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SDAVerification: 2017-02-08 10:27:21 am
SDAVerification: 2017-02-08 10:25:45 am
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/MarbleMadness.html

Marble Madness (ntscus) (nes) [Any %] [Single Segment]
Marble Madness (ntscus) (nes) [Any %] [Single Segment] [Co-Op]

Verifier Responses

Quote:
The WR run by Elipsis is near perfect. I have been keeping up with his progress on this so I have no doubt that this run is legit. Video is fine and his commentary is informative. No signs of cheating that I can see. And the time was spot on. An accept for me.

Video quality is fine and the time was spot on. Although the run itself by Toad and Elipsis is a bit sloppy at parts, particularly the Ultimate race where there were quite a few deaths and mistakes. They also mention that the game was locking up at the last screen if they didn't kill the black marble. I have seen other runs where this didn't happen so I'm not sure if it was a hardware specific issue with his NES. Either way the run needs a lot of improvement and frankly it's a downer to see those deaths IMO. I'm going to say reject on this one.

Some discussion followed in the verification thread and it turned out the verifier hadn't fully realized why the runners had to settle for this run (the runners live far apart and had only a 6-hour window at AGDQ to work with). The verifier added the following comment:
Quote:
So I guess with this new information in mind... I can accept it. Mainly because it's the two best Marble Madness speed runners in the world attempting a co-op run in a limited amount of time. I guess I can accept that.


Quote:
The single player run was very clean, and a/v all around was good. Accept

Now, the co-op run, albeit exciting to have these two amazing runners play together, was not as clean as it should be. There were just too many little hiccups that make it difficult to accept this run. However, co-op runs like this tend to be more difficult just because of the limited time that these runners have to work together on a game. This reminds me of the Battletoads and Double Dragon run by PJ and Mecha Richter. It was a good run, but there is definitely still room to improve. I guess because of this, I'm still in the air for this run.

The same verifier later added:
Quote:
I'll go ahead and say no for the co-op run. With how short the game is, there just shouldn't be as many mistakes as there are.


Quote:
A/V is good for both runs.

The 1p-run speaks for itself. You have to be quite familiar with the game to spot anything that looks like a time loss. Overall it's a top notch run.

Obvious accept (1p)

The coop run is a different story... It was made by the two top guys of this game during an intensive 6-hour session at AGDQ. I can't say that I have any own experience from cooping this game, but it doesn't require a lot of imagination to understand how brutal it must be in coop mode.

I know these two players are capable of more than this. There are several good moments throughout, but the game play falls somewhat apart towards the end.
It's explained in the comments how it would be difficult to achieve a better run, due to the best runners living far from each other. As such, I can recognize that despite this run not being as smooth as one could have wished for, it's still a run that will be hard to improve on.

Another point that I would like to bring up is about the routes being used. Considering the short time line and the difficulty of the run, it might have resulted in a faster run simply by using easier strats. A good example of this was in stage 5. Both runners attempted the very difficult clip shortcut near the end. One got it, while the other missed, resulting in an overall time loss compared to taking the safe way around. Even in 1p, it's almost a miracle to get it to work, so to expect that trick to work in a coop run with so little time to work with doesn't seem very well thought through.

Despite the flaws, I'm leaning towards passing it through. The difficulty of the run and the unlikeliness of pairing up two of the top runners again any time soon indicate that this run will stand for a while. Of course, I still hope that an improvement will come along down the road.

Weak accept (coop)


Decision: Accept

Reason: The coop run is on the limit for what's acceptable. Let's hope the two runners will overcome the logistical hurdles in the not too distant future and work on an improvement.

Congratulations to Steve 'Elipsis' Barrios! (1p)
Congratulations to Steve 'Elipsis' Barrios! and Toad22484 (coop)
Thread title:  
Woohoo!  Thanks all!  I was worried about the 2P run, and I fully acknowledge there is more slop in the run than Toad and I were really hoping for, we are definitely planning to improve it the next time we get together... but given the limitations of the window we had to work with, I really appreciate the verifiers understanding of the situation.


Re: Black Marble - I would appreciate it if the verifier could link me the particular video in question.  Toad and I discovered that the Black Marble will definitely crash the game, but we also know that it will sometimes despawn itself by wandering off the top of the screen.  This might have been in the case in the playthrough that you're talking about... but it is more or less RNG as to whether or not the marble will do this on its own.  The only way to guarantee that it was gone was to take matters into our own hands, so we added it to the route to avoid what was guestimatedly a ~80% crash rate left to RNG.

See the CGDQ video for the crash (note the Black Marble doesn't despawn):