Contra III

2009-05-02 01:21:55 am

Hi, im deaf, could you kindly make subtitles for your commentary?? would be awesome then i get to hear your awesomness, Mr Mike Uyama. Cry

nate

2009-05-02 01:17:43 pm

haha, i think someone would have a lot of fun doing that. need lyrics sheets for all the songs so we can do them as a chorus at next magfest to entertain other guests.

you would still miss out on uyama's amazing singing voice, but worse things have happened.

Tiki

2009-05-02 02:27:23 pm

I don't even know what the fuck this is

Quote from nate:

worse things have happened.

not really

Zealie

2009-05-02 04:10:44 pm

Quote from Tiki:

Quote from nate:

worse things have happened.

not really

you lucky bastard...

p.s. Mike your run is amazing! Also commentary is likeable Wink

Riskbreaker Y

2009-05-03 11:05:56 am

berserker status

I watched the run a few days ago and i have to say it is nigh perfect. This was always my fav iteration of contra. My favorite part of the run was when you didn't even let that 'rocket man' grab onto to the missile with you in the helicopter part! GTFO my missile! XD

mikwuyma

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2009-05-08 03:42:42 pm

2009-05-08 03:17:15 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

For anyone interested.

http://dl.speeddemosarchive.com/Contra3_hard_1459_bloopers.mp4

This isn't really bloopers more than all of the failed attempts during the session I completed my run (yes, it cuts off right before my successful attempt).

BTW, if you have any questions on why I restarted in certain areas, just ask.

Vice

2009-05-10 12:11:38 pm

Clam

Where's the trademark audio Uyamantary?

Ifrit

2009-05-10 03:48:09 pm

congrats on finally getting that run completed Cheesy

Zero_Awakening

2009-05-14 12:30:35 pm

Quote from TallDeafMan:

Hi, im deaf, could you kindly make subtitles for your commentary?? would be awesome then i get to hear your awesomness, Mr Mike Uyama. Cry

i am currently in the process of transcribing the commentary for you, when i figure out how to put subtitles on videos i will find a way to put it somewhere o.o

Zero_Awakening

2009-05-14 02:48:52 pm

here is a link to my transcription
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZRVG0AM5

is there any way to use avisynth script to add subtitles or something?

Enhasa

2009-05-15 01:27:59 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

There's no way you can script those subtitles because you didn't include time information. You'll have to go back and time the lines, but at least you won't have to retype.

Use srt format and I'll upload it as external commentary. srt is text-based and very similar to what you already have (only with time info of course). I recommend something like Subtitle Workshop.

Zero_Awakening

2009-05-15 01:34:59 pm

okay i used subtitle workshop and got it all ready to go i think... here's the link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EK96RZHG

Enhasa

2009-05-18 01:27:35 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Looks good, added it.

Also want to add that most people nowadays use .ass format and Aegisub, but I kinda thought that was overkill for something like this. Support in players is also worse than it is for .srt. A good comparison would be that .srt is like .m3u for playlists, .ass would be more like xspf or at the very least, .pls. Just wanted you to know FYI, you don't have to change anything.

Zero_Awakening

2009-05-18 01:45:24 pm

Quote from Enhasa:

Looks good, added it.

Also want to add that most people nowadays use .ass format and Aegisub, but I kinda thought that was overkill for something like this. Support in players is also worse than it is for .srt. A good comparison would be that .srt is like .m3u for playlists, .ass would be more like xspf or at the very least, .pls. Just wanted you to know FYI, you don't have to change anything.

LOL! you sure have a knack for telling me these things after the fact. Its fine though, i spent my hour and a half doing the timing and i'm done! I noticed that a few lines in stage 1 are very very slightly off but i'm not going to go back and refine any more than it is, good enough for the world...

Mr. K

2009-09-10 10:14:28 am

Yes

I've been messing around with a lot of different variations for Contra III and I was considering a low % run with no deaths on hard mode. I've figured out a way to overcome the three major obstacles for this run, being the tightrope soldier, heart and the cocoon spewing alien. The biggest threat that I saw was the cocoon dropping alien from the first Contra. If you've ever taken this thing on with the peashooter, you'll know how brutal it is. I was finally able to beat the dang thing with the peashooter and no bombs, but I have a major problem. It took about five minutes! The peashooter barely has the firepower to destroy the cocoons as they're spewed out and because the mouth opens and closes the amount of damage it does is quite dismal. Even if you were to make a death abuse out of it and use bombs it doesn't save much time.

I guess what I'm asking is, would a low % no death run be too boring? There are a few exciting spots, sure, but the delay in a lot of places can be a few minutes and that fight in stage 6 takes about five minutes. It's a bit of an eyesore to be sure. If it's too boring to watch I'll probably turn my attention to improving the hard mode run.

I've been messing around with a lot of different variations for Contra III and I was considering a low % run with no deaths on hard mode.  I've figured out a way to overcome the three major obstacles for this run, being the tightrope soldier, heart and the cocoon spewing alien.  The biggest threat that I saw was the cocoon dropping alien from the first Contra.  If you've ever taken this thing on with the peashooter, you'll know how brutal it is.  I was finally able to beat the dang thing with the peashooter and no bombs, but I have a major problem.  It took about five minutes!  The peashooter barely has the firepower to destroy the cocoons as they're spewed out and because the mouth opens and closes the amount of damage it does is quite dismal.  Even if you were to make a death abuse out of it and use bombs it doesn't save much time.

I guess what I'm asking is, would a low % no death run be too boring?  There are a few exciting spots, sure, but the delay in a lot of places can be a few minutes and that fight in stage 6 takes about five minutes.  It's a bit of an eyesore to be sure.  If it's too boring to watch I'll probably turn my attention to improving the hard mode run.

MASTER-88

2009-09-10 11:05:04 am

Master-88

Quote from Mr. K:

I've been messing around with a lot of different variations for Contra III and I was considering a low % run with no deaths on hard mode. I've figured out a way to overcome the three major obstacles for this run, being the tightrope soldier, heart and the cocoon spewing alien. The biggest threat that I saw was the cocoon dropping alien from the first Contra. If you've ever taken this thing on with the peashooter, you'll know how brutal it is. I was finally able to beat the dang thing with the peashooter and no bombs, but I have a major problem. It took about five minutes! The peashooter barely has the firepower to destroy the cocoons as they're spewed out and because the mouth opens and closes the amount of damage it does is quite dismal. Even if you were to make a death abuse out of it and use bombs it doesn't save much time.

I guess what I'm asking is, would a low % no death run be too boring? There are a few exciting spots, sure, but the delay in a lot of places can be a few minutes and that fight in stage 6 takes about five minutes. It's a bit of an eyesore to be sure. If it's too boring to watch I'll probably turn my attention to improving the hard mode run.

Low-% hard is not borring. I am extremely interested see it, but i think it is too hard to beat on console. We know low-% games like Metroid Prime, last fight is extremely long, but it is still very interesting.

[quote="Mr. K"]
I've been messing around with a lot of different variations for Contra III and I was considering a low % run with no deaths on hard mode.  I've figured out a way to overcome the three major obstacles for this run, being the tightrope soldier, heart and the cocoon spewing alien.  The biggest threat that I saw was the cocoon dropping alien from the first Contra.  If you've ever taken this thing on with the peashooter, you'll know how brutal it is.  I was finally able to beat the dang thing with the peashooter and no bombs, but I have a major problem.  It took about five minutes!  The peashooter barely has the firepower to destroy the cocoons as they're spewed out and because the mouth opens and closes the amount of damage it does is quite dismal.  Even if you were to make a death abuse out of it and use bombs it doesn't save much time.

I guess what I'm asking is, would a low % no death run be too boring?  There are a few exciting spots, sure, but the delay in a lot of places can be a few minutes and that fight in stage 6 takes about five minutes.  It's a bit of an eyesore to be sure.  If it's too boring to watch I'll probably turn my attention to improving the hard mode run.

[/quote]

Low-% hard is not borring. I am extremely interested see it, but i think it is too hard to beat on console. We know low-% games like Metroid Prime, last fight is extremely long, but it is still very interesting.

Frezy_man

2009-09-11 10:29:51 am

bläää

I do not know what kind of delays this low% run will include but slow boss fights does not mean it is boring to watch. I think Contra III is such a populare game that there would be a public for a low% run. Just like the NES games in the series.

Mr. K

2009-09-11 11:48:28 am

Yes

Okay I've been playing around with it a bit more.
First, rapidly switching guns serves one purpose and one purpose only- reducing the amount of lag between shots before a gun can fire again. Usually, there is no lag with the peashooter so it doesn't help. There are places though where the peashooter does lag. You'll really notice this if you shoot diagonally at the beginning of stage four where the shots don't make a constant stream. Rapidly switching (and it doesn't have to be that fast) eliminates any delay between shots meaning that you will kill some enemies faster. A good test is to fight the stage one tank. Stand at the far right side of the screen and compare the time difference between switching guns fast and not switching. Because this thing takes a lot of punishment, it's a good example of the difference.

Next, there are a lot of really annoying parts to this run:
-Stage one's general randomness can really eat into your time
-Destroying bunkers with the peashooter on stage two just isn't fun. Especially the one where you have to turn away to hit it. Chasing down the core of the boss is kind of fun, though.
-The things I hate about stage three are the first part of that robot with the spinning pole. It's just hard to get good damage and it takes a while.
-Coming up with a good strategy for the stage four boss is tough. I was hoping I could hit the top turret diagonally, but it's a bit tricky and the amount of chaff flying out makes it really tough.
-The cocoon boss from Contra does take a couple of minutes
-The heart boss can be beaten with the peashooter, but you must get a pretty good pattern to do it (meaning the spiders don't come down on you diagonally at a weird angle). If you get a rough spot it's curtains. I want to use my one bomb to get through the stage quickly, but I'd really like to have it in reserve for the heart.
-I hate the reaching tentacles on the alien queen. It's a cinch when you destroy one, but I hate it when one reaches out for you and suddenly backs out and the other comes back at you. I probably just need to sit down and dodge that attack for a while.
-I'm probably going to go for the blue walking legs orb. The only problem is that it's next to the spiked one and the snake one. I might be able to survive the snake one with a bit more practice if I hit it on accident, but it's not my favorite situation to be in.

Is anyone else interested in doing a run like this or practicing for it?

Okay I've been playing around with it a bit more.  
First, rapidly switching guns serves one purpose and one purpose only- reducing the amount of lag between shots before a gun can fire again.  Usually, there is no lag with the peashooter so it doesn't help.  There are places though where the peashooter does lag.  You'll really notice this if you shoot diagonally at the beginning of stage four where the shots don't make a constant stream.  Rapidly switching (and it doesn't have to be that fast) eliminates any delay between shots meaning that you will kill some enemies faster.  A good test is to fight the stage one tank.  Stand at the far right side of the screen and compare the time difference between switching guns fast and not switching.  Because this thing takes a lot of punishment, it's a good example of the difference.

Next, there are a lot of really annoying parts to this run:  
-Stage one's general randomness can really eat into your time
-Destroying bunkers with the peashooter on stage two just isn't fun.  Especially the one where you have to turn away to hit it.  Chasing down the core of the boss is kind of fun, though.
-The things I hate about stage three are the first part of that robot with the spinning pole.  It's just hard to get good damage and it takes a while.
-Coming up with a good strategy for the stage four boss is tough.  I was hoping I could hit the top turret diagonally, but it's a bit tricky and the amount of chaff flying out makes it really tough.  
-The cocoon boss from Contra does take a couple of minutes
-The heart boss can be beaten with the peashooter, but you must get a pretty good pattern to do it (meaning the spiders don't come down on you diagonally at a weird angle).  If you get a rough spot it's curtains.  I want to use my one bomb to get through the stage quickly, but I'd really like to have it in reserve for the heart.
-I hate the reaching tentacles on the alien queen.  It's a cinch when you destroy one, but I hate it when one reaches out for you and suddenly backs out and the other comes back at you.  I probably just need to sit down and dodge that attack for a while.
-I'm probably going to go for the blue walking legs orb.  The only problem is that it's next to the spiked one and the snake one.  I might be able to survive the snake one with a bit more practice if I hit it on accident, but it's not my favorite situation to be in.

Is anyone else interested in doing a run like this or practicing for it?

Spider-Waffle

(user is banned)

Spider-Waffle

Edit history:

Spider-Waffle: 2009-09-19 04:50:43 am

2009-09-14 05:46:14 am

Don't think! feeeeeal

I thought about this too, yes there's ways to get past everything and some can be quite challenging, but they can take a long ass time and for many you can do very risky strategies to save tons of time but they're just so hard you could never pull them all off in one run and you have to do safer strats which take so long.

I think you'd get a lot more recognition and appreciation using your talent to beat the hard mode run, and many more people would watch it and enjoy it much more.

Mr. K

2010-12-20 05:11:44 pm

Yes

So it's only been a year since I've given an update.

This is a low % run I did today. There is only one death, I had an unlucky alien pattern on the path to the heart. For as many times as I've practiced, it's nice to know what the actual time of this run is going to be. We're looking at something in the neighborhood of sub 23. There is a lot of randomness that can happen with a low % run. Here is what I hate about this run:

Stage 2
Did not manage to circle with the boss

stage 4
Boss needs to be more aggressibe

Stage 5
Bad luck in the shifting sands, no corner trick

There are a ton of other improvements, but if you want to see what a low % run for Contra III looks like, this is it. And yes, it's on hard.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CZNEPXX3

DK28

2010-12-20 10:51:58 pm

General Kong - Bullets and Bananas

Nice Mr. K. I don't want to know how tired your arm was after all that weapon toggling. And it wasn't on that weak "easy mode". Wink

MASTER-88

2010-12-21 05:11:11 am

Master-88

This run was truly sick.

Last year i joking about this: Can anyone beat game low-% on hard? I just joking because i thinking thats impossible by human. Now i see one death run it was truly cool. You make very last boss look so easy maybe you was just truly lucky or you was just so good. What ever this run was really great and you make it look much easier what it is.

I´ll hope see deathless run in SDA if you can. One death here is not are bad.

Heidrage

2010-12-21 06:07:51 am

Willing to teach you the impossible

If you can, I would like to see the HQ vid. There are some things I could not determin because the LQ is only 20 fps (I think, might be 30)

PJ

2010-12-21 11:27:45 am

Is PJ

Yes, that is an awesome run, Mister_K! I definitely wouldn't worry about it being boring on the bosses or whatever. I was very entertained during the entire thing. Tough luck about the death, but that is a tough spot to get through. :/

I've been playing this game a lot lately, since I figured it would be a good one to learn. I've been having a lot of fun with this. I was playing around with the final boss a lot because I really like getting the blue orb pattern to make things more interesting. During one of my practice runs (just loading a savestate from the boss), I killed him at the very beginning of the fourth round of blue orbs. I think I killed him during the third round once also, but I'm not sure if I trust my counting there. It seems too suspect. Anyways, doesn't it take four rounds of the grey rock pattern to kill the brain (beginning of the fourth round = death, IIRC)? I hit him far less during the blue orb pattern and he still dies in that time. I also killed him at the beginning of the fifth iteration of the red/black snake pattern, and I barely make contact with the brain at all. My last attempt, I just shot at the ring constantly to trigger any pattern at all. I got the eyeball, black/red snake, blue orb, and spiky grey ball patterns. It died shortly into the spike ball round. Those aren't great patterns for shooting him, but he still died in the same number of rounds.

Does this boss have varying health/defense based on which pattern you get?

Yes, that is an awesome run, Mister_K!  I definitely wouldn't worry about it being boring on the bosses or whatever.  I was very entertained during the entire thing.  Tough luck about the death, but that is a tough spot to get through.  :/

I've been playing this game a lot lately, since I figured it would be a good one to learn.  I've been having a lot of fun with this.  I was playing around with the final boss a lot because I really like getting the blue orb pattern to make things more interesting.  During one of my practice runs (just loading a savestate from the boss), I killed him at the very beginning of the fourth round of blue orbs.  I think I killed him during the third round once also, but I'm not sure if I trust my counting there.  It seems too suspect.  Anyways, doesn't it take four rounds of the grey rock pattern to kill the brain (beginning of the fourth round = death, IIRC)?  I hit him far less during the blue orb pattern and he still dies in that time.  I also killed him at the beginning of the fifth iteration of the red/black snake pattern, and I barely make contact with the brain at all.  My last attempt, I just shot at the ring constantly to trigger any pattern at all.  I got the eyeball, black/red snake, blue orb, and spiky grey ball patterns.  It died shortly into the spike ball round.  Those aren't great patterns for shooting him, but he still died in the same number of rounds.

Does this boss have varying health/defense based on which pattern you get?

Mr. K

2010-12-22 12:36:48 am

Yes

By blue orbs, do you mean the walking orb or the marble orb? I also assume you're talking double crush here since you mention four cycles and that you're playing on hard

I haven't quite subjected this boss fight to rigorous testing, but the following things I can say for sure:

With the walking orb, the advantage is that you have a relatively clear path to the brain, the downside is that it will walk out of the crush explosion and so you'll lose some plash damage
The grey orb is great because you can consistently point blank, but the grey orbs will soak up the splash damage (some, not all of it)
The red orb lets you consistently point blank but it takes some skill to keep it in range, miss shots cost time and you waste a second detonating the bomb at the beginning

Unless you get two suboptimal patterns or seriously screw up one of the other ones, the boss dies in four attack patterns, but the question is how soon can you get it to go down during the fourth pattern. I assume you were playing on hard, correct? There are a couple of other things messing with the results
-Even if you never actually fire on the brain, it takes damage each time you hit an orb and it does an attack pattern, this much I have been able to confirm. The question is whether or not this damage is the same, regardless of the orb you pick. We'd probably need a TAS'er to check for it, though I suppose I could check it myself if I got really bored.

Ultimately, as far as I've seen, whatever amount of damage is ultimately done, the red brain and grey orb patterns are still ideal, the additional damage (if any) done to the boss don't compensate for the added damage you can get during this attack pattern.

By blue orbs, do you mean the walking orb or the marble orb?  I also assume you're talking double crush here since you mention four cycles and that you're playing on hard

I haven't quite subjected this boss fight to rigorous testing, but the following things I can say for sure:

With the walking orb, the advantage is that you have a relatively clear path to the brain, the downside is that it will walk out of the crush explosion and so you'll lose some plash damage
The grey orb is great because you can consistently point blank, but the grey orbs will soak up the splash damage (some, not all of it)
The red orb lets you consistently point blank but it takes some skill to keep it in range, miss shots cost time and you waste a second detonating the bomb at the beginning

Unless you get two suboptimal patterns or seriously screw up one of the other ones, the boss dies in four attack patterns, but the question is how soon can you get it to go down during the fourth pattern.  I assume you were playing on hard, correct?  There are a couple of other things messing with the results
-Even if you never actually fire on the brain, it takes damage each time you hit an orb and it does an attack pattern, this much I have been able to confirm.  The question is whether or not this damage is the same, regardless of the orb you pick.  We'd probably need a TAS'er to check for it, though I suppose I could check it myself if I got really bored.

Ultimately, as far as I've seen, whatever amount of damage is ultimately done, the red brain and grey orb patterns are still ideal, the additional damage (if any) done to the boss don't compensate for the added damage you can get during this attack pattern.