10-Yard Fight for NES
American Football...kind-of. There are major differences in this game depending on what version you are playing.
The North American release of this game plays much like a standard game of American Football with both offense and defensive play during a set time frame; winner being the team with highest score when the time runs out. Four difficulty levels are available to choose from at the beginning of the game.
The Japanese version, however, has a completely different goal. This version is high score based; more like the arcade release. Score increases with progress down the field, touchdowns, kicked PATs, and remaining time on the clock when the touchdown is scored. Another major difference is no option to select difficulty at the beginning; the game moves through the 4 difficulties as its normal progression to the hardest level (Super Bowl). Each difficulty level involves a first and second half. Scoring a touchdown ends the half and moves to the next. As each half ends as soon as a touchdown is scored, the game can be progressed through without regard for the time on the clock. Thus it is able to be speedrun.
Objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.2.1
- Beat the Super Bowl as quickly as possible.
- Aims for Vault publication
- This submission is an attempt to help complete the TASmania project.
- The primary limitation to progress in this game is the
running crawling speed of the players.
- A rough calculation of running speed yields the players run speed at 19-20 seconds to run 40-yards.
- For comparison, professional NFL players (wide receivers/running backs) average 4.5 to 4.6 seconds per 40-yards and that's from a standing start, not already moving at top speed.
- Vertical running speed is unaffected by L/R movements as long as 'Up' is also held on the directional pad during lateral diagonal motions.
- This TAS uses the same strats used by RTA speed runners to avoid being tackled.
- Pausing/Un-Pausing the game stops musical ditties in various places which speeds up action of the game. These are performed frame perfect as soon as possible in all instances.
- Once the 2nd half of the Super Bowl is beaten, the game restarts the Super Bowl and loops. After the final input of this TAS, one half worth of time needs to run out in the restarted Super Bowl to reach the 'Game Over' screen.
Publication Eligibility
Is this run eligible for a moon tier publication I highly doubt it.
Is this run vault eligible? Maybe.
Some details to consider:
- This TAS time is 10:18.45. Time ends on last input (kicking the field goal)
- The RTA record is 10:30. Time ends with the restart of Super Bowl.
- The Super Bowl restarts approximately 6.5 seconds after the final input of the TAS, yielding a difference between the TAS and RTA runs of 4-5 seconds.
- While 4-5 seconds may not sound like much improvement over RTA, consider that this difference is primarily accomplished through frame perfect inputs for the pause/music skip and kicking of the PATs. This demonstrates how much having frame perfect precision is important for a TAS.
Why I think it should be vault publishable:
- It is the fastest known current time for the game.
- It is not trivial from a casual player's perspective.
- Though the strats used may make the run appear trivial, the game itself is not.
- Unless more glitches are found that would somehow speed up the run, I don't foresee any potential improvements.
- In my opinion, the fastest known run (that is not obviously sub-optimal) of any non-trivial game should be vault eligible regardless of how closely RTA runners can come to matching the final time.
- In my opinion, the fastest known run (that is not obviously sub-optimal) of any non-trivial game should be vault eligible regardless of how crappy the game itself is perceived to be.
- It will help complete the TASmania project.
Cancelling due to anticipated improvements.
