We’re back again, and it’s about time too! (Hmmm, I feel a song coming on.) Back in April, we introduced this site’s second round of Twin Galaxies bounties. These were intended to be fun, unique gaming challenges, not featured on typical high score or speedrun leaderboards. Rather than playing around with silly incentives like TG points or, heaven forbid, actual money, I offered the prize I know everyone is dying for: Recognition on this website! All of this is for good fun, and I heartily thank everyone for playing along. And hey, after we’re done looking at folks’ accomplishments, we’ll be introduced to four (or five) new challenges! So let’s get started.

DONKEY KONG: HIGHEST SCORE WITHOUT USING THE JUMP BUTTON

Our most popular challenge of this round was no-jump Donkey Kong. As I briefly referenced last time, I had stumbled upon this challenge following a wacky series of events that led me to submit a score of exactly 100 points, which I’m happy to say currently sits at 614th place out of 614 total scores at Donkey Kong Forum. (Okay, technically it’s a two-way tie for 613th, but Brett Wheeler beat me by four years, so I give him the tiebreaker.) Thankfully, this challenge brought out some actual Donkey Kong masters, who looked to push no-jump Donkey Kong as far as it could go:

Our top score on no-jump Donkey Kong was 12,700 points by TG user 000, who currently holds TG world records on various games including Discs of Tron and Pengo. 000 had incredible luck on the first barrel board, however this is to be expected. No points are available without jumping until that first board is completed, and the way to do that is to keep spamming attempts until you get the opening you need. This isn’t to say there’s no strategy involved, though. After waiting for the first barrel to pass by the second ladder, 000 took a calculated risk by ascending ladders three and four even as barrels approached his position. Either one of these barrels could have dropped down the ladder and ended his run, but 000 got the required luck, as they instead rolled by his position harmlessly. On the fifth girder up, 000 used a game mechanic rarely seen in traditional Donkey Kong play – partially climbing the broken ladder near Kong to achieve a faux jump, allowing two more barrels to roll by underneath:

000 ended the barrel board with 3200 on the bonus timer, making that his score entering stage 1-2. The rivet board was where 000’s no-jump DK play truly shined. While there are now on-board points to accumulate, they’re still limited to three pieces of Pauline paraphernalia (for 300 points each) and eight rivets (for 100 points each). However, 000 correctly surmised that the best way to boost your score before the next almost-certainly lethal barrel board is to collect all but one of those rivets before dying to start the rivet board again:

This nets you potentially 1600 points on each of four lives, for a 6400 point boost on top of whatever score you got from the barrel board bonus timer. Of course, this is much easier said than done. The firefoxes are crawling around everywhere, and you can’t jump rivet gaps to avoid them, nor can you collect the hammers to smash them. In fact, if you find yourself pinned on one side of the board cleared of rivets, a single firefox hanging around the bottom ladder can ruin your day. But 000 managed to avoid these dangers and collect the maximum 6400 points across four lives, plus another 100 points for the 8th rivet on his last life, plus another 3000 points on the bonus timer, for a grand total of 12,700 points.

Of course, board 2-1 did not give 000 the same luck, with a blue barrel coming down on his head on the third ladder. But 000’s score survived a late challenge to remain our top score of this bounty. He offered these kind words about this bounty and about competitive DK history:

The challenge was a really fun spin on how to play Donkey Kong. It was like driving a plane from airport to airport instead of flying. Since you can’t jump, you need to ride the chance cube and hope any barrels overhead don’t come down your ladder. Then you need Donkey Kong to give you openings to make the top far right ladder and then to save Pauline. On the rivet stage you need to plan and execute great strategy against the firefoxes as you can’t jump across a missing rivet. You lose a lot of Jumpmans playing this track but it’s worth the LOL moments. In fact this bounty inspired me to name the next MAME Gaming League Tournament at Twin Galaxies as “No Jumpman Arcade” … https://www.twingalaxies.com/ooo/wall/12121/mgl57-no-jumpman-arcade-world-competition

When I think about the Donkey Kong video game over the last 40 years, there’s a very rich history of fascinating stories and achievements. Ikegami Co. Ltd developed the program and Nintendo did not, the 2 million and 3 million plus claimed scores were intriguing, The King of Kong movie released in 2008 made Donkey Kong the most popular classic arcade game ever, the controversy of high scores has been difficult and very entertaining, the LIVE Kong Off tournaments in the USA and Australia have been terrific, and the amazing competition by gamers like Lakeman, McCurdy, Chien and Copeland have been stellar. Thanks to Twin Galaxies and Ersatz_Cats for running the no jump competition, it was fun.

And please do check out 000’s “No Jumpman” arcade challenge, across twelve nominated classic arcade games:

https://www.twingalaxies.com/ooo/wall/12121/mgl57-no-jumpman-arcade-world-competition

Our next submissions are from legendary Donkey Kong great Tim Sczerby, a.k.a. “Skywarp” on TG. For those of you who have never been on any gaming forum ever, in the year 2000, Tim achieved a new world record on Donkey Kong with a score of 879,200. This made Tim the first to beat the standing Donkey Kong world record of 874,300, attributed to Billy Mitchell way back in 1982. Of course, you wouldn’t know this from watching the film King of Kong, which took efforts to erase Sczerby’s achievement in their attempts to keep the focus on the film’s stars, Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell. While top level DK competition has since entered a stratosphere young Mr. Sczerby could not have ever imagined, he has since joined the exclusive million point club with a 2016 score of 1,076,700, putting him currently 23rd all-time on Donkey Kong Forum.

Back in June, Tim submitted a modest 4,300 point score in this no-jump challenge, in which Tim cleared the barrel board on his third and final life. In addition to 3000 bonus timer points, Tim claimed three Pauline prizes and four rivets before getting pinned by a Firefox:

But later that same month, Tim achieved a higher score of 12,600, which was submitted on the last day of the challenge in August. You can watch Sczerby’s recording here, along with his colorful commentary on the ongoing TG / Billy Mitchell legal battle. This run started with just about the most beautiful clear shot at the first barrel board you will ever see:

Tim ended up clearing that first board with a 3700 bonus, putting him 500 points ahead of Mr. 000 at that spot. On the rivet board, Tim also used a technique 000 did not, performing careful reversals on some rivets in order to clear them without having to cross over into danger:

Unfortunately, Tim found the firefoxes to be less than cooperative. On one life, two of these incandescent malefactors pinned Tim as he tried to clear the seventh rivet, denying him 100 points. On his final life, Tim was able to clear the full board and collect the bonus timer reward, but with 500 fewer bonus points than 000 had achieved, negating his previous barrel board advantage. Tim otherwise maximized his rivet board points, but in the end, that one missed rivet was what denied him a tie for the top spot.

Like a true champ though, Tim didn’t settle for just passing level 1. He made a great shot at clearing the second barrel board, reaching all the way up to the broken ladder on the fifth girder. With a little better barrel luck, Tim would have gotten all the way to the 2-2 elevator stage, an effective kill screen for this challenge.

As promised, Tim was offered his chance to express his thoughts on this challenge or any other appropriate gaming topic. And it should be of no surprise to anyone that Tim graciously accepted this offer:

Yes I enjoyed this bounty, I logged an estimated 200 hours on it since early June. I scored the 12,600 on June 28th. I missed a rivet or it would have been 12700 instead of 12600 and OOO would have tied me.

When OOO submitted a 12,700, I was very surprised. I spent over 12 hours on the bounty in what some would call a marathon session on August 30th. Non-stop play, one right after the other with the exception of a few 15 minute breaks. I can’t find the analytics of the number of times the game was played when I set up that MAME but I know it was a lot.

I had a 12,400 as well as another 12600. The 12600 could have been 12800 to an even 13000 if not for a stubborn Foxfire guarding the last rivet long enough to take the winning points from my bonus timer before the clear. I ended up tying my previous 12600 but I had picked up all rivets and not missed any during those 4 lives unlike my first 12600 where I missed one.

Under the best circumstances a score of 13900 could be achieved. I once cleared a barrel board with a 3900 left on the timer. It was as if all the barrels deliberately rolled out of my way and I had no obstruction getting to the top. This happened only once. On the next level, I could not complete the rivet board. I once had a 3500 clearing the rivet board but not enough points clearing the first barrel board. Its more luck than skill at this point.

The second barrel board is like a “kill-screen” as far as I’m concerned. The barrels are more likely to come down on your head if you wait under them. The farthest I made it was to get to the far right of the screen on the second to last girder but the pace Kong rolls out the barrels is slightly faster and it does not allow for a retreat and reposition to get up the ladder. Only some wild barrels thrown at just the right time would allow room enough to get to the top before the rhythmic procession of barrels began again.

With this bounty, there’s an inflection point to where the luck factor supersedes skill. I feel that is around the 10k or higher point value.

Of course I express my usual disdain for Billy Mitchell and his shakedown lawsuits. The scam that keeps on scamming.

I’ve only told in detail the true story behind how Billy Mitchell’s 1982 arcade DK WR was beat. You won’t hear about it in that fraudulent documentary featuring the same subject matter.

Catherine DeSpira, Dwayne Richard, Rudy Ferretti and Ben’Apollo. Two of them are now deceased, I think Dwayne has had enough and is done with the ordeal, but I’m not sure about Catherine. I get so irritated with Billy Mitchell and that KoK scam I take it out on everyone and I did the same to her several years ago. I would apologize but she would probably ignore or tell me to get lost which is fine but I have no ill will toward her.

Billy Mitchell and his selfish greed and ego have helped to create bad feelings and as a result have driven a wedge between a lot of people.

You might want to contact her for some KoK info. Years ago, aside from Dwayne, she was one of the first to point out that the basis of KoK was fabricated and gave me the credit I deserve.

The issue goes far beyond the scope of “just a video game score” There were life rights to the stolen topic matter. I take umbrage with the unfairness to which I was defamed and covered up at the start.

I frequented the arcades on a regular basis back in the 1980’s.

I spent the time to recover a dead Donkey Kong game from a local operators trash dumpster. It came from Stanton Automatics in the spring of 1998. They gave it to me, NOT sold it as incorrectly stated in an old article. They also gave me a dead Sinister at the time. I recovered a DK cocktail from Syracuse Coin Machine exchange in the early 90’s minus the PCB which I found a short time later.

I fixed the DK upright game I rescued from the dumpster in 1998 with help from a guy named Franz Brunner who was also a technician for Syracuse Coin Machine Exchange and for Bally’s Aladdin’s Castle arcade back in the early 1980’s in the Syracuse N.Y. area.

I spent the time to beat and submit a score beating Billy’s 1982 arcade world record which stood for 18 years in the summer of 2000.

So when a documentary featuring the VERY SAME subject material is considered, Twin Galaxies and the film makers owe me. FUCKING “A” RIGHT THEY OWE ME!

Instead what happens? My once verified score becomes “Constantly disputed and impossible to verify therefore merited no inclusion in the film”! Yes, this is verbatim from the initial reason for my unjust exclusion. The story kept changing every time I disproved one of their cock-eyed lies.

One does not re-write a documented historical event to include different people because they “think” they can tell a better story. This is not how documentary film making works. Don’t believe me? Ask one and see what they tell you.

There are certain historic boundaries to any historic subject material including who did what and when that are crucial to the material and never changed. A documentarian has absolutely no creative freedom to change these boundaries of who did what and when.

Again don’t believe me? Ask a lawyer in the entertainment field or a real documentarian and not those bullshit artists Seth Gordon and Ed CUNTingham……….why doesn’t it say….. “CUNTingham” ,,,,,,as the producer of that documentary abomination? 🙂

I had a solid case for defamation and false light, my mistake was not winning life’s sperm lottery so as to be born with a silver spoon up my ass like that fraud Bully Mitchell and his punk kid and the biggest mistake of all was to trust Billy Mitchell to begin with.

Well, it’s not like publishing Tim’s remarks is going to get me any more sued than I already was, lol.

Next up is Jon Wilson, a.k.a. 10yard (who is listed on TG as “degenatrons”). Jon offered the first submission to this challenge in May, with a score of 7,600. As usual, this involved a barrel board grind. A wild barrel gave Jon the opening to reach Pauline on his second life:

But without that extra life worth of rivet points, Jon was forced to complete the rivet board on his third life, gaining the extra life at 7,000 on the bonus reward. This did give Jon two chances to beat the 2-1 barrel board, but sadly a no-jump “kill screen” was still not achieved.

Jon offered these kind words about the challenge and about this site:

Hey Ersatz, thanks for contacting me and for giving me that motivation to attempt this wacky Donkey Kong challenge in the first place. It was a whole lot of fun! I had like 500 attempts, reached the penultimate ladder a few times, but only got lucky enough to make that final climb once. You need persistence and a lot of luck. It was good to see a few other crazy folks getting involved and racking up bigger scores. I suppose the secret to scoring is to max out your points on rivets with death points as there’s bugger all chance of getting through another barrel board.

I do follow perfectpacman, and I admire your completeness and attention to detail. I will look out for your write up.

Anyway, I do like to mess with DK myself and have been creating my own romhacks (including Galakong, Vectorkong, Allenkong) and even made a Donkey Kong based arcade frontend system (DKAFE) – https://github.com/10yard/dkafe#readme If you get any ideas for rom hacks then please let me know – maybe a “girder finger” variation where you have to make BM jump broken girders while DK throws law suits instead of barrels 😀

LMAO Oh, there are so many ways to go with that.

Finally, we have another May submission, of 6,600 points from Tim Sampson a.k.a. “insx”. Tim got the best first life barrel opening you could ask for, ending the board with 3,600 bonus points (only 100 shy of the high mark from the other Tim S.):

But sadly, this Tim found the rivet board to be much less forgiving. Tim took chances on close calls, which ended up not paying off when the firefoxes chose not to cooperate. On his last life, Tim found himself stranded high and dry, short of the 7,000 needed for an extra man:

Tim summed up his run in the submitted message:

Not being a DK expert or anything, I plugged away at it until I got a bit of luck on the first stage. It would be nice to have a strategy in place for stage 2 but I had to just wing it and regretted some of my choices. But hey, I got a score and it was a fun challenge.

And honestly, having tried the challenge myself, I can attest that simply clearing the first board is a feat unto itself. Kudos to each of the top four, who got further than the rest of you lazy bums who didn’t try hard enough.

When I posted the challenge, I added a qualifier that, should anyone get to the elevator stage on 2-2, they should use the minimum jumps required to continue, and that both their pre- and post-jump scores would be recognized. I didn’t want anyone to feel as though they were obliged to kill their minimum-jump run in progress simply to comply with the bounty rules. But of course, if passing both barrel boards were feasible, a competitive minimum jump run would require different strategy than a no-jump run, where sacrificing lives on 1-2 was the optimal play. There was also discussion of whether an additional jump would should be permitted to pass the opening blue barrel of 3-1, or if good RNG could allow that barrel to be avoided without jumping. But I didn’t expect any of that to be relevant, given the unlikelihood of passing both barrel screens.

However, after the challenge was posted, I was directed to this very old and neglected page on Donkey Kong Forum, featuring a series of miscellaneous DK challenges, including something called “The Jeff Willms challenge”:

16,500!? Does this mean the Kong Off master was able to pass both barrel boards on no-jump DK? To my knowledge, no surviving record of this run exists, but if it’s true that this score went all the way to 2-2, he would be the only one so far.

MINECRAFT: RETURN HOME FROM A 10000/10000 TELEPORT

The idea behind this Minecraft challenge was to turn the game’s traditional game play on its ear. Instead of focusing on collecting or finding things, the objective was to safely travel a great distance. Of course, the distance itself is arbitrary, but the dangers along the way are not. To keep it accessible, I chose 10000/10000 as the desired range. (In plain English, this lands you 10000 units to the east and 10000 to the south of 0/0. There’s also a Y coordinate for elevation, but that was left to player choice.) Players were also given the option to teleport further for extra swag points, or for a bit of fun, they were allowed to create some little landmark at 0/0, provided the player’s inventory is empty at the moment the teleport command is entered. After the bounty was posted, it was quickly noted that I failed to forbid land shenanigans with superflat worlds or such, but thankfully all runners embraced the spirit of the challenge as intended.

Our top Minecraft submission, with a time of 40:59.733, was from Czech speedrunner Gamebuster – a top competitor and SRC moderator on Wii’s Excitebots and Excite Truck. Gamebuster played Java edition on hardcore mode, which carried the added swag of automatically setting the game to hard difficulty:

Gamebuster wasted no time initiating the 10000/10000 teleport, which on three straight occasions landed them underground. However, as some might say, fourth time was the charm, when GB emerged in safe water:

For Gamebuster, it was all speed, all the time. The early run was smooth sailing, with GB enjoying a swimming boost from some nearby dolphins. Even as land approached, GB was able to stay waterly thanks to wide river passages.

A full ten minutes in, as night threatened to fall, Gamebuster decided it was finally time to collect some wood and build a boat. However, as they lamented, they still lacked wool for a bed. After a dusktime sail through a swamp, GB finally found sheep, accompanied by a few friends:

Sleep saved the day, as it always does. GB chowed on raw mutton to stave off hunger, and crafted leather boots to improve stamina. After abandoning their first boat, GB was a bit annoyed that they couldn’t build a second one using different types of wood together. (We’ve all been there.) After another sail and a short hop over a deep gorge, GB found themself at a town, with all this baled wheat just sitting there for the taking:

Now fully stocked up on bread to eat, GB went back to the sea. Optimization was still key, with functions like eating being done during rowing time. Despite a couple savannas getting in the way, GB continued on boat until more dolphins arrived. Zipping along the water, Gamebuster occasionally changed view, just to make sure their finned friends were still there:

GB cut across some plains and sparse jungle, hoping to stay in the water as much as possible. But of course that didn’t last forever. After zipping through another town, GB found themself climbing through the trees in an old growth birch forest. GB traversed a deadly gap by jumping onto a narrow ledge made of spare wool, as one does:

The birch trees gave way to a winter wonderland. This offered the opportunity to exploit the boat’s insane speeds over ice, which as GB pointed out is an intended game mechanic. At first, Gamebuster remarked “There doesn’t look like there’s very much ice I can boat on, unfortunately.” But it turned out, there was much more frozen water than just a small patch:

GB enjoyed a huge boost along a lengthy ice river through a snowy taiga. Eventually, that advantage gave way as well, as did another traditional boat ride, when GB was forced back on land at night with about 1000 blocks to go. A massive ravine near the end forced GB to improvise:

This diversion led GB into an archer ambush. After two arrow strikes, GB had five hearts of life left. But leftover bread from the back of the fridge carried the day. Upon arriving at 0/0, GB executed the seed command to show their world seed, as is speedrunning tradition:

Gamebuster offered these thoughts on the challenge, and how it can be improved:

So, basically the best way to complete this challenge quickly is to spend as much time in water as possible, all of the fastest forms of travel are in water or on frozen oceans/rivers.

• The boat is the most essential item in the entire run, and should be obtained as soon as possible. It has very good speed in regular water, and is the fastest method of transportation in the game if used on top of ice (As seen at 32:42 in my submission).
• If you spot dolphins, you should get out of the boat and start swimming, making sure the dolphin follows you. Dolphin’s grace allows you to swim faster than a boat can travel on water.
• Theoretically, if someone was able to obtain depth strider boots (say from a shipwreck or something) they would get an even bigger speed boost from dolphins, however I was not able to do this.
• The player should use the largest render distance they can so they can see the best route to avoid land.

I think this is possible to clear in under 30 minutes if someone gets an exceptional seed and plays their cards right, especially if they get depth strider boots and lots of ice.

Overall I found the challenge interesting but pretty easy, even on hardcore mode. I think for a harder challenge I would disallow sleeping and increase the distance by 4x or 5x . But then again I’m a bit of a masochist when it comes to video game challenges, so most people probably wouldn’t be willing to put up with that.

And FWIW, I don’t regret making these challenges more accessible, but I do agree this one can be made much harder, for the more hardcore folks out there. (Get it? Hardcore?) Oh, and please do give Gamebuster a follow on Twitch as well!

Our next entry is a time of 59:29.17 by Yoshio, a speedrun WR holder on the Dragon Ball series. While Yoshio is a speedrunner by heart, this run wasn’t done exclusively for time, as they began their timer while taking the encouraged opportunity to craft a landmark to await them at 0/0:

After teleporting slightly farther than the required minimum (10420/10420, to be exact), Yoshio found themself in the vicinity of a lovely beach town adjacent to a warm ocean. Yoshio burglarized one of the residents of this peaceful villa, claiming a pretty teal bed, thus pre-empting the need for wool:

Or at least, that was the plan. At about 6:16, during a long boat ride, some aquatic outlaw cast a “Mining Fatigue” curse on our innocent protagonist.

Following some treasure at a broken portal, Yoshio reached land as night was about to fall. Due to the mining fatigue curse, they were barely able to collect their boat, and the teal bed remained firmly where it was first laid. At any rate, a night’s sleep staved off death, before Yoshio resumed the journey. Yoshio collected mutton and berries to eat before reaching a good ocean stretch, and another easy boat ride.

The first threats arrived as Yoshio traipsed through a dark forest the following night:

First up was a little zombie kid zooming around their feet. Then Yoshio got struck by an arrow from behind, and had to detour around an approaching creeper. But despite the sinister surroundings, they emerged from the taiga to take a nighttime boat ride into the icy yonder.

At around 28:00, still at night, Yoshio can be seen antagonizing a polar bear from an artificial platform, which I assume was for food-related purposes and not for some other quasi-scientific venture. The polar bear experiment didn’t pan out, but fortunately for Yoshio, after day broke, they found a shipwreck full of someone’s old carrots before starving to death.

Returning to the seas, at first Yoshio appeared to get good luck with a waterway right through a stony shore biome:

However, late into the run, Yoshio bled huge amounts of time exploring and backtracking in and around various inlets, apparently in the hope of finding a quicker route through the precipitous cliffs blocking the way. To make matters worse, a thunderstorm broke out, with at least two lightning strikes landing uncomfortably close to our hero:

Eventually, Yoshio had to give up on the expedition for the “Northwest Passage”, and scaled the tall rock face the old-fashioned way. The sight of wooded badlands on the horizon heralded their return home:

I think that’s worth a few points, don’t you?

I managed to track Yoshio down on Twitter for the offer to add comments. Here’s what they had to say:

I would like to congratulate Gamebuster on the excellent 40 minute time. The challenge made me realise just how much easier long distance travel in Minecraft has become. Back in the day, boats were quite a nightmare to control, and would explode with even light contact on a block.

The main threat was coming across land and having to decide between jumping out of the boat and running across, or taking the gamble on steering around it. You wouldn’t know if it was a small island or a long coastline that was sending you way off track until it was too late.

It had me thinking about ways Mojang could further improve travel. I think the solution is to add a variety of silly hats for the player to collect. They wouldn’t do anything, but might inspire players to continue running, because they might find more silly hats along the way.

lol And please do give Yoshio a follow on Twitch as well, because that’s what heroes like you do.

Next up we have a run of 1:30:10 by newcomer RizzyDizz, performed on the Switch version of Bedrock Edition. Admittedly, I’m not entirely familiar with the full gamut of Minecraft releases and their peculiarities. Rizzy began the world in creative, before switching the run to survival following the 10000/10000 teleport. I interpreted this as a necessary and entirely acceptable work-around to enable the teleport command in this version:

The fun began right away. As the world loaded around Rizzy, someone’s secret underground laboratory could be seen, otherwise hidden under some indoor snow:

This only yielded some food and coal, as well as a couple torches. But a nearby town proved to be a plentiful starting point.

While the other runners were at least somewhat focused on time, Rizzy was in no hurry, relishing the moment. Rizzy was polite enough to stop and close people’s doors after raiding them of their worldly possessions. Rizz nearly filled their available inventory, prepared themselves some yummy beet soup, and even took time to bake 41 potatoes for the long journey. It was safe to say, scarcity wasn’t going to be an issue. As an old fogey, it reminded me of the times playing Oregon Trail on the old Apple IIe, taking the time to hunt for full food before leaving the vicinity of Missouri.

At about the 18-minute mark, it was finally time to embark on their quest for Oregon. As Gamebuster did, Rizzy took advantage of ice boat physics. In fact, in this version, Rizzy frequently found themself speeding out further than the game could load:

After the first half hour, Rizzy finally left the cold biomes, hitting a great stretch of open ocean. On the distant shore, they collected some iron in abandoned rail carts on a mesa. While the nature of the challenge discouraged runners from spending much time in dungeons, Rizzy couldn’t resist the opportunity to raid a nearby desert temple of its emeralds and enchanted books:

At this point, Rizzy was overflowing with gear, having to choose what to leave behind. While the trip across land was a bit slow, Rizz did collect some swag points with a sweet camel ride at the halfway point:

Arid lands gave way to forests, and finally a colossally obstructive mountain. After circumventing it to the north, they arrived at another barrier in the form of a giant chasm:

One thing I truly enjoy about both watching and playing Minecraft are the gorgeous vistas the game randomly generates. Nowhere was this more evident than around the 3/4 point in Rizzy’s run, when they encountered a village spanning both sides of a mountainous gorge.

After multiple high rise cliff dives into water (I love those, too), Rizzy found themself in a long nighttime ocean ride. This was smooth sailing, provided Rizzy didn’t stop. However, like a true dedicated Minecrafter, they couldn’t resist the temptation to drop the proverbial anchor and check what exciting treasure lay near an underwater altar visible from the water’s surface:

After one more sleep, Rizzy arrived uneventfully at 0/0, out in the water. Rizzy returned to the nearby shore where they first spawned, and basked in the fruits of their journey. First, Rizzy planted a cherry sapling obtained back near canyon town. Then, after crafting a compost bin and filling it with their unused carrots and potatoes, Rizzy used the resultant bone meal to bring that sapling to its full beauty. Throw in some repurposed laboratory torches, and you have yourself the loveliest of luaus on the beach.

I asked Rizzy for some autobiographical details to include. Aside from appearances at The Retro World Series, they don’t stream (yet), and only started a TG account to participate in the bounty, which they’d heard about on social media.

As for the challenge itself, Rizzy had this to say:

It was a lot of fun. I feel like I got a very lucky spawn when I teleported and that helped speed things along. But it was overall very fun and not too dissimilar to my usual play style. I’ll normally start a world and travel thousands of blocks till my inventory is full of stuff I don’t want to drop, or I find a nice place to settle down. Then I build a base and play the game from there. This was basically the same to me but I just work back to spawn instead of leave it. I honestly thought about going 20,000 blocks away but figured that might take more time than I had to spare at the time.

In short. Was happy to do this, had a ton of fun, got a very lucky spawn, and was shocked after I nearly died I managed a couple times to do it in one shot. Hahaha! Great challenge and I would do it again.

We have one last run to discuss… sort of. Some of you may remember my interview last year with shmup master Pearl, of team ASE. Pearl also used to be a competitive Minecrafter, and decided to take a stab at this teleport challenge on Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1820383340

I proactively asked Pearl if I could treat this as an “at large” submission, and he basically said “Sure, why not?” I had watched most of it before, but of course for this write-up I wanted to give it the full review it deserved. I sat down, and as soon as I’d settled in, I saw this:

LMAO, While I’m sure this seed was effectively random and innocent, technically it was against the challenge rules posted to TG, which required a fully random seed. Pearl laughed and didn’t remember doing this, and never actually submitted it to TG anyway, so no harm was done. And it’s not like he was trying to hide anything, lol.

Anyway, given that snafu, it would feel weird giving this the full submission treatment here alongside the other runs. (And this post is running long on images anyway.) But if you’re interested in this Minecraft challenge, and don’t mind some foul language, you should check out that run as well. Pearl also played on hardcore, and used a 15000/15000 teleport for added difficulty. Highlights of the run included a truly massive cliff dive, treasure hunting underwater, and a trident attack. After arriving at 0/0 near the shore, Pearl concluded the run by barricading himself with some TNT he acquired from a desert temple and letting it rip.

Thank you again to all of this round’s Minecraft runners!

SUPER METROID: GET AS FAR AS YOU CAN ON ZEBES WITHOUT TAKING DAMAGE

With all of today’s real bounty entries out of the way, let’s get to these last two, featuring only submissions from yours truly. I prefer to use this bounty system to write about others’ game play, and thus I typically don’t submit to challenges already covered by other gamers. But with the end of August fast approaching, I could see I had to put together something for the Super Metroid challenge, or else I’d have nothing to write about for it.

It didn’t take me long to realize where I screwed up my challenge design. While someone had previously completed a damageless run of the entire game, in my tests, I found the opening fight with Ridley to be more difficult than I was aiming for. (More difficult to do damageless, at least. Obviously the fight itself is an automatic win.) Thus, I said the damageless portion of the challenge begins when you touch down on Zebes. That’s all fine, except my stated rules didn’t give players the opportunity to skip the long intro on repeated attempts. For goodness sake, the game literally autosaves when you arrive at Zebes, but following my own rules, I still had to erase those save files and play out the whole intro cinematic and escape sequence every time I reset. Had another player pointed this out, I would’ve been happy to modify the rules for them to allow restarts from that autosave, but it seemed unfair to retroactively change that rule for myself, especially so close to the deadline. Like a chef who screwed up his own meal, I just had to sit and eat it.

At any rate, the first two missile packs are gimmes. You literally can’t die acquiring them unless you try. The path back up isn’t too precarious either. Where the challenge really begins is the first Chozo statue boss (the one guarding the bombs).

Taking a cue from that full damageless run, starting the battle in that spot seen above seemed to be the best setup. If you’re lucky, Chozo walks right over you, giving you ample opportunity to shoot him in the back. (Some say that’s the safest way.) But even if Chozo jumps back to the right, you can still retreat to the left and fight from that side. Focus on playing defensively, just shooting individual missiles when you have a clear opening. With wall jumps up in the corner, and enough tries, eventually you’ll get there.

Having met the minimum requirements for a qualifying run, the world was now my oyster. It was my time to shine. I could freely collect all the missile packs I wanted.

Instead, I promptly got hit by some bullshit flying thing.

Last time on these bounties, I enjoyed attempting Ocarina of Time damageless, and would like to try that again some day. However, I now know that damageless Super Metroid was a terrible idea. Literally nobody enjoys playing this game this way, and if they say otherwise, it is because they are trying to deceive you for some sinister purpose. If this happens to you, my advice would be to play along only until you discover their true nefarious motivation, then use that knowledge against them.

DRAGON QUEST 3: GET TO ROMALY WITHOUT USING THE FIGHT COMMAND

And this finally brings us to another ersatz_cats-only challenge. Again, I don’t do these bounties just to write about my own game play. I literally own a website, and I could write about whatever game play I want any time I want, no justification required. And I certainly do not design these challenges strictly as a platform for my own personal gaming ambitions…

…eeeeexcept maybe for this Dragon Quest 3 bounty, lol. Sure, anyone could have submitted a run, and if they had, they would’ve smoked me by several hours. But as you’ll see, I had something crazier in mind – something that resulted in a nearly nineteen-hour Twitch stream. I wish to be clear that this run is no big shakes in the grand pantheon of gaming. Literally anyone who wants to can do this, if they dedicate some time to it. But as far as what it means to me personally, I can honestly say without any hint of exaggeration that this stream was the single greatest achievement of my entire life. These were my finest nineteen hours. When I die, I want them to play this run at my funeral. When future generations of the “C” family ask about their great uncle Walter, I want their parents to simply show them this video, and say “This is all you need to know about him.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbklBGBG1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqPjrWpca6U

Nineteen hours is a lot to cover, so I’m only going to go over the broad strokes. The stated challenge was to get to Romaly – the third town in the game – without using the “attack” command. (That’s a lot of words to say “magic only”.) I used my recommended party of Hero, Pilgrim, Wizard, Wizard. This offered good early game offense while also having the benefit of healing. Sure, my Hero was just a meat shield until she could learn Blaze, but I could tackle all but the most formidable adversaries to come my way – at least with one tiny exception.

That’s right. I had no answer for this little blue piece of puke. By rule, I couldn’t hit it. And it was impervious to all my early magic. Any time someone like a Rogue Knight summoned a Healer as reinforcements, it was like cutting the Ace of Spades. When he showed up, I had no choice but to run.

The challenge as intended wasn’t too difficult, though. I casually reached the vicinity of Romaly around the 107-minute mark:

A trained walrus could probably have beaten my time. Except… I wasn’t done. The funny thing about Romaly is, it’s a pivotal location in the game, yet it’s entirely optional. You don’t need to enter to fight Kandar for the stolen crown (which itself is optional on the NES version). And while riding Wings of Wyvern back to Aliahan every time you want to save can get tedious, it is an option. All roads may lead to Rome, but Romaly is surrounded by detours.

I gave others who enjoy this game a simple challenge, but what I really wanted from this was to see how deep into the game I could progress using only magic. However far I’d get, once I tired of the journey, I could satisfy the bounty requirement by entering Romaly as my victory lap.

The early grind was difficult at times. The goal was to get set up at the healing spot in Noaniels Cave, which seemed almost tailor made for this challenge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t revive dead characters, and I did party wipe a couple times. (In Dragon Quest, a full party death does not require a reset. The king revives you, chides you, and takes half your gold, but you get to keep the items and experience you gained.)

I skipped the Poison Needle because I had no use for it, but otherwise I did all optional side quests. I beat Kandar and let my Wizard don the Golden Crown. At 16:08:13, I somehow killed three Elysium Birds in one fight, which is crazy even in normal play. Using magic-casting items like Staff of Thunder, I even entered the magic-suppressed Pyramid basement and obtained the Golden Claw:

Oh, that’s another thing. This whole almost-nineteen hour run was done on a Retro Achievements enabled emulator. You can actually track the on-screen notifications to the times each achievement was unlocked.

I expected the Orochi fight to be difficult, but I was hoping to have more luck against Boss Troll, which would have opened up much more of the game to explore. Sadly, that didn’t pan out either, as I had limited ice magic, and fire magic was inconsistent against him. And so in a petty act of revenge, I fired my second Wizard. (Technically, I changed her to a Merchant and “sacrificed” her to start the new town.) Actually, the real reason was because it was time to get two sages, both for the RA cheevo, but also to diversify my magic portfolio. You can turn any one character into a Sage with the Book of Satori, but for a second Sage, you need a Goof-Off, and on NES, nobody can class change into a Goof-Off – you have to start one from scratch. At any rate, after patiently grinding my fresh jester to level 20, then class changing, then grinding to 20 again, Boss Troll and Orochi were both a breeze.

Using the Staff of Change, I spent the traditional ten tedious minutes at the Elf Village shop, trying to get that rare dwarf morph so I could buy a bunch of Wizard Rings I’ll never end up using. But right before that, at around 7:44:30 in part 2, a strange bug occurred. I was dropping off excess items at the Vault, when the game mystifyingly switched from my Hero’s inventory to my Wizard’s inventory. Of course, this is exactly the kind of inexplicable thing you want to have happen seventeen hours into a marathon run you intend to submit to a competitive gaming site. What amazing luck!! In the moment, I felt like I maybe held the “A” button too long on a confirmation, but I don’t know if I really did or if that was actually the cause. I have no idea if this was an emulation bug or a glitch present in the original NES game. All I can do is point it out, throw my hands up, and say “This is apparently a thing”.

At this point, the challenge was no longer about the difficulty of the game, but about my own personal stamina. After a whole day of barely eating, I turned my mic back on, and I was babbling half-incoherently. But I made it! I got all six orbs, and I got the bird. I returned to Kanave and got that Poison Needle I skipped, just to fill out the Retro Achievements list. And then I set foot in Romaly, at 18:40:33 (at around 9:23:10 in part 2 of the upload), to assume my place as king / queen.

And that’s where I ended the stream. Canonically, I’ll say my Hero acquired the bird, got a good overhead view of Baramos’ Castle, said “Woah, that looks way too dangerous for me”, and decided to settle down and let some other young fool try and take on the Archfiend.

Truthfully – and I do mean this – this challenge was a fucking blast. I recommend it to anyone who appreciates this classic RPG. I’m looking to continue this challenge, hoping to clear almost all the RA achievements for DQ3 using magic only. (All of them except for beating Zoma without using the Light Orb. That one you want to do at full capacity.)

Wow! This post went on longer than I expected. Thank you all again for the great run submissions, and for reading my recaps. But now it’s time to look ahead to four new bounty challenges for the fall.

NEW BOUNTY CHALLENGES

Our first new challenge – inspired by a real-life encounter with a Robotron game in Seattle – is what I call the “Broken Arrow” challenge. Basically, score as high as you can in this arcade classic with one of your cardinal directions disabled. You have eight such directions – up, down, left, and right, on both the movement control and the weapon control – and it’s your choice which of those to disable for the entirety of your game. To be clear, disabling a direction also negates the two connected diagonals. If you choose to disable down movement, this also disallows down-left and down-right. See the following examples:

How exactly you go about executing the challenge is up to you. You can simply not use the forbidden direction, or you could go in and reassign or disable those keys in MAME. If you’re a true lunatic, you could physically disconnect that joystick switch on your arcade control panel. The important thing is that you pick a disallowed direction (and connected diagonals) and stick to it. Personally, I would recommend choosing a firing direction, so that you still have full range of movement and don’t find yourself pinned on one side of the board. But I leave that option to you.

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/robotron-2084-the-broken-arrow-challenge-ppmdc/

When designing these bounties, I try to find interesting approaches that aren’t already covered by existing challenge sets or speedruns. This can be hard in a game like Legend of Zelda on NES, which has been trod so thoroughly by so many runners. Sometimes these rule sets can get pretty extreme, as with “The Extreme Challenge” (where you must only get certain items and you can’t kill overworld enemies).

Personally, I’ve always been fond of deathless runs (which I’ve done on first and second quests) and of swordless runs (which I’ve only done on first quest so far). I’ve also never been a fan of using Up+A on the second controller to teleport back to start. Like time travel as a story device, it negates all the tension. Of course you don’t die when you can just press the “Don’t die” button any time you’re in a jam.

So I’ve decided to mix all of this together into one hearty stew. Deathless and swordless. And it must be one continuous play. You can’t actually beat Ganon without the sword, but you can get to his room, which will be considered the end goal of this challenge. Also, I’ve allowed block-clipping and the screen wrap-around glitch, because why not? I’ve opened this as two separate bounty pages, so you can enter a time on first quest, or on second quest, or both. Two challenges for the price of one!

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/the-legend-of-zelda-nes-swordless-and-deathless-first-quest-ppmdc/

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/the-legend-of-zelda-nes-swordless-and-deathless-second-quest-ppmdc/

There are so many games out there begging for damageless challenges. A complete damageless run might be too difficult for most players, but there’s nothing stopping you from trying it out and seeing how far you can get. This time, we turn our eyes to the Mega Man series. And since I already have an NES challenge this round, that leaves us the classic Mega Man X.

As folks may be quick to point out, you do take “damage” during two designated story sections, including at the end of the intro stage. Obviously, those don’t count. Progress will be measured by how many robot masters you defeat, or Sigma stages you clear, with a minimum requirement of passing the intro stage. Deaths are also forbidden, but if you get far enough, you are allowed to die to acquire the Hadouken. But you won’t get that far. None of you will. I am certain of it.

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/mega-man-x-get-as-far-as-you-can-without-taking-damage-ppmdc/

For this round’s RPG, I’m going back to the Final Fantasy well again. There are so many ways to beat FF7 using the plethora of materia provided. But how would you fare when you can’t use materia at all? Can you survive through the Midgar escape relying on other resources, like items? I’m admittedly not sure how this challenge will go. At the very least, this can be the first step toward trying a full game no-materia run, which has been shown to be possible.

Oh, and major glitches are ALLOWED in this one, except for anything that lets you begin your game outside of Midgar. The game must start with the traditional Aeris cinematic. But after that, if you can break the space-time continuum to open a portal to Nibelheim or wherever, go for it. Please don’t feel you need to use glitches, of course; it’s just a fun bonus for those who want to. Time ends when you set foot outside Midgar through such shenanigans, or when Motor Ball dies the old-fashioned way.

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/final-fantasy-7-escape-midgar-without-using-materia-ppmdc/

And if you’ve read any of these and said “Wait, I’ve already done that before”, that’s awesome, but we’ll be recognizing new submissions achieved within the bounty timeframe. If you want to participate, I hope you have it in you to achieve it again.

One last thing of note: I’m choosing to discontinue the option for “at large” submissions to PPMDC bounties. I offered it for people who didn’t want to have to sign up for TG accounts, but the option didn’t get used enough. Most people just signed up at TG anyway, and honestly, it’s easier on my life to have all adjudication go through the TG process, of which I am but one participant.

As always, happy gaming!