Emulator game movies (NES)

Pages:
Movies
Purpose, rumours and facts
Questions and answers
Resources for players
Movie making rules
Discussion forums
Contacting
Contents:
Purpose explained
Myths and facts
Too easy?

This section had to be written because many people seem to have some kind of fixation on flaming the players.
That kind of counterproductive spirit destroys easily the entertainment for too many people.

Shortly:

Now, for the calmer text...

What is the purpose of these movies?

Short answer 1: They are entertainment.
Short answer 2: They are art.

The long answer:

These movies have been made solely for the reason that they should be entertaining to watch.
 
Entertainment comes when the video is: When you're making a timeattack video, you'll automatically: Thus it's only natural that all of these movies are timeattacks.
Speed is still not the primary goal. Entertainment is.

Myths:

The authors are boasting how they can beat difficult games.
- Nobody is boasting. These are entertainment. Keep it so, don't spoil the fun!
These movies are hoax - they haven't been played honestly.
- That's not the point. We're not demonstrating talents here. We're making cool movies. See explanation.
It's a competition between who makes the fastest video.
- This is only half true. We often compete for speed, but sometimes a two seconds slower movie has better chance to get published than a faster movie, if it keeps the audience entertained better. It all depends on various things, but generally more speed is better.

Facts:

This is not a skill competition.
- And this is why quicksaves and slowdowns are used. Nobody is as perfect as the movies are.
- Though - it seems that different people are differently skilled in making timeattacks. Better timeattacks usually supersede worse timeattacks.
The method how the movies are created is insignificant. - the result is all that matters.
- But they have to be honest real games (not video edits).
If you don't know which laws to expect, you can't be surprised when you see them broken.

If the feeling that these movies aren't "real" enough is bothering you so much that you can't enjoy them, don't watch them!
But please keep your bothers to yourself and don't spoil the fun for others.


Rumours and facts

Many people seem to like belittling the players.

I don't understand why people are so eager to flame these movies.
It's not just about console games.   jsb, the person who has played awesome records in Dance Dance Revolution, has also got his undeserved share of accusations from people who think they know more than a casual observer. Click here to read his messages about the subject.

Facts:

The games have been played under an emulator (Famtasia)
- For practical reasons. A real NES/Famicom/FDS system doesn't provide enough utilities for perfecting a game.
Quicksaves have been used.
- Players are not perfect, yet we try to make perfect plays. For this reason, it's necessary that we can undo mistakes and retry until we succeed.
- Imperfection isn't entertaining to watch.
Games have been played by slowing down the emulator
- Players are not perfect. Slowing down the emulator helps improving the accuracy of playing, without modifying the game physics.
The final product is always a continuous play.
- Rerecording means that all the 1000 cases your jumps are too short to make it or you die etc do not exist in the result, because they never happened (you undo'ed everything until you succeeded). You can verify this yourself by playing the fmv file in your emulator.
The games are unpatched, unmodified ROM images of the NES games.
- You can verify this yourself by running the fmv files in your emulator. No game genie codes or other hacks have been used.
Games are not perfect. They have bugs which can be exploited.
- If you can't repeat a trick seen in the movies, it's because you don't try hard enough. We try. Hundreds of times, until we learn to do it or succeed by chance.

Nobody is trying to cheat you into thinking "wow this guy is really talented". Please read the section about the purpose of these movies.

Myths:

It took 2 years for Morimoto to do the SMB3j video
- The movies on this page have all been recorded in a few hours. It's highly questionable why anyone would need two years to make a video someone can do in 5-10 hours.
- I think someone has believed a crappy Babelfish translation and recklessly spread a misinterpretation.
- Japanese is a highly contextual language. Translating Japanese to English is not easy - let alone a machine translation. Maybe Morimoto has had the speedrun-making hobby for 2 years. (I have had it since November 2003.)
He did it frame by frame
- Almost. This is a half truth.
- Recording is not clipart where things are copypasted together.
- The movies are played in slow motion to gain high precision control over the game.
The videos are edited with an image manipulation program
- Plain lie. You can't make emulator movie records (the fmv files) with an image manipulation program. Those records consist solely of timed button presses. You can easily reproduce all of those videos by playing back the fmv file in your emulator.
The games are hacked or game genie codes are used to boost the jumps and/or make the character invincible to enemy hits
- Plain lie. You can test yourself and see that the fmv recording works very well with an unmodified rom. No hacks are needed.
Savestates have been edited to make miracles happen during game
- Nope. The fmv replay method works as a proof here too. fmv stores only keypad input, not game state.
Well the button sequence files have been edited then!
- By far the easiest way to generate "button sequences" for the right part of the game is to actually play the game! Anything else involves too much work to even consider. What is it with you guys? Why are you so obsessed in twisting everything?

Besides, who cares? Just enjoy!


Isn't it too easy when you use an emulator?

Short answer: Perfection is not easy.

Yes, using the above-mentioned tools makes playing easy - but we're not just playing here.

We're attempting to perfect the games to godly level of precision - which involves handling the game like if it was The Matrix - observing every slightest detail of it to gain control of it in ways that the makers never realized. We're searching for perfection.
To reach that goal, using the features provided by an emulator is irrelevant, as long as the "world" - the game - is unmodified.

It's a really huge job to produce a good timeattack movie. Sure, anyone can undo when they make a mistake - but who can spot the error that causes 0.1 seconds of delay in the movie? Who can spot and abuse bugs in games to do seemingly unearthly maneuvers?