Speed Runs of the Week 7

Tools Assisted Speedrun (TAS)

NES Excitebike (JPN/USA) in 05:29.44 by Lord Tom

Times for each track are:

• 0 = 36.19
• 1 = 37.84
  
• 2 = 38.67
• 3 = 41.96
• 4 = 41.00
• 5 = 31.34

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Real time run (Not Tools Assisted)

Super Meat Boy Speed Run Light World Ending in 20:10 by Exo



Super Meat Boy originally came out late last year as a suprise hit on Xbox Live Arcade and Steam. A new speed run was posted onto the Speed Demos Archive forums that shows very good execution and deathless too. It recently got featured on Team Meat's Twitter page.

Speed Runs of the Week 6

Tools Assisted Speedrun (TAS)

NES Rockman by Shinryuu & FinalFighter in 12:23.34



Rockman is the Japanese name of Mega Man.

When "perfection" is defined as "as fast as possible", it requires some sacrifices. Indeed, this movie sacrifices a lot in the playability of the game. Full of tricks to pass through walls, tricks to avoid mandatory battles, tricks to pass through enemies relatively unharmed, tricks to acquire weapon refills in little time — there is very little in this movie left that resembles normal playing. Even death is used as a viable playing strategy that saves time. All of the tricks are still performed by the means of mere controller input, even though significant portions of the input were calculated by a computer program.

This movie is a considerable improvement of 3:04.39 to the previous run; this is mainly due to a new technique which tricks the game into calling an 'end of level' object.

Of course, upon watching this movie, one does have to question something... is it Mega Man saving the world? Or Dr. Wily trying to save it from absolute destruction?

This run has won three awards in 2010 on the TASvideos site including:
Glitchy TAS of 2010
NES TAS of 2010
Best overall TAS of 2010

Highlight: The credits, it's a mess.
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Real time run (Not Tools Assisted)

Metroid Fusion - SS 1% Speedrun in 0:49 (In-game time of 49 minutes) by BioSpark



Metroid Fusion came out in November 2002, for those who have played through the game will probably remember how deadly the enemies were part way through the game. The runner picks up the lowest amount of expansions (which is only 1 Missle expansion, 0 on both Energy Tanks and Power Bomb expansions). With only 99 units of life, most of the enemies and later bosses have enough power to kill you in less than 3 hits!! That alone is pretty impressive and the runner had the guts to say that the boss fights were the easiest parts.

Highlight: Ridley X boss fight!

Early Nintendo Conference reaction.

While most of us in the UK were pretty much asleep, in Japan there was a pre-TGS conference revealing more information about the future of the Nintendo 3DS.

It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the system, from the price cut back in August to the secondary circle pad add-on that was revealed last week.
During the event they revealed a bit more information about the add on including:

*It's priced 1,500 yen (roughly £12)
*It uses x1 AAA Battery
*Out December 10th in Japan

My only concern is how long it will last before replacing it with a new one, it feels like the 90s again where most of the portable gamers had to save up money or ask mum to buy a new pair of AA batteries. It would be decent if this AAA battery can last as long as a TV remote or a Wireless Keyboard.

The add on itself looks like Nintendo's way of making the portable future proof, except that it looks half done. I can imagine a redesigned model will support up to date features built in and not like the ill fated Megadrive/Genesis add ons. Look at the Wii remote for example, the Motion Plus accessory was only an add-on in 2009 but in late 2010 technology became so advanced that Motion Plus features were built inside newer Wii remotes calling it the Wii Remote Plus.



This isn't an official image but look at how much neater it looks! Now that is a good example of how a potential redesigned 3DS could look like.






Compared to the official image (Original 3DS model with the secondary circle pad add on).

Enough of dissing the model. Some of the games that were meant to be out this year got delayed until 2012 thanks to the support of this add on. The most notable example of this is Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D.

The system also has the upper hand now when it comes to play dual stick first person shooters in speckless 3D! Some of the 3D Action/platformer/adventure games will benefit with better camera controls. I also forgot to mention that it will have more shoulder buttons, all of these inputs are nearly as much as a PS2 controller but without the 'pushing sticks', and with a touch screen instead.


But more importantly, it enables the 3DS gamers who had the system since March 2011 to buy a simple add on and not be forced to buy a newer, up to date model to enable them to play the newest games that uses or requires add-on control support.



The games:

There has been a good amount of announcements including 2 Monster Hunter Games coming out on the 3DS, that's right 2. Monster Hunter is pretty big in Japan so I can imagine the 3DS selling pretty well during the Christmas holidays. Monster Hunter 3G is out December 10th 2011 in Japan while Monster Hunter 4 is in development.

Two of the must have 3DS games has release dates worldwide now!

Super Mario 3D Land
Japan: November 3rd
USA: November 13th
Europe: November 18th

Mario Kart 7
Europe: December 2nd
USA: December 4th
Japan: December 7th

To make things awkward for the European fans, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is out on the same day as Super Mario 3D Land! Ahh

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords freebie has a release date and a new name:

Out Sepember 28th and renamed as: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition. In this version you can play the original Four Swords solo, and it contains 2 new areas (6 levels) exclusive to the DSiware freebie.

That's it for now. Expect a new post later on this week!

Speed runs of the week 5 and other news.

Tools Assisted Speedrun (TAS)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past TAS by Tompa (1:16:11.05)



The third produced game in the series, released back in 1991-1992 on the Super Nintendo.
This run use a wobbling trick in order to make Link walk a bit faster. The execution of this maneuver requires the usage of a controller that allows the player to press Up+Down simultaneously (such as, in this case, a modified Snes9x's controller). The traveling-through-walls trick that is seen in the out of bounds glitch run is not used.
Fun fact: If you have ever seen the film Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, you'll probably notice some similar tunes where you see Young Neil playing A Link to the Past on his Nintendo DS or GBA SP... I couldn't remember what system he played it on.

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Real Time Speedrun (Not Tools Assisted)

Awesome Games Done Quick - Altered Beast Co-op Run (07:42)
By Mikwuyama and Stanski



Now for a special run, recorded during Awesome Games Done Quick 2011 marathon that took place earlier this year. Containing Manly muscle men, and an epic script read out by Flicky and Breakdown. If you want to read the entire script
Click here and scroll down to find the big, bold text!
From there, it contains references that is backed up with links to either:
The comments in the forums or videos on Youtube.


In other news I've managed to best my personal record on Streets of Rage yet again. Finishing with an impressive time of 26:05, I think I know a good target to submit the run now!

New personal record: Streets of Rage 1 in under 26:30!

Today on September 7th 2011, I've managed to beat my 1 year old personal record. Now 15 seconds faster, even though I've managed to hit my target of 26:30 and under, I still want to improve it. Round 4 sections 1 & 3 were terribad and looks SDA reject worthy alone, and there were a few mishaps on Round 8 sections 3 & 5. Mr.X fight was actually pretty good, not perfect but still good none of the less. I actually forgot the usual strat when recording it :o

Old time 26:42
New time 26:27!

Speed Runs of the Week 4 & Special mention

Tools Assisted Speedrun (TAS)
Megadrive Golden Axe (JPN/USA,r1) in 07:01.95 by Mukki



The first notable console port of a classic arcade game. Although it lacks the 'Golden Axe' that Gilius Thunderhead wields, it makes up for it by having 2 extra stages and a survival/vs mode.

Highlight: The dumbest artifical intelligence you'll ever see on a Sega Game and how the credits is longer than the actual gameplay.

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Real Time Speedrun (Not Tools Assisted)

Clue: Speed Run on SNES by Molotov



It's a board game, nuff said.
Highlight: Blink and you miss it.


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Special mention

First ever TAS submission of a Gamecube game



Yep TASvideos.org now accepts Gamecube games, the only unfortunate part is that the emulator isn't stable and doesn't run on every PC/MAC... the emulator doesn't work on my PC yet. This run aims for entertainment only which the term TAS also stands for Tools Assisted Superplay. The author of the run did say that he is planning to redo/update the run by TASing the credits sequence and hopefully better fights. I hope the author chooses a different character (other than Fox) because when using Fox, despite being Top Tier in human play tournaments, the TAS runs mostly abuses his Shine attack and infinites, other characters I've only seen briefly uses a bit more variety.