Denver, CO, USA
I was screwing around and made a TAS for this while looking for extreme early ending input runs. Turns out the advance mode is better than the rookie mode for being able to drain much more time per play when you're on offense and should drive down the RTA time quite a bit.
Hello. Someone pointed out on my TAS of this that the best ending is actually considerably higher than we thought.
It's nearly 6 million.
I recently knocked out a TAS for this game ( ) and I may have solved the chopper dilemma.
Memory value 0x0019 displays the chopper's health starting at 18. (If anyone has video evidence of them getting 17 or 16 kills to beat the boss, please let me know.) I tried numerous things and it always started at 18. It decrements by 1 each time an enemy has killed, but not all kills count.
It seems like if you hit the enemy twice (either from a standalone double hit or like, kick them in mid air then hit them again on the ground) that it doesn't decrement the counter for that kill. This was consistent across all my tests.
Janky game is janky.
From what I understand about this game, the AI has a pool of moves to choose from per move. There's a rolling timer byte that dictates the move that is chosen. The timer for this does not advance when you're holding A (among other situations) even if it's not your move.
For whatever reason Ke7 is in the pool of moves after e4 but not after e3 so I don't think a faster move route will be possible
And honored to lose one to the golf legend!
I'm not a mod but I'm glad to see new runners! And I know starcrytas is active
I was optimizing the TAS for this game and I came across a new route that should bring the time down to 51/50 ish seconds with a good wizard fight.
AI behavior is seeded to some degree based on frame entry from the title screens. One in particular has the AI cast the imprison spell in lieu of a fight. The spell is way faster than a second battle.
Note that this is optimized for TAS (final input) so you'll still want to end the fight as close to the end spot as possible.
Enjoy!
Added. It could possibly be redundant with the 100% category but we'll see how it goes.
Save states are generally disallowed across the site with very few exceptions, as they can lead to an unfair advantage with the starting RNG. This is the case with pretty much every game that uses seeds like this one. It is typically accepted that either memorizing the seeds or forcing a specific one is okay as the player is still doing the work in this instance and even if you land on a favorable seed you still need to execute.
That said, it might take a few more resets to get the proper seed again but it's definitely something you can do. I personally didn't play this way since I prefer the challenge of reading and reacting to the board even if that means my time is not optimal.
The ideal "route" is drain balls 1 and 2 intentionally to get to ball 3 for the fast multi ball and farm jackpots from there. This is obviously MUCH harder to pull off on BB and Wizard but it works great for Joker, sub3 for that table.
BB is a problem. The skill shot farm works but occasionally it takes too long to drain and you risk losing the ball.
Wizard does not have that problem. Very fast no-risk drains. Plus the plunge hits the cumulative red arrow loop for the extra points and eventual 10mm. BB also hits the loop.
My theory for a solid safe-ish run is:
Joker - ball 3 jackpot farm BB - play ball 1 normally, when you drain naturally, skill shot farm ball 2. If that drains then skill shot farm ball 3 Wizard - skill shot farm ball 3
Even if I don't run it, hopefully this will be helpful for someone.
I found a couple interesting things in this game today.
First - I managed to get like ten jackpots in one shot. The ball did not go all the way to the "catcher" but hovered right near it in a way that confused the game into providing extra jackpots before it "un-lit" it. This was a fluke and I'm not sure how viable it would be to go for.
Second and much more important - It's possible to farm skill shots over and over again. When you drain with the ball saver active it plays a little animation. If you tilt during this animation your ball will be fully reset (not auto launched from the saver) and let you go for the skill shot again without costing you a ball. You can chain this indefinitely (as long as you drain before the saver disappears) on ball 3 for 3mm per shot. With a decent success rate I think it would clock in around 30 minutes or less. It's not the fastest strategy but it is pretty easy.
The other version of the game on SRC is also wave 100 and you can skip more than half of the game through warping. It's a lengthy run but due to the warps any shorter categories would feel arbitrary in my opinion.
Here's my two pennies
Proposal 1: I'm generally against having every run use ms and generally for limiting it to "times under X:xx" as this breaks the ties near the top which is probably where most of the ties are going to be anyway. It also means not having to retime every run on the board which can get tedious.
Proposal 2: This is a tricky one. What you said absolutely makes sense. It depends on what we consider the start of the game vs the start of the run. Control is technically gained in a weird place (basically before the face off even truly starts, when both sides can move) but the hockey game does not actually start until the puck drops. Having time begin on the start press keeps everything uniform but it sucks to start a run losing time. I have no strong feelings either way on this one other than disliking the awkwardness of splitting while also mashing and also using the dpad and trying to get out of that first face off without doing anything that makes you lose the RNG time you just saved. If I had to pick though it would be start press.
My two cents -
Draw option doesn't need to be a variation in my opinion. It should certainly be allowed to be changed in the manner you described, because it does not confer a speed advantage. If you are on the second draw through the pile you can certainly get a better chance of finishing the run but I can't think of a scenario where that would actually save time.
