As I mentioned, I have 2 problems with this judgment: rules clarification and viewer support. One depends on the other though, and I can't fully make my point about how to treat the
viewer support without pointing out how the rules should be tweaked in my opinion. With the latter, I might be sent to the other thread, but I can't fully prove the
rules need to change there without going into details about this submission, which would be offtopic there. So as both opinions have been expressed here already, I'll combine my take on them in one post, because of how tied together they are.
The main reason not to accept this TAS was that it is neither different enough from the NTSC run, nor superior to it to warrant an obsoletion. This is expressed in these rules:
Judge Guidelines
Sum-up
- Quantity is not quality.
- Keep the number of different branches per game minimal. A run for a proposed new branch for a game should offer compelling differences relative to previously published runs of that game
.
Movie Rules
Console versions of PAL games run at a lower framerate than NTSC games, running at ~50Hz compared to NTSC's ~60Hz, and the games themselves are often not modified or poorly modified to accommodate to the change in timing. Due to this, PAL versions of ROMs are generally not allowed, unless there are significant technical and/or entertainment merits to using this version. See Rygar and Blaster Master for examples of good usage of the PAL ROM.
If you take this run in isolation and check it against the above rules in isolation (ignoring how well known the game is, what feedback the run got, what other guidelines say, etc), you'll be comparing the PAL run to the existing SMB branches in order to see, whether the PAL run is
as different from the existing branches for that game as they are different from each other. If it is
that different, we have the desired diversity and it's safe to publish it.
But there are other judge guidelines too.
Sum-up
- Satisfy the audience's expectations.
Be thorough
Uncover, evaluate and address as many aspects of a given run as possible. This allows for decisions that could serve as a long-term reference or set important precedents in complicated situations. If you miss some of the aspects that might have influenced the final decision, your decision will be imperfect.
Consider the audience's feedback
Viewers that are experienced in the game you're judging can expand your outlook even further by providing good food for thought. Always analyze their opinions and talk to them in order to get valuable information from them.
This decision completely disregards the opinion of the
vast majority that the run should be accepted based on its merits. It could happen if one bases their take on some guidelines, but skips the others.
But maybe the viewers' take can be ignored here with no harm? Also, why does the viewers' take directly contradict that of most of the judges? This is a clear collision: between the judges and the audience, between the existing rules and the desired rules, between the letter and the spirit of the law. Why does it happen? Do we want to avoid such situations? Should we go out of our way and try to guarantee against such scenarios, at least in cases like this one?
I'm very certain we need to
move towards matching the audience's take on the whole thing. If we can't change the rules and the minds of the judges, we need to convince the audience that they weren't quite right. If we can't convince the audience, we are either wrong ourselves, or haven't came up with compelling arguments. Or we also can try to tweak everything: the rules, the judges' opinions, the audience's opinions, making one huge compromise. I know it works,
we've done that before with little to no complaints on the result.
But let's try to answer the first question first: why did it happen at all?
First of all, if you watch the two movies (NTSC and PAL) side by side and compare their difference to how the other SMB branches differ from each other, you will clearly see, that there's
not enough difference, and/or the existing difference is not compelling: one new glitch that saves a few frames, all the rest is identical gameplay-wise. The PAL version doesn't present new features that add unique merit to the gameplay: no new levels, no new items, no new warps, no new enemies, no nothing. The only thing that's significantly different is the physics change that allows for that new glitch. But the important part is, even that new glitch is mostly TAS only (until the RTA geeks reproduce it). When you try to play each version as a normal human, you will see that Nintendo invested quite some effort to make the gameplay identical. They polished out some edge cases that you might never even run into, they tweaked some other things like the speed of the music or non-playable parts, but generally it's still the same exact gaming experience.
That is my word of a judge here. But why does the audience not notice this similarity?
When they watch it and ask themselves whether they have seen the "compelling differences" here, and whether there are "significant technical and/or entertainment merits" to the PAL run, they say YES!
This is fully subjective and is based on how well known and exhaustively examined the game is.
Pay attention to that statement. When people watched the Super Metroid "in-game time" TAS, they
1) enjoyed it,
2) saw the similarities to any%,
3) disregarded the similarities in favor of all the differences they noticed.
The presence of vast similarities is proven by the fact that that same audience
several times agreed to obsolete the in-game run with any%. Yet every time that run popped up in the submission queue, they were loving it, and the judge was listening to them.
Now compare the complexity of Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros. I'd say the difference is completely insane. And out of what the Super Metroid game has to offer, people were still seeing the enjoyable compelling differences between these known-to-be-similar runs. And they were heard. Note that while Super Metroid might be "the best game of all times", it's far from "the most well-known and examined game of all times".
Look at SMB. Every retrogamer knows it, and most of them know it quite well, at least on the normal play level. Look at how long that TAS remained unimproved due to the lack of substantially new tricks. Since 2009 it still hasn't been improved by more than a single frame, regardless of all the info we have about it, and that improvement was still just an optimization in a single place. Sure, the framerules don't work on our side, but the whole picture is that:
the NTSC run does not look improvable at all to anyone.
Then a run appears that succeeds to deliver new content, and guess what? It's also faster by real time. Guys, I tell you, if it was slower, no one would have really cared. There wouldn't be any obsoletion advocates. There wouldn't be too many moons-branch advocates. It is slower, the record withstands, no reason to lose your mind. If it was slower, people would have looked at the movie rules that say PAL games are generally slower and see it proven once again.
The fact that the PAL run is shorter
even though the character speed has been configured to match is what makes people tremble with ecstasy. I felt that too BTW, despite of what I see here as a judge. "This game can still deliver new content!!!111"
Yes, this impression is 100% subjective, and it is based solely on how well people know the game. But it is not the same thing as when SM64 kids enter TASVideos forum just to say how much we suck if we don't blindly give infinite rights to their celestial favorite. It's not some flash mob sent to infect us with their hype.
It is the actual opinion of our audience, with some really good points, with some super detailed research, with all the relevance and meaningfulness that we expect to see. The only flaw they have is lack of reading comprehension when it comes to seeing the verdict. But the thing is, the verdict should have considered all these factors to begin with.
The rules about ROM regions should fully fit those about goals and branches
If some regional version of the ROM is superior, if it has better media, gameplay, difficulty, challenge, glitches, routes, it might be judged to obsolete. If we have several branches, some of them might be done on other regional versions, if such versions highlight some unique aspect of the goal or the game, not seen in other branches. If some regional version provides some significant enjoyment for the audience, it should be judged on the case-by-case basis, still only applying the Moons rules.
If some PAL version is accepted on that basis, it shouldn't mean other PAL runs also should be accepted simply based on the precedent. Every PAL run should be judged uniquely. If we tweak the rules that way, and the audience changes their opinion and prefers the rejection based on the new rules, my goal about analyzing the shit out of this has been reached.
