Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by June 6, 2014.
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.
After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.
Anyway, here we have the Genesis Ghostbusters, completely with giant heads, and I could tell that the runner was fully aware about everything he was going to do for the run. Going off the runner's comments, I could see that the runner has spent plenty of time playing this game, studying it, and even studying TAS runs of the game to optimize the run as much as possible.
There isn't really much to say for the run itself other than the basics: The video was good, the execution was well done, a few minor complications here and there, but overall it was a pleasure to watch. Accept.
When I saw this thread, I thought somebody might have decided to run the NES Ghosebusters. I was presently surprised to see Genesis Ghostbusters. And echoing the other reviewer's comments, I concur that a lot of planning went into this run.
As for the run itself, the runner damages boosts when appropriate, and the execution is generally clean, though the final boss fight is a bit dicey towards the end, with no life to give and a giant hook being blasted at the player character. Overall its a good run and was fun to watch.
Luck was just ridiculous with the good drops from slimers and no bombs in safes. Otherwise, everything seems legit. However, while everything looks good in the run, the final stage is a mess with multiple costly mistakes. Considering this is a less than 30 minutes run, I would REJECT this run.
Luck was just ridiculous with the good drops from slimers and no bombs in safes. Otherwise, everything seems legit. However, while everything looks good in the run, the final stage is a mess with multiple costly mistakes. Considering this is a less than 30 minutes run, I would REJECT this run.
Verdict: Reject
Luck has very little to do with this run (except boss patterns). The first safe is only random one, and if I get bomb from it, i just reset. The second and third safes are sure to give money. And I don't rely on slimers, they only decide, that do I use peking duck now or later
I was not saying the safes were cheating. I'm saying the mistakes in the last stage are quite costly. I rejected purely based on the final stage, not anything else as it was pretty much perfect!
I was not saying the safes were cheating. I'm saying the mistakes in the last stage are quite costly. I rejected purely based on the final stage, not anything else as it was pretty much perfect!
I'll rephrase my original statement then.
Video and audio are fine.
No signs of cheating detected.
Luck with safes and slimers was ridiculoous but that's OK. Luck is a major factor in a lot of games so it's fine in my book. The first five stages are very well executed with very few minor mistakes. However things go bad in the last stage where the runner is bounced around and falling down pits where recovery is very costly in time.
Considering the length of that game, around 30 minutes, I cannot accept so many mistakes in a single stage, even if it's the last stage of the game.
Decision: Reject based on the performance of the final stage.
The final stage is not the best final stage in the world. Yes it can be improved. But here's the thing, I've rejected faster runs before purely based on final stage performance before (see Chameleon Twist public verification).
If you do a cursory Youtube search for this, the only two things that pop up is a 5 year old run by Breakdown which is a 34:06, which as the runner notes in the submission notes is an emulator run, and the TAS. Considering that its a 5 year old emulator run... you can take the time with a grain of salt, but 16 bit emulation has been known to be generally accurate if a bit overclocked on some games. So the submitted run being faster than that is a good start.
As for the final stage, I briefly mentioned the final boss battle being dicey, but I'll expand on the final stage. I don't believe the final stage brings the whole run down with it.
Yes the moving platforming jumping is kinda sloppy at places, and getting knocked into a pit twice and taking the trampoline ghost thing to get back up there really stings. But these are relatively minor blemishes and some minor execution errors are to be expected in a 30-35 minute long platformer, especially when the final stage itself is 10 minutes long and includes 5 boss fights. The run is using fast optimal strategies, the menuing is really good and every thing is planned out well.
I see no reason why this run is not an easy Accept
As mentioned, things go really smoothly until the final level. In said final level there are a couple jumps that are flat out missed, some trolling by an enemy, a couple really tight-looking platform cycles missed, and one big mistake: the runner goes for a drop, just barely misses making it back on the platform and has to take a long circuitous route back. Most of it can be written off as expected imperfection, but the one big mistake is quite costly - about 35 seconds or so by my estimation (taking into account the platform cycle when the mistake occurred and when the runner returned), plus leading to another missed jump or two and an enemy troll for about 45 seconds total. One big mistake can certainly ruin an otherwise acceptable run, and this one comes damn close to doing so in my book.
All in all I can't say this is an easy decision, but I'm going to give it a weak accept simply because other than that one mistake this run is excellent. Hopefully the runner pushes the time even lower in the future, though.