As always, I have provided a release package on my sourceforge project. It includes the movie file, spreadsheet, and Memory Watch file.

I decided to continue Randil's WIP that he posted some time ago. The total improvement time is 1838 frames.
Most of the improvement comes from more precision, especially in boss fights. There is also a trick that Randil discovered. If you end a battle on the right side of the screen, holding L+R makes the screen scroll faster.
Btw, this is one of the most terribly programmed games for the NES. Changing weapons, lightning, and bosses appearing force the screen to go black and the return. There is lag everywhere despite the character moving at very clunky speeds where it can take 4 frames for the sprite to update. And to top it all off, even the closing credits are laggy! Sheesh.
Also, another 2004 movie bites the dust, woo.

Flygon: Replaced YouTube module with HD module.

DarkKobold: Claimed for judging.
obvious acceptance.

adelikat: I'll handle the publication (of mmarks encode & screenshot & links)


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15584
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2940: adelikat & Randil's NES Castle of Dragon in 06:28.44
Skilled player (1326)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 1354
Location: U.S.
Voting Yes. I watched this before it was submitted, and im happy that the old infamous movie is finally beaten!
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Cats puke is more appetizing than this game. I give a Yes vote for the duo's ability to somehow get the courage to improve a TAS of this game. SD download HD download
Post subject: Re: #2940: adelikat, Randil's NES Castle of Dragon in 06:28.44
Player (246)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
TASVideoAgent wrote:
And to top it all off, even the closing credits are laggy! Sheesh.
They may be laggy, but the credits music is super epic and catchy, which is surprising considering the quality of the game! Also voting yes as a good improvement. I actually don't mind watching this game being played, barring stupid graphical errors in the programming (lightning in the catacombs? You bet!)
Joined: 12/27/2006
Posts: 49
It looked very optimized, but dear gods those were some ugly graphics... I'm going to need to mull this over. EDIT: Well... there's always the folks who'll be impressed with the TAS from a purely technical prespective, and of course those who actually played this game would probably like it. Still, after going through the entire list of published NESgames, I can't find a game that I disliked watching more. It doesn't help that side-scrolling action games seem to be the most popular types of game to TAS, so there's a lot of competition there. TLDR: Voted no.
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I'm glad you decided to finish this. Now I got that burden off my shoulders! :) I think the run held a consistent high technical quality (even my part!), so I'm throwing in a yes vote. I have a question though: When using the flail on bosses, sometimes you seem to be very accurate about when you press B (such as the boss around frame 15000), but other times it looks as if you used autofire (such as around frame 16400). Why is this? EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to ask: Did you get any help from Nitrogenesis' WIP? If so, maybe he should be mentioned in the comments.
Active player (437)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Voting no, wasnt entertained and the game choice was pretty bad in my opinion.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Editor, Skilled player (1439)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2108
I had considered doing this because 2004 movies are easy targets, but turns out that won't be necessary anymore. Voting yes as an improvement to a published run.
Editor
Joined: 3/10/2010
Posts: 899
Location: Sweden
This game is somewhat better than castelevania the adventure. And the run is good.
Joined: 12/16/2010
Posts: 18
Fugly game, good run. I was entertained enough to vote yes, if I could that is.
I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.
Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain
Horrible. Plain and simply horrible. I vote not to publish this thing, but quietly replace the old movie file in the currently published run.
No.
Joined: 2/20/2010
Posts: 209
Location: I'm in space
DrJones wrote:
I vote not to publish this thing, but quietly replace the old movie file in the currently published run.
Ditto. The game is super boring to watch, TAS or no, but as this improves an already-published run of it, I'm compelled to vote yes. If the question of bad game choice weren't already answered, I'd probably vote otherwise. =^p
Oh, play it cool. Play it cool. Here come the space cops.
Skilled player (1605)
Joined: 6/11/2006
Posts: 818
Location: Arboga, Sweden
Huge disagreement from my side then. This game isn't that bad, as a matter of fact, it's even quite awesome. It's like the ugly little brother that Sword Master never had, and the TAS is well done as well. This is one of those games that consists of "walk to the right and do more shit than just jump over pits". Short, action-filled and no cutscenes. I vote yes and would have done so even if this would have been the first entry for this game.
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 893
my eyes are bleeding from this madness but i still give a yes vote.
Editor, Experienced player (885)
Joined: 1/23/2008
Posts: 529
Location: Finland
I don't think this is a bad game choice. Since it well improves the old run, yes vote.
Joined: 4/29/2005
Posts: 1212
This game is basically just one big endurance round to save a princess with huge breasts. ...Hell, that's all the motivation I'd need! xD Yes vote.
mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
Nice, I'm glad to see an improvement of this got finished. It's hard to tell most of the specific improvements, though. Could you put in some more explanation, such as why you fire the flame sword from so far away and how much damage you do running into enemies with your body? That would help clarify what this movie's doing and make it more enjoyable. Regardless, good job with improving this clunky but oddly-entertaining game.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Randil wrote:
When using the flail on bosses, sometimes you seem to be very accurate about when you press B (such as the boss around frame 15000), but other times it looks as if you used autofire (such as around frame 16400). Why is this?
Most of those are probably situations where it was equally fast. Generally I would test with auto-fire and savestate, then attempt to improve. If I merely matched it probably went with the original state. Often the amount of damage didn't need to be optimized like when the HP is 22. The max you can do is 7 so either way you are doing 4 hits and none of them need to do a lot of damage. I hope that made sense.
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to ask: Did you get any help from Nitrogenesis' WIP? If so, maybe he should be mentioned in the comments.
Nitro's wip had nothing useful compared to yours. He picked up where you left off but immediately took the wrong route :P So none of his input is represented in this movie.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
mklip2001 wrote:
Could you put in some more explanation, such as why you fire the flame sword from so far away [...]?
I can answer this: The flame sword is a powerful but time limited weapon. When there is a flame wave on screen, the timer for this weapon stops. The reason for constantly firing this weapon is to keep it longer.
adelikat wrote:
Most of those are probably situations where it was equally fast. Generally I would test with auto-fire and savestate, then attempt to improve. If I merely matched it probably went with the original state. Often the amount of damage didn't need to be optimized like when the HP is 22. The max you can do is 7 so either way you are doing 4 hits and none of them need to do a lot of damage. I hope that made sense.
Yes, that made sense, and this is what I thought too, I just wanted to make sure. Thanks for explaining.
NitroGenesis
He/Him
Editor, Experienced player (556)
Joined: 12/24/2009
Posts: 1873
adelikat wrote:
"Randil wrote:
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to ask: Did you get any help from Nitrogenesis' WIP? If so, maybe he should be mentioned in the comments.
Nitro's wip had nothing useful compared to yours. He picked up where you left off but immediately took the wrong route :P So none of his input is represented in this movie.
I was testing to see what would be better... :P It was very rough.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Banned User
Joined: 8/30/2010
Posts: 500
Location: Argentina Bs. As.
For publish: Description: I decided to continue Randil's WIP that he posted some time ago. The total improvement time is 1838 frames. Most of the improvement comes from more precision, especially in boss fights. There is also a trick that Randil discovered. If you end a battle on the right side of the screen, holding L+R makes the screen scroll faster. Btw, this is one of the most terribly programmed games for the NES. Changing weapons, lightning, and bosses appearing force the screen to go black and the return. There is lag everywhere despite the character moving at very clunky speeds where it can take 4 frames for the sprite to update. And to top it all off, even the closing credits are laggy! Sheesh. Also, another 2004 movie bites the dust, woo. Archives: YouTube Archive.org Torrent Image: Thanks
[18:51] <scrimpy> Oh, nothing [18:51] <mmarks> oh [18:51] <Nach> I think scrimpy is just jealous of you mmarks
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Thanks for all that publication info help. In the future however, the length of the video file would be a big help.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15584
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1698] NES Castle of Dragon by adelikat & Randil in 06:28.44
Joined: 3/3/2007
Posts: 41
Given that we now have a published TAS for the arcade version, and the description for this TAS focuses on how bad of a game the NES version is, I think it now ought to be emphasized that this is a terrible port of an arcade game. It can be as simple as amending the last sentence to refer to "the superior arcade version" instead of just "the arcade version," or the second sentence to contrast the poor qualities described with that of the arcade version (which has much better controls, superior graphics and sound, and no fake difficulty through random factors, respectively, as well as a much faster pace compared to the plodding NES version). Either way...
- The Green Herring