Honorary Mentions (group projects where I had little to no input):
20. [3137] SNES Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by arandomgameTASer, Exonym & Samsara in 30:11.80
The small sections I did were hell to do, and then the end result wasn't even entertaining enough to make it to Moons. Damn shame.
19. [2777] NES Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II by Aglar, Randil, Alyosha, rchokler & Samsara in 07:14.32
I literally have no input in this movie. I'm only listed as a coauthor because of a frame war I ultimately lost. Sure I helped knock it down, but still... why?
18. [3124] NES Battletoads "warpless, 1 player" by feos, Alyosha & Samsara in 21:38.38
I joined this project at a bad time and had to drop out quick. My biggest contribution was inviting feos, who basically did the whole damn thing by himself since Alyosha also had to drop. Great movie, but it's not something I can be proud of creating.
17. [2923] NES Streemerz: Super Strength Emergency Squad Zeta "Streeeeemerz Mode" by adelikat, Aglar, Noxxa, Really_Tall & Samsara in 05:03.33
Streemerz as a competition was fun as hell, optimizing it was also a thing I didn't really do though. Being the official submission Resync Bitch was a bit of a pain, but it was still fun to bring down the time with all the improvements coming in.
16. [3224] NES Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse "Grant path, warp glitch" by arandomgameTASer, Samsara & Noxxa in 15:22.01
I love Castlevania a whole lot, even if I didn't have a lot to do with this movie I'm just glad I managed to get in on a Castlevania run at some point in my life. It's a good run overall, I'm pretty proud of my (small amount of) work too.
Actual List (solo projects + group projects I contributed heavily to):
15. [1793] SNES Run Saber "1 player" by Samsara in 13:38.48
Garbage. A lot of what motivated me to finish it was just being so far ahead of the published run at the time, though it took me a while to realize I was only so far ahead because of all the entertainment tradeoffs used in said run. I can't help but look back on this run and despair.
14. [2554] NES Wayne's World by Samsara in 05:38.86
Fuck this game.
13. [2911] A2600 Riddle of the Sphinx by Samsara in 01:37.41
I really only submitted this because I finished it. It's not an entertaining run by any stretch of the imagination, though I think the rating is a little unfair.
12. [2962] PSX Umihara Kawase Shun by Samsara in 02:17.25
This is so low on the list because I don't feel like it's my run. It's all my input, but apart from a couple small changes in routes, it's not really mine. And yes, I'm ranking this improvement lower than...
11. [2945] PSX Umihara Kawase Shun by Samsara in 02:20.41
...because I feel like I had more of a say in this run. It's still ultimately not much of my run, sure, but with my knowledge at the time I felt motivated by all the "improvements" I was finding over the public run I had access to. You know, the one that wasn't hidden from everyone except one dude on the forum.
10. [2240] NES Moon Crystal by Samsara in 08:35.12
This is the first TAS I actually put effort into... But it wasn't a good amount of effort. There wasn't a whole lot of research or testing done, I just kinda went in not expecting to find much over JXQ and ended up finding more than I expected. And then it was basically rendered obsolete super quickly for the dumbest reason: Me. I'm the dumbest reason.
9. [3201] SNES Majyuuou "best ending" by Samsara in 16:13.40
This wasn't a whole lot of fun to do, I'll be honest. It started out neat, but getting into things like later boss fights and all the lag reduction, it kinda turned into a hellish project that ended up not being as nice of a result as I would've liked it to be.
8. [2635] NES Treasure Master by Samsara & micro500 in 19:15.80
Not the most exciting or difficult game (in fact, it's pretty sync-stable and improvements could be easily added to any stage at any time), but for an early project of mine I think it turned out really good. It was probably the most fun I've had with a project just due to how simple it was: I actually hashed out 15 minutes of the run in one straight 8-hour session. Best part of the run was finding that huge Prize World skip (and even finding a TAS-only part 2 for the skip that makes it save way more time). If I hadn't found that, this would've been lower.
7. [3168] NES Gimmick! by Aglar, Hotarubi & Samsara in 04:24.61
Look back to the Umihara Kawase Shun comments and you'll understand why this is lower than most people think it should be. It's just barely enough of "my run" to classify it under something I feel like I worked on, but I can't really be too proud of it because the movie's overall a huge copout. If I redo best ending, it'll be 100% my input, and it'll probably be first on this list in the future... But for now, any% sits here.
6. [3018] Genesis Earnest Evans by Samsara in 07:36.54
5. [2987] PCE Splatterhouse by Samsara in 12:15.72
It's clunkier than Wanpaku Graffiti and I think people are overrating it. My entertainment stuff only got really good in Stage 4 and onward. Still, it was a fun run, I like watching it back from time to time, and it does at least have the bonus of syncing across two different game versions, which is Real Nice, Yo.
4. [2915] NES Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti "best ending" by Samsara in 19:11.24
This run kinda influenced my entertainment choices for all of my future runs. I'm super happy with how those sections turned out. It's just a shame that the last two minutes is dedicated to a single, terrible boss. I feel like the run would've been much better received without that.
3. [2823] SNES Umihara Kawase "sightseeing" by Alyosha, ars4326 & Samsara in 11:44.77
This would be higher up if I hadn't taken a month away from the project almost immediately after starting. I'm a flake. I know. Even though a lot of this run is based off of the efforts of the same Umihara TASer whose work I used for Shun, this was definitely the most unique Umihara run of the lot, where some stages actually used unique strategies and optimizations that made it all look different. Problem is: It's improvable. Using that same TASer's
new strategies. You can tell why I hate Umihara TASing. Fun fact: I believe this is the first published run that was primarily made using (an at-the-time extremely buggy, beta) TAStudio. So there's that piece of history for ya!
2. [2933] GG Coca Cola Kid by Samsara, ars4326 & dekutony in 08:26.47
Daaaaaamn, I'm proud of this and how it turned out. It's the closest I'll ever get to Sonic TASing, the group work was excellent, and thankfully none of it was too overly difficult.
1. [2908] SNES Run Saber "1 player" by Samsara in 13:05.27
This was basically absolving myself of my TASing sins, going back to my oldest and worst run and destroying it in every possible way. Much better optimization, new tricks, more entertainment, and god just look at that screenshot. It's a masterpiece. This is the run I would show people if anyone I knew outside of the site ever asked me about my TASes. But then again, that's probably going to change before the end of the year.
