Newcomer Recs should all have some defining TAS-like aspect to them, something that anyone can see regardless of how much they know about the hobby. I'm all for diversity as well, as I think there are a lot of solid runs out there that show off TAS precision much better than Marios and Metroids.
With that said, I may as well go through every recommended movie we have and offer a brief summary of my thoughts on them.
KEEP:
Aria of Sorrow "all souls": It is one of the only movies that continually blows my mind every time I watch it. It's just perfect. It defines luck manipulation and insane movement/glitch usage.
Yoshi's Island "100%": This should be the sole Mario game we have recommended, because it manages to captivate you for 2 hours without ever getting boring. It shows off just how much control TASers have at any given time by using precise movement and lots of playaround antics. It's a show-offy run, and not only is that legitimate praise, but it's the best praise I can give it.
Cave Story: Still a fantastic run, and one of the very few TASes we have where the watcher can actually go and play the game right afterward. It could potentially be one of the most eye-opening TASes we have if we also recommend that newcomers play the game afterward and see just how much more intense the TAS is.
Family Feud: One of our defining and most popular runs, it's a perfect example of the playaround nature of TASing, where not every run has to be "FASTEST POSSIBLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES". It's also funny as hell.
International Superstar Soccer Deluxe: Honestly, same reasoning as Family Feud, but it does it in such a different way with a different game that no one would expect anything exciting out of. It's one of my go-to recommendations.
Gimmick! "100%": I already sang this run's praises earlier in the discussion. Gimmick's super-polished, interesting, abusable mechanics make it a prime watch in my opinion. The run may be a bit outdated at the moment, but it won't stay that way for TOO much longer.
Gradius: It may have fallen out of my personal favorites list, but that doesn't mean it's lost its charm or excitement. Proving that a horizontal space shooter can make an excellent playspace, it should be kept for genre variety.
UNDECIDED:
SMB3 "ACE": My only issue with this one is having too many Mario games. This is the most creative ACE run we have, and we absolutely need a solid ACE playaround recommended to newcomers, but if diversity's an angle we're going for then we might need to decide whether or not we should have two Mario runs in a short list of 15 games. Either that or we could just knock up the number of recs we have and it'll be fine. If it does end up getting replaced, I'd recommend
Pokemon "pi" as a suitable replacement for a creative ACE run.
Mega Man 2: A lot of the Mega Man runs are starting to feel the same to me right now. While this is a classic run, it doesn't do a WHOLE lot to make it stand out from the rest. I would honestly prefer to see the
original game's TAS replace it for the DelayStageClear shenanigans and the Magnet Beam abuse, but it's not a glowing recommendation from me.
Majora's Mask: With so many new discoveries since its publication, this time has been beaten RTA. It's not a timing thing either: Even when both runs use the same timing, RTA is still faster. If a new run utilizing all the new finds wasn't being actively worked on at the moment, I would recommend this be dropped, but instead I suppose we should keep it and have it replaced with the new run when the time comes.
Sonic 3: It's become mostly zips, which are fun for a while, but when you think about it there are a lot of other zippy runs out there (look at AoS, for example), and a lot of these zips have been replicated RTA. It may be mind-blowing to newcomers, but it's one of those things that gets stale after most stages are skipped. I'd rather see
Sonic Adventure here, personally.
DROP:
SM64 "0 star": This doesn't really show off what's possible in SM64. RTA runners have matched the 0 star route, and even though it'll be obsoleted by "1 key", the fact that SM64 parallel universes are an honest-to-god meme means that a good amount of people are going to come in and know everything that's going on from the get-go. If we have to replace it with another SM64 run, either of the others is fine. 120-star shows off the broken mechanics, and 70-star shows off that the game can still be beaten extremely quickly even when not abusing the most broken exploit. Otherwise, I'd recommend the Banjo-Kazooie improvement as a replacement.
Super Metroid "RBO": Popular game, series, goal, sure. I still feel this is an arbitrary inclusion to the list. Everything Metroid does as a game and this run does as a TAS, Aria of Sorrow "all souls" does better, faster, and flashier. If we want a Metroid game, why not
Prime Hunters? Same series, different console, different genre, arguably more fun to watch for me. Makes sense.
SMB3 "warps": Yoshi's Island does everything better, in my opinion. The precision is tight, but YI has much more of it. The playarounds are fun, but YI has much more of them. Also, if we keep SMB3 "ACE", then we'd literally be recommending the same game twice. I'm not a fan of that. For a non-repeated run that masters tricky movement and playaround sections, how about I shamelessly self-promote
Umihara Kawase "sightseeing"?
SMB "walkathon": Honestly, there's only one level in the entire run that's worth watching. I love the history behind the run and the research required to make that one level possible, and the setup/payoff is amazing, but the rest of the run is just a site meme. We may as well recommend Color a Dinosaur.
As for runs I want to see bumped up to Newcomer Recs, I'd have to have a good think about those and consider whether or not I just like them for personal reasons or if they're actually great recommendations for newcomers to TASing. I'll probably get around to doing that late next month.
