Published on 12/4/2020
The Adventures of Captain Comic: Episode 1 - Planet of Death was one of the first console-style side-scrolling platform (shareware) games for PCs. Though it was developed as an experiment to test the viability of real arcade games on standard IBM-compatible PCs, Captain Comic gained fame as one of the best shareware games ever made, later serving as the inspiration for Commander Keen and even getting an unlicensed port to the NES.
To complete the game, players must collect three treasures that were stolen from the planet Omsoc: rare gems, a sack of rare coins, and a jeweled crown. Sand and Kabuto collect the three treasures as quickly as may be technically possible, thanks to accomplishing the routing of the run using computer optimization. To learn more about the algorithms and optimization work that went into this run, read the authors' submission notes.

The encodes of this movie have the authors' commentary embedded as subtitles. Additionally, there is a 21-part series of live coding videos that documents the creation of this TAS. Check out a TAS of the unlicensed NES port here.

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