit their results to Atari and win prizes totaling up to $150,000. Unfortunately, the fourth game and the contest itself were cancelled in the wake of Atari's financial collapse. While the contestants would be compensated, the story of the series was left unfinished.

In this run, ShesChardcore speeds through the game with strategic use of the teleporting Amulet and efficient item management in order to get the "Sword of Ultimate Sorcery" and complete the game in record time.

The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Rivendell is an unreleased adventure game for the Atari 2600 based on The Lord of the Rings books. Here, Frodo must journey to Rivendell without getting caught by the Nazgul. On the way, he can receive help from allies such as Legolas and Gimli to make his journey easier, along with the help he already receives from Sam.

In this run, ShesChardcore tests her patience as she gets Frodo to Rivendell in record time.

Tomarc the Barbarian is an action game where Tomarc the Barbarian must rescue Senta from a cave she got herself lost in. Senta also managed to get herself kidnapped and is imprisoned in a cage that can be opened by Tomarc's sword. Unfortunately, Tomarc lost his sword in the same cave, so he must now find his sword and rescue Senta before the cave bats eat her alive. Special to this Atari 2600 is the ability to switch between two characters to control, Tomarc and Senta, and both characters continue to be affected by their environments even when you're not controlling them. While Tomarc is used to find the sword to rescue Senta, Senta herself is controlled to fend off the bats that are trying to kill her.

DrD2k9 decides not to go through all that trouble in this run by using a good amount of RNG manipulation to get a cave layout that requires the least amount of movement needed and controlling only Tormac to get the sword and rescue Senta as fast as possible.

Warlords for the Atari 2600 is best described as a competitive multiplayer version of Breakout. Each player has a tiny hitbox defended by a wall that chips away with each hit from a bouncing ball and a shield to defend the wall with. A player earns a point each round when every other player's hitbox has been eliminated. The first one to five points wins the game.

As it turns out, at the highest difficulty, you can actually win the game without even moving the shield at all. ShesChardcore takes advantage of this and provides only a quarter of a second of input time, most of it just selecting the game with the hardest difficulty.

Word Zapper is an edutainment game for the Atari 2600. With a given word shown to you for a few seconds and a 99 second time limit, you are to scroll a set of letters from the alphabet and zap each letter in the correct order to form the word, then finish the round by shooting the alien emoji. You can also use the alien emoji in place of any letter, but the round must be finished with it and another one won't be given to you unless you shoot down five asteroids.

ShesChardcore completes a cycle of the game as fast as possible by manipulating the RNG to generate the words that can be zapped out the fastest on-screen.

Donkey Kong Junior is the sequel to the hit classic Donkey Kong. Like that game, it also had ports to numerous consoles. The Atari 7800 version is the last official release of the game.

Fortranm and EZGames69 collaborate to beat the game in record time.

Knight Guy in Low Res World: Castle Days is a homebrew action platforming game for the Atari 7800. You play as a knight who decides to go into a castle to rescue their pet from a dragon. There are 99 rooms of danger and puzzles to go through if you are to get to your pet before an hour is up and you lose completely.

MrTASer and Samsara collaborate to go through all 99 rooms and defeat the dragon as fast as possible. A cat was also chosen as the knight's pet.

You can get the game here.

Slide Boy in Maze Land is a homebrew puzzle game for the Atari 2600 and Atari 7800. You play as Slide Boy, who can only slide in one direction and cannot stop until he hits a wall. The goal of each level is to get to the exit while avoiding all hazards.

Darkman425 plays on the Normal difficulty and gets through all 30 rooms as fast as possible.

You can get the game here. There is also a run for the Atari 2600 version for those interested.