This submission is for Warlords for the Atari 2600. It's like a competitive version of breakout where you have to defend your own walls with a movable shield and attack the opponents. Our shield fell asleep on the job, but thankfully he was in the perfect position.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.8
- Aims for fastest time
- Aims for shortest final input
- Uses "hardest" difficulty
- Chardcore wins by doing absolutely nothing.
Comments
Well, yeah. We manage to beat game 14 (probably the "hardest" difficulty due to faster ball speed and no Catch function) by channeling our inner Luigi. The AI have a few patterns, and some of those patterns can be exploited by just... not moving.
By holding select and start for the desired number of frames, we can skip having to wait the 30 frames between select inputs and the final input has been cut all the way down to frame 17. The shield moves into place at the start automatically, that's not actually an input.
Final hit is scored on frame 43106, about 12 minutes into the video.
ALSO FLASH WARNING, a lot of the hits and kills cause flashing lights.
Memory: Claiming for judging.
Memory: replacing file with 376 frame improvement
Memory: So in some ways this submission is trivial but in others it is very much not. On the one hand it has very few inputs, basically all of them are menuing. We have rejected runs with a lot more input than this. On the other hand, ensuring that the game actually reaches the end does take a little work.
The response was surprisingly positive here for a game that largely plays itself. I find it kinda funny as a concept, a little long to watch but not heat death of the universe levels of long.
If a run aiming for fastest gameplay came along, either we'd have to consider the two runs against each other (which feels kinda eh), or we figure out how to accept both. Note that this does not and will never mean that a run that simply trims a few frames will be published alongside a run that doesn't. At best that would result in playground. At worst rejection. I would only ever consider it for cases where strategy greatly differs between TASes, but that's a discussion for later.
Honestly, even if this supposedly sets a precedent regarding triviality, it's one that is fine as long as people realize we cannot revisit all past runs at once.
Accepting.
despoa: Processing...