FLASHING WARNING DUE TO BEING A LIGHTGUN GAME
Introduction
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 63 - The Gun Shooting 2 is a PlayStation game from the Simple Series line of games by D3 Publisher and developed by Amusement & Multimedia Studio. This is a Guncon lightgun compatible game done in the style of the Point Blank games where there are short challenges with quotas to meet. This game has a story mode where each chapter has a selection of 3 challenges where one has to be passed to advance forward. The goal of this TAS is to complete the Story Mode as fast as possible.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- Nymashock core
- Uses death to save time, technically
- Ow my eyeballs
Game notes
Speed tradeoffs
At the start of the game I do align the cursor though I'm pretty sure that's probably never needed except for personal convenience for TASing. I also put in a lot of custom initials as a personal speed/entertainment tradeoff while keeping the actual gameplay as fast as I could.
Input polling
Intermittently there's pockets of input polling that prevents shooting as fast as possible. While there can be a shooting input queued up during that pocket, it comes out after that. The problem is that the game still runs everything during that time so there's very noticeable spots where shooting just stops for a bit in a way out of my control. Sometimes hitting something with a shot from that pocket causes another smaller pocket that eats rapid inputs right after with the same conditions. Otherwise the game doesn't lag at all which considering the scope of the game makes sense.
As a note the game spaces lightgun inputs 4 frames between them. This means the fastest shooting speed without loss of input polling is 15 shots for every 60 frames, or about 15 shots per second.
Scoring
Each minigame challenge requires a score of 1000 before the clear bonus to advance to the next stage. Score can be broken down as this:
- Score: The points earned towards the minigame's objective. This varies by minigame and is taken at face value.
- Reaction speed: I'm actually not 100% sure on this but it seems to be the reaction time between successful shots. I have done real time play that's reached lower times than ones seen in the TAS but in general this doens't really add much score.
- Accuracy: This is a percentage of how many shots hit the intended targets rounded to a whole number. Some minigames can get this above 100% in certain situations. This is multiplied by 5 and added to the total score.
- Target score: This is the goal score and is always 1000 points. This gets checked against the sum of points earned by Score, Reaction speed, and Accuracy. If the sum is less than the goal score then it's a failure. If the sum is greater than the goal score, then it's a success and 500 extra points are added to the total score.
- Total score: The total sum of Score, Reaction speed, Accuracy, and (if earned) Target score bonuses.
Some minigames can technically be failed objective-wise but still have enough score to pass to the next stage. This is used for a couple of the chapters to get through the game faster.
RNG
Some minigames have an RNG component to them that affects their completion time. In all honesty I didn't super bother with RNG manipulation since I'm not sure what affects it and it's not really needed for most minigames anyways. The ghost and gunman minigames are where RNG would be affected the most for completion times.
Chapter breakdown
Each chapter has their own set of minigames. I'll explain my choices in each section. I used Google Translate on my phone as well as some extra language checking to get the chosen minigame names so they're probably wrong in some way or another as I do not claim to understand the language fully. Minigames are not ordered by difficulty all the time but in general the harder ones are on the right side.
Chapter 1
Game chosen: UFO
The UFO minigame has a health bar for the UFO which means it can be shot down quickly. The other minigames are on a set timer of 20 seconds and are thus very clearly slower.
Chapter 2
Game chosen: Goldfish scoop 3
Apparently this goldfish is half shark. It also has a health bar but always dives down to move after being shot 3 times when it surfaces. The other minigames technically have a player healthbar where every shot depletes it. The first goldfish scoop game depletes it faster if a goldfish is missed. However, the second goldfish scoop game always has that faster rate for each scoop regardless of success. Either way they're both slower as Goldfish scoop 2 is slower by 87 frames. Technically it could be greater but that's dependent on the movement RNG in Goldfish scoop 3.
Chapter 3
Game chosen: Stone crusher
The stone doesn't have a health bar but it's a simple matter of just shooting it until it crumbles. The other minigames are on a 20 second clock and are slower than shooting a rock.
Chapter 4
Game chosen: Prize shooter
The goal is to simply fill the girl's heart gauge by shooting the requested objects on the shelf. Once again, the other minigames are on a set timer and are much slower.
Chapter 5
Game chosen: Ghost hunter 3
The intended goal is to take out ghosts for the entire timer to protect the girl running around. The game can be ended early if they manage to grab and steal the girl's spirit away. Thus the fastest completion method for all three versions of the game is to shoot enough ghosts to reach the 1000 score threshold at the end and let the ghosts commit a kidnapping. Ghost hunter 3 was chosen as the movement patterns ended up faster than the other two versions from my testing.
Chapter 6
Game chosen: Target shooting
The goal is to shoot as many targets as possible during the 20 second time limit. I took the time to get as many double and triple shots as possible. While this is slow, the other minigames are much longer. The left one is a rhythm style game that takes even longer. The middle one is a sound matching game where the sound order playing takes longer than 20 seconds.
Chapter 7
Game chosen: Quiz
All of these minigames in this chapter are on a 20 second time limit. Thus choice doesn't really matter at all. I chose the Quiz one since that's the most incomprehensible if you don't both know Japanese and the symbols for Japanese maps. Yes, there's an intentional pause between the last two shots. I did shoot enough just to get to 2000 points for 1st place.
Chapter 8
Game chosen: Gunman 3
Gunman 3 has the player wait until the opponent is completely facing the player to shoot them successfully. Otherwise it's a miss. The RNG is kind enough to give me a quick pattern for 3 of them, enough to reach quota, and intentionally failing the other 2 opponents to finish quickly. This ended up faster than the other two gunman games since those have long forced waits between rounds that can't be skipped.
Chapter 9
Game chosen: Coin shot
Coin shot is about juggling the coins for the entire 20 second timer. I get as many multi-coin shots as I could reasonably do. The middle game, coin purse, may seem like it can be faster than the timed game with the quick rounds but it ended up slower even with the quota only needing 1 coin to reach. The right game, coin break, is another 20 second timer game based around destroying coins rather than juggling them. Coin shot required a little less shooting.
Chapter 10
Game chosen: Solo fight
The lone knight has an HP bar that can be depleted but only takes damage every 10 frames. The left minigame is on a set 20 second timer and is obviously slower. The right minigame is about finding the bush the ninja is hiding in and shooting it. Each round takes a long while so that's also slower.
Improvements
Most likely the biggest improvement would be RNG manipulation to save some frames in the more RNG dependent minigames. If there's also a way to avoid having the input polling stopping once in a while that might also save some frames here and there.
Note to publishers if this gets accepted
I'll leave it to dealer's choice whether to let the ending dialogue play or not. However I will say that the gun cursor will move after the last input of the submission so if you don't want the cursor on the final illustration at the end do have it set somewhere else on screen.
ThunderAxe31: A weird game, but the goal is clear: beat the game. And the movie does exactly that, and fast. Accepting.
But that doesn't mean I didn't make single video tracks, cause I did: