Can somebody (Pat? Gameboy? Brian?) please decide whether or not to accept the multi-million point Rastan scores? Mine has been there for 4 weeks now and it has neither been confirmed nor rejected. I'd hate to have it rejected at the very last moment in the tournament and not have a chance to try to improve my "regular" score on it. Conversely, I'd hate to zero it out and submit a better "regular" score just to find out it would have been accepted after all...

Thanks. Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), December 19, 1999

Answers

Since this involves the scores of three recordings - this question HAS to go to the Judging Coordinator - Pat Laffaye. This can also go to the judge of this game - Brian McLean.

If you want my personal OPINION - it's no - the multi-million pointers shouldn't count. But that's just my opinion... the scores after DQs counted the zillion point scores this time.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), December 19, 1999.

Can you explain exactly how this cheat works? What makes it happen? I watched one of the recordings and the 87 Million points (or something) was awarded in a dungeon when the player broke a block - but there must be more to it than that.

Is it always the same amount of points? If so and you could only do it once in a game then it would be acceptable. If however you can do it repeatedly and max out the score or if the amount of points is variable then it ruins the game and you can't separate good play from bad. I'd error on the side of banning it. After all we are trying to use score as measure and means of awarding good play - this sort of trick makes a farce of that.

-- Tim Morrow (tjmorrow@bigpond.com), December 20, 1999.

Good point, Tim. Yes, everybody who can get to the end of round two can max out the score on Rastan this way, and so it does not award players who are able to end the game by finishing all six rounds. I hadn't thought of this, but even without it, I already had the opinion it shouldn't be allowed. It looks like a bug to me. I don't know if the actual machine has it too.

What makes it seem like a bug to me (amongst other things) is the fact that sometimes after doing it the first time, the game starts to behave very strangely. And this even happens ALMOST ALWAYS after doing it the second time in the same game. Strange things that happen include: Weird colours, no enemies anymore, player being "trapped" when getting to the boss of the round, game restarting at round one when getting to the boss of the round, no swinging ropes (in general: no moving objects) so you cannot get past certain points, and the game just completely freezing or crashing.

As far as the amount of points you get, it's variable and I haven't figured out yet what it's based on. So far I've seen "bonuses" of 56M, 57M, 83M, 84M, and 87M. Some seem to happen more frequently than others. I've even seen a "bonus" of 0, but it definitely happened since the game displayed its strange behaviour afterwards.

As for how: I am very hesitant to put this out in the open since it may prompt a flood of "ridiculous" scores on this game. And I want the technique banned. You are very right that people who can't even get close to finishing the game can get a number one score on it this way, so the score no longer reflects how good a player is at the game. I think that makes it fall into the same category as making the enemies stop shooting in Galaga.

OK. Here it is: Just make sure you kill one of the swordsmen right over the place (block) where you crash through the floor. If he leaves behind a bonus, then pick it up and after a few more kills (or a crash through the floor, but this is NOT necessary), you'll get your multi-million point bonus.

When I got my 87M, I only uploaded it to T2 since I didn't expect it to be accepted. I never uploaded it to regular MARP because I didn't like to take advantage of what seemed like a bug to me. However, when Game Guru finally figured out how to do it, he did upload it to regular MARP as well. Despite how I felt, I also didn't like having my leaderboard points on that game reduced to 1, so I finally put it on regular MARP as well.

So Game Guru: If you are reading this, let me know and I'll remove my 87M from regular MARP if you assure me you'll remove your score too.

Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), December 20, 1999.

There are some Rastan issues I'm dealing with right now, 2 of which you touched upon. I need to make a critical decision and didn't have a chance to look at INPs this past weekend. My inital inclinaton is that I will not allow the current top 3 scores. So you are forewarned. I will post more info by the end of this week.

-- Pat (laffaye@ibm.net), December 20, 1999.

Hmm... OK... well... at least I'm forewarned. But I can't record a better regular score yet because by the end of the week it will have expired in view of the 3-days-to-upload rule for the last two weeks of the tournament...

Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), December 20, 1999.

I'm not sure whether it is possible or not but how about making the following compromise: Rather than make people rerecord those games where they used the multimillion bonus in order to compete with others that had used it, why not accept those recording but with their final score being their end score MINUS the multimillion bonuses.

It would be irritating to lose a good recording that was only flawed because the multimillion trick was used - especially since it wasn't explicitly stated in the rules that you couldn't use the trick in the first place.

This is one of those unfortunate situations where it seems unfair to change the rules mid competition where it is clear if we knew of the trick beforehand it would have definitely been banned.

-- Tim Morrow (tjmorrow@bigpond.com), December 22, 1999.

Well... the good recording (even after subtracting the multi-million point bonus) may very well be a result of that bonus, because it slightly (but significantly) changes the game: Usually, extra lives are earnt at 100k, 200k, and every 200k after that, but this is different after the big bonus: Getting the big bonus itself gives you an extra life, and you get an extra life as well for each of the two or three enemies that you kill immediately after that. Then the game no longer gives extra lives, regardless of whether the score reaches a multiple of 200k.

So the big bonus makes it easier to get a higher score since it gives you three or four extra lives almost instantly instead of having to go for 200k every time before getting just one at a time. And it also means (also depending on whether your score has already reached 200k at the time) you probably have more lives compared to a regular game.

Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), December 22, 1999.