This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6831: XTREMAL93's NES The Punisher in 59:00.50

Before I started watching, I thought, “I hope this isn’t an LJN game.” But, sure enough, it comes from Beam and LJN. It’s a shooting gallery game very much like the author's previous work on Mechanized Attack, except it’s much longer and lacks Zapper support. The RTA timing cuts out about 9 seconds. The TAS time converted is about 58:51, compared to the RTA record of 1:00:13. The game is almost totally an autoscroller, but it’s not trivial. The game noticeably has no music, except for the occasional appearance of Mr. Saxobeat, whose song lasts for only about 20 seconds each time. It makes him a memorable character, at least. I think it was a good entertainment choice not to shoot him. The graphics are also a positive point. The boss fights look pretty impressive, especially the fight against Sijo (the ninja). The scenery initially has some variation, but the later part of the movie becomes repetitious with more street and warehouse shooting. The submission has almost no information. It would be nice to know if the author examined other routing possibilities or secret doors that may lead to alternate paths. Also, if the goal is fastest time, wouldn't it be faster to miss some enemies to avoid end of stage bonuses? I played the first stage and intentionally missed some enemies to confirm that fewer bonuses show up. But killing bad guys is entertaining, and so maybe the branch could be changed to 100%, which should qualify as a full completion and remain Vault-eligible. Overall, the game has a few more positives than expected, but it goes on too long. The nature of the game does not give the author much freedom to improve the entertainment. It should go in the Vault.

Also, if the goal is fastest time, wouldn't it be faster to miss some enemies to avoid end of stage bonuses? I played the first stage and intentionally missed some enemies to confirm that fewer bonuses show up. But killing bad guys is entertaining, and so maybe the branch could be changed to 100%, which should qualify as a full completion and remain Vault-eligible.

This TAS doesn't achieve 100% kills on every level. I made it 20ish minutes earlier and the last level I saw ended with 99% kills. If it's true that this isn't optimal, I wonder if it is a publication-blocking hurdle. I can't imagine it accounts for many frames lost over the course of an hour-long movie, so maybe it can be excused for now. On the topic of entertainment, this is potentially one of the most boring TASes I have ever seen. Almost no music, repetitive gameplay, and it is way, way too long. I agree, though, that it is Vault-eligible despite appearing trivial on the surface.

This TAS doesn't achieve 100% kills on every level. I made it 20ish minutes earlier and the last level I saw ended with 99% kills. If it's true that this isn't optimal, I wonder if it is a publication-blocking hurdle. I can't imagine it accounts for many frames lost over the course of an hour-long movie, so maybe it can be excused for now.

Visually, every enemy seemed to die, but indeed the stage completion screen at 17:45 showed 134/135 enemies eliminated. Assuming the enemy can be found, I'm not sure whether it would be easy to sync the rest of the movie. Although it may be a matter of only a few frames overall, the movie seems to currently be in a state where its goal is neither fastest completion nor full completion, which is a problem.

yes, it i mostly 100% kills, except Assassin-1 and Kliegg-2 stages. Maybe game has bug and enemy spawns out of the screen. I checked many speedruns and walkthroughs on youtube and everybody has this problem. Visiting bonus levels (GO arrows) will make the run longer, because after it, Punisher spawns at the same place and you can't skip the part of level. And even with bonus levels you can't achieve 100% kills in Assassin-1 and Kliegg-2 stages. I think it is not worth it to keep alive enemies to save frames. Some of them will follow you and shoot. More objects on screen, more missing sprites, more boring playing. I think this run is improvable only if you can manipulate some bosses: Kliegg - make him exit from tank as soon as possible. Sijo - make him less jumping Assassin - make him less moving left and right, so grenades will have more effect. Hitman - make him less moving left and right, so grenades will have more effect and make him exit from helicopter as soon as possible. Kingpin - make him shoot less so you don't have to avoid damage and lose time

Adding to Arc's assessment. I did a side-by-side comparison and noticed that the speedrun and this TAS don't seem to be the same. Not having played this game, I attribute this to either the game randomly going through backgrounds and bosses, or that it is just a different version. One thing to point out is that the ninja fight shows up in different orders , but they still exist. So I don't see a problem with the comparison among the RTA, as long as both runs exhibit the same content. Additionally, it seems that all the stages are on a fixed amount of scrolling time. As Arc stated, it would be nice to have more submission notes to analyze what was done to cut time. One item that I believe could be a factor is cutting lag; however, I don't see that lag is a factor...unless a frame of it exist upon hitting or killing an enemy. If this is the case, a frame of lag in these cases could mount up to a big saving by the end...if shooting it on a different frame would actually remove it. If this game didn't have any boss fights, I would say this autoscroller would be a trivial attempt, unless it was known that the end of each stage could be triggered quickly by killing the last seemingly scripted enemy appearance, or the aforementioned possibility of lag reduction. Because the author takes damage during boss fights, and the fact they they are vastly superior over any human effort, I also agree that this should be accepted to the vault.

One item that I believe could be a factor is cutting lag; however, I don't see that lag is a factor...unless a frame of it exist upon hitting or killing an enemy. If this is the case, a frame of lag in these cases could mount up to a big saving by the end...if shooting it on a different frame would actually remove it.

Took a quick look at the game: There's no lag when shooting. Hardly any at all, actually, at least as far as I've watched in emulator (20+ minutes in and less than 2 seconds of lag, all from loading and literally none at all during gameplay, which I am incredibly jealous of after NOES). There's a stage select (it flashes by fairly quickly in the TAS so I didn't catch it when watching the encode), so level order in the TAS just seems to be whatever ends up directly under the cursor when the stage select screen appears. I assume the RTA runs use a different level order to maximize their chances of a run finishing (i.e, getting harder levels out of the way early), since every level appears to be laid out the same no matter when they're chosen. If the triviality rules hadn't been changed while I was gone, I'd be more hesitant about this run, seeing as it's almost completely on-rails except for the bosses. Hell, two people are tied for the RTA record, and it's only about a minute slower than the TAS. The bosses are clearly non-trivial, though, and the killing during the stages looks pretty nice. I agree with 100% kills, too (or at least 100% of what's possible to kill, given that not all enemies seem to be that way). The bonuses don't take too long and given what I'm seeing (and what I've messed around with myself), leaving enemies alive might kill Frank Punishman before it even starts to affect how long the bonuses last. Either way, TASMania rolls onward with another Vault run. No vote for entertainment, but worthy of publication IMO.

The game is on rails. There's almost no music. It never felt like the enemies got to the point where they were swarming the screen. The boss fights were interesting, though, but that's such a small part of the entire run. I voted no on entertainment. Feedback looks mostly negative. 7 votes, 3 nos, 3 mehs. This does feel like a Vault run.

Please talk about the weapon usage. Is supergun used? Can rocket launcher be brought to a boss? Can you select weapons? If you die you're back to UZI?

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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4269] NES The Punisher by XTREMAL93 in 59:00.50