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Platform Game - Blog Posts
Tool-Assisted Speedruns Out of Context
In only one week, @TASNoContext speedran becoming my new favorite Twitter account. TASVideos publisher EZGames69 posts short clips of old games freaking out when they receive frame-perfect sequences of gamepad input. Already, the tool-assisted madness has consumed Contra III, Sonic 2 and 3, Pokémon Yellow, UMK3, Donkey Kong 64, and dozens more.
Edit: In less than a year, the Twitter account is retired because some idiot billionaire bought Twitter and did his own speedrun of destroying it. Tool-Assisted Speedrun Clips has moved to Tumblr.
Source: @TASNoContext media posts after their clip of pirohiko & FinalFighter's TAS of Mega Man
Krzysztof Słowikowski – Mega Man 3 Guitar Playthrough (revised)
Oh boy, it’s a Mega Man! The Mega Man games always have rockin’ soundtracks. Krzysztof “MET” Słowikowski made metal covers of every game in the entire classic series, some of the X games, and some other random stuff.
Source: Krzysztof Słowikowski via searching for the Mega Man II Game Boy soundtrack
The 8-Bit Big Band
The 8-Bit Big Band plays memorable video game tunes arranged for their incredible New York orchestra from the Before Times. I’m really vibing to this, so it’s a natural fit for this blog’s music pantheon.
Source: The 8-Bit Big Band and YouTube and Bandcamp via andyTHPS Community Tournament #2
Drop Rate – "Donut Land" by Hitstun
Drop Rate has this super nice dude who plays Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 custom parks and some indie games. He has a knack for finding cool stuff, and he found my PS4 park, Donut Land! Um...I think I broke him. Sorry.
Source: Drop Rate via YouTube searches for THPS 1+2 parks
“Donut Land” by Hitstun - ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2’ (Create A Park Ma…
THPS 1+2 Donut Land
For the past two months, I’ve put an unhealthy amount of time on my PS4 building my Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 park, Donut Land. It’s a city with the size of a normal THPS2 level, filled to the brim with ramps, combos, tunnels, transfers, and giant gaps. It’s in the community’s hands now, so I’m curious to see what lines and remixes they come up with.
Source: myself, music from Savaged Regime’s Xeno Crisis soundtrack
Grant Kirkhope – Donkey Kong 64 Soundtrack
30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Bonus Stage) Day 31: All 30 prompts with one game From Donkey Kong 64 (N64, 1999)
Jiko points out that DK64 has a song for everything on this list. That’s a lot of music! DK64 is fun to play and fun to break.
1: Title screen music: Main Menu 2: Opening level music: DK's Treehouse 3: 8-Bit music: Donkey Kong 4: Music from a console exclusive series: Hideout Helm 5: Hub world or overworld music: DK Isle 6: Music that makes you feel relaxed: Crystal Caves 7: Music from an indie game?: Mine Cart Carnage 8: Music from a shooter (first or third person): Angry Aztec Underground 9: Music from a licensed game: uh...the N64 Logo? 10: RPG battle music: Dogadon 11: Puzzle game music: Frantic Factory R&D 12: Music that makes you sad: Wrinkly Kong 13: Music you like from a game you don't like: Bonus Barrel 14: Music featuring vocals: DK Rap 15: Boss battle music: King Kut-Out 16: 16-Bit music: Jungle Japes 17: Music you never get tired of: Enguarde 18: Music in a game released the year you were born: off by 1 but Jetpac 19: Cover of music by a different artist: Jungle Japes Underground 20: Music from a racing game: Frantic Factory Car Race 21: Music you associate with frustration: Angry Aztec Race 22: Town/village music: Fungi Forest Day 23: Underrated music: Mad Maze Maul 24: Music you constantly have stuck in your head: Snide's HQ 25: Music that gets you pumped: Rocket Barrel Blast 26: Music you like from a game you haven't played: Monkey Smash 27: Music from a handheld game: uh...Mini Monkey? 28: Music that makes you nostalgic: Pause Menu 29: Final boss music: K. Rool Duel 30: Credits music: Staff Credits
Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun
Rob Hubbard – Monty on the Run
30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 26: Music you like from a game you haven’t played From Monty on the Run (C64, 1985)
I grew up in an Apple II house, so I’ve barely touched the Commodore 64. I’ve played Space Taxi a couple times, but that’s it. Is THEC64 worth picking up?
Source: YouTube via I Wanna Be the Guy, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun
Junko Shiratsu and Mariko Nanba – Door Into Summer
30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 23: Underrated music From Knuckles’ Chaotix (32X, 1995)
Chaotix nicely uses the extra sound channels that went unused in most 32X games. I think I ought to give Chaotix a chance.
Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun
Masashi Kageyama – Happy Birthday
30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 21: Music you associate with frustration From Gimmick! (Famicom + 5B , 1992)
To a special someone: May you navigate life’s brutal platforming challenges with more finesse than I have.
Retro Game Audio did an episode on Gimmick and its Sunsoft 5B chip. They're good!
Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun
Highraiser – Just Warming Up
30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 7: Music from an indie game From Butterflies – Episode 1: Rudies (Windows, 2018)
Grab this game on itch.io to warm up for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Leave it to the fans to faithfully carry on Jet Set Radio’s legacy.
Source: Highraiser and YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun
RetroAchievements for Romhacks
RetroAchievements adds Xbox 360-style achievement hunting and leaderboards to thousands of classic games and romhacks. Uncommon games often have romhacks that work with RetroAchievements. Check Romhacking.net for patches you can apply with utilities like Floating IPS. I’ve already recommended Rockman 4 Minus Infinity but it also has RetroAchievements.
Dynamite Headdy delocalization by M.I.J.E.T. (RetroAchievements) The localization we got here removed most of the dialogue, added American pop culture references, and made the annoying tower boss fight four times as long. This fan translation doesn’t do any of that. Go collect those secret bonus points.
Pulseman translation by M.I.J.E.T. (RetroAchievements) My favorite game on Sega Channel had you build up static electricity and then discharge it to attack and move around. Most of the team that made it went on to make Pokémon Red and Blue.
Super Mario Land DX by toruzz (RetroAchievements) Also Super Mario Land 2 DX by toruzz (RetroAchievements) Super Mario Land is the first game I ever beat and a fine place to get started with romhacks. This turns Super Mario Land and its sequel into Game Boy Color games with some graphics redrawn for better visibility. The RetroAchievements add some nice challenges to keep things fresh.
Extra Mario Bros. by ATA (RetroAchievements) This romhack gives Mario a dose of Metroid-like exploration with collecting keys and permanent upgrades to reach new places. It’s still Super Mario Bros., so the screen only scrolls to the right.
Umihara Kawase translation by satsu (RetroAchievements) A new Umihara Kawase game just came out and I’m afraid to start it because I get hooked on these games for a long time. We’ve got a wedding to plan! The original game’s RetroAchievements keep track of every door and backpack you’ve reached, so try to get them all.
Source: RetroAchievements, Romhacking.net, and My Life in Gaming
Dr. Fatbody - Sonic the Hedgehog 1 at AGDQ2019
Awesome Games Done Quick 2019 brought us a Sonic 1 run by Dr. Fatbody, a highly entertaining player with the speed and precision of a yung Wumbo. He tries risky tricks that backfire sometimes and will goof off a little for style. When everything works, he’s really fast! He reminds me of my own playaround style, and now I know why. He’s also from the fighting game community and plays Zangief in Street Fighter V! It all makes perfect sense now.
Source: Games Done Quick via GeekNights
TerminalMontage – Something About Super Mario 64
Super Mario 64 is fun to speedrun and fun to break. YouTube animator TerminalMontage captures this pretty accurately in this animated 0-star speedrun. I’m heading to GDEX to play some local indie games and break them, of course. EDIT: GDEX got too serious and too expensive, so I actually didn't go.
Source: Something About Super Mario 64 ANIMATED SPEEDRUN (Loud Sound Warning) ⭐️ 0 Stars 01:49 Legit Non-TAS via Jiko
Super Mario Land 2 – Memory Exploration
Retro Game Mechanics Explained is an educational video series from Super Mario World speedrunner Dotsarecool. In Super Mario Land 2, it’s possible to glitch yourself right out of the map and into other regions of the Game Boy’s address space. Wandering around those garbage tiles and randomly flipping bits will usually crash the game, but it’s possible to trigger the ending credits from there. This reminds me of the game-breaking screen warp glitch I played around with in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening v1.0.
Source: Retro Game Mechanics Explained via YouTube recommendation
Oddheader – 100 Things You Didn't Notice in Tony Hawk Games
In the PlayStation 2 era, I spent thousands of hours playing the Tony Hawk games online and making levels and videos. We’d get out of bounds and explore behind the scenes, and sometimes find the developers left some easter eggs for us. Oddheader has compiled the community’s findings into one epic 24-minute video that takes us through Neversoft’s entire run with the series.
The transition from WordPress to Tumblr is about 75% complete. 108 WordPress posts became 120 Tumblr posts (20 are Tumblr reblogs). I lose the mouseover text on images, Twitter embeds, and email updates, but most things work and I’ve fixed about a dozen broken links.
Source: Oddheader via related videos for a LiangHuBBB Dragon Ball FighterZ video
Pannenkoek2012
Super Mario 64 arrived in North America twenty years ago today. I used to speedrun it badly. Pannenkoek2012 is still finding new ways to exploit game mechanics and collect stars with as few A button presses as possible. This involves accelerating to relativistic speeds to travel to parallel universes. On his second channel, he uses programming logic to explain cloning, health, enemy behavior, floating point arithmetic, and more.
Source: Pannenkoek2012 via YouTube related videos
Lagwagon – May 16
Most of what I know about punk rock came from the Tony Hawk games. I’ve been listening to punk on SiriusXM and Spotify and I keep recognizing songs from Tony Hawk games. This one’s from THPS2. That one’s from Underground 2. That one’s from Downhill Jam. I didn’t realize that these songs were icons in the wider punk rock community, to the point that May 16 is now “Lagwagon Day“. Is it like 20, November for Bemani fans?
Source: Moshcam via YouTube search
Control Config Menus
I’ve been updating my VOGJAM game Skeleton Hunter with new features like custom button mapping. PC games need this because players might have foreign keyboards, nonstandard gamepads, or disabilites that make the default controls unusable. Mine works like the PC version of Skullgirls where every action has both a keyboard key and a gamepad button, and you can assign them one by one or all at once. Please try it and tell me if the menus work the way you expect them to.
Source: my game Skeleton Hunter v1.02 reusing code from my Control Config Demo
Koji Igarashi's Super Mario Maker levels
Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi has been spending the past couple weeks distracted by the same thing I’m playing: Super Mario Maker. Polygon asked him to make a level and we got to see how he messes with the player’s expectations. This level isn’t open to the public, but IGA has been hard at work uploading even more creative levels for all to play. He’s working on a faithful recreation of Rondo of Blood with creative use of stacked enemies.
Source: Polygon via a DuckDuckGo search after playing Castlevania Rondo of Blood Stage 1 with bugfixes suggested after playing Waffledog’s level Monty Max: Fury Rainbow Road
AndyTHPS's Shipyard Style Line
In 2003, I had just started making levels for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 when the legendary AndyTHPS unleashed this Shipyard line on the Internet. This changed my life. It didn’t only motivate me to buy a capture device and start recording my own videos. This video also introduced me to Dillinger Escape Plan and started my descent into math-metal insanity. I was hooked for years.
Source: AndyTHPS via the tXo‘s old web site
Super Mario Bros. 3Mix
For Super Mario Bros. 3‘s 25th anniversary, I present Captain Southbird’s romhack Super Mario Bros. 3Mix. Similar to Rockman 4 Minus Infinity, it implements great ideas from several later Mario games, but this one stays true to the level design lessons of the original. The Rev 1 release from two days ago fixes bugs Mike Matei found in his review, so make sure you get that one.
Update: Captain Southbird has released Rev 2B which fixes a couple bugs, so get that one instead.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck_a8Y3Gefo via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9rIGa9R9bE via YouTube subscription, also http://sonicepoch.com/sm3mix/
UberNES - Nintendo Screen Saver
If you still use screen savers, Columbus-based developer M \ K Productions has a good one for you. Nintendo Saver 2015 fills your monitors with several NES games. Each one is actually a fully-functioning NES emulator playing a replay that was recorded in UberNES, and if you like, you can pick up a gamepad and take over control of one of the games on the spot. The recorded replays include my Super Mario Bros 3 playaround and a couple shorter videos showing glitches in Super Mario Bros 1 and Mega Man 2. If you like it, maybe I’ll record some more.
Source: http://www.ubernes.com/nesscreensaver.html via the UberNES – NES Screen Saver Facebook page
Mega Man 1 - Glitchfest
Scykoh‘s Glitchfest series is all about breaking popular games in as many ways as possible. TASVideos’s resources for NES Mega Man games covers several methods for moving through the game quickly, but even that doesn’t explain what Scykoh does in Ice Man’s stage. When I planned the “bugs” in Skeleton Hunter, the first place I looked for inspiration was Mega Man 1’s zipping, pause tricks, and tileset corruption, and they’re shown off very well here.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdqJgCLVR2Q via YouTube subscription via recommendations probably generated from Did You Know Gaming?
Michiru Yamane and Tsuyoshi Sekito – Motocross Maniacs BGM3
You know, I really should post music here more often. I’ve got a ton that I want to put up, and I’m starting with the motorcycle puzzle platformer Motocross Maniacs. Before developers got a handle on the Game Boy’s sound hardware, they had to dedicate two of the Game Boy’s sound channels to music and the other two to sound effects. Konami’s talented composers made the best of it. I used the same restriction when I made the music and sound effects for Skeleton Hunter.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxd6FYuNBrk which I recorded from BGB with sound channels 1 and 4 turned off; using OBS; also Game Boy World
Skeleton Hunter
I made another game! For VOGJam 1 the theme was “A Buggy Game,” so I made Skeleton Hunter, a broken little 2D platform game in HTML5. You are the hunter from Skeleton’s Revenge going around defeating skeletons and the necromancer that keeps summoning them. Jump backwards through walls, wrap around the screen, undo deaths by pressing Pause, and utterly pick apart the game. I hope this makes it into Awful Games Done Quick someday.
Google Chrome has gamepad support and is the recommended browser for playing this game. UPDATE: v1.02 has support for gamepads in Firefox and control config for all platforms.
Play at Bakamo Studios Play v1.02 with control config at Bakamo Studios Play at VOG Network
Yes, there is a way to reach the title screen with the hunter. Try escaping boss rooms.
Because I didn't have time to make a controller configuration menu, I basically just allowed for every control scheme at once. Even gamepads are supported if you're using Google Chrome. (Or Firefox in v1.02, which has a controller configuration menu now.
If you do a jump attack facing away from the wall, you can get inside the wall. I knew from the moment the theme was announced that I wanted to do a game with bad collision detection.
The skeleton wasn't even implemented until two days before the deadline. It turned out alright, though.
Holy crap, what happened here? Did that guy walk off the title screen to the right? You broke my game! How could you?
Source: http://hitstun.bakamostudios.com/vogjam/skeletonhunter.htm made from scratch in HTML5 and Javascript using Notepad++, Tiled, GIMP, FamiTracker, Bfxr, and Audacity.
Awesome Games Done Quick
Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 is underway and my favorite games are already getting destroyed by top speedrunners. Check the schedule for the games you don’t want to miss. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive block has just begun. I keep the Twitch stream in fullscreen on one monitor and the QuakeNet IRC chat open on the other. While this is going on, I’ll be working on my own broken platform game for the VOGJam.
Wait, how did I post about this last year? Click the banner to go to the stream.
Source: https://gamesdonequick.com, YouTube, and the banner via the AGQD 2015 megathread via the FAQ
Rockman 4 Minus Infinity
Rockman 4 Minus Infinity isn’t just the best romhack ever made. It’s superior to the NES Mega Man games in every way. Puresabe just released v1.00 a few days ago, and what it does to Mega Man 4 is ridiculous. This features redesigned stages, bosses, and weapons, tons of new music, autosaves, 8-way scrolling, difficulty options, a time attack, and multiple boss rush modes, and that’s just the start. JDetan and I call this the real Mega Man 4, and the other one just a beta.
It's a romhack, but I actually own a Famicom cartridge of this. It's only version v0.02, same as the video I linked above, but it has that delightful Engrish language setting. "This amplifies cruelty." "Ouch! Stop beating!" "Drills pierces everything." Sadly, this doesn't work on a Retron 5 or any other Famiclone; only a real Famicom can play it.
Source: https://sites.google.com/site/rockman4mi/ via JDetan; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pEt_A_13es via browsing YouTube for a R4MI video that fights two secret bosses, even though it’s an old version; also my photo of the R4MI repro cart that I bought from Warp Zone
MixerProductions Sonic Mashups
Video game mashup artist MixerProductions found out that the sound of 16-bit Sonic games makes for natural hip-hop beats. Now every time I play the Flying Battery zone, I’m going to hear MC Hammer in my head. It’s been stuck in my head for days, and now it’s going to be stuck in your head too.
Yo Dawg, I herd you like Sonic, so I put Sonic in your Xzibit track so you can spin while you spin. OK, no fair mashing up Michael Jackson with himself.
Source: MC Hammer vs Sonic – Cant Touch This Battery – YouTube via Backloggery livestream chat. Also here and here.
Gashi Gashi – E-can
The animations on pixiv are just a series of PNGs animated in HTML5. Luckily, Gashi Gashi also posted a GIF of this on Tumblr, so I'd added that here. When Mega Man charges up a shot, he starts flashing, but everything else that's the same color as Mega Man flashes too.
UPDATE: Gashi Gashi posted this animation as a GIF on Tumblr, so it’s here now.
Source: 「Ｅ缶」/「ガしガし」のイラスト [pixiv] via pixiv每周排行 – 前50
RIP Justin.tv 1997-2014
UPDATE: I’m getting tired of these videos that don’t even stay online for four years. The original Vimeo video is private now, but somebody re-posted it to YouTube. Twitch got better and I stream there now.
In May 2009, I started a weekly video game stream on Justin.tv. Justin.tv was just getting video game streams, but people also streamed videos and webcams and hosted communities with their own forums. It was great. Over the next couple years, they removed the communities and forums, shoved all the gaming streams into a buggy new site called Twitch, and left the rest of Justin.tv to rot in obscurity until it finally died today.
I still stream every Wednesday night at Instagib. It’s not 2009 Justin.tv but it’s the closest anybody has come since. We’ll miss you, Justin.tv.
Source: Goodbye from Justin.tv via Sweetielise’s stream title today, “RIP Justin.tv you had a good run!” Also Vs. Super Mario Bros. World 7-4 – YouTube, recorded May 2009 on my Justin.tv channel.