Tool-assisted superplay (TAS) of Moon Patrol (3 courses)
I played this game often in the 80s, and it was one of my favorite games back then. My hi-score was over 400,000 points if I remember correctly.
I wasn't sure if I would learn anything new about this game by doing this TAS since it's a simple game, so I was very surprised to see that it is possible to play this game at full speed, only slowing down once per course. I was sure that was not possible. (Note that this would be very difficult for a human to do)
Throughout the video, I only let go of the joystick in neutral position 2 frames per course. (6 frames in total for the whole video) (3:15 10:19 17:34)
-The rng can be changed by shooting or jumping. So when you see the TAS shoot nothing, it's to change the rng. A few times I change the timing of a shot by a frame or two so I don't get killed by an enemy bullet, which is why I never had to slow down when the saucers were raining bullets on me.
-You can shoot 4 upward shots at the same time at 30fps but you have to wait for a shot to complete its run before shooting again.
-You only fire one bullet forward at a time, you have to wait for the explosion animation to end before firing again, which takes between 17 and 25 frames depending on whether the bullet hit something close to the buggy or not (2.4 to 3.5 fps).
-The 58 seconds instead of 59 trick:
-If you jump on the first possible frame at the beginning of a section, you will end the section with one second less. In Section A, you can time your jump to the end of the intro music. For other sections it is more difficult to time the jump but the trick works for all sections as you can see in the video.
-Did you know that there is a mine without collision? Point Q of the champion course (19:03).
-You can score a 100 point bonus by shooting the rock past the end of the T point on the champion course (12:15)
-As far as I know, the Rocket Car score is random (500,800,1000) and the pits score (Pit Plants?) is also random (300,500,800). I tested shooting at different delays and for each delay I got a different value and no noticeable pattern.
-I was sure this game had a 60hz refresh rate but it's 57. That's why the scrolling isn't as smooth as I would have liked. I'm not sure I can do anything to fix this. Sorry.
Bonus: I found a small bug: At the end of the video I show that it is possible to have the animation of dying twice for the same death (21:36)
What is a TAS? [ Ссылка ]
For a good introduction to TASing: [ Ссылка ]
For more information visit [ Ссылка ].
0:00 Title screen
0:11 Round 1-A
1:32 Round 1-E
2:50 Round 1-J
4:12 Round 1-O
5:32 Round 1-T
7:04 Round 2-A
8:30 Round 2-E
9:51 Round 2-J
11:17 Round 2-O
12:42 Round 2-T
14:19 Round 3-A
15:44 Round 3-E
17:05 Round 3-J
18:31 Round 3-O
19:57 Round 3-T
21:36 Bonus
