Big Mac
Data currently available for mission LIGHT BULB Intelligence has assessed that there are IB power vaults, each are accessible through the control room (Exit marked E'| To achieve mission all switches must be made negative (turned off). Once the
enemy security system has been broken into, the air supply is automatically switched off. The oxygen
meter on your watch will keep you informed of the air you have left to complete your mission. The
security system within the station itself will also be activated upon entry, so be on your guard.
Manual
Here is a link to the manual for this game, which supports the reason for a tape image.
https://www.lemon64.com/game/big-mac
Tools Used
- Bizhawk 2.8
Effort in TASing
This was a top favorite of mine, during my teenage years. As with many of my games, this was also a very difficult game to play. I may have gotten to about the 8th room. Nevertheless, I played it heavily due to it having a mix of action and puzzle solving.
In July 2019, I had a temporary layoff and was looking at some C64 games that I used to play and remember Big Mac. Even though I started TASing this game back then, I wasn't enthusiastic enough to keep it going. So...I pecked at it over a long time and finally decided to get serious as of late. Having seen youtube videos, over the past 3 years, I finally got more and more ideas on how to cut time....which now you are seeing the culmination of all my effort.
Ending Point
This game has 18 levels, which repeats back to level 1...over and over. So unique content is satisfied.
Routing
This game is all about routing. Because this game is very touchy for humans (control-wise), it was hard to know what was possible. Having gone through this game many times, via the TASTudio Editor, I now understand some mechanics that I would have never known about.
During one of my many "run-throughs", I finally saw how re-enabling a floor switch (the purple one) actually helped improvement routing on screen 16 to get to the yellow switch. This was a situation where I had to break my idea of thinking on the permanent disabling of all switches. Seeing this problem means that other spots could exist; however, I'm not able to find them anymore....maybe because they don't exist??
Techniques
- Jumping: This turned out to be fairly productive, as the animation doesn't seem to be very busy at certain times...until the fast walking, which I attribute to it being slowner for the code to manage.
- Sprite Manipulation: Unlike most systems, the C64 does't abide by a "hit box", rather than the sprite collision detection routine in the kernel. Because of this, the placement of Big Man helps to eliminate a pixel or two to avoid certain obstacles.
Human Comparison
This run was very good and demostrates the difficulty for a human. It appears though that my TAS is roughly 8 minutes faster than this run.
Special Thanks
- ME: I never said anything to anybody. Oh well...
Samsara: Looks like a whopper of a TAS. Judging.
nymx: Replaced movie file with a 115 frame improvement.
Samsara: Been holding onto this one for too long, dropping my claim so someone else can pick it up.
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Accepting.
The ROM used here matches this entry in Commodore C64 - Games - Arcade - [TAP] (TOSEC-v2022-12-25_CM).dat:
<rom
name="Big Mac - The Mad Maintenance Man (1985)(Mastertronic)[a7].tap"
size="368282" crc="a2a2c9d7"
md5="b5c4ee977f285a74cc161098bfe1582d"
sha1="4eb41bb183176a9e9630e1c58d7ac2f9d08aeaa3"
/>
a meaning
An alternate ORIGINAL version of another ORIGINAL image, e.g. if a game was released, then re-released later with a small change (and the revision/version number is not known)
and
7 meaning
In case where multiple images exist that need the same dump info flags, the flag is numbered
Since the game is self-titled in 3 different ways at once, I'm not sure how to catalog it.
EZGames69: Processing...