Game Page: https://speeddemosarchive.com/MilonsSecretCastle.html
Milon's Secret Castle (Any %) (Single Segment)
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to 'HavocProdigy'!
Milon's Secret Castle (Any %) (Single Segment)
Verifier Responses
Quote from CarpetCrawler:
A/V good, no cheating detected.
Is sub-9 possible? Yes, absolutely. However, none of the things holding Havoc back in this 9:03 are through his own fault. Havoc held up his end of the deal, the rest of the game relies on having good boss patterns, which as of right now we are not sure is something that can be accurately pre-determined or not. Typically in Havoc's attempts Kama will end his run, or Milon will be too battered and abused by the frantic, chaotic enemies that he will lose his health and die. This run has some pretty good luck with boss patterns and a decent Maharito fight.
I'm curious to see if a sub-9 run will ever come to fruition. Getting on Havoc's level of play with this game is no easy task and would take heavy repetition and grinding. Havoc does not lie when he says he's put in thousands of attempts to get the time he got here. A definite ACCEPT as this is a great, ideal run as it is with only minor hopeful RNG improvements if anyone was curious enough to try and beat this time. Which is something that I don't see happening.
Is sub-9 possible? Yes, absolutely. However, none of the things holding Havoc back in this 9:03 are through his own fault. Havoc held up his end of the deal, the rest of the game relies on having good boss patterns, which as of right now we are not sure is something that can be accurately pre-determined or not. Typically in Havoc's attempts Kama will end his run, or Milon will be too battered and abused by the frantic, chaotic enemies that he will lose his health and die. This run has some pretty good luck with boss patterns and a decent Maharito fight.
I'm curious to see if a sub-9 run will ever come to fruition. Getting on Havoc's level of play with this game is no easy task and would take heavy repetition and grinding. Havoc does not lie when he says he's put in thousands of attempts to get the time he got here. A definite ACCEPT as this is a great, ideal run as it is with only minor hopeful RNG improvements if anyone was curious enough to try and beat this time. Which is something that I don't see happening.
Quote:
time: Appears correct, 9:03
a/v: I'm no techmologician, but this indeed looks and sounds like Milon's Secret Castle.
cheating: Nope! This is really how the game actually plays! Seriously!
Run: I see no obvious errors, execution or otherwise. There appears to be only a few very minor hiccups that don't seem to be caused by bad luck amounting to maybe a couple of seconds lost across the whole run.
Overall optimization of play and health/umbrella management is impressive. Well, I say management of health but what I mean is not getting bum rushed by boss fireballs.
Speaking of bad luck, although there is a bit of that in here, there appears to be more than enough good luck too.
Other than that, the run comments by the author are very informative and honest, and those say way more than I could.
Extremely tightly played run of an extremely unfriendly to play game! Can't really fault the runner for grinding out excellent RNG in stead of perfect RNG. Easy peasy ACCEPTesey
Congrats on the great run
a/v: I'm no techmologician, but this indeed looks and sounds like Milon's Secret Castle.
cheating: Nope! This is really how the game actually plays! Seriously!
Run: I see no obvious errors, execution or otherwise. There appears to be only a few very minor hiccups that don't seem to be caused by bad luck amounting to maybe a couple of seconds lost across the whole run.
Overall optimization of play and health/umbrella management is impressive. Well, I say management of health but what I mean is not getting bum rushed by boss fireballs.
Speaking of bad luck, although there is a bit of that in here, there appears to be more than enough good luck too.
Other than that, the run comments by the author are very informative and honest, and those say way more than I could.
Extremely tightly played run of an extremely unfriendly to play game! Can't really fault the runner for grinding out excellent RNG in stead of perfect RNG. Easy peasy ACCEPTesey
Congrats on the great run
Quote from Dragondarch:
Game: Milon's Secret Castle
Category: RNG Fuckfest Any%
Audio/Video: Everything looked good.
Cheating: He cheats death a few times, but that's acceptable.
Good god, this game. This was one of the earlier NES games I had as a kid, and I remember spending who-knows-how-many-hours attempting to beat it. I did manage to complete it at some point, and many times after that, but good god was this a monster of a game for kid to try to beat.
This run is made of the tears of Queen Eliza who, while it only took Milon 9 minutes and change to rescue her on his successful attempt, has waited patiently for what's probably the equivalent of months for Milon to finally reach her. I'm sure she must have cried many-a-time as she watched Milon get bodied time and time again by the various monsters inhabiting the castle. I'm also betting that at some point she gave up hope that Milon would ever reach the top of the castle and defeat Marihito, given his success rate.
As for the run itself:
This is a nightmare to play, let alone speedrun. The runner articulates the issues of running this game quite well in his comments. Umbrellas need to be obtained at specific points to re-obtain double shot (good game design right there...), money is necessary for a few items, the fireplace is hell without the Fireproof Vest, boss battles are incredibly and dangerously random, and the only saving grace for Milon are a scant few Hudson Honeybees and some Honeycomb. Milon doesn't exactly have a lot going for him, does he?
The runner overcomes all of this bullshit and finishes in record time (9:03 by looking at the video). Congrats to the runner, and please for the love of god bury this game somewhere you'll never find it again. You'll be better off for it.
Easy ACCEPT.
Category: RNG Fuckfest Any%
Audio/Video: Everything looked good.
Cheating: He cheats death a few times, but that's acceptable.
Good god, this game. This was one of the earlier NES games I had as a kid, and I remember spending who-knows-how-many-hours attempting to beat it. I did manage to complete it at some point, and many times after that, but good god was this a monster of a game for kid to try to beat.
This run is made of the tears of Queen Eliza who, while it only took Milon 9 minutes and change to rescue her on his successful attempt, has waited patiently for what's probably the equivalent of months for Milon to finally reach her. I'm sure she must have cried many-a-time as she watched Milon get bodied time and time again by the various monsters inhabiting the castle. I'm also betting that at some point she gave up hope that Milon would ever reach the top of the castle and defeat Marihito, given his success rate.
As for the run itself:
This is a nightmare to play, let alone speedrun. The runner articulates the issues of running this game quite well in his comments. Umbrellas need to be obtained at specific points to re-obtain double shot (good game design right there...), money is necessary for a few items, the fireplace is hell without the Fireproof Vest, boss battles are incredibly and dangerously random, and the only saving grace for Milon are a scant few Hudson Honeybees and some Honeycomb. Milon doesn't exactly have a lot going for him, does he?
The runner overcomes all of this bullshit and finishes in record time (9:03 by looking at the video). Congrats to the runner, and please for the love of god bury this game somewhere you'll never find it again. You'll be better off for it.
Easy ACCEPT.
Quote from PJ:
A/V looks great and there are no signs of cheating!
Sorry for being so late with this reply! I am giving this the strongest ACCEPT possible. This is seriously one of the most impressive NES runs I've ever seen. I thought that the absolutely relentless difficulty and randomness of this game would prevent it from ever getting an optimized run, but the runner proved me wrong pretty convincingly.
He is using the most reckless route possible, not collecting enough extra money to get a single health refill from any of the later shops. As a result, he has to play through the last two thirds of the game with the same life bar (note: bosses kill you in 2-3 hits from full health). He manages to get to the final "traditional" boss of the game without losing any health at all! I can't stress how ridiculously impressive that is. The boss fights are completely random, and a lot of the possible trajectories are completely undodgeable because you don't accelerate quickly enough to move out of the way. He still charges forward without fear and crushes them!
This route is incredibly strong. Every enemy kill is planned to force umbrella drops in optimal locations, all the early damage boosts are done with the honeycombs in mind, all of the uses of the shield are planned perfectly, and he has a very efficient kill of the balloon-dropping guys in the well escape. I see no route improvements here.
Congrats to the runner for an astonishing run of this game, and for finally getting a run you are satisfied with! Here's hoping you can play some enjoyable games from now on.
Sorry for being so late with this reply! I am giving this the strongest ACCEPT possible. This is seriously one of the most impressive NES runs I've ever seen. I thought that the absolutely relentless difficulty and randomness of this game would prevent it from ever getting an optimized run, but the runner proved me wrong pretty convincingly.
He is using the most reckless route possible, not collecting enough extra money to get a single health refill from any of the later shops. As a result, he has to play through the last two thirds of the game with the same life bar (note: bosses kill you in 2-3 hits from full health). He manages to get to the final "traditional" boss of the game without losing any health at all! I can't stress how ridiculously impressive that is. The boss fights are completely random, and a lot of the possible trajectories are completely undodgeable because you don't accelerate quickly enough to move out of the way. He still charges forward without fear and crushes them!
This route is incredibly strong. Every enemy kill is planned to force umbrella drops in optimal locations, all the early damage boosts are done with the honeycombs in mind, all of the uses of the shield are planned perfectly, and he has a very efficient kill of the balloon-dropping guys in the well escape. I see no route improvements here.
Congrats to the runner for an astonishing run of this game, and for finally getting a run you are satisfied with! Here's hoping you can play some enjoyable games from now on.
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to 'HavocProdigy'!
Thread title: