SO I once set a fun goal for myself: Make TASes of as many Intellivision games as possible, and then submit them all at once, to celebrate my favorite pre-NES console! And a couple years later, I have successfully made it to, uh, like four runs? So: screw it, nevermind, I'll just release them whenever I darn well feel like it, and just occasionally make another one whenever inspiration strikes. Let's start with a simple one today:
Tropical Trouble for the Mattel Intellivision seemed to take the Donkey Kong concept and turn it on its side--instead of going up the screen to save a damsel from a beast, you're going across the screen to save a damsel from a beast! I challenged myself to complete a run of this game in less than a minute, and after many rounds of optimization, I have successfully got a run of 3599 frames, so I'll call it a success.
The first six levels here all take the form of a randomly-generated chase--catch up to your girlfriend's flailing legs on the right side of the screen, and you survive to the next level! Every time you touch an obstacle, though, you trip and are frozen in place for a second. If you get too far behind and fall to the left side of the screen, you lose a life. This game is also very momentum based--every single time you try to change direction, you freeze for a few frames, meaning you want to line up your shots to sprint as far possible in one go. You can also jump to clear over any obstacles, but you don't control where you land and can risk losing a lot of speed. This is avoided as often as possible unless the jump lands me in victorious reach. Randomly, your girlfriend can drop her handkerchief onto the field, which grants invincibility for a short time, but this is never needed in this TAS.
In levels 1 & 2, you are running along the beach, evading clams, snakes, and the main threat is the beast throwing coconuts at you. In levels 3 & 4, you are now in the jungle evading bushes, and the main threat is an ape throwing coconuts from the top of the play field, making their angle less predictable to avoid. In levels 5 & 6, you are at the top of the volcano, evading fire, and the main threat is lava falling from the sky!
For the final level 7, you charge across a perilous rope bridge, dodging coconuts one last time. Instead of a chase, though, it's the final stand, and any collision with a coconut is an instant death. Reach the bad guy, though, and he is plunged deep into the waters below, leaving you with a rescued damsel and the day is saved!
You can repeat this process as many times as possible to score more points. The difficulty increases by having way more obstacles on the path--this run starts on the Hard difficulty already, and each further island has such a massive scattering of obstacles that every level becomes a repeated process of running as far as you can, jumping at the last second, tripping and waiting until you get up, then repeating the process during the very short invulnerability period, until the damsel drops a Hankerchief to spur your desire and give you the invincibility you need to charge through the level to victory. I have found no other change from doing extra loops, like some kind of reward or special message on the screens between stages, so I have chosen to just demonstrate a single loop in this TAS.
feos: Claiming for judging.
