Expanding on the discussion in the "Classic game achievements" thread, I picked up a similar idea today: measure the "super-ness" of a superplay according to metrics other than (but including) time. Unlike in straight speedrunning where the goal is to beat the game as fast as possible, the idea here is to beat the game quickly, but without neglecting style, kind of like Devil May Cry.
As a rudimentary demo of the concept, I hacked together a script for the original TMNT where the score has been overwritten with a new score, calculated by Lua. It basically multiplies the player's kill count by 10, and decrements by one each frame. This is admittedly a crappy demonstration compared to what could be done with more interesting metrics, and more time invested in finding the necessary memory addresses.
It also fails because you can game the system in stupid, boring ways, like grinding for points in certain rooms where it's easy to rack up a lot of kills. However, there's nothing stopping us from changing the way the score is calculated so that the framecount penalty is exponential, or whatever provides a decent balance. Given the effort required to create such a balance, I'm guessing there will be, at best, one or two "killer apps" that are actually worth doing.
Here's the script:
--TMNT score recalculator demo
ingamepts = 0
score = 0
while true do
if memory.readbyte(984) > ingamepts then
score = score + (memory.readbyte(984) - ingamepts) * 1000
end
for i = 0, 10 do
gui.drawbox(25, 200+i, 100, 224-i, "#000000")
end
ingamepts = memory.readbyte(984)
score = score - 1
gui.text(25, 200, score)
FCEU.frameadvance()
end
Some other ideas:
Super Mario Kart: harass the other racers while placing in the top four. Maybe a bonus/penalty for proximity to other racers.
River City Ransom: maintain a high damage-per-second rather than bypassing everything and smashing the bosses; throwing people at other people and other strategies.
Final Fantasy VI: penalties for using the same attack (joker/vanish doom, ultima...) repeatedly. Bonuses for diverse attacks and completing parts of the WoR.
