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Super Smash Bros Kirby High Score Time Attack TAS- Comicalflop

  • EMULATOR -- Mupen 64 rerecording 0.5
  • ROM – SMASH BROTHERS
  • COUNTRY -- USA
  • CRC -- 5B8B6B91
PLUGINS --
  • video: glN64 v0.4.1
  • sound: Jabo's DirectSound 1.6
  • input: TAS Input Plugin 0.6
  • RSP : RSP emulation Plugin
CONTROLLERS --
1: Present
2: Disconnected
3: Disconnected
4: Disconnected

Goals

  • Aims for Highest Score in Fastest Time
  • Takes no Damage, Hardest Setting
  • Manipulates Luck
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Genre: Fighter
For my second TAS I decided to do a High Score run of Super Smash Bros. for the N64. This is an extremely popular fighting game, which spawned two sequels in the two succeeding Nintendo consoles. Many people all over the world spent and still spend endless hours playing the 8 original characters and 4 unlockable characters, and the game's single player mode with an adventure to complete, bonus stages to get records on, plus the game's best feature of outstanding multiplayer gameplay of “cartoon mischief” made it a mainstream N64 title.
This run is a high score time attack using Kirby on very hard mode, with one life, achieving a final score of 2,554,881 in 4 minutes 13 seconds in-game time, 8m 8.083s (29285 frames). This beats the previous record of a tool assisted high score time attack of 2,419,243, which will be mentioned later. The reason that this is called a high score time attack score and not a high score run is due to the goals that were set at the beginning, and was discussed in the SSB Fastest Completion + High Score forum. To summarize, it was debated because in every stage that is played it is possible, with all the myriad bonus awards that can be gotten from achieving a certain goal during the stages, to get higher scores than what I had achieved. However, all of them were at the cost of time. There are three categories for a speedrun for this game: Fastest time, pure high score, and high score time attack. Each is competitive with its own goals; fastest time to get a faster time, pure high score to, no matter in how much time lost/gained to get a higher final score, and high score time attack, to get a higher score in a shorter time.
Kirby was chosen for his ability to get many bonus points, with a few certain attacks that are used frequently throughout the game. The bonus that arguably provides the biggest amount of points for least effort is Pacifist, which grants 60,000 if your opponent dies without you damaging him/her. Now waiting around for an opponent to die on his own on very hard with one life is not a feasible strategy- enter Kirby’s B move, copy. Kirby is well known throughout his games of copying his opponents’ abilities, and Super Smash Bros. is not different. Kirby will suck in an opponent, and copy their B move after he spits them out.
But the programmers that designed the game made it so that if Kirby sucks in an opponent and does nothing, he’ll wait and wobble a little as the opponent struggles to break free. Eventually he/she will break free, and Kirby gets launched backwards as the opponent escapes. The catch? If an opponent breaks free like that, there’s no damage dealt. Therefore, Kirby is capable of forcing a pacifist kill on an opponent, by sucking an opponent, falling down near the bottom of the stage, and spitting out at the very last moment. No CPU under the right circumstances can escape from that.
You’ll see this technique used in 4 of the stages, in the others different strategies are used for very specific reasons. There is one additional Pacifist kill, and in the rest Kirby attacks normally. Every stage was very carefully planned to get the highest score in the shortest amount of time, and I’ll go into length for each stage to describe what I did to get the highest score quickly.

Playing strategies

There are a few playing strategies that will be described here in detail.

Enemy Movement

This is, by far, the biggest thing about this game that could possibly make Kirby’s movements look like mistakes, but they are not. EVERY frame of input that Kirby makes affects the enemy’s movement. There is an incredible amount of Luck Manipulation in this game, which is used to simulate 100% randomness when playing the game in real time against an opponent or with friends. Every single move that Kirby makes was utilized to get the desired outcome from enemies; so if I take a few extra hops, run in different directions, move around in a sloppy manner, it was all carefully executed to get the enemy to behave in a certain way. There are certain strategies that didn’t work because an enemy would not behave a certain way, and there were others where you could consistently get an enemy to do something. But every Kirby movement, whether smooth or not, was done for a purpose.

Certain attacks

This run only uses a few of Kirby’s attacks.
B move, swallow is used to force a Pacifist bonus on single targets.
Up+B ‘cutter’ was used in three different ways: in Teams to use the sword to hit a weak opponent into the sky, against single targets to ‘spike’ them downwards, and using the wave part of the cutter as a projectile.
Down+B ‘stone’ was used to gain some vertical down speed in one of the bonuses, and in the last Team fight a few enemies were not killable with a normal cutter, so stone was used to greater affect.
Down+A Aerial ‘drill’ was used to rack up damage% on opponents, and is Kirby’s best form of doing so. Used in Mario Bros., Samus, and Master Hand.
Smash+A ‘smash attack’ this was used in only one stage to force an opponent with low% damage to be pushed towards the edge.
Back+A Aerial ‘backwards kick’ used only once to knock an opponent backwards over a lava pit.
No other attacks were used in the run.

Stages

The single player mode is set up with an ‘adventure’ consisting of 14 stages, 10 where you fight enemies, of which three of those are ‘teams’; three bonus stages; and a final boss fight.

Super Smash Bros Kirby High Score

StageIn-game timer endScore to beatFinal score
Link4:52110550110600
Yoshi Team4:26247770266000
Fox4:52368420386700
Break the Target1:46(14"37)428220447900
Mario Bros.4:50521371566111
Pikachu4:58652171697011
Giant DK4:55837921882761
Board the Platforms1:30(30"31)895121940761
Kirby Team4:3710205811079121
Samus4:4411189321201151
Metal Mario4:5812697311352051
Race to the Finish0:3713022311385551
Polygon Team4:0314124621529911
Master Hand4:3924192432554881
The Link stage is set on top of hyrule castle, and Link is the easiest to fight since he is the very first stage. Kirby disregards making the opening move and runs right past him, and takes a few small hops to ensure that Link runs towards Kirby at maximum speed. Then Kirby turns around and swallows Link- who struggles to escape, not realizing that doing so pushes Kirby off of the edge, and spits Link out one frame above the bottom.
Alternate strategy: It was considered to either grab onto the ledge and make Link kill himself, or to try the swallow maneuver on the left side. The reasons they didn’t work: Edge grabbing is more difficult to do then swallowing, and Link had a habit of not using his Up+B move to swirl over Kirby’s head. Any attempt to do a ledge grab strategy resulted in a failure and a slower time. The left edge is actually a slope, and the wobbling that makes swallow maneuvers possible does not work since the opponent wobbles Kirby away from the edge on slopes.
Bonuses:
No Item, Speedster, Pacifist, No Miss x1, No Damage, Full Power

Yoshi Team

The Yoshi Team is set in one of the stages from the N64 game Yoshi’s Story. You must face off against 18 Yoshis of varying color. The Yoshis are very easy to kill, since any throw or special move is usually a guaranteed one hit kill. For this stage Kirby exclusively uses cutter to send the Yoshis into the background, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE. The bonuses Hawk, Trickster, and Yoshi’s Rainbow were sought in this match.
Alternate strategies: late in the run the shooter bonus was discovered, but it was realized that the Hawk bonus (all attacks are made in the air) is lost from cutter’s projectile. It was debated about using Pacifist here as well, but getting 18 Yoshis to kill themselves on very hard was not feasible.
Bonuses: No Item, Hawk, Trickster, No Miss x2, No Damage, Full Power, Smashless, Single Move, Fighter Stance, Yoshi Rainbow

Fox

Fox was the only successful ledge grab, and it worked out splendidly. Not much to say, other than Fox was kept charging most of the time and died earlier than expected.
Bonuses: No Item, Speedster, Pacifist, No Miss x3, No Damage, Full Power, Fighter Stance

Break the Target

Fastest BtT strategy was used to get the lowest achievable in-game timer, instead of actual time. Actual time was 14”37, which was found in the game files after the game was finished. Saving hundredths of seconds was not sought, because it would not increase the score, only seconds saved would do that.

Mario Bros.

Wow this was a difficult fight. It was determined that Calamity Brothers (kill Luigi before Mario receives any damage) and True Friend (your partner does not get hit) had to both be awarded. It was notoriously difficult to achieve both of these in a short time, but after many retries both bonuses were received. Many times I had to attack fireballs to ensure Pikachu didn’t get hurt.
Alternate strategy: someone suggested trying pacifist here as well- not very feasible.
Bonuses: Cheap Shot, No Item, Speedster, No Miss x4, No Damage, Full Power, Fighter Stance, True Friend, Brothers Calamity

Pikachu

As soon as Pikachu is done being my partner in the last stage, here I kill him humiliatingly fast for not helping at all. The programmers designed Pikachu and Metal Mario to die before you do, which makes the swallow maneuver very fast and easy- if you still have Pikachu in your mouth when you hit the bottom, he’ll die before you. This is used to get a 2 second fight.
Bonuses: No Item, Speedster, Pacifist, No Miss x5, No Damage, Full Power

Giant DK

Another swallow maneuver and a very hard one to do at that. Many times DK would still have time to recover.
Alternate strategy: edge grabbing worked in a previous Fox Fastest time run, but Fox was better because he could manipulate DK better by being faster. It was tried, but Kirby couldn’t get DK to kill himself.
Bonuses: No Item, Speedster, Pacifist, No Miss x6, No Damage, Full Power, DK Perfect

Board the Platforms

The fastest strategy for this bonus. Beats the world record by 0”12, but doesn’t matter since A) it is not visually provable and B) doesn’t matter because the score is only increased by seconds saved. I tried but it is impossible to catch that moving platform right after I land on platform #6, so instead I wave it goodbye.

Kirby Team

Kirby Team was tricky because they didn’t automatically die from any attack (although throwing came close.) Instead, the projectile part of cutter was utilized to get Speedster and Shooter bonus, which makes up for the lost Trickster or Hawk. It was very hard manipulating those Kirby’s to die, but in general if they were off screen they didn’t feel like floating, which is why I move around a lot. And of course, I kill them in order.
Alternate strategy: using Hawk + Trickster. Didn’t work because the Kirby’s didn’t go into the background.
Bonuses: No Item, Shooter, Speedster, No Miss x7, No Damage, Full Power, Smashless, Single Move, Fighter Stance, Kirby Ranks

Samus

I apologize to Samus fans, but she got completely owned this round. The Lava really ruins things for a speedrun, however I utilize it to snag two bonuses. I did 4 drill attacks (3 did not rack up enough damage, so this is optimal) and kicked her beyond the platform, then used a cutter to spike her into the lava, which was just enough %damage to make her go into the background.
Alternate strategies: not much, only tried to maker her die sooner, which wasn’t as fast or netted as many points.
Bonuses: Star Finish, No Item, Hawk, Speedster, No Miss x8, No Damage, Full Power, Smashless, Fighter Stance, Acid Clear

Metal Mario

Metal Mario is a real pain, because it takes 300+% damage to kill him, and for speed running he doesn’t move around a lot. Annnnnndddd…. He dies in two seconds!!! I was able to manipulate him to jump extremely early, and a swallow, plus the same programming error as Pikachu makes him die so quickly.
Bonuses: No Item, Speedster, Pacifist, No Miss x9, No Damage, Full Power

Race to the Finish

Kirby doesn’t have the fastest running speed, so I make sure that he doesn’t get slowed down by anything. 0:37.

Polygon Team

Wow this was difficult. 30 enemies to kill!!! I had to use cutter and stone to kill them all. Neither the Yoshi or Kirby strategy worked here, so I just tried to kill them as fast as possible while getting Hawk.
Alternate strategies: Both the Yoshi Team strategy and Kirby Team strategy were considered, but neither worked.
Bonuses: No Item, Hawk, No Miss x10, No Damage, Full Power, Smashless, Special Move, Fighter Stance

Master Hand

Ooooh, the big, bad, nasty glove of death!!! I make short work of him- at this point I hope you like the drill attack, because I use it solely to beat him in 21 seconds. There’s a lot of luck manipulation here as well, since I manipulated which attacks he’ll use next so that I can attack him in the least amount of time. In particular his “shooting gun” phase was to be avoided, as I had no opportunity to attack.
Bonuses: Hawk, Speedster, No Miss x11, No Damage, Full Power, Smashless, Very Hard Clear, No MIss Clear, No Damage Clear, Speed Demon

Thanks

I’d like to dedicate this section to psychoticworm for creating the very first Tool Assisted high score speed run of Super Smash Bros. using Kirby. He used savestates but no slowdown in order to get a score of 2,419,243. It was his video that was inspiration for me to use all the tools available to beat his time/score. Practically most of the strategies came from his video, and this run would not be possible without it. He was also a great help in the forum during the making of this run.
I’d also like to thank antd for his incredible work on doing the individual bonus stages TASes. He was the first person to my knowledge to experiment with Tools to see what is possible by TASing SSB by making individual bonus runs and creating many entertaining combos in practice mode. He was a great source of info on how to TAS this game and I eagerly await his Fastest Fox completion run.
I’d also like to mention all the posters in the SSB thread (because the run started November 28th and ended December 9th, so didn’t last very long):
Bag of Magic Food, for suggesting a high score run in the first place
Laughing_gas, for constant input and showing me that my avatar directly reflects my screen name
bkDJ for providing some initial .mkv’s of WIP; eventually I was able to make WMV and youtube link’s on my own, but his effort to make the .mkv’s is appluaded
And to all those who contributed with feedback/suggestions: Zurreco, Chef Stef, Thegreginator, Jsmith, Shadow Burn, Kitsune, Kirbymuncher, Macman, L4yer, NrgSpoon, DeHackEd
Truncated: This will be controversial no matter which decision is made, but here are the reasons for my verdict:
  • The movie has unclear goals - it does not go for max score, fastest time, or entertainment.
  • Very repetitive strategy.
  • Record number of No and Meh votes (but also a fair number of yes votes).
  • Published fighting games so far have gone for entertainment. This game does not offer a lot of variety, and as such, it is perhaps unsuited for a TAS.
Therefore, rejecting this submission.

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Posted: 12/9/2006 11:13 PM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
I'm not sure if this was the best choice of game to do a TAS of or not, but one thing I can say is that I enjoyed watching it. The break the platform and other minigame-like levels were very interesting to watch, and take a look at that high score! Nice work.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Posted: 12/9/2006 11:15 PM
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JSmith
Joined: 8/1/2006
Posts: 428
87 1/4 points per frame. Voted yes.
Trying 127.0.0.1... telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
Posted: 12/9/2006 11:20 PM
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JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
comicalflop wrote:
so 4 out of 14 stages were boring because of suck and swallow, and that alone makes it unworthy? Despite that two of those stages are faster than the Fox run?
I also said that generally, the run was repetitive (which you even quoted). For a fighting game to be interesting, it needs variety, and this does not bring it. Being faster than some other run in a fighting game means absolutely zero, especially when you aren't even going for fastest time.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 12/9/2006 11:25 PM
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Mukki
Skilled player (1099)
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
GBA TASer of 2012 GBA TAS of 2012 Lucky TAS of 2011 Gameboy TAS of 2011 N64 TASer of 2007
moozooh wrote:
o_0 Since when does a large fanbase mean higher potential for making movies, etc.?
Given the response my comments have had in this topic I feel I should say no more in this thread. However, if the game were not famous and well known by many, would anyone sit through 4 hours of FF6 or Chrono Trigger, or even 2.5 hours of OoT? They wouldn't, nor would anyone bother to make the movie. Size of fanbase can be a considerable incentive in making movies. In closing I voted YES because :- 1) I personally enjoyed the movie and thought it well optimised. My judgement was in no way influenced by :- 1) The popularity of the game. 2) Repetitiveness of other published runs. I merely presented these as facts that surround the submission and not as justification for the movie to be published. I voted YES for all the right reasons. I respect the reasons of those who voted NO and MEH, I even considered them and appreciated them. Please accept my own.
http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html
Posted: 12/9/2006 11:36 PM
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JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
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Mukki wrote:
However, if the game were not famous and well known by many, would anyone sit through 4 hours of FF6 or Chrono Trigger, or even 2.5 hours of OoT? They wouldn't, nor would anyone bother to make the movie. Size of fanbase can be a considerable incentive in making movies.
You're right that it can be an incentive, but it shouldn't be. Going for the "glory" or whatever doesn't really makes sense around here. That's for console speedrunning. </opinion>
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 12/9/2006 11:57 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Mukki wrote:
I respect the reasons of those who voted NO and MEH, I even considered them and appreciated them. Please accept my own.
I don't dispute your opinion nor your vote, I dispute your arguments on repetitiveness, fanbase and such. Also, I didn't like the CT run at all (though I once spent more than 15 hours on the game consecutively — that much I enjoyed playing it), and I fastforwarded through most of the FF6 run, especially after getting Setzer with his slot machine. Also, I consider the OoT run incredibly boring. I tend not to transfer the positive emotions from my playing experience to the speedruns too much, since there's a Grand canyon worth of difference. That being said, I may be spoiled by the fun value this game bears when played live, but even all I said above doesn't make its runs (well, at least this one) less repetitive. Bottom line.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 12/10/2006 12:00 AM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
I understand your point of view JXQ, but what would you suggest instead? a wider variety of moves even if time/score is sacrificed, or just not bothering with games that might not be the perfect candidate for a TAS? Or something else?
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Posted: 12/10/2006 12:11 AM
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antd
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Yes. It's good. Will sit nicely next to my fastest time run of this game. ^^
Posted: 12/10/2006 12:39 AM
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meepers
Player (35)
Joined: 12/18/2005
Posts: 250
Voted yes. Not sure what the big problem is since it's only 8 minutes long so it can't be THAT repetitive (which I feel it isn't), but the game itself can't really have "variety" which other people are asking for. But, for the sake of argument, let's say the next run will have variety. How much variety? A game like SSB has KOs through knocking them out of the "arena" rather than depleting a finite life bar (similar to MK or KI). So while a variety of moves can be done in MK to demonstrate how cool it looks (whilst not going for time), it continues to stay entertaining because the enemy dies in several hits because their life bar is limited AND they don't have monster health. To do that in SSB is significantly harder because you can rack up to 999% (a regular attack from Kirby is anywhere from 1-5% damage) and continue to damage them without actually killing them or knocking them out of the arena. When do we draw the line of staying entertaining and having variety and LOLITBORING? So with that said, having this run as a score/speed run is fine until someone can think of a better idea that won't be boring, "slow", or both.
我々を待ち受けなさい。
Posted: 12/10/2006 12:45 AM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Vidar wrote:
But, for the sake of argument, let's say the next run will have variety. How much variety? A game like SSB has KOs through knocking them out of the "arena" rather than depleting a finite life bar (similar to MK or KI). So while a variety of moves can be done in MK to demonstrate how cool it looks (whilst not going for time), it continues to stay entertaining because the enemy dies in several hits because their life bar is limited AND they don't have monster health. To do that in SSB is significantly harder because you can rack up to 999% (a regular attack from Kirby is anywhere from 1-5% damage) and continue to damage them without actually killing them or knocking them out of the arena.
Bingo, that's why I'm saying this game isn't suited for TASing. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 12/10/2006 1:31 AM
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psychoticworm
Joined: 11/30/2006
Posts: 42
Location: WA
I think everyone that is saying this video is too repetitive is just making excuses. Its a great video, well put together and well thought out. Not to mention very well optimized, and enough variety to suit me. This video really does demonstrate a highest score possible in the least amount of time. You see, for the particular goals of this run(highest score IN fastest time) variety is cut to a minimum. You cannot use items(for one because you would not get the No Item bonus, and taking the time to use most of the items would waste completion time) You also cannot take time to rack up as much damage with each opponent because that would also waste time, not to mention that on certain levels a higher score is possible by NOT damagine an opponent. And if you even took the time to notice, All the Yoshis in Yoshi team were killed in the ORDER that they fell from the sky!!(the order of the colors in the top left corner) Same with Kirby Team!!! these are outstanding achievements! I think this is just one of those games that you would have to play in order to understand why this run was such a perfect idea(knowing what bonuses there are, all possible outcomes, etc.) The only big things I would like to have seen is maybe a final Pokemon KO, or proximity mine KO, or trying to get All Variation in Polygon Team. Other thent hat, the video is well optimised, and is exactly what its suppose to be, a high score time attack(I really think after this you should go for an ultimate highest score possible run!) This is a definite Yes vote for me, wether or not I got a mention in your post.
Posted: 12/10/2006 5:00 AM
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Halamantariel
Player (105)
Joined: 1/30/2005
Posts: 564
Location: Québec, Canada
Wow. Just wow. I don't like this game. I playe it, but I always hated it and I always thought it was a boring game and stuff. This TAS brought this game back to life for me. I LOVED the TAS. Definitively a YES vote from me, even though I don't like the game at all. Great TAS.
Posted: 12/10/2006 6:17 AM
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Chef_Stef
Editor, Active player (476)
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
NES TAS of 2019 Lucky TAS of 2019 Funny TAS of 2013
Voted yes... I thought the run was only a bit repetitive during the polygon battle where pretty much every KO was from final cutter. But the rest of the run was entertaining. Part of the enjoyment comes from seeing interesting, perhaps odd, strategies in the individual levels, and then seeing how it all comes together to net all those bonuses at the end of the level. Also, there is a fair amound of variety in this movie. Some levels were "avoid the CPU and get it to suicide" while others were more "destroy all the enemies." The Samus battle was definately my favorite because the strategy (racking up damage and spiking into the acid) was different from the other levels.
Posted: 12/10/2006 6:25 AM
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JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
Raiscan: My suggestion is to avoid TASing games that aren't suited for it. psychoticworm: Making excuses for what?
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 12/10/2006 7:32 AM
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change1
Joined: 12/10/2006
Posts: 2
*****NOOB ALERT***** ive been following tasvideos for a while now, seeding several videos and watching all the newcomers and stuff, and this one seems really interesting. only problem, is that i cant run the video. i have the right video input, the right emulator, (version 5.1) and the right rom. now i download the video, and the little browse window wants me to look for a ''.rec'' file. problem is, the one i download from here, is a ''.m64''. i tried renaming the extension, drag and dropping, all noob tricks and none worked. help please? (im dying to see this video) xD
Posted: 12/10/2006 7:45 AM
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Bag_of_Magic_Food
He/Him
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Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
I admit that I still don't get the point of "highest score in fastest time". To me it sounds like comicalflop was trying for just the absolute highest score, but got lazy, and eventually settled for pretty-high scores that didn't take as long to achieve. Is that the real situation here?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Posted: 12/10/2006 8:01 AM
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Zurreco
Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Vidar wrote:
When do we draw the line of staying entertaining and having variety and LOLITBORING?
Probably when noticeable amounts of time aren't added so that the CPU is baited into suicide/Kirby doesn't have to slip off of the platforms for a pacifist kill.
psychoticworm wrote:
I think everyone that is saying this video is too repetitive is just making excuses. .. You see, for the particular goals of this run(highest score IN fastest time) variety is cut to a minimum. I think this is just one of those games that you would have to play in order to understand why this run was such a perfect idea.
As JXQ already asked, what excuses are we making? If anything, the claims that this run lacks variety because it aims for the goal of 'best ratio of points to time' is more of an excuse than anything else. Furthermore, while I am a huge fan of the game, I think the concept of high score without going highest/fast time without being fastest is questionable, because...
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I admit that I still don't get the point of "highest score in fastest time". Is that the real situation here?
This right here is my major qualm: the premise is sketchy. If someone made a "most coins/fastest time" run of Super Mario Brothers, what are the chances of it getting accepted? SSB is, to put it plainly, not a very entertaining game to run. Pure speed is repetetive (but not to the extent that I found this submission), and high score would be too much of a hassle. So, like I said earlier; I feel that this run is extremely repetetive. While nico's run was a bit less repetetive, it was also much much faster and bearable compared to comicalflop's run. While it is impressive to see how high of a score could be acheived in such a short time, the concept of not fastest/not highest score seems to be very weak to me. People are free to agree with me, but no one can really explain why they find this so entertaining aside from "the game has a big fanbase" or "this is exactly what I expected from the premise, but it was faster than expected."
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Posted: 12/10/2006 8:04 AM
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Inzult
Active player (436)
Joined: 9/27/2004
Posts: 650
Location: Canada
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comicalflop wrote:
As per the goals it'd be a total higher score in a shorter time. In terms of adidng variety or doing this differently, I don't think that a higher score in a shorter time can be met, as this was pretty optimal. At best I could probably maybe save a second or two of in-game time for a few levels, but I'd be suprised if that AND score could be improved.
You don't think it can be improved. Well. Okay. You do think it can be improved. Or wait. You don't think it can be improved. As per the goals, It sounded to me like a random strategy was decided, so long as it was pretty fast and gave you a pretty good score. Hypothetically: Is a much higher score in a slightly slower time an improvement? Is a slightly lower score in a much faster time an improvement? If points per frame is how the run is supposed to be measured, then it seems that the answer to both could be yes.
Posted: 12/10/2006 8:56 AM
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P.JBoy
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Posts: 850
Location: stuck in Pandora's box HELLPP!!!
Do you have the right settings
Posted: 12/10/2006 10:43 AM
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Twelvepack
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Voted no. Neither won as fast as possable, nor did it maximize score. Points per second feels like a bad idea, pick one goal, and put it first. You did well, but the thing that put me in the (suprisingly small) "no" camp was that you got many bonuses up until fighting polygon team, but then didnt even seem to try for polygon ranks (the award for killing all 30 in the order they spawn).
Has never colored a dinosaur.
Posted: 12/10/2006 11:10 AM
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Mr._Pwnage
Joined: 6/6/2004
Posts: 223
There is no "polygon ranks" bonus.
Posted: 12/10/2006 11:11 AM
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mwl
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 636
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I admit that I still don't get the point of "highest score in fastest time". To me it sounds like comicalflop was trying for just the absolute highest score, but got lazy, and eventually settled for pretty-high scores that didn't take as long to achieve. Is that the real situation here?
I voted "meh" for precisely this reason, even though the run was well-executed given its nonstandard category. Quite frankly, I don't see the point of this -- the standard "time attack" and "score attack" runs already cover all bases.
Posted: 12/10/2006 12:32 PM
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Rikku
Former player
Joined: 11/20/2006
Posts: 86
that was funny how you knock out the enemys with kirby and the target and stage level are very nice. yes that was cool.
Posted: 12/10/2006 1:32 PM
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laughing_gas
Former player
Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp
Going for absolute highest score would destroy the entertainment value since there are many bonuses that don't show up unless you wait over a minute into the fight.
Borg Collective wrote:
Negotiation is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
Posted: 12/10/2006 1:40 PM
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Baxter
Skilled player (1410)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
TAS of 2013 SNES TAS of 2013 Speedy TAS of 2007 Innovative TAS of 2007
laughing_gas wrote:
Going for absolute highest score would destroy the entertainment value since there are many bonuses that don't show up unless you wait over a minute into the fight.
Doesn't that basically mean having the highest possible score as a goal isn't suitable as a TAS? I don't see what's the point in publishing a score TAS if it is known that it doesn't actually have the highest possible score. The real goal would become pretty unclear then.
http://tasvideos.org/Baxter.html
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