Table of contents
About
Me
- Real name: Jean-François Lapointe
- From: Quebec, Canada
- Age: 23
Origins of "Acmlm"
This goes back to 1991-1992, when I rented Shining in the Darkness, a (then new) RPG on the Genesis, and started a new game. I had gotten bored of entering my real name in games by then, so I decided to mash buttons randomly and got some crap like "ABVRT". Unsatisfied, I tried again and got "ACMLM" (reproduced on emulator), which for some reason looked good to me. From then on, I've purposely entered this name in every new RPG I've played (when it fits), and decided to use the same name online.
So no, for those of you who were wondering, it doesn't stand for anything, but you could always make up some silly acronym to pretend it does.
History
I grew up with the NES since 1988, and started to fall behind in modern gaming during the first 32bit era (Nintendo 64, Playstation) once 3D gaming took over. I'm still into classic gaming (8bit and 16bit), which happens to be the best emulated consoles.
I first heard about console emulation in 1998, when I saw someone playing Excitebike on a PC, but I thought it was only a perfect port. Later that year, I got a SNES emulator and FF6 (FF3 US), played through it, started looking for more ROMs, and got a NES emulator, and so I got into emulation.
A year later, while looking for SMB2j and messing around with Game Genie codes for glitched levels in SMB1, I found a level editor and eventually did ROM hacking (mostly the Strange Mario Bros series, available on my site), actively until summer 2000. This started with only level editing, but being also a programmer, I progressively wanted to change more aspects of the game, such as graphics, colors, music and finally the code itself. This has actually been useful for me here, particularly in Dragon Warrior and Monopoly where I had to figure out (and simulate) the game's randomization algorythm to manipulate luck better.
My first tool-assisted plays were also in 2000, when NESticle was still popular. It had no re-recording but could record movies with slowdown and frame advance, so I messed around with it in a few games, such as Tetris. Nothing great, but one of them can be found in Zophar's Domain's movie archive.
Then I had mostly forgotten about it, until Morimoto's famous SMB3 run in late 2003, which I first thought was insane skill, but already had doubts it was done with slowdowns and savestates. I still didn't know about any re-recording emulator at the time, but made a short run of Nintendo Tetris type B entirely with a hex editor.
Finally, in November 2004, one of the previous (but then new) SMB2 runs brought me here, and I made my first true tool-assisted runs, starting once again with Tetris. I've then moved on to many different games, and still work on new runs whenever I'm in the mood for it.
Current plans
- The Guardian Legend, 100% run (all corridors, all weapons)
Runs
In progress
- NES The Guardian Legend (12-11-06)
- 0:42:49, corridor 5
Incomplete
- NES Klax (12-20-05)
- 0:03:56, wave 71 (with warps)
- GBA Splinter Cell (09-27-05)
- 0:09:49, 3rd mission
- SNES Lemmings 08-25-05)
- 0:09:29, Fun 13
- NES Ys III (08-01-05)
- 0:27:59, Eldam Mountains
- NES The Quest of Ki (06-07-05)
- 0:02:59, floor 12
- SNES Dragon View (04-27-05)
- 0:42:28, on the way out from Keire Temple
- Test run only
- SNES Bubsy II (04-20-05)
- 0:04:30, 2½ levels done
- Minor problems with the SNES version in Snes9x (fake mute is required to avoid desyncs, but causes lag and sound problems), should be done on Genesis instead
- NES Commando (03-11-05)
- 0:02:57, 1-3
Complete but not submitted
- Genesis Phantasy Star III in 2:46:10 (02-25-06)
- Test run, has been improved with better planning, battle manipulation and a glitch that skips a large part of the game
- NES Chessmaster in 00:15 (12-24-04)
- Fast win in 8 turns, but at the easiest level