SDA Speedrunning Tourney info and voting thread

2008-12-06 03:21:10 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Along these lines, I was thinking it would be funny to have Lemmings 2 in a speedrun competition (bronze/bad ending) because since you would only need one lemming to survive, it could turn into some sort of mouse-based mostly action game with superlems and stuff like that.

El Viento is badass, you should run it (IRL) no matter what wins.

mikwuyma

2008-12-06 03:35:49 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

wtf is wrong with smf. Enhasa and I always set the polls not to show until it's over, but the poll options somehow always revert back.

groobo: It's so cute how fickle you are. First you say all of the choices are shit, then you realize Ristar is awesome :-D

Lost Vikings: I like this game but it's insanely long and hard and you will not beat this game quickly within a week unless if you have already been playing for a couple of weeks or your name is groobo and speedrunning is a full-time job to you. Vote for El Viento (short and fast-paced) or Ristar (just plain awesome) instead. The other two games are pretty good too, but they're like STGT '07 choices, there just to make sure there are 5 choices Tongue

Enhasa

2008-12-06 08:35:20 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

I put in great games on the shortlist for people to discover some of these games and hopefully run them anyway (like Shatterhand cmon), even if I don't think they have a chance like Kabuki and Granada. Anyway it's bad to try to predict that because I've been wrong already. Actually I put Granada in since I want to play it. WRU Granada love

BZero

Edit history:

BZero: 2008-12-06 11:23:39 pm

2008-12-06 10:45:00 pm

Here are some handy codes for Ristar that will make practicing a lot easier:

SUPER - Play the game with one hit point, one life... and infinite continues.
Try it if you want to practice playing bosses or levels perfectly (or just
want one heck of a challenge).
MUSEUM - Play the game in "boss rush" mode; you'll fight all eight bosses and
try to beat them as quickly as possible. See how fast times you can rack up!
ILOVEU - The level select code. You can begin play at any level or boss you
want.

(Copied from a FAQ at GameFAQs)

Vote for Ristar, people! If you've voted for El Viento, Granada or RKA, remove your vote and give it to Ristar instead! It's Ristar vs. TLV now.... AKA a fun game to speedrun vs. SPEEDRUN HELL Ò_Ó (IMHHHHHO of course)

groobo

2008-12-07 12:59:47 am

boss

Quote from mikwuyma:

or your name is groobo and speedrunning is a full-time job to you

I have no other hobbies other than making money and sda so it's kind of true lol. NOW PAY ME SO I CAN DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME MUAHAHAHAHA!!!

Also lol @ poll.

BZero

2008-12-07 01:27:16 am

If TLV wins I'll go into a state of denial, and just play Ristar anyway.

In fact, I've aldreay started. First playthrough of Boss Rush: 12:36:11

RaneofSOTN

2008-12-07 06:09:47 am

I want off the ride....

if TLV goes through i'll smile. I was gonna torture myself with the SNES ver anyway *points to sig* So it doesn't matter to me. I know a good half of the levels off by heart already. and if people helped opt, damn it'd go quick

Enhasa

2008-12-07 09:23:53 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Everyone should have switched their votes from Ristar to El Viento instead of vice versa. Sad

PS Battle Garegga could still win, I'm ready to medal chain

Enhasa

2008-12-07 10:36:12 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Absolutely killer slate of games for SNES week. All without TAS's or other speed vids AFAIK.

There were a bunch of games I also considered this week (SNES is probably the console I know the most about). Some games that barely missed the cut are Majuu Ou, Skyblazer, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and Cybernator. Majuu Ou is probably the least known of these games. It feels vaguely like Xardion except a little less awesome but a way better game. It's really dark and bloody and twisted and probably the opposite thematically of Magical Pop'n. Pop'n is the better game though, and amazing for speedrun planning. As are all these games really.

Xaggoth

2008-12-07 10:52:26 pm

Blah, I'd have loved Legend of the Mystical Ninja, such a great game.

Voted for Pocky and Rocky because I never finished it. It's much more fun to vote at random though.

ColonelFatso

2008-12-07 10:58:18 pm

No Front Mission: Gun Hazard?

gogo 15 hour ss ftw

gia

2008-12-07 11:05:05 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Too much sweetness with penguin, ristar and now twinbee? rather have people suffer beating Pocky & Rocky.

Enhasa

2008-12-07 11:05:40 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Oh yeah, like always some great choices got DQ'd because they already have runs somehow. For Genesis that included Alien Soldier, Comix Zone, and the Vectorman games.

For SNES: ActRaiser (Professional), Demon's Crest, Metal Warriors, and the Mickey Mouse games. God, that would be an amazing lineup right there.

Enhasa

Edit history:

Enhasa: 2008-12-07 11:22:31 pm

2008-12-07 11:07:07 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote from gia:

Too much sweetness with penguin, ristar and now twinbee? rather have people suffer beating Pocky & Rocky.

No Twinbee anywhere. You can retaliate by playing some Majuu Ou to satisfy your bloodlust, but as much as I wanted to include it over Magical Pop'n, Pop'n is just a better game and way better for a tourney.

Also I've said it enough, but if you wanted variety you should have played in the arcade tourney. Tongue

Edit: Hmm, just realized, each week (including SNES) the game I wanted to play was the least cutesy one. I think this clearly means I'm far too manly for SDA. Now who wants to play TSS?

Double edit: I see we have a lot of irresponsible human beings!

gia

2008-12-08 10:39:53 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

I didn't know of that tourney, also didn't know that game, it's awesome

Enhasa

2008-12-08 02:14:13 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

If you haven't seen the link yet for the arcade tourney, it's here. There wasn't any voting for that one, I just picked the games myself, so I could enforce variety in genres, developers, difficulty levels, style, etc.

The shortlist I would have used for this week, if some of these games weren't already on SDA, would have been:

Demon's Crest
E.V.O.
Magical Pop'n
Metal Warriors
Pocky & Rocky

The actual shortlist for this week isn't compromised any though, since I love all these games too. If you are some voter reading this, please don't take this to mean that I think Alcahest and Violinist are worse than the others or you shouldn't vote for them. That's very much not true, the average for those 2 games > the average for the other 3 for me.

AquaTiger

2008-12-08 04:05:45 pm

Never give up!

Here's my thoughts on the games this week:

Alcahest: I'm leaving out what I was originally going to say here and just say that of the games I didn't know already from this week, this is the one I like the most. Were it not for E.V.O., I probably would have voted for this.
E.V.O.: While this is easily my favorite of the whole list and the game I voted for, I really doubt this is going to get much of a following for a one-week-per-game tourney. Reason is that the game is somewhat long and actually requires some thinking to do well.
Magical Pop'n: Points for relative simplicity of controls, and I think this game is going to be the winner based on that sort of thing (easy-to-play makes the most sense for a one-week-per-game tourney), but I wasn't too big a fan of it. (Too simple, in my mind.)
Pocky & Rocky: Would've been my second-place choice if it weren't for Alcahest. Oh well.
Hamelin no Violin Tamaki: Normally I can stand really weird and unknown games, but I couldn't get into this one much. And I can't place my finger on why.

Here's my thoughts on the games this week:

[b]Alcahest:[/b] I'm leaving out what I was originally going to say here and just say that of the games I didn't know already from this week, this is the one I like the most.  Were it not for E.V.O., I probably would have voted for this.
[b]E.V.O.:[/b] While this is easily my favorite of the whole list and the game I voted for, I really doubt this is going to get much of a following for a one-week-per-game tourney.  Reason is that the game is somewhat long and actually requires some thinking to do well.
[b]Magical Pop'n:[/b] Points for relative simplicity of controls, and I think this game is going to be the winner based on that sort of thing (easy-to-play makes the most sense for a one-week-per-game tourney), but I wasn't too big a fan of it.  (Too simple, in my mind.)
[b]Pocky & Rocky:[/b] Would've been my second-place choice if it weren't for Alcahest.  Oh well.
[b]Hamelin no Violin Tamaki:[/b] Normally I can stand really weird and unknown games, but I couldn't get into this one much.  And I can't place my finger on why.

groobo

2008-12-14 12:03:17 pm

boss

Didn't have time to play this week, but I had time to try out next week's games. Some thoughts:

Alcahest: gay
E.V.O.: gay
Magical Pop'n: gay
Pocky & Rocky: gay
Violinist of Hameln: gay

With that in mind my vote goes to pop'n since it's less punishing than P&R and relatively more awesome than the rest of the bunch. I also did test runs for both pop'n and P&R and you can finish the first one in less than 34 minutes and the latter in less than 27. Even though magical is longer it doesn't have this feeling of torture while playing like in P&R where getting hit unintentionally even once can cripple both your time and your dignity. Here's a run through magical pop'n's stage 1 in 2:49 (timed from getting control to last hit on the boss) if someone cares because I know it will win.

mikwuyma

2008-12-14 03:26:44 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

lol is groobo trying to sway the vote again? I'm actually cool with any game winning this week, except maybe EVO.

Enhasa

2008-12-14 10:49:27 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

First off, was there anyone who wanted to vote but couldn't? smf is infinitely awful and it just changes poll settings all the time, including locked/unlocked apparently.

Ok now that it's over, this week has definitely the best games 1-5 of any week IMHO. Then again, it's probably a bad idea for me to expect people to be able to vote games after trying them all for 15 mins. It's a fundamental flaw since you have to know everything about the games that you really can't when you just start playing. Also after a couple people suggested last time (plus own laziness), I didn't provide any descriptions, and most of these games have extremely important things to know about them that you probably won't be able to figure out on your own until you have put a good deal of time into them.

Alcahest: very fair and nice optimization planning, but kinda long and difficult (especially when running) where it will beat you up, steal your girl, and defecate on your face
EVO: starts off very slow (as a fish), but picks up quickly, some nice tricks, insane amount of speedrun planning and flexibility (which can also be a negative if you don't like planning, because a better route will trump better play), probably a bad idea for weekly though
Magical Pop'n: I think easily the best choice for a weekly comp (probably in the whole tourney)... it's easy, flexible, shortish, fast-paced, and there are a shitton of tricks and shortcuts and tons of ways to optimize movements... also the midboss music kicks so much ass, and the last spell you get (for the last 2 stages) is insanely useful for fast movement and shortcuts and it would take beautiful MP planning
Pocky & Rocky: ideal difficulty and good for weekly and really nice for speed because you have to use your life as a resource and optimize your sliding
Violinist of Hameln: starts off slow but really really picks up in speed and interestingness once you get more forms... really nice for speedrunning because there are a lot of optimization planning and tricks... don't think of this game as a platformer but as a puzzle game like Lost Vikings with less micromanagement and more action, with good AI and better controls and more flexible puzzles

Violinist is probably my favorite game of these by a hair, but it got 0 votes, doh. Then EVO (although it has some flaws, it's also unique and inventive), then a small dropdown to Alcahest, Pocky and Rocky, then another decent dropdown to Pop'n. To give some comparison to more famous games, Alcahest (developed by HAL -- probably my favorite part of Nintendo -- and released by Square) is a top 3 Square game of all time for me along with Chrono Trigger (which I honestly think Alcahest is probably better than) and Vagrant Story. I think Violinist is better than Lost Vikings, Magical Pop'n is way way better than Super Mario World or most SNES platformers in general, and Pocky and Rocky is the best shooting game of the entire 16-bit generation (it's either Pocky or Twinkle Tale for Genesis).

First off, was there anyone who wanted to vote but couldn't? smf is infinitely awful and it just changes poll settings all the time, including locked/unlocked apparently.

Ok now that it's over, this week has definitely the best games 1-5 of any week IMHO. Then again, it's probably a bad idea for me to expect people to be able to vote games after trying them all for 15 mins. It's a fundamental flaw since you have to know everything about the games that you really can't when you just start playing. Also after a couple people suggested last time (plus own laziness), I didn't provide any descriptions, and most of these games have extremely important things to know about them that you probably won't be able to figure out on your own until you have put a good deal of time into them.

[u]Alcahest:[/u] very fair and nice optimization planning, but kinda long and difficult (especially when running) where it will beat you up, steal your girl, and defecate on your face
[u]EVO:[/u] starts off very slow (as a fish), but picks up quickly, some nice tricks, insane amount of speedrun planning and flexibility (which can also be a negative if you don't like planning, because a better route will trump better play), probably a bad idea for weekly though
[u]Magical Pop'n:[/u] I think easily the best choice for a weekly comp (probably in the whole tourney)... it's easy, flexible, shortish, fast-paced, and there are a shitton of tricks and shortcuts and tons of ways to optimize movements... also the midboss music kicks so much ass, and the last spell you get (for the last 2 stages) is insanely useful for fast movement and shortcuts and it would take beautiful MP planning
[u]Pocky & Rocky:[/u] ideal difficulty and good for weekly and really nice for speed because you have to use your life as a resource and optimize your sliding
[u]Violinist of Hameln:[/u] starts off slow but really really picks up in speed and interestingness once you get more forms... really nice for speedrunning because there are a lot of optimization planning and tricks... don't think of this game as a platformer but as a puzzle game like Lost Vikings with less micromanagement and more action, with good AI and better controls and more flexible puzzles

Violinist is probably my favorite game of these by a hair, but it got 0 votes, doh. Then EVO (although it has some flaws, it's also unique and inventive), then a small dropdown to Alcahest, Pocky and Rocky, then another decent dropdown to Pop'n. To give some comparison to more famous games, Alcahest (developed by HAL -- probably my favorite part of Nintendo -- and released by Square) is a top 3 Square game of all time for me along with Chrono Trigger (which I honestly think Alcahest is probably better than) and Vagrant Story. I think Violinist is better than Lost Vikings, Magical Pop'n is way way better than Super Mario World or most SNES platformers in general, and Pocky and Rocky is the best shooting game of the entire 16-bit generation (it's either Pocky or Twinkle Tale for Genesis).

Enhasa

2008-12-14 10:51:14 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

I voted Alcahest because that's what I wanted to play, but the game that "should" have won was Magical Pop'n. Pocky and Rocky kicks tremendous ass and will probably be my favorite week so far though.

Gonna watch groobo's stage 1 of Pop'n.

mikwuyma

2008-12-14 10:53:59 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Quote from Enhasa:

First off, was there anyone who wanted to vote but couldn't? smf is infinitely awful and it just changes poll settings all the time, including locked/unlocked apparently.

No, I did that about 40 minutes ago so people could see the voting results. No one told me if it actually worked though (yes I asked on the channel). :-/

Enhasa

Edit history:

Enhasa: 2008-12-15 12:34:35 am

2008-12-14 11:02:42 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

This week's honorable mention is Korokoro Postnin, which inspired Kaiten Patissier (which has a thread by LLCD in general chat that I am too lazy to link).

PS1 voting week is now. I know it's more effort to get ISO's but you can get them on snesorama, and IIRC these ISO's aren't that big because the games are all 2d. I think one game is a slam dunk to win this week because it's easy, fast-paced, a different genre than we've had so far, and has nice tricks for speedrunning. There's another game that satisfies all those except different genre, another that satisfies all but easy (to say the least), another is all but speedrunning tricks and maybe fast-paced, and the last on different genre (kinda) and fast-paced (kinda).

Ok, that one game is probably a slam dunk mainly because Mike (yep) and me (if anyone asks) and groobo (if he cares at all) would all recommend it. I already voted for it.

Edit: Hey, the game I voted is finally winning for once. Smiley

groobo

2008-12-15 08:18:39 am

boss

Holy shit we're fucked. Prepare for a whole week of agony. Pop'n should have won because I had the route, star usage and whatever the fuck already planned and even recorded. I'll play the psx games and give my thoughts today to prevent this shit from happening again.

mikwuyma

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2008-12-15 08:40:27 am

2008-12-15 08:35:22 am

My feelings on The Demon Rush

*gasp* we won't be able to produce a perfect run of Pocky and Rocky! NO THE FUN IS DIED.

Seriously though, have you considered that the game is fun to play through and this tournament is just for fun? I don't think a whole lot of us (myself included) are going to try go through the game without getting hit.

EDIT: Maybe what I meant to say in the verification board Quake 2 topic was that you're a robot from the future who came here to prevent us from voting for games you don't like Wink