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  • takes damage to save time
  • manipulates luck
  • glitch abuse
Time to prepare your barf bags, for here comes... a speed-TAS of Mortal Kombat 4 for GBC!
In my honest opinion, this is one of the worst fighting games ever made, if not the worst. Everything about the game is a travesty. From the unresponsive controls to the horrendous presentation to the piss-poor enemy A.I. to the slowdown to the random freezes, the game manages to suck in practically every aspect imaginable. It's even worse than Mortal Kombat Advance, and that's saying a lot.
I'm having strong doubts if you could ever make a good, entertaining playaround for this game - starting from the fact that it's torture to experience any part of it with any of your senses - but at least a speed-TAS of it is mercifully short. A large part of the run's brevity comes from a glitch in Scorpion's teleport punch, doing multiple times the damage it should if you're close enough to your opponent. A fight can at best end in only three hits. However...
A fast fight also needs something more. For one, the teleport punch damage varies due to the bizarre hit detection this game has. I couldn't always help it. Also, you need to take some damage per round to prevent the "Flawless Victory"-message from showing up, which wastes over 2 seconds each time. So, enemies had to be manipulated to quickly hit you at some point during the barrages of teleport punch.
As for manipulation techniques, I mostly used blocking and d-pad presses after a teleport punch. Another way to manipulate things is to wait frames in the Kombat Kode-screen before a fight starts. I found I had the most difficulties in manipulation in the first two fights.
This run is admittedly not perfect, but I think it is good enough for a first-edition TAS. It's a great improvement in strategies and precision over my test TAS, at least.
feos: This is such an awful game people especially enjoyed the shortness of its run. Wow. The submission met 66% of Yes votes unexpectedly. However, this is not enough of a gap to get to Moons (people are uncertain if this content is really good, or just odd). How much superplay does this run present? I see no superplay here. The only fun thing to me is the "Finish him" move. Let this be a good Vault run rather than a bad Moons run.

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Posted: 5/4/2013 7:16 AM
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TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15619
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3963: AKheon's GBC Mortal Kombat 4 in 02:13.17
Posted: 5/4/2013 8:21 AM
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totodiletrainer01
Joined: 6/29/2011
Posts: 16
Location: Parkdale, Victoria
This game is a monstrosity. It's also hilarious. Yes, because I think the fact that it's so short is good for its entertainment. Any more fights and the jump attacks would get boring fast.
Posted: 5/4/2013 9:42 AM
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CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
Wow, I'm surprised this game was actually commercially released. This would be bad quality even for a pirate game. Good speed-oriented run though. It was short enough that it didn't ever get boring, yes vote.
Posted: 5/4/2013 12:52 PM
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flezki
Joined: 12/19/2010
Posts: 126
voted yes because of the flawless victory speed killing
live life
Posted: 5/4/2013 6:29 PM
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KusogeMan
Experienced player (753)
Joined: 2/5/2012
Posts: 1804
Location: Brasil
yesvaultgamesux
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto. TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Posted: 5/5/2013 1:39 AM
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OmegaWatcher
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
That's what I like about MK TASes. Every single one of them is a trainwreck of some sort. A really amazing one, that you can not look away. This is probably the biggest one. Ironic, since its the shortest. I have no choice but vote yes
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ
Posted: 5/5/2013 8:25 AM
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Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2655)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6446
Location: The land down under.
Flash TASer of 2022 PSX TASer of 2016
FINISH HIM/HER *slide kick* well... vault. (Yes)
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Posted: 5/5/2013 8:49 AM
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goldfish
Joined: 2/20/2010
Posts: 209
Location: I'm in space
floating rapidfire air punch + bad sound effects made this funnier than i was expecting. nonetheless, blah blah speed goal in fighting game blah blah vault.
Oh, play it cool. Play it cool. Here come the space cops.
Posted: 5/5/2013 9:07 AM
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andypanther
Any
Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1107
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
So bad it's good? Absolutely yes!
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Posted: 5/5/2013 5:19 PM
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feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1255)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11492
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
NES TAS of 2011
Such votes can lead it directly to Moons suddenly.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 5/5/2013 6:15 PM
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Master_of_Puppets
Joined: 10/31/2006
Posts: 134
Did you find this movie entertaining? No, sorry If the question was "Did this movie not bore you" then the vote would be Yes What a crappy game, they should've just given up on GBC by then...
Posted: 5/5/2013 6:55 PM
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mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
This game is an amusing train wreck, but only for this length of run. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to see some detailed storyline after the final fight. That may be the main redeeming feature of this whole thing. I voted Meh, and I certainly would not recommend it for any higher tier than Vault. One question, though: I didn't look too closely when you selected your Tier. Did you pick the hardest difficulty? (i.e. the longest option?)
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.
Posted: 5/5/2013 8:06 PM
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AKheon
Editor, Experienced player (885)
Joined: 1/23/2008
Posts: 529
Location: Finland
No, it is the shortest (easy) mode. Usually, in Mortal Kombat-games you can choose separately between A.I. level (very easy - very hard) and the amount of fights (destiny towers). In this game the two are combined into one. On hard-mode enemies become more ferocious spammers of attacks, but that doesn't matter too much because they still never learn how to block. I'm guessing a hard-mode run would look the same as an easy-mode run, although the luck manipulation would be different (in some respects harder), and the run would be nearly twice as long (due to more fights). --- The standards for fighting game speed-TASes are a pretty interesting topic indeed, with many unresolved questions remaining (after all, fighting game speed-TASes are still a relatively new thing here). If you can choose the amount of fights you'll fight, is it reasonable to choose the lowest amount in a speed-TAS? There may not be a perfect analogue to this option in other genres... Could picking fewest fights simply be compared to picking a fastest route through a game? Most people seem to complain that fighting game speed-TASes are very repetitive anyway, so for now I'm personally for the option of skipping fights where applicable. But I'm also thinking that it's useful to respect the default settings of a game to a degree, to retain a semblance of normal gameplay in a run, for example not choosing 1 rounds to win instead of 2 rounds, or making a 10-sec long round timer and winning through time outs. Enough of this kind of choices, and the run would become too cheesy, not that impressive to watch any more. And if difficulty could be separately selected, it should be the hardest. Eh......... I'm undecided. I'd need more case examples of different games to really know what works the best. As for why I chose the easy-mode for MK4. Most importantly, I worked under the assumption that watching any more of it than absolutely necessary would be unbearable. Second, the change in difficulty would've not influenced the gameplay in a too critical way since I damage glitch through the fights so quick. Third, it's a stretch, but you could say that easy-mode is the default mode for the game since the cursor starts on it in the tower screen.
Posted: 5/5/2013 9:01 PM
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OmegaWatcher
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
I really think that this lengh is enough. Part of my vote for moon tier invokes the fact that this tas is only 2 minutes short. Maybe one on the hardest setting may be vault elegible
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ
Posted: 5/6/2013 2:39 AM
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Vykan12
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
My eyes vomited after 30 seconds, so I'm definitely voting yes.
Posted: 5/6/2013 9:53 PM
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Zavalix
Joined: 2/6/2011
Posts: 130
Voting No on entertainment, voting yes on Vault so people in the future can learn from our mistakes and avoid them at any cost.
Posted: 5/7/2013 6:29 AM
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Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2655)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6446
Location: The land down under.
Flash TASer of 2022 PSX TASer of 2016
feos wrote:
Such votes can lead it directly to Moons suddenly.
Some of us did vote yes to vault.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Posted: 5/7/2013 6:40 AM
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deuxhero
Joined: 8/7/2011
Posts: 166
Where's the option for "what the hell did I just watch?"?
Posted: 5/7/2013 2:09 PM
Post subject: Movie published
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TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15619
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. ---- [2387] GBC Mortal Kombat 4 by AKheon in 02:13.17
Posted: 5/7/2013 3:27 PM
Post subject: Re: #3963: AKheon's GBC Mortal Kombat 4 in 02:13.17
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OmegaWatcher
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
feos wrote:
This is such an awful game people especially enjoyed the shortness of its run. Wow.
I laughed at that
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ
Posted: 8/15/2013 4:41 PM
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jlun2
Skilled player (1742)
Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4986
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"
GBA TASer of 2010
This game misuses the "Mortal Kombat" title, and I feel sorry for the poor sucker who bought this game thinking it would be as good as the other Mortal Kombat games.
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.