Excitebike: Track 4 - New World Record

After many resets I've managed to top the world record for Track 4 in Excitebike... This one is very frustrating and the run is bitter-sweet. Wow, just a very frustrating track, but still not the hardest!

Next up, the hardest track in the game! Track 5 is absolutely horrific to speedrun.

Excitebike - Track #3 World Record

Today I managed to top the best time for Track #3 in Excitebike! Getting these times is extremely frustrating and is the result of many resets. I finally managed to get the fast bike speed on both laps. I can't help feeling that with a little luck it might be possible to shave a few seconds off this, but I'm not entirely sure. Anyhow, I'm definitely satisfied with this result and hope to improve more tracks this week.

Excitebike: Track #3 - 48.84

Exciting Excitebike!

Excitebike! It's one of my favorite titles on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Excitebike is a fairly well known title, but I have always felt like this game is under appreciated. Excitebike is a game many do enjoy, but if I had to guess, I would imagine players rarely spend more than an hour playing it.

Excitebike appears to have only 5 courses, but in fact it has 10 tracks total. There are 5 preliminary tracks, which one can select from the main menu, and then there are 5 harder versions of those tracks. The game also has two modes: Mode A consists of just conquering the tracks in the game, but Mode B adds a challenge of finishing the tracks with opposing racers getting in your way. Another feature of the game is unique. It was one of the first games that allowed you to design your own courses.

Feel free to make a track that is entirely small jumps if you'd like! The game has a lot to offer to the casual gamer, but it actually makes for a very tricky and challenging game at high level play.

Off and on for a number of years now, I have been competing for the fastest preliminary track times. I basically only have one serious competitor, and luckily he has been serious about putting up great times for this game. Without his competition, I would not have tried for better times, and probably would have lost interest in playing it. Flyhec is a great gamer and most notably known for his insane button mashing speeds. It's easy to see why he's the Track and Field arcade champion (which requires extremely fast fingers). Here's a video showing just how fast that is:

Advanced Excitebike play involves a few different techniques:

The 1st trick for fast Excitebike times involves bouncing on the front wheel after jumping off the small triangular ramps seen in the above picture. These ramps build unusual bike speeds, and bouncing off the front tire maintains what I refer to as "the fast speed." 

The 2nd trick involves keeping the bike from overheating by conserving your TEMP (temperature gauge). Holding "A" moves the bike at a slow speed, but keeps your temperature low. Holding "B" moves the bike at a fast speed, but you will overheat if you only use "B". However, we've developed a few techniques to avoid using "A" at all. The first is before the race even begins. If you wait to select a track on the track selection screen until the music stops and hold "B" when the race begins, you lower the initial starting temp by a small amount. This is useful for gaining those few extra milliseconds.

The 3rd trick is also related to TEMP conservation. Any time that the bike is in the air, we release the gas entirely. The temp builds up when you are holding "B," and the air gives the opportunity to release "B." You only need to press the gas when you're on the ground, so we take advantage of this. Arrows on the ground also reduce the temp, and it is crucial not to accidentally pass by them.

The 4th, and final trick involves altering your jump lengths. You can shorten or lengthen your jump distance off a ramp by holding "up" or "down" respectively. This is useful for maintaining the fast speeds, while also positioning the bike in between or directly on top of ramps to avoid crashing the bike.

Advanced play is much more complex than casual play and allows for huge and unexpected time gains. Below is my progress on Track 5:

Track 5, standard play:

Track 5, advanced play:

After learning the advances techniques, the game became much more interesting to me, and having a serious competitor allowed me to improve drastically. To this day, I'm still improving my times. In fact, today I managed to best my Track 2 time for a new world record! Track 2 is probably the most boring track in the game, but it's definitely not easy.

Now to improve the other tracks. Wish me luck!

Pogosticks and Video Game Competition

I've always had a fascination with the world's best anything. It has always been something that came to mind ever since I was a kid. When I was around 8 years old I got a pogo-stick for Christmas. I spent that night practicing and actually managed to get a few 100 consecutive jumps that same day. Fast forward a few weeks and I managed over 1000 jumps, at which point I became curious as to what the world record was for most jumps on a pogo-stick. I browsed an old 1992 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records at my grandparents' house and found an entry of I think it was a 12 year old who managed over 100,000 consecutive jumps on a pogo-stick.  Looking further into this, it appeared he was sponsored by a company who actually custom made a pogo-stick for the attempt lasting nearly 24 hours. By recollection, this is former champion Gary Stewart pictured below:

That didn't deter me. When I was 9 years old I set out to break the world record for most pogo-stick jumps. There was actually a counter on one pogo-stick my family bought for me, and it's funny, I actually remember being angry that it looped back to 0 after going past 999 jumps. My several attempts resulted in my record of (what I remember as) ~32,000 consecutive jumps (the attempt resulting in a broken pogo-stick).  I actually broke my 2 pogosticks within the span of a week. If not for those incidents, I would likely have likely kept on trying. I love competition, and video games have always been something with enjoyable competition.

I have been rediscovering my love for high score competition in video games. When looking at many classic games like Pac-Man, Tetris, or Frogger, it is a bit interesting to see just how well people can play these games. I feel one can only truly appreciate a high score if they themselves have attempted it first. The world record for Frogger (arcade) is nearly 1 million points, and to most people that sounds impressive, but not many really understand just how difficult that score is, how long it takes, and whether it actually is good or not. I consider myself good at Frogger, but my score still isn't even 1/5th of the world record. To say the least, I'm very impressed with that record.

Even George Costanza's high score doesn't cut it!

Frogger is a game that is just plain great for high scores. There really aren't any rules attached to it, just play, survive, and score as high as you can. Many classic games are this way, and they are easily the best ones to compete on for high scores. However, there are many more games that aren't the best for high score. 

Super Mario Bros is my favorite game, but I realize it's not very good for high scores. The reason is because you can infinitely gain lives and stay in the same level forever if you wanted. Sure, you could track that score, but it is merely a matter of who can stand to play the game the longest. 

For Super Mario Bros, tracking the high score without any rules is meaningless. Twin Galaxies, the authority on video game high scores, has created rulesets for many games that fall into this category. For this game, they gave a restriction of 5 lives and rule that states one cannot abuse the turtles for tons of points. While this works in some regard for competition, at the end of the day, it is an arbitrary ruleset. While I love Super Mario Bros, it is just not good for high score competition. I may hold the Twin Galaxies' record for highest score in this game, but it is diminished by the fact that the game can easily be abused to score much higher.

There are games that are good for high scores and games that aren't. Many classic arcade games were specifically designed for high score competition. Video games have quickly moved away from the notion of high scores, and arcade games remain the only games that are really suited for it.

The question now for video games outside the arcade era isn't "How high can you get?", but instead the question has become "How fast can you get?" 

Super Mario Bros. may not be good for score, but it makes a great speedrun. In fact, you can speedrun almost any game. Speedruns are great because there aren't any rules attached. Like Frogger, I'm free to do as I please and do the best I possibly can without a ruleset dictating or limiting my ideas or abilities.

Just like there are games with tactics that "ruin" high score competition, there are games where speedruns "ruin" the game as a result of having no in-game rules. One may skip huge sections of a game with a game-breaking glitch (pictured above) resulting in faster speedruns. The solution to this problem is creating secondary categories such as "100% completion," as to not skip anything in a game. Categories that are uninteresting won't be competed, and as a result, the competition remains on the categories that are best suited for the specific games. The concept of "no rules for in-game play" might not always work out perfectly for speedruns, but doing anything else results in arbitrary (and uncompeted) rulesets. 

Speedrunning of today is like arcade high scores of the 80s. How fast can you get?

Exploring The Lost Levels!

The video game 'The Lost Levels' is basically a harder version of Super Mario Bros on NES. It is a somewhat unknown Mario title because of the story surrounding it. It's an interesting story, but basically to summarize it:

The Lost Levels is in fact actually the real Super Mario Bros 2, but released only in Japan.

After Super Mario Bros release, the U.S. got Super Mario Bros. 2. You know, the one where in addition to being Mario, you could be Luigi, Toad, or Princess Peach. Peach was clearly the best character with the ability to float for a short period of time. The game could have easily been called 'Princess Peach's Crazy Adventure,' but instead they decided to call it Super Mario Bros. 2.

Japan thought the game was too challenging and would fail in the United States, so they decided to entirely transform a completely unrelated video game into what we now know as Super Mario Bros. 2. It was always the oddball game, and many people still don't realize that this is the reason why it's so different from every other Mario game.

Eventually, the real Super Mario Bros. 2 made it to the U.S in a Super Nintendo game called Super Mario All-Stars. This game actually contains four remade Mario games: Super Mario Bros 1, 2, 3, and of course the real Super Mario Bros 2 (known to the U.S. as The Lost Levels). 

Now, I'm exploring The Lost Levels again. Well, I'm doing more than exploring it, I'm speedrunning it. I'm trying to beat all 52 stages of the real Super Mario Bros. 2 in record time. The time to beat? 36 minutes and 31 seconds by Japanese player 'Hotarubi'. Hotarubi is a very well known and respected speedrunner who has demolished  tons of video game world records. His times are good. Here is the current leaderboard for the The Lost Levels:

I've got the 3rd best time to date. A few months back, I started doing some speedruns for this game, but never got a chance to finish. So now I'm back on the attack and I'm hoping to finish what I started and best Hotarubi's time. This is going to take great skill, knowledge, and practice to get this.

Wish me luck!