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:
- These movies are not fake - they are exactly
what we promise them to be. Read below on this.
- Do not go posting about things you don't know about!
It's really enticing to go believing all conspiracy theorists
over there but would you please listen to us too??
Yes, this applies ESPECIALLY to you who are the most
eager to post LOUD posts in the theme "those are hoax"
and YOU who go belittling the players because they "cheated"
which of course means that they did nothing impressive at all!
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:
- Variable (not slow, not boring)
- Surprising (does things you'd not expect)
- Skillful (handles awkward situations confidently)
When you're making a timeattack video, you'll automatically:
- Try to eliminate all slowness
- Look for ways to surprise (exploit bugs, look for non-obvious shortcuts)
- Look for fastest ways to handle awkward situations
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?