The next Mortal Kombat I've set my eyes upon. Although a while back I abhored Midway for their arguably lazy design choices for this game, now that I've actually tried it I'm finding it surprisingly fun and addictive. Because of the multiplayer? Nah. Arcade-mode? Konquest-mode? No. Driving mini-game? Definitely not! Well, what is it then...? Quite simply... the awesome glitches it has!
I sort of envision a big, at least 40-minutes long playaround of this game that would visit all of the play modes and create all sorts of insanity on the way. First building up cash for creating an own character, maybe in Konquest-mode... then more infamy... well, I'm sure I'll come up with the rest as I continue glitching it.
For some reason the Wii version doesn't emulate too great for me, with save states practically unuseable. To be honest, I'd prefer using the PS2 version. But since the start of the run is still far away, who knows if TASing PS2 games becomes an option at some point until then. For now I've done the glitching on PS2, both emulated and on an actual console as well.
So, about the glitches. I've been exploring something called the jumpover glitch in this game, and another related glitch which I've simply called the blank move-glitch. With jumpover glitch you can load moves from a wrong movelist. The most infamous incarnation of this glitch is the
possibility to do Impale with Sub-Zero, never mind that the move is blocked in MKA. Also, it doesn't cause Sub to lose his weapon like it should... it's the foe who loses their weapon instead in the process! (found by check4900)
But it's the blank move-glitch (BM-glitch from hereon) where the combinatorial shit-hits-the-fan explosion truly begins. Blank moves are numerous in this game, although accessible only using jumpover glitch. They are basically empty move ID slots, if even that. They were a mystery to me for a long time, because it always seemed they did nothing but freeze your character on their tracks and cause a certain stiffness to their movement. But the fact is that the effect of a blank move can vary a lot. A lot! You see, MKA has an address that keeps track of your current/last attack or other animation (like taking damage, etc.) A blank move directly reads this data, and tries to utilize it when you access it. But for the most part this game ties up moves as you do them so that there is nothing left for the blank move to really use in normal circumstances. However, there exists a few techniques in the game for interrupting animations at any point and letting their data stay in the temporary memory. If you then access the blank move, strange things may happen... moves with wrong properties, characters disappearing into the ground. Loads and loads of game crashes. And the research isn't even very far in yet...
Here's a playlist of the MKA stuff I've uploaded so far..
MAJOR UPDATE:
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It turns out that a variation of jumpover glitch and therefore blank move glitch is also
doable in MK: Deception.
This means that both games are now ruined. Good candidates for a playaround, although MKA is still better because you don't have to trouble yourself over unlocking characters and such, and the roster is huge. Sucks that Shang Tsung can't morph in these games, though.
Smaller update:
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Made a
blog post explaining the jumpover glitch a bit better.
A decent-sized update:
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There's more discussion about this run here:
http://mk-tas.forumprofi.de/showthread.php?tid=11
