Submission #9092: Arc & ShesChardcore's NES Maniac Mansion in 05:19.47

TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY… I submitted my first Maniac Mansion movie to TASVideos, which had a time of 9:51.93. My most recent movie, submitted last year, got the time down to 5:22.04. But in that submission text I wrote “I hope that I can submit another improvement on 26 May 2024 to do a proper ‘20 years ago today’ meme.” Thanks to a new tip from ShesChardcore about skipping some screen transitions, I was able to get an improvement to turn my dreams into memes.

On the first screen, Dave and Syd walk simultaneously to save time. At the front door, Syd gets the Key to the door under the rug and rings the doorbell to lure Weird Ed out of his room. At the main stairway, I use New Kid buffering to delay Ed’s reaction. I also use New Kid to exit the cutscene in preparation for the upcoming trick.

Syd goes through the steel security door, then I take advantage of the glitchy hallway to walk Syd all the way up the stairs (while New Kid buffering again). A major timesaver is the double skip at the landing, where Syd bypasses both Green Tentacle and Ed.

Syd works from left-to-right through the upper hallway. The radio room is on the way to Green Tentacle’s room, and I continue New Kid buffering to delay Ed’s return to his room. In Green Tentacle’s room, Syd gets the Yellow Key, which is necessary to start the Edsel. Then Syd goes back out through the radio room while still New Kid buffering.

Syd goes into Ed’s room while Ed’s out, and gets the Hamster and Card Key. The Hamster is needed only because it’s covering the Card Key. The Card Key is needed to open the lab door. Syd leaves and has enough time to go right before Ed catches him thanks to all that buffering.

Ted’s room contains the Hunk-O-Matic machine, which allows kids to open the grate and the garage door. I use the tele-strength glitch to buff Dave outside, and I have Dave open the grate with his new strength. Then I return to Syd and buff him since he will open the garage later.

Syd goes to Ed’s room to get captured, and New Kid trickery allows Syd to walk out of the dungeon immediately. He needed the teleport to the basement to get the Silver Key, which opens the locked pantry door. The route diverges tactically here since I decide not to open the fuse box until later. Syd needs to travel a long way to the pool. Along the way, he sees Edna in the kitchen, but switching kids makes her disappear. While on Dave, I have him open the water valve to drain the pool. I use a screen transition skip here by waiting for the right moment to go to the grate. After the cutscene, I’m at the front porch instead of under the house.

Syd opens the fridge to activate Ed’s hunger later. Syd continues the long walk through the dining room and pantry to the pool. Another screen transition skip is utilized when entering the pool, using the purple tentacle investigation cutscene. At the bottom of the drained pool is the essential Glowing Key that opens the outer lab door.

Syd makes the long walk back to the main stairway. Dave also enters the room so I can move them simultaneously. I decided to have Syd give the Silver Key to Dave, since it is no longer needed and the menu becomes more organized for the end sequence. I’m not sure if it’s better, worse, or inconsequential in the long run. Comparing this movie and the previous one side-by-side, time is initially lost, but the movies eventually resync.

Anyway, Dave goes into the basement to turn off the circuit breakers, and Ed’s Gee I’m Hungry cutscene activates. Syd goes up the staircase to the steel security door room, where he encounters Ed on his way to get a snack. The purpose here is to teleport Syd to the dungeon so he can open the lab doors.

Syd opens the outer door with the Glowing Key, and he uses the 0000 trick to open the inner door. The deactivated circuit breakers trigger Purple Tentacle’s capture of Dave, which is necessary to make the ending sequence work. The cutscene allows Syd to walk by Purple Tentacle at the door.

Inside the lab, Syd ignores Dr. Fred and goes straight to the card slot to insert the Card Key. The door opens to Meteor’s room. Syd turns off the switch, and a New Kid glitch allows a lot of time to be saved by skipping Fred’s big speech. Syd grabs the Meteor, causing a radiation suit to magically appear. Syd goes out and opens the garage door. He puts the Meteor in the trunk of the Edsel without opening it and uses the Yellow Key to launch the meteor into space. Wheeeee.

I still suspect that the entire movie will have to be remade from scratch at some point in the future because of new tactics, but that is still theoretical. Today I just wanted any sort of improvement so that I would have something to submit.

Thanks to the Maniac Mansion speedrun community.

eien86: Claiming for judging.

eien86: An amazing run of a classic NES game and a fantastic addition to this game rich history of publications. Personally, I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. Having played the MS-DOS version of this game in my childhood, I was able to appreciate the sheer amount of skips and tricks used here. Given my own perception and the positive feedback this movie received, I thought that perhaps this might be a candidate for a Star classification.

The issuance of Stars is currently a grey area in this site. In the past, Stars were given to movies largely on feedback and the subjective evaluation of the judges. After the (not so) recent change in movie classification rules, there is no longer a pre-sanctioned way to attribute Stars. Movies with Stars (and their obsoleting movies) would continue having them, but in principle no new ones are to be given. Therefore, any attempt (such as mine) to provide such accolade is evaluated on extremely exceptional cases.

To make my case, I wrote some arguments in a forum post and internally among the TASVideos community. Unfortunately, given this is such an old game (and perhaps also niche), I couldn't find many others that could give an informed opinion, even if they wanted to. To get more feedback, I resorted to the Speedy Adventures discord server and in the game's Speedrun.com Forum.

To summarize, this is the feedback I was able to gather:

Although it'd be better to have more feedback, the ones I got seem to point to a similar conclusion. This is a masterfully made movie that showcases how a perfect RTA play would look like. However, it does not appear to transcend optimality to a mind-blowing degree, enough to warrant an exceptional new Star allocation.

Given all of the above, I will be accepting this movie to Standard. Nevertheless, let it be registered that the feedback received reflects at large that this is a superlative movie that improves yet again its rich a 20-year history. Should our stance on Stars ever change, I recommend this movie be retroactively reconsidered.

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