Contra ReBirth - August 9, 2015

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2015-08-09 10:25:56 am

2015-07-20 04:49:41 am

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/ContraReBirth.html

Contra ReBirth (ntscus) (wii) [Any %] [Single Segment] [Hard] [2 players]

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Kyle 'Mr. K' Halversen & Jeremy 'DK28' Doll!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2015-07-20 04:49:41 am

Run Information

Contra ReBirth (ntscus) (wii) [Any %] [Single Segment] [Normal] [2 players]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/contrarebirth-20150630/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

Sir VG

2015-07-20 08:13:49 am

Fucking Weeaboo

Overall, it was a pretty OK run. Unfortunately numerous deaths (especially by P1) and other various slowdowns really hurt how good this run could be.

In both Stage 1 and 5, there's a couple of seconds in each stage where 1 player gets to the edge of the screen before the other does, and it takes both getting to the end to move forward.

Maybe it's because I know what these two runners can do and what Contra runs should be like, and maybe it's partially influenced by my short tries with romscout years ago (god damn, almost 6 years ago apparently) that I'm going to have to reject the run.

BTW, here's what Stage 1 should pretty much be like.

Eternalspirit

2015-07-25 11:12:10 am

First time I've heard of this game and never seen these runners play before.

There's obviously a few bumpy moments but this game overall seems a bit harder than Contra 3 just from watching it. Though that might just be the Contra 3 runners making it look like a joke.

The actual time loss for the mistakes in this run doesn't seem to be significant at all so I'll accept.

zallard1

2015-08-02 09:28:26 pm

B+Left, Left, Up+B, ★

A few things before I verify this run. This game has some pretty bogus design choices, especially when it comes to being able to see excruciatingly important details (i.e. the enemies and yourself). When you have a runner like Mr K, who's been a part of just about every Contra speedrun in some fashion whether it be a co-op partner, research, ect, yet he legitimately could not even discern whether or not he's alive for over 10 seconds in a run because the positions of enemies are masked by way too many explosions and clutter, that's quite an impressive feat. If you couple that with the fact that it's Hard mode & there's only a week to get a coordinated run of a game as chaotic as this, that's quite impressive. Sure, the run is simply not on the same tier as Contra/SuperC/Contra3 as far as optimization goes, but it should be understood that all of those games have had huge advantages as far as runners actually living close to each other for local practice, as well as each game having the mechanics completely broken down and completely understood. Contra Rebirth just doesn't really have that same strong history. Heck, there didn't even exist a hard mode run in real time before this run. Also, as far as I can tell, there is no routing for real-time 2 player hard mode made public for this game outside of stage 1, which is possibly the stage with the least impact on the final time in the run. The only other resource that could be found was the only 2 player TAS timing in at about 13:22 give or take a second or two. Considering this run times in at 13:52, that makes this submission approximately 30 seconds behind the only known TAS. For only having a week of attempts, that is pretty strong, despite the deaths.

Anyways, onto the run itself.

Stage 1 - Pretty good. The only literal mistake in this stage is P1 stopping at 50 seconds for less than half a second.

Stage 2 - Loses a bit of time at 2:00 and 2:17, probably because the entire screen is filled with blinding explosions and missiles and they needed to make sure the enemies actually died before progressing. A death at 2:27 cost about 2 seconds, although he didn't lose spread, so no extra time outside that was lost. Rest of the stage was fine.

Stage 3 - An autoscroller for the entire stage outside of the miniboss & boss, both of which were great.

Stage 4 - An autoscroller up until the 2nd section of the stage. 2nd part was REALLY good, especially for all the crap it throws at both players in hard mode. Boss was perfect.

Stage 5 - A death happens in the first section that loses about a quarter second since they get to re-sync at the heart, but he never lost homing, which is by far the most important part of running this stage on hard. In fact, getting peashooter for the heart may have been beneficial since only 2 shots of each spread wave actually hits the heart VS the 3-4 peashots that hit each time a wave of spread reaches the heart. The deaths on the final boss were probably the roughest part of the run, since P1 loses spread. That and the pattern the final boss gives was really poor, but nothing could've been done about the bad luck at that point. This would probably be the spot that a future run would be able to improve upon the most.

SDA's standards seem to waver a bit from game to game. I've seen a fair share of runs that have been accepted to this site in the past that I feel are not up to SDA standards, but this run is simply not among them. There is enough good that outweighs the bad in this run that makes it worthy of being on this site, as well as there being an earnest effort to provide a the best run the runners could accomplish considering the restraints it was under.

Accept.

A few things before I verify this run. This game has some pretty bogus design choices, especially when it comes to being able to see excruciatingly important details (i.e. the enemies and yourself). When you have a runner like Mr K, who's been a part of just about every Contra speedrun in some fashion whether it be a co-op partner, research, ect, yet he legitimately could not even discern whether or not he's alive for over 10 seconds in a run because the positions of enemies are masked by way too many explosions and clutter, that's quite an impressive feat. If you couple that with the fact that it's Hard mode & there's only a week to get a coordinated run of a game as chaotic as this, that's quite impressive. Sure, the run is simply not on the same tier as Contra/SuperC/Contra3 as far as optimization goes, but it should be understood that all of those games have had huge advantages as far as runners actually living close to each other for local practice, as well as each game having the mechanics completely broken down and completely understood. Contra Rebirth just doesn't really have that same strong history. Heck, there didn't even exist a hard mode run in real time before this run. Also, as far as I can tell, there is no routing for real-time 2 player hard mode made public for this game outside of stage 1, which is possibly the stage with the least impact on the final time in the run. The only other resource that could be found was the only 2 player TAS timing in at about [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms36k2oO1KE]13:22[/url] give or take a second or two. Considering this run times in at 13:52, that makes this submission approximately 30 seconds behind the only known TAS. For only having a week of attempts, that is pretty strong, despite the deaths.

Anyways, onto the run itself.

Stage 1 - Pretty good. The only literal mistake in this stage is P1 stopping at 50 seconds for less than half a second.

Stage 2 - Loses a bit of time at 2:00 and 2:17, probably because the entire screen is filled with blinding explosions and missiles and they needed to make sure the enemies actually died before progressing. A death at 2:27 cost about 2 seconds, although he didn't lose spread, so no extra time outside that was lost. Rest of the stage was fine.

Stage 3 - An autoscroller for the entire stage outside of the miniboss & boss, both of which were great.

Stage 4 - An autoscroller up until the 2nd section of the stage. 2nd part was REALLY good, especially for all the crap it throws at both players in hard mode. Boss was perfect.

Stage 5 - A death happens in the first section that loses about a quarter second since they get to re-sync at the heart, but he never lost homing, which is by far the most important part of running this stage on hard. In fact, getting peashooter for the heart may have been beneficial since only 2 shots of each spread wave actually hits the heart VS the 3-4 peashots that hit each time a wave of spread reaches the heart. The deaths on the final boss were probably the roughest part of the run, since P1 loses spread. That and the pattern the final boss gives was really poor, but nothing could've been done about the bad luck at that point. This would probably be the spot that a future run would be able to improve upon the most.

SDA's standards seem to waver a bit from game to game. I've seen a fair share of runs that have been accepted to this site in the past that I feel are not up to SDA standards, but this run is simply not among them. There is enough good that outweighs the bad in this run that makes it worthy of being on this site, as well as there being an earnest effort to provide a the best run the runners could accomplish considering the restraints it was under.

Accept.

Heidrage

Edit history:

Heidrage: 2015-08-06 06:17:26 pm

2015-08-04 12:24:55 pm

Willing to teach you the impossible

Gunna watch this tonight, will edit this post

Edit: Ok, so I am a stickler for wanting a run to be done well to a rather high standard. Realistically though, if a player can not see or enemies spawn on top of them (mouths in super c?) what can you do? Most of the deaths did not cost much of any time as where the deaths happened the other player was more than able to make up for it. I did not like to see both players hesitating in some spots where the did not have to. That is not Contra, that is so not Contra. But this is a really small time loss from it, Improvable? For sure. SDA acceptable... Yes... But I want to see better. I know my crew can do better, I know they expect better, I dont see this not being improved in the near future.

honorableJay

2015-08-05 05:22:45 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

So I watched the entire thing and saw nothing but explosion sprites for 13 minutes, and when it all cleared 2 shirtless men were still standing. I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but it must've been epic.

Accept

Seriously, how could they see what was going on???

Worn_Traveler

2015-08-05 09:52:20 pm

Formerly known as Skullboy

A/V is fine. No cheating detected.

Watched the run. Enjoyed the run. Accept the run.

Good job Contra runners. Keep it up!

SDAVerification

2015-08-09 10:25:59 am

Decision posted.