Since Guybrush's apparently too busy TASing this game, he asked me to make this topic.
It's more or less the prettiest-looking NES game there is, with more shooter-themed gameplay than with the original. Batman's also learned how to slide, and the boss fights have an interesting number-based life system. So, anyone else interested in this game?
Nothing much else to say for now, Guybrush can report his other findings.
Here's my WIP. It's very short but gives a fine picture of the game.
Can someone come up with a faster way through those spike balls or find any other ways to improve this?
EDIT: If anyone is willing to be a boss fighter for me I'd be really grateful.
I'm not good at boss fights.
This looks like a good game to run, but your movie of it so far is very improvable.
Probably the biggest thing is that you're not using the dash correctly. Pressing left or right during a dash slows it down, which you might want to do sometimes to regain control sooner and avoid hitting things, but most of the time you should only hold Down and A during the dash. It's much faster so it should get used a lot more. (You can use it to dodge under those spike balls, at least the first 2 of them.)
The other main problem with this is that it'd be faster and and more entertaining to take a more destructive approach. At least destroy the crates to dash through them instead of jumping over them. And it's a good idea to get some powerups for variety and more firepower. (It doesn't seem to be random, but you can shoot a powerup before picking it up to choose which one you want to get, although that probably isn't worth the time unless you're in an autoscroller.)
Oh, and there's something weird about the weapon damage in this game. Don't just use autofire because some of the bullets won't do any damage, you'll have to test more carefully than that to kill something as fast as possible.
Here is an example movie of that first level.
Thanks nitsuja!
I have never played the game, so I don't know much about it.
All tips are helpful ;)
But for the weapons: I think N-weapon is the best weapon around. I don't know if every shot does damage (it seems it does though),
but it fires two rows of normal bullets rapidly which makes it deadly.
I'll redo the first level and see what I can do.
Make sure Batman starts walking toward the blimp before frame 1670, or it's definitely not as fast as possible.
You should see if it's faster to wait for the 3rd spiked ball to rise and dash under it than to dash through it. The damage delay is pretty long so it might be. And, make sure you're on the ground when you scroll to a new screen, preferably dashing.
Guybrush wrote:
I don't know if every shot does damage (it seems it does though)
I took another look at this, and yes every shot does seem to do damage, but the problem is that every press of the B button doesn't make a shot appear. So you should check that a new shot actually appears, and wait 1 frame before pressing B if it doesn't. If you use regular autofire, about 1/4 of the button presses won't actually fire a shot.
Guybrush wrote:
But for the weapons: I think N-weapon is the best weapon around. ... it fires two rows of normal bullets rapidly which makes it deadly.
I think there is no best weapon. That's certainly a good one, but some of the others are better in different situations. For instance, the C-weapon does huge damage with every shot (and also bounces off to hit more), so you can fire it once to kill something then immediately dash, which saves some time compared to firing the N-weapon 3 or 4 times and then dashing. And the S-weapon seems OK, I wouldn't use B though except maybe on a boss that forces you to dodge a lot or is hard to aim at.
Okay, it seems that it's faster to use C in some places.
I redid the beginning of the first level and it's bit faster than nitsuja's test run.
I found a fast way to get past that last spikeball: Take damage at the second one.
Here's my short WIP.
This was one of my favourite games on nes. And I still own original copy of it =) This is also one of the easies NES games ever and I have completed game hundreds of times with NES =)
If you are doing TAS already, I'll give a hint. C is absolute domination weapon against Joker in 7-2. You can kill Joker in seconds with it. Just go very near RIGHT wall (left doesn't work) and shoot the wall as fast as possible. Splitted parts of shots are hitting Joker with insane tempo.
So, actually Joker at 7-2 is absolutely easiest boss in this game =)
Ok, this is not TAS or seriously made TAS, but this is just introducion to people who doesn't know what kind of game this is. (I used only save states)
Whole game is completed about in 16:30 minutes. When you start to watch it, remember... there is ALOT things which doesn't belong to TAS (few times standing still for few seconds, too many shots fired etc.)
I made this introducion because I wanted to see this game TASed someday. It took about 1,5 hours to make this video. So it isn't so bad to make TAS ?
I hope that somebody got intrested about this video and wanted to make real tas. I'm ready to help if you need some information for this game.
And... here's the url to video
http://koti.mbnet.fi/creatus/batmanrun/brotj.fcm
I't was made with fceu 0.98.15
And used rom was: Batman_-_Return_of_the_Joker_(U)
P.S.
Sorry for waking up old post
Beggars can't be choosers. :)
Thanks for helping me kill 17 minutes.
A: Batman is beautifully animated.
B: The music is fairly good. Danceable, at any rate.
C: Autoscroll levels.
A+B+C=BATMAN MUST DANCE!
The game is good for TAS. It's fast, nice to watch and not too long.
But, jumping makes TASing very... awful. I stopped because I got fed up with the first vertical shaft.
Maybe I'll finish it someday, now that there's a test run.
