TAS's passed off as RTA's

2013-02-25 08:31:37 am

This is mainly a question after watching this:

Basically, I'm 99% sure that this is a TAS. However, I think that some people will put "speed run" in the title, even though its a TAS (and won't go back to fix it after it's published). How true is this? I'm curious about the history of speed runs and tases and when people started to distinguish between the two.

I also know that this can be a concern for submissions as well on SDA, although I have yet to encounter any in my time that I've done verification for this site. There was a SUPER MARIO BROS. run that was featured on TSSB with a 4:57 time that was obviously tas'd (and taken down shortly after the show).

Thread title:

JackintheBox333

2013-02-25 09:28:42 am

Professional Shaq Fu Speedrunner

That Super Mario Bros. 4:57 run was also spliced together pretty bad too. With the 4-2 alt pipe warp, the in-game timer dropped like 60 seconds, so it was really noticeable.

Brossentia

2013-02-25 09:41:55 am

No pain, no gain

Hah. Just reading through the comments on that Megaman X4 video, other members from SDA have commented that it's a TAS. Yeah, if you look at the dialogue skipping, the rate of attack, and pretty much the level of execution, the runner at the very least uses turbo if not something more; runners of the game would be more familiar with the tactics and whether or not these things are possible by a human.

I don't think it's a huge deal of YouTube -- people can name things whatever they want, pretty much, and it's not going to get them in trouble. However, trying to pass it off in the speedrunning community is another thing. Some have successfully done it in the past and, only later, others finally discovered that it was spliced together. This is especially notable with some former Zelda runs.

The benefit of the community, though, is that people are continuously learning about the games. TAS runs in the past don't have current knowledge, so the more time goes by, the more likely a run breaking SDA's rules will be caught.

Unfortunately, this method isn't 100%, but it's been effective enough so far. Live-streaming has also helped in recent times. It's not required, but it's given many runs more reputability.

Hah. Just reading through the comments on that Megaman X4 video, other members from SDA have commented that it's a TAS. Yeah, if you look at the dialogue skipping, the rate of attack, and pretty much the level of execution, the runner at the very least uses turbo if not something more; runners of the game would be more familiar with the tactics and whether or not these things are possible by a human.

I don't think it's a huge deal of YouTube -- people can name things whatever they want, pretty much, and it's not going to get them in trouble. However, trying to pass it off in the speedrunning community is another thing. Some have successfully done it in the past and, only later, others finally discovered that it was spliced together.  This is especially notable with some former Zelda runs.

The benefit of the community, though, is that people are continuously learning about the games.  TAS runs in the past don't have current knowledge, so the more time goes by, the more likely a run breaking SDA's rules will be caught.

Unfortunately, this method isn't 100%, but it's been effective enough so far.  Live-streaming has also helped in recent times. It's not required, but it's given many runs more reputability.

zallard1

2013-02-25 02:50:58 pm

B+Left, Left, Up+B, ★

I've encountered this kind of thing before.

When I was searching around the net for Super Punch Out strategies, I came across a thread on SRK forums with a guy that said the following "Streaming myself superplay/speedrun through Super Punch Out and Kirby Super Star. Trying to not get hit in both games and achieve fastest time possible."

I watched his archived run where he went out of his way to show off that his controller was configured to his gamepad, however he got absolutely absurd luck and arbitrary frame perfect execution on very peculiar actions on one single attempt. His strats were not the current TAS strats though, so it threw me for a loop for a bit. I sent it over to Heidman to discuss it for a bit until we concluded that the guy basically just replayed the oldest TAS of the game. The archive of this run has since been removed.

I don't know why this game has an unshakable history of shadiness that continues to this day Sad

zewing

2013-02-25 06:05:25 pm

just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it

I've seen the dragoon fight and it was an obvious TAS. The best 2 thumb/finger masher I know (Mushipan) was WAY slower than what this joke of a "speedrun" did. Also it should be noted that some runs it will be very hard to pin point TAS passed of as RTA. That's why I really respect SDA's system over Youtube's "pass anything off as whatever"

doicm

2013-02-25 08:06:15 pm

Thank goodness for verification then. <3 SDA's system of verification.

zallard1

2013-02-27 06:19:09 am

B+Left, Left, Up+B, ★

Oh hey, wouldn't you know it, the guy from SRK forums replayed the SAME Super Punch Out TAS again on stream.

http://www.twitch.tv/bakuhakubasugasu/b/371457081?t=1h23m50s

Play that archived run above side by side with the following TAS below for laughs.

http://tasvideos.org/127M.html

What's kind of funny is that my current SS run of the game is faster than this TAS at 3:04.16.

It also seems like all his runs are just replayed TASes. I watched a little of his Mega Man 7 run and it had the same level of execution as the SPO TAS where he does unnecessarily frame perfect actions in odd places.

doicm

2013-02-27 08:56:41 am

That is hilarious. I loved his commentary too. "I'm good."
I'd be impressed if I could match my exact times and scores with a TAS's. Thanks for the laugh! Cheesy

zallard1

2013-02-27 09:06:13 am

B+Left, Left, Up+B, ★

Yeah I'm not really sure how he thinks streaming old TASes of games is gonna fly these days. Then again, his stream chat seemed completely oblivious as to what was actually going on.

doicm

2013-02-27 09:11:42 am

If the SPO wasn't obvious enough, the Mega Man 7 should have been. I watched a few minutes of that, and he mashed faster than what is humanly possible. I love how someone in his chat commented "this run is still probably better than the one on SDA."

ais523

2013-02-27 10:23:10 am

For what its worth, the TASing community really dislikes TASes being passed off as speedruns, too. It makes TASes look less impressive (because they aren't beating the "speedruns"), genuine speedruns look less impressive (because they're nowhere near the cheated "speedruns"), and mis-educates people.

Speedrunning is skilful. TASing is skilful too, while you're making it. Replaying an input file is not skilful (unless you're using Mupen), especially if someone else made it.

Dalimyr

2013-02-27 10:53:24 am

Oh God, that is comedy gold...

His chat just seems totally moronic. Even if you didn't know they were TAS videos being replayed, not a single one of them ever questioned some of the odd things going on there, like him hiding the emulator from the stream every time he was changing game, and at one point in Hook he made some comment about how he could "peek at chat" because it was so slow, and nobody picked up that he didn't have a problem paying attention to chat while doing frame-perfect tricks in the other games before or after that...and with each game he played, he was saying at some point "Oh yeah, I superplay this a lot too", and at the start of Hook he said "I've got maybe like 50 games I feel confident superplaying". Where does he find the time? Roll Eyes

Slightly tempting to lurk in his stream and when he goes live again, see what game he's playing, find the TAS and post in chat "Hey, that looks rather similar to this". I suspect he'd probably quickly ban to try and hide the evidence, but would probably still be funny to see how he and his chat react, more so the chat because it'd actually make them aware that he's not playing the games himself.

Oh God, that is comedy gold...

His chat just seems totally moronic. Even if you didn't know they were TAS videos being replayed, not a single one of them ever questioned some of the odd things going on there, like him hiding the emulator from the stream every time he was changing game, and at one point in Hook he made some comment about how he could "peek at chat" because it was so slow, and nobody picked up that he didn't have a problem paying attention to chat while doing frame-perfect tricks in the other games before or after that...and with each game he played, he was saying at some point "Oh yeah, I superplay this a lot too", and at the start of Hook he said "I've got maybe like 50 games I feel confident superplaying". Where does he find the time? ::)

Slightly tempting to lurk in his stream and when he goes live again, see what game he's playing, find the TAS and post in chat "Hey, that looks rather similar to this". I suspect he'd probably quickly ban to try and hide the evidence, but would probably still be funny to see how he and his chat react, more so the chat because it'd actually make them aware that he's not playing the games himself.

presjpolk

2013-02-27 12:52:21 pm

HELLO!

What I found amusing was his comment that he's done thousands of superplays.

When ever actual runner I know would talk about thousands of ATTEMPTS.

__sdfg @ work

2013-02-27 01:23:09 pm

Every attempt was really super.

mikwuyma

2013-02-27 02:57:13 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

I watched part of Zeroblade777's run and it didn't seem that great, and then I saw the Magma Dragoon fight and it was blatantly tas'ed/turbo'd with how fast he was slashing. Like Brossentia said, it's not huge deal on youtube as long as this run isn't passed off as legit.

As for the bakuhakubasugasu guy, that's pretty sad, but I'm not going to pay too much attention to him since he only has about 49 followers or so and doesn't seem to be that big. I feel like paying attention to someone this small only makes them bigger, you know?

If someone wants to try Dalimyr's linking to actual TASes, feel free to try, but don't be surprised if you're immediately banned.

presjpolk

2013-02-27 03:59:32 pm

HELLO!

Link directly to the youtubes though so he'll have to actually click through to know it's something he needs to ban.

RoboSparkle

2013-02-27 04:17:50 pm

Magical. Flying. Bathtub

You guys are just jealous you didn't think of it first...

presjpolk

2013-02-27 04:19:34 pm

HELLO!

I have restreamed pro_jn runs of zelda 2... but side by side with my own to figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong. Smiley

zewing

2013-02-27 06:16:34 pm

just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it

pretty pathetic if you have to resort to playing a TAS to show you have skill.

Sonikkustar

2013-02-27 09:45:30 pm

The Loony Bin

While it is sad that he is resorting to playing old TASes, I'm not so bothered with that as much as the fact that this is plaigarism.

From the looks of it, he took down all of his "speedrunning" videos. I'm guessing people caught on to what he was doing.

Softman25

2013-02-27 09:57:19 pm

It's sad, but it's too silly to even care.

I'll admit, the plagiarism gets under my skin a little, but again, he's been caught. He will reap the lack of respect that being a...plagiarist gets.

sinister1

2013-02-28 11:33:01 am

sinister1

so pro u don't even know

I would imagine this guy is violating the Twitch TOS in some form or fashion. He could just be reported and probably have his account shut down.

There is a new Ninja Gaiden II run in 10:27 that may or may not be TAS that is being passed of as RTA. It is done by a guy who also got the WR in Ninja Gaiden any% (beaten since) and sword only in pretty short order. There are mistakes in all the runs but some of them don't really make sense (why not reset in 2-1 NG2??). Any help in determining whether these are legit or not would be appreciated: see pages 4 and 5 of this thread for links to the Nico vids.

The Ninja Gaiden I runs could easily be legit, it is more the NG2 run that is in question, but obviously if that one if fake then, maybe the other two are as well.

Heidrage

2013-02-28 02:17:36 pm

Willing to teach you the impossible

Sinister: Stage 1 boss, it is possible on console to moonwalk like that?

sinister1

2013-02-28 09:27:31 pm

sinister1

so pro u don't even know

Quote from Heidrage:

Sinister: Stage 1 boss, it is possible on console to moonwalk like that?

Yes, the main thing in question is the sword climbing which appears to be frame perfect or close to it and some of his stage times reflect that level of sword climbing which none of the top players have achieved.

Carcinogen

2013-03-01 12:55:38 am

I did it once with a Mario 64 TAS. I didn't even try to hide the fact that I was fullscreening VLC. People got so angry. It was fun.