- Is a demonstration
- Manipulates luck
- Plays on the hardest difficulty (most of the time: see below)
- Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
- Does not skip cutscenes, as they're really the only reason this game is worth watching
Before I start my submission notes, extra special thanks to greysondn, who wrote a brute-force script for solving the minigames and saved me hours, if not days, of agony. This TAS could not have been submitted in time for April Fool's Day if not for him!
Spanish for Everyone is a 2007 language-learning educational videogame for the Nintendo DS, developed by GameMill and published by Activision. It is notable for its nearly 6000-word dictionary, with every word fully voiced in both English and Spanish, as well as a story campaign that must be seen to be believed.
This TAS does not skip cutscenes, as they are far and away the most entertaining part about this game.
Without spoiling anything, the bare-bones premise goes like this. Our protagonist, Shawn, has lost his brother’s Nintendo DS when Shawn’s friend Miguel accidentally took it with him after his father called him home. Nothing will stop Shawn on his quest to get back his DS, even though he doesn’t know a lick of Spanish - thankfully, a helpful cast of friendly characters serve as his tutors while he travels across Mexico to Miguel’s house. The rest will have to be experienced for yourself :)
(For those who
really want the behind-the-scenes explanation for the premise spoiled, here it is encoded with
the ROT13 cipher. Uhzntnqr rfgnon vaperíoyrzragr noheevqb unpvraqb ha whrtb rqhpngvib gna fvzcyr, l ab graín fhcreivfvóa qr Npgvivfvba, n dhvra ab yr vzcbegnon zhpub ry QF pbzb cyngnsbezn. Pbzb erfhygnqb, Uhzntnqr vaivegvó tena cnegr qry qrfneebyyb qry whrtb unpvraqb ynf rfpranf gna vzcnpgnagrf pbzb shr cbfvoyr l ivraqb pózb cbqína fhcrene yn RFEO zvragenf znagraína han pnyvsvpnpvóa qr R.)
There are four minigames in Spanish for Everyone: La Piñata (hangman), Match las Tarjetas (snap), Finding Palabras (word search), and Vocabulario (a Scrabble-style anagram game which is unlocked after passing World 3). Each minigame has four difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard, and Extreme) with slightly different rulesets, and each gives out bigger rewards when completed on higher difficulties. You must score a certain number of points to reach the next area, upon which your tutor will give you an "exam", which is just replaying all three minigames under a time limit and escalating difficulty (Gina is Easy, Mr. Bull is Normal, and Tio Juan is Hard).
Finding Palabras on Extreme is by far the fastest way to get points, as unlike the other two minigames, the celebratory animation for finding a word (in the word search's case, a wolf howling) can be immediately cancelled. It also gives anywhere between 5000 and 6500 points per round, and the game can be completed in just three seconds. For the very last minigame I play Vocabularia, because the final "exam" with Tio Juan doesn't use it and I want to show it off.
While relatively straightforward, each minigame has some gameplay quirks as well:
- In Finding Palabras, a word can be found by dragging the stylus for two frames, after which there is lag that is context-sensitive. The first few words have a lag of two frames between word selections; however, once the dictionary of solved words at the top of screen is longer than eight words, the game needs an extra frame to scroll through the solutions. The number of hidden words (that the game is looking for, anyway) can vary from as little as 18 to as many as 27; however, the games are so fast and the RNG seed changes so slowly that it's rarely beneficial to luck manipulate for a board with more words. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that Extreme difficulty may not have been playtested properly, as some boards, especially on World 1, are unsolvable. At one point I had to stall in the results screen to reroll the RNG seed for a solvable board, and in another, I had to quit out to the main menu because the game would not stop giving me unsolvable boards.
- La Piñata has long animations for each letter found, but the end portion of the animation is cancelled when there is more than one of the same letter in the answer. When feasible, I luck manipulate the exams so each Piñata round will have a word with at least one duplicate letter.
- Match las Tarjetas has a starting animation that can be skipped by touching the bottom screen on a certain frame. The matching cards can be touched over three frames, but there is a 129-frame lag after matching two cards before you can select another card.
- When dragging the letters to the board in Vocabularia, there is an area of effect around each tile, approximately 52 pixels in diameter. Drag the stylus too quickly out of that area and the letter won't move. As a result, dragging a letter over can take as long as 3-4 frames, depending on distance.
The rest of the TAS should be self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask, and happy April Fool's Day! :)
feos: This movie is incredibly entertaining, so I voted Yes. It is so entertaining that it doesn't require any input at all, the highest superplay value would have been demonstrated if the author just provided emulator savestates for each cutscene that everyone must watch, and we would accept such a movie to Stars.
This wasn't done, but it's not a problem, because the author carefully dodges introducing any subplay by skipping the cutscenes, so this movie can be easily considered optimal enough to be published as the only TAS on the site, because nothing can compare to it and everything else will just be obsoleted by it.
Because watching how extraordinarily cutscenes are not skipped is incredibly entertaining, I'm accepting this movie to Vault as a "completo completion percent%" branch. Since educational games are exactly what we want in Vault, I'm also accepting it to Moons as an "any percent completion%" category.
This game requires drawing straight lines on the screen. It requires you to use your human memory. It requires you to learn. It requires you to magically know things. It requires you not to solve any puzzles that require muscle memory or planning. You can also avoid all that and write down all the solutions before applying them. Also this game elegantly relies on praying in order to get good luck from the game spirits that live between ones and zeros of its code. Since there's no way for a TASer to know anything in advance, I accept this movie to Stars for pleasing the game spirits and getting the best ever possible luck probably.
This game demonstrates how to travel to Spain from Australia on a car, so the movie is obviously a demonstration. For that reason, I'm rejecting this movie to the Demo tier which we will create yesterday. Make sure to publish it as a "demonstration demo monstration% completion" when you finish reading this lozenge-shaped fishy cucumber of square schizophasia.
Accepted to adelikat
