Krunch

I wanted to ruffle feathers, yeah I see it get placed up there, personally I find it droning, blaring on a hard frequency, and its typical. I used to like MM3 and part of that was the atmosphere so idk. I think the best NES music is Gemfire which many wouldnt agree with so I'm coming from a different spot

Well as much as I hate to say it I dont think I can beat the participation bar here. I've only just got a few bosses down, I'm not good and that's one thing but I'm just not enjoying it either. The level design is so janky, so many cheap deaths/hits and it just aggravates me to play it. And the music is... not good. For my long term stamina season I should just bow out now and not attempt further. Anyone wanna buy a CIB Mega Man 6? lol

Willy

I love this list. Speed, strategy and execution is the name of the game this year. Rampart and Tecmo Cup Soccer are great strategy picks, maybe also Godzilla was along those lines, I never got far at all. TMNT2 I always love, I still need redemption from 2013. All the high-octane speed comps look great. Good shit!!!

920 Ignore the 1800 high score, I'm at my folks for super bowl doing this and my brother successfully played a run before I did

Yo nice job @Splain, I totally just mashed a score together last-hour but looks like you had already set a high bar

7687

It's funny cause I realized with ample time left that it could be a sole-player victory but I still could not beat the Dam! I think the complicating factor for me was that I wasn't only getting hit by the same enemies - most of them had a chance - so it wasn't just a single obstacle to overcome with repetition and I got lost in the mix Apparently VGSs is bad at Goldeneye, this might warrant a full-game 00 Agent summer showdown

I tried a few times but it's no dice for me. Can't stay alive long enough to beat the Dam even

I got more thoughts for later too but for now I'll say I lean towards the shrinking of the genres too, and specifically I do think racing should be incorporated back into Sports. Because both of those genres have a comparatively larger amount of basically less exciting/polished games, though we should still explore those too, but with a balance. Shrinking the total number of genres' best benefit IMO is that it increases the number of games per genre. As for the level of interest in puzzle games I feel its a staple of the contests. I happen to like them, so bias, but it's my opinion. This year it might have not shown because there happened to be lots of repeats from seasons where I was playing and invested; 3 examples being I don't really like Yoshi's Cookie and I was so-so on Puzznic this time (the latter has a big grind factor. In the previous and probably first Puzznic contest I had a good showing). And events aside I've really lost my Dr Mario edge compared to those other years.

Dude!!! I just pulled it. I misread before and thought I had it. Went and started settling down and went in the thread. Realized I was still in second at 8:35. Rushed to my TV and came and improved the rings and pads. Pads my score before wasnt great I spent the least time on pads.

300 points - 2'44"85 Balloon: Rings: Floating Pads:

Love it, this was the 4th 64 game we got back in the day - my nan went out by herself unprompted and bought it for us, ESRB be damned its the hot title. So thank you to nan and that random salesperson from two decades ago

About to fire this up and take off- haven't played it in years. I actually was worried my cart wouldnt work cause it seemed to not be working a few years ago when I tried it. Great game choice!

And Also LET US PLAY M.U.L.E.

This is interesting - I like how 1st is the only slot that goes +4 on the slot immediately under it, then it's a sliding scale. This definitely increases the spread, which is needed, but to slightly curtail this have you considered opening it back up to top 10? Nothing too drastic but gives two more slots that aren't just minimums, and (I think) it would create more of a "bottom-half" fervor. I suggest 1st: 20 2nd: 16 3rd: 13 4th: 10 5th: 8 6th: 6 7th: 5 8th: 4 9th: 3 10: 2 Participation: 1 So when comparing each placement to the placement immediately underneath it's 1st (Winner): +4 2nd and 3rd (Top 3): +3 4th and 5th (Top 5): +2 6th to 10th (Top 10): +1 (Participation: Equality! Well it's +1 technically if compared to anyone on the site who doesn't play.) (Alternatively and more extremely, you could alter it where the Winner gets points equal to the total number of participants in a week once it's wrapped up, and everyone else just slides down from there with the same +4,+3, etc rubric - until you get to 1 and that's considered the participation bar. It could makes "big wins" with lots of competition naturally worth more, and make the inverse for less competitive weeks.)

I got some thoughts on the code stuff and will have some other stuff later but for now this is where I'm at. First thing is just addressing the fact that even though we're all talking hypothetically about "anybody" being able to read the code, we all know it was only deafcode who was doing it. So it kinda falls flat for me right off the bat because here we have a contest that's been going for over a decade and it hasn't really been a common tactic to do this, and now one person is doing it which necessitates a huge rules overhaul. But don't hate the player, hate the game, and I don't, so I'm sorry to be this upfront about this deafcode cause I do think you're a shrewd & cool dude with attitude but the year is done now and it's just easier to speak literally. So the known roadblock is that many NES games aren't quite up to snuff in terms of how perfectly balanced the score system or other systems are. As we all know that's why there's certain legendary games that still don't get played - they are too difficult to format. But now there's possibly an extra layer of reliability needed for every game choice - it has to hold up to an even higher level of exploitation attempts. It's quite difficult to get that level of reliability, and might even be virtually impossible. It's complex, and it makes me feel for guill and Bea quite honestly. It's like every week we're sailing in a boat that represents the game being played. It's a metal boat, but it's covered in holes. It still moves, because the holes are filled with silicone... but if you intentionally try to pierce through the silicone, it's gonna sink! And what's worse is, it only sinks once it's already set sail, since only deafcode can conjure the tools to do it. We can't see each and every hole until the contests are live and the games are being played which creates a dissonance. Rule changes aren't completely avoidable, but they are messy. The two weeks that stick out to me are Dr. Mario, and Golf. Dr. Mario peeved me, although at the time I was like "whatev." (Mind you, I've never done as well as I wanted in any Dr. Mario contest). There's irony here in that this was one of the easier strategies for the layman to access - it's all over Youtube, it's apparently a known bug. (I myself had never heard of it.) But that actually made it worse in my opinion, if it's that known it shouldn't have been even attempted in good concsiense. That one is cut and dry for me, that deafcode should have just said hey you can do this known bug and it shouldn't be allowed, but that's not what happened, and it felt sour. It happens to be an easy future fix (Add a rule that says "don't do this bug"), and one might question why wasn't it already in the rules? It loops back to not knowing the true level of exploitability a given game has before setting sail for the week - yes, even for a staple like Dr. Mario. How deep are we expecting the organizers to go beforehand? Golf was really blurring the lines too. Deafcode makes a script where he can backwards calculate every shot condition to get it perfect. Where's the skill? Sure you still need to make the shot... but you aren't plagued with the guesswork. The random element of the wind doesn't become completely zero but is highly mitigated. The sport of golf has a linear scoring system with a tight standard deviation at high-level play. There are no cross-incentives, you simply have to get the lowest score you can - that's the only limit you're fighting against. Part of the point of the sport is that it is about consistency and that there is always room for improvement, but it didn't seem to me that deafcode's game could have been logically improved upon... (maybe 1 or 2 strokes tops? I didn't analyze really) -23 was the score if I remember, that would be an insane score in a real golf round, that's 13 birdies and 5 eagles, no pars at all. Many courses only have 4 par 5's - most likely for eagles - but in a bizarro flip, I would bet that par 3 hole-in-ones would be the easier eagle with this script method? I don't mean to imply that VG golf should be exactly the same as real-life golf but the plain fact is that the events transpired made it LESS like real golf. That's a clue you're not playing a game anymore. It's not like the Hole 1 trick which is a useful NES-style trick, a slight advantage, that was cool... it felt like deafcode was just doing the rest because he could, it was more akin to building an easy mode than it was just carving out advantages. And it was super effective during an important week. As I mentioned I think truly preventing this while still allowing the practice of code-peeking will require the contest organizers to do a lot of brutal prep work. Which is pretty unfair. And it's also a grim prospect that these practices are more likely to reduce the amount of viable games, not boost them (with the recent additions of non-USA games notwithstanding - it still drops the ultimate total). Boosting the list has usually been the macro-goal. Okay but then the question that makes me change my mind again is, "What are you allowed to know?" Because it's not like you can ban knowledge. What if there's some instance where a random member who never otherwise participates is a master at the game of the week. And they're very good, since they've spent years studying the game with these tactics, they know about the inner workings, and let's say also that they happen to win. What can you do then? Overall I do enjoy the knowledge gain that results from these contests so this is why I'm torn. We are accidentally incredibly productive researchers in these threads. Most game faqs don't go behind the window like this. Certain current games that warrant it have this level of analysis, it's the logical late-stage result of competitions. So despite my qualms I think there's definite value in embracing it. In my opinion it comes down to either: - having the rulesets down pat out of the gate with any exploits considered (big task, still probably impossible to perfect) - or, having deafcode (or anyone in future) continue to say what they're doing as he has mostly done. I really think it has to be basically 100% open book though. And it could be in a separate thread or threads to keep the conversation in the main thread more diverse. - I also think that if something is discovered that crosses the line that the organizers should be able to make any rules changes they see fit to handle it. - following and in conjunction with points 2 and 3, and this might be extreme, but... how about a small leaderboard point deduction if you do anything or things that you have to announce to the group? It seems crazy... but does it? We could use our point system to balance all the others, it de-incentivizes but still allows the practice. It would create a choice for the player, whether it's deafcode or someone copying him, to either play "au naturel," or "Pandora-style" with a deduction & knowledge boost - what will net you more points this week? (By the way I am in favor of changing up the VGS point system in other ways too. But I'm gonna share some of my thoughts on that in a following post, and might relate it back to this when I do. Thanks all for the great season - I'm really looking forward to starting the next one!)

Fuck yeah!! Love seein shots of the old basement

Has this ever been attempted on VGS before?

Thanks for the mention and looks cool, but I will pass

You're lucky I went to see the Harlem Globetrotters and didn't have the day today to play! I used to do these exact rules all the time when I played this more, except on Very Hard, cleared it with only two characters IIRC. This was easier, but the polygons remain the defining part for me on either difficulty.

576,550

Glad it worked out! At least he did the lion's share of the work, I wonder if most would even offer that with flawed machines

I must have stayed out of the loop, or out of the sphere, on where the 400K points path was. Still an enjoyable week. But I just played right after last-minuting Starfox

Think I'm gonna take the last place crown this week