Happy Halloween, everyone! Our fifth round of TG bounty challenges is in the books. We received submissions toward two of those challenges, and they just so happen to involve two classic female gaming protagonists: Samus Aran, and Ms. Pac-Man. (Oh, I guess Mr. Ms. Pac-Man is there, too.) I promise I didn’t plan that, no more than I planned using “ghosts” as the theme back in June without considering that this update would come out on Spooky Day. I also didn’t plan for the fact there’s apparently no existing art showing Samus and Ms. Pac teaming up together, so we’ll have to do with my meager MS Paint skills:

(In case there are any concerns, the “Girl Power” theme I chose to frame my intro around refers exclusively to Samus and Ms. Pac, and was not an attempt to tokenize any runner. I’m not that creative, and I can’t think of anything else to thematically link freaking Metroid Dread and Ms. Pac-Man.)

Anyway, for those who aren’t familiar with these “bounties”, they’re intended to be fun, unique gaming challenges not featured on typical high score or speedrun leaderboards. They use the Twin Galaxies “bounty” system to facilitate fair adjudication, hence why I call them “bounties” even though the award is nothing of value, lol. (To be fair, some people do put a lot of stake in the title “Video Game Player of the Century”.) I’ll be changing up how these bounties are handled going forward, but for now, let’s meet our newest centenary.

METROID DREAD: GET AS FAR AS YOU CAN WITHOUT TAKING DAMAGE

Our first submission today is a tremendous run from the speedrunner Aranea, who holds top times on several Metroid Dread categories. I asked players to clear at least the first boss in Metroid Dread without taking damage. However, independently of my bounty posting, Aranea went one better and cleared the whole freaking game without taking damage! Oh, and she collected minimum items too, because apparently a literal perfect no-damage run wasn’t difficult enough, lmao.

Aranea uploaded the whole run to YouTube, in both a commentated version (linked above) and a no-commentary version. My problem is, admittedly, I don’t know Metroid Dread very well. I get that it’s a Metroid game, and that space things are gonna blow up, and that there will probably be an escape sequence of some sort, but I certainly couldn’t break the run down as thoroughly as I did with Mitch’s SMB3 run during the last round of bounties. I suppose that’s the danger of breaking out of my old fogey retro comfort zone to offer challenges on these new-fangled Switch games. But you know what? Since Aranea did publish her commentated version for you all (on top of some additional commentary provided below), I’m going to use this space to have some fun by playing into my ignorance, and offering my own low-information commentary on Aranea’s run.

First thing I noticed was that Aranea began by loading a save, which skipped the intro cutscenes. For a moment I was like “Wait, is that technically disqualifying?” This is Twin Galaxies adjudication we’re talking about, after all. But then I remembered that when I set up the bounty I was smart enough to specify I was using Speedrun.com rules, because that way at least someone involved in the rules for this would know what they were doing. And yes, SRC does allow the use of a “Run file” of the exact characteristics Aranea used. So far, so good.

Right away, there’s a cut-away to this weird ass blob thing, that looks like it’s gonna be a problem. But Aranea parries its attack and dispatches it with ease. In fact, these parries seem to happen a lot, with whatever varmints or door guardians the speedy Samus can’t unalive from a distance. Maybe blobbo was a parry tutorial enemy?

After that, we get to our first boss, who I probably named in the bounty description, but hell if I can be fucked to click a link. Instead, I’m gonna try and use the alphabetic naming convention they use for hurricanes each year. I say “try”, because sometimes you have to figure out what’s a real boss, and what’s a mini-boss, and what’s a repeat boss, and what’s just a heavier-than-normal regulation lizard. Anyway, I’m just gonna call this guy “Andy”:

Andy’s got this big-ass tail he likes to swing around, which would whack any other player into the wall. But of course, Aranea’s ready to jump while Andy’s still in his wind-up. Even worse, after getting his ass kicked a bit, Andy’s like “Fuck it, I should just turn invisible, like really, why didn’t I just do this in the first place?” But our heroine’s still on it. After some more pummeling, Samus acquires the “Phantom Cloak”. Given the size disparity between Andy and Samus, I’m assuming the tag on this cloak dryly reads “One size fits most”.

A relatively harmless platforming and puzzle sequence ensues. Aranea gets the Charge Beam, then somehow finds herself back at the beginning, before going here and spending about half a minute trying to execute what clearly must be a sweet speedrun skip:

Aranea then wastes some other boss, who we’ll fittingly call Big-Ass Eyeball. We’ll be seeing that thing a few times. She acquires something called the Omega Blaster, then proceeds to encounter some silver crawly thing. I’m not even sure if it’s a real boss, or just a glorified weapon demo. But I’m making this bullshit up as I go anyway, so I’ll count it for my alphabetical convention, and call it Creepy McCrawlersdotter:

Creepy’s reign of terror over Gotham City is short-lived, and Samus then gets back to the platforming. There’s a long stretch of her going here, going there, using some mechanism to drain the lava, which is probably important in a no-damage run. There was a distinctly blue collar feel to this part of the run, as you even see Samus take the tram here and there, fiddling with machinery as needed, like it’s just another day on the job. I could see her and all the evil crawly things punching in at the same time clock to start their day.

Samus also does a bunch of these Mega Man style slides around, before finding the Wide Beam laying around. Wide Beam seems especially suited for blasting things before you even see them on screen.

After another trip on the trolley, Samus goes another round with Big-Ass Eyeball, followed by a revenge fight with Creepy’s green cousin Deuce McCrawlister. This leads into those three words you know you’ll eventually see the moment you pick up a new Metroid game:

Morph Ball acquired.

It looks like the slide was still quicker in places, but this at least opened up the path to the Varia Suit. After all this time running corridors, riding public transit, and wasting little blobs cosplaying as bosses, we get to another actual cut-away major boss encounter, which given my alphabetical convention, I’ll call “Every Metroid Game Has Some Version of Kraid”.

This Kraid is mechanically restrained, at least at first. What anyone on any planet would want with a handcuffed Kraid, I couldn’t tell you. Or maybe he’s there voluntarily, for some kink of his. If so, I certainly would not want to know. At any rate, his restraints don’t stop him from vomiting up tiny rocks at you, which I don’t think would be much of an issue if not for that whole “Don’t take any damage whatsoever” thing. Still, Aranea navigates these projectiles professionally, doing enough damage to free Kraid from his shackles.

With his arms free, Kraid does this massive swat move, which Aranea avoids with a Smash Bros style dodge or something. (Hey, the life counter stayed at 99, and that’s what counts!) Kraid then vomits up more crap and punches the wall before being given a bad case of indigestion, which to be fair I would say is the least of Kraid’s problems. At any rate, Samus gets something called the “Diffusion Beam”, which is like the Wide Beam but shinier.

After an elevator ride down, Aranea then acquired the Grapple Beam. Per my stated challenge, I’m more interested in the damageless side of things than the speedrun side of things, but Grapple Beam still offered opportunities for movement tech, hooking onto distant walls for a bit of extra momentum, etc. Aranea also used it to bypass some enemies in a way which, given my familiarity with grapple physics, made me wince every time. But I guess in damageless speedrunner land, that sort of thing is just par for the course.

Another yellow crawly thing showed up, but Samus donned that old Phantom Cloak and bypassed it entirely. After acquiring the Bombs, Samus hopped on the train, this time to a rainy area called “Burenia”. (More like “Bu-rainy-a”, amirite?) This time, the gimmick was water manipulation. Cue another scuffle with Big-Ass Eyeball, followed by – you guessed it – Creepy’s second cousin, Franz Yellowcrawlenstein. Aranea was rewarded with every Metroid speedrunner’s favorite words:

Whereas Aranea was previously having to blast random creatures out of the way, now she can speed dash right through them unharmed. Moments later, she found herself in her next super-duper-for-real boss fight, against some bladed monstrosity I’ll call Governor Gary Gygax:

Samus speed-boosted into this thing a few times. The timing looked really important, but again, the fuck do I know? After yet another trip on the light rail, she zipped through some corridors, blasting through kind of a half version of the bladed Gygax, who I’ll just call Half-Crit. After that was another super-scary looking creature, in its own room, which you absolutely could have sold me on being a major boss if not for the fact it vaporized basically the moment Aranea saw it. Samus then upgraded to Super Missiles and the Plasma Beam, which looked like the previous weapon, but green.

Following that, Aranea encountered a new boss I’ll call Iggy Pop (seen above), who at first blush looks like what would happen if Metal Mario had a baby with a Ninja Turtle. I say “at first blush”, because after some wall-jumping and other gymnastic theatrics, he opens his giant mouth and it’s all scary alien shit. But after some masterful evasion and a steady stream of green firepower, Samus discharges that Plasma Beam right down Iggy’s toothy gullet, ending its dreams of ballet school.

Samus then used an aerial dash to skip right past some other giant boss-looking thing in its own room. But at least I got to see this one for more than a second:

Approaching the one hour mark, there was a subtle moment where Samus had to charge at an enemy on a ledge, then immediately swipe at an oncoming attack:

Again, I have no idea what I’m talking about. But that had to be a tricky spot, right?

After trawling through a lengthy underwater sequence, Aranea got the Gravity Suit, which was the least surprising thing ever. Subsequently, she encountered Iggy’s cousin, which she defeated the same way.

I wrote this out based on Aranea’s uncommentated version, because it was important that I stay as uninformed as possible. However, even without words, I could see the little webcam of Aranea in the corner, and I could see her get more excited the deeper into the run she got.

Beyond an ice region, Aranea encountered our next boss, Jack Skellington’s Pet Jaguar. This thing seemed to have a widely varied attack pattern, which required some narrowly targeted jumps. But the Metroid rule is that everything blows up eventually. From there, Samus’ suit upgrades allowed her to pass right through some flame obstacles that would’ve been damaging before. Aranea then acquired the Screw Attack, which must be a godsend on a damageless speedrun.

I would’ve figured Screw Attack would’ve opened up the next pathway. But instead, back in Burenia, Aranea was up to more sequence break shenanigans (I assume), as she did a bomb climb into a distant shaft:

This took her into a fight with not one, but two bladed baddies:

What was once a “super-duper-for-real boss fight” was now half of an arbitrary encounter. As Aranea notes in her comments below, this is one of the toughest fights in the whole game to pull off damageless. She seemed quite pleased in that little corner window when she managed to waste both of these Gygaces without getting hurt. (Google says I’m the second person ever to use the word “Gygaces” in that way, lol.) This unlocked the door to a weird inky Venom-looking boss, who I’ll just call “Kiss Him Goodbye”, because that’s how difficult Aranea made it look.

More upgrades were acquired. More new areas were explored. And another new boss was unearthed. It morphed from an alien hornet to an ink blob to like a dog toy looking thing. Let’s call this one “Let’s Call This One ‘Lucy'”. (But you have to say that whole thing each time.) Aranea just pummeled it with Screw Attack until it gave up and gave her Storm Missiles. After two more bladed buzzards, Aranea performed another upward bomb sequence:

It’s a good thing Gravity Suit not only allows you to move through water as if it isn’t there, but also allows the force from bomb explosions to propel you through water as if it isn’t there. (Don’t think about that one too much.)

Hope you didn’t forget about Big-Ass Eyeball, because he came back for another round. Samus then skipped a fight with Creepy’s purple third cousin, Mr. Doesn’t Get a Name.

At this point, the upgrades start coming fastly and furiously. Samus gets the Wave Beam, which shoots purple. Samus gets Power Bombs off another Iggy in red armor, making her look all jazzed up. She then skips another hornet thing, before wasting yet another Iggy in gold armor.

Finally, 80-minutes into the run, Samus enters this cathedral-like chamber, and battles some evil falcon pope thing.

I would give this guy a silly name, but every so often you see it get an electrified silhouette, and you could clearly see it’s supposed to be Ridley:

If it ain’t Mother Brain, you know it’s gonna be Ridley, right? He certainly seemed foreboding, although you could say his aim could use a little work. Pope Ridley cycled through a few forms, on the ground, in the air, and back on the ground, requiring Aranea to expertly dodge and parry.

Once Ridley went down, I could see Aranea dancing around in her chair. Indeed, the hard part was over. Samus’ missiles were gone, and she faced some quick bonus battle at a cutscene angle. Following that – sure as shit – there was an escape sequence.

Final run time was 1:24:23, even though the in-game stats padded like sixteen minutes onto the final totals:

Of course, I had foolishly set a goal of acquiring as many missiles as possible, not really considering the possibility that someone would drop in and crush the entire game while acquiring no extra missiles whatsoever. Obviously, I love those swag points, and I’m glad there wasn’t a “20 missiles” submission I would be required to rank ahead of this run. At any rate, Aranea absolutely demolished this one. On top of that, she was awesome enough to provide some additional thoughts on the challenge, for those of you who prefer to hear from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about:

I originally started this challenge about a year ago when I got the world record for the Minimum Items speedrun on Normal Mode with one death and realized I could probably beat the category deathless if I dedicated more time to it. Eventually I did so on Hard Mode, and once I did that, I figured, why not Dread Mode too? It was actually a funny coincidence that I happened to get the hitless speedrun during the range of time for this bounty.

The biggest thing is just avoiding any stray hits during overworld traversal. Holding charge shot helps mitigate the danger from some smaller enemies since it gives Samus a weak hitbox, and once you have screw attack, you’re mostly golden. But for most enemies during most of the game, you really just have to know where they are and how to avoid them or kill them efficiently.

Most boss fights are fairly straightforward, but I’d like to shout out the twin gold robo fight in Burenia. That fight is an absolute mess if you don’t hit the manipulation. I jump over the top robo at the start of the fight and morph to dodge all attack patterns from the bottom robo. After this, the robos break into one of two attack patterns, and either of them will let you kill the top robo in short order. The 1v1 with the remaining robo is easy.

Something I really like about this challenge is that the final fight is genuinely the hardest part of the run. Raven Beak has more elaborate attack patterns than any other boss, and it’s also the longest fight by far. The highlight of the fight to me is the second phase, where I stand in specific spots depending on what attack he does in order to manipulate the position that Raven Beak will be in relative to Samus if his next attack is the Beam Burst. When he stomps the ground, I want to be slightly past the tip of his wing. When he crashes into the wall, I want to be in the center of the arena. When he uses the charge beam, I want to either be under his wings or one step past the intersection of the laser and the ground. If you don’t do this, it’s easy to get knicked by one or two shots at the start of the attack. But if you manipulate everything properly, you can use free aim to dodge the Beam Burst and deal damage for the entire duration of the attack.

All in all, this was a very fun challenge to do in my favorite Metroid game.

Apparently the last boss is formally called “Raven Beak”? You’re not fooling me, Ridley!

Big thank you to Charlotte Aranea for submitting this run to the bounty! Please gives her a follow on Twitch and on YouTube. Meanwhile, another big thank you goes to our next challenger…

PAC-MAN AND MS. PAC-MAN: PERFORM THE MOST GHOST PASS-THROUGHS IN A SINGLE GAME

We go from an 84-minute run of space bounty hunters evading aliens to about 8.4 minutes of yellow pizzas evading ghosts. Okay, I cheated a bit, in that this was actually two challenges on two games, requiring two track listings. However, both challenges were bested by returning champion, TG user OOO. (Apologies, in the no-jump Donkey Kong write-up, I had his username as zero-zero-zero, whereas I’m discovering now that each character is actually the letter “O”.)

For those who don’t know (and didn’t read our “Video Game Fraud of the Century” series), yes, it is possible for Pac-Man to pass right through the enemy ghosts. The game uses a tile system to detect collision; in other words, the whole game board is divided into small tiles, and each sprite’s location is tracked as they pass through those tiles. The ghosts obviously don’t harm each other, but if Pac-Man are on the same tile at the same time, they are said to collide. Normally, this means Pac-Man dies, but if the ghosts are turned blue from one of the power pellets, Pac-Man instead eats the ghost and survives. However, if both Pac-Man and the ghost head directly toward each other, and if each cross onto different tiles at the same time, without ever being on the same tile at the same time, then Pac-Man will just fly right through, untouched. (Or if the game’s in “blue time”, the ghost will pass through, uneaten.) And since the Ms. Pac-Man game is built on the same underlying engine, the same principle applies there, as well. Normally, this is a frame-perfect trick, so if you were to blindly attempt such a pass-through, you would only have a 1-in-60 chance of success. But continuous motion patterns help eliminate that variable, getting you your pass-through every time.

For the record, the all-time world record for most pass-throughs in a game is… up there. But we’re not here to talk about that, because they didn’t submit a run for this challenge! They also used different patterns on long perfect score games, whereas OOO, in a feat worthy of serious swag points, developed his own patterns for this challenge. (Note, he did credit Aart van Vilet for finding one of his Ms. Pac pass-throughs.) In his submissions at TG, OOO screenshot and labeled each pass-through in both of his runs – a total of seven on original Pac-Man and three on Ms. Pac-Man. But you know I’m here to cover it all, anyway.

Since OOO’s provided comments started with Pac-Man, we’ll start there:

OOO clearly used a starting pattern that sets up a pass-through with Blinky there, and then promptly sacrificed himself. So, you might figure, easy-peasy, right? Just do that six times, and you have six pass-through right there.

But here’s where it gets complicated. And it’s also where my previous study of Pac-Man perfect score techniques comes into play. Until you get into the late game, Pac-Man normally moves faster than the ghosts, allowing the player to outrun them. However, Pac-Man slows down while eating dots, which you obviously must do in escaping the start point. This small change of speed throws your initial pattern completely out of whack, since all the ghosts will now be in new positions as you speed along your old path. This means, until you can carve out enough area to plot a pass-through pattern on only clear terrain, you have to figure out a pass-through strategy for each life.

But that’s what OOO did! He made sure to check with me on the above pass-through, as it wasn’t exactly on a straight line. But if you watch, it clearly shows them crossing tiles over each other as Pinky turns north. It wasn’t appreciably different from his third pass-through, which was also on a corner:

For his fourth pass-through, OOO returned to Blinky, this time at the northeast junction:

The bulk of OOO’s play time comes between his fourth and fifth pass-throughs of Pinky, which both occur in the same spot:

At first glance, you might think he had finally landed on a clear-path pattern for his remaining pass-throughs, until you notice the other ghosts are all in different spots, a bunch of dots had regenerated, and he wasn’t even on the same board! Indeed, having spent all his spare lives, OOO had to accumulate enough points for that sixth bonus life, which he was just ten small dots away from at the end of the cherry board:

OOO got his seventh pass-through back where he started, along the right corridor:

For the record, I’m cool with OOO not rolling the dice on a 1-in-60 pass-through on his previous lives, since eating even one stray dot could foul up his subsequent patterns. But for the record, I’m glad he did roll those bones on his final life, even if Inky did deny him an eighth pass-through:

OOO used this opportunity to plug his own project, which I think is an awesome idea, and one more folks interested in these challenges should take advantage of:

PAC-MAN GHOST PASS THROUGH BOUNTY by OOO

When I saw this round of bounties on perfectpacman.com it was a huge coincidence that I was also finishing my five years journey to author and publish a fun book on the GREATEST ARCADE VIDEO GAMES. I have been arcade gaming for over four decades now and to create the book from concept to completion was one of my cherished life time goals. On one of these novel games I wrote about the incredible arcade phenomenon of Pac-Man. I had already done a lot of research on this title where my book covers the infamous ghost pass through and why it happens. For me the klaxon sounded just like munching on all four blue ghosts when this super bounty for the maximum number of pass throughs in one game came along. This time the whole idea was to exploit a weakness in the game design as many times as you can.

According to the Twin Galaxies Scoreboards there are 15 outstanding gamers who have officially scored the perfect Pac-Man score of 3,333,360 points. Over the past 44 years, these gamers are Rick Fothergill, Chris Ayra, Tim Balderramos, Neil Chapman, Donald Hayes, David Race, David Cruz, John Stoodley, Greg Sakundiak, Jake Goldberg, Derek Sevcik, Douglas Loyd, Peter Gatland, Chris Kola, and Jamey Pittman. That’s an incredibly long time for so few to attain the perfect score. We have to wait every 3 years on average before someone else can do it. All of these gamers are legends of Pac-Man and I think they deserve massive kudos on what they have achieved.

The perfect Pac-Man is for the perfect score, however this bounty challenge is what I would like to call the imperfect Pac-Man. It is solely due to the imperfection of the game code that allows you the opportunity to exploit the weakness of the ghost pass through. (Maybe I should create a term called “sprite-zing” for this trick, as in zinging through the ghost sprite, as “ghost pass through” is pretty long winded … LOL … verb – to move through an object without collision.) It was a long quest of discovery to determine under what circumstances you will be successful, find where it works most consistently, and then be able to perform the trick. It’s one thing to know what to do, but then it matters if you can execute. Then multiply that difficulty again by making sure every life in your game has at least one pass through and earn the extra Pac-Man as well for another pass through. It took a great amount of time and patience to get there. I was glad that I eventually worked out and could execute that every muncher I had passed through a ghost. Even better was my fifth Pac-Man did it twice, for seven in total.

Patterns are well known to be used in Pac-Man and they are very effective if you can execute them correctly. You also need to be able to complete the maze if you make a mistake. In the imperfect Pac-Man challenge there is the added challenge of split second timing to be in the same spot as the ghost when the check isn’t made. The program checks every split second that is very minute. When sprite-zing if you are not there when the check isn’t made it’s deflate Pac-Man every time.

Oh, but we ain’t done yet! Remember, this is the “girl power” bounty edition, and so we have Ms. Pac-Man to round out the set. The date of the achievement was September 30th – the last day of the bounty – and so I’m guessing that could be why OOO had developed only three pass-throughs on this run. Hey listen, it takes a procrastinator to know one. Note also, however, that forward motion patterns don’t work the same on Ms. Pac-Man, for the fact two of the ghosts – Blinky (red) and Pinky (pink) – are designed to begin advancing in different directions. (This measure was implemented specifically to thwart pattern players, who had figured out how to hog original Pac-Man machines for hours on end.) So regardless of any time crunch, it was only natural the Ms. Pac run would feature fewer pass-throughs.

OOO got the lucky blue board to start, getting my hopes up for a sweet opening screenshot. But instead, Ms. Pac met a quick death:

On his second life, the overall Ms. Pac strategy became clear. OOO hovered back and forth near the ghost pen, and darted for Blinky as she emerged, nailing the 1-in-60 chance:

From there, OOO cleared the board and advanced to the strawberry stage, where Inky finally got in on the pass-through fun:

Thank you to David Race for confirming a last-minute question I had, which is that Inky is not affected by the added ghost randomization, making him a prime pass-through target on this game. Inky was pressed into service yet again for OOO’s third and final pass-through of the run:

Poor Clyde got left out altogether. Alas, I must deduct a small quantity of swag points for failing to go for the 1-in-60 following the second pass-through, but OOO did redeem himself by taking those shots on his final three lives, sadly to no avail:

As an aside, I think Blinky would have the highest player-kill count of all baddies in video game history, would he not? Unlike the generic goombas and bats and slimes populating the stages of so many other long-lasting franchises, Blinky has an individual name, making him uniquely identifiable. And yet he’s everywhere! He’s the first out of the box on every single board of Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and most if not all of the derivative Pac family games. If you walk away from your game, Blinky’s the one who’s gonna gobble up your remaining lives. And here he is again, happy to add a few notches in his ghostly belt – at least when you fail to walk right through him.

Anyway, OOO’s remarks continue with the Ms. Pac-Man side of the challenge:

MS. PAC-MAN GHOST PASS THROUGH BOUNTY by OOO

Since I was going to try out for the Pac-Man bounty, I thought it would be very interesting to do the same bounty playing Ms. Pac-Man. As patterns don’t work in Ms. Pac-Man like they do for Pac-Man, this was going to be a more creative challenge. I didn’t have much time left to play this game after spending a great deal of time on Pac-Man. I tried to find a pattern for the start of the game and this was very difficult due to the random movement of the ghosts. So I thought I would start off with a free style pass, that is one without using a pattern. I have to credit Aart Van Vliet for working out the second pass on the second maze when I went through Inky. (Aart is the current world champion on Ms. Pac-Man with a mind boggling score of 955,860 points.) I then worked out a more consistent pass after that and executed the move, for three in total.

When I look back on Ms. Pac-Man it’s an incredible creation with smoother looking graphics, four challenging mazes, patterns like in Pac-Man don’t work, there is no perfect score, and it’s just a fun caper with the four crazy ghosts. Due to the random bonus which moves through the maze, which is a very novel touch, your scores will vary depending on what bonus you collect.

Ms. Pac-Man is a very controversial game for many reasons. Pac-man was designed by Namco in Japan but they did not create Ms. Pac-Man. When Pac-Man was released in Japan it was a moderate success. Bally Midway management marketed and licensed the game in the USA and turned the game into a sensation, becoming the no.1 selling arcade machine in the world. Merchandising Pac-Man was also a financial bonanza.

Meanwhile unbeknownst to Bally Midway and Namco, General Computer Corporation (GCC) who developed speed up kits for Missile Command decided to create a game called Crazy Otto by reverse engineering the hardware and software of Pac-Man. They used the name Crazy Otto to avoid copyright infringement instead of using Pac-Man in the game name. After disassembling the code and figuring out how it works, they wanted to kill the predictability of Pac-Man with this new game. They randomised the monster algorithm so patterns would not work anymore. They even planned to have vertical tunnels but it didn’t work, as the monsters would never go through them. GCC then approached Bally Midway who liked the idea and they changed the name from Crazy Otto, to Super Pac-Man (which would be later used for the name of another pac-game), and finally to Ms. Pac-Man. The game was a huge success and proved to be even more popular than Pac-Man at the cashbox.

The GCC code overlayed on top of the existing Namco code, so an additional PCB was installed on top of the original Pac-Man pcb. GCC knew of the collision bug in Pac-Man, what we call a pass through of the ghost by Pac-Man, but they left that code untouched for Ms. Pac-Man. Thank goodness they did, otherwise this bounty would be impossible, and I wouldn’t be able to write up this story.

If you would like a super fun read on arcade video games and more information on the ghost pass through in Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, you can buy my book at https://arcadefun.bigcartel.com/product/the-greatest-arcade-video-games or scan the QR code below. More information can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1683549692/the-greatest-arcade-video-games. This book includes all things arcade with games in detail, gamer interviews, tasty recipes, competitions and leagues, crossword puzzles, trivia, comics, world records, 250 full color pages, 600+ images, 46,000+ words, and a whole lot of arcade fun.

I’d like to give a great big thanks to ersatz_cats for running the bounties and Twin Galaxies for hosting the game submissions. To all readers at perfectpacman.com thanks for tuning in. I hope you found this write up interesting and may all your games be good ones… woka woka.

KICKSTARTER – TGAVG https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1683549692/the-greatest-arcade-video-games

Absolutely to check out OOO’s book project at the link above! And thank you again to both OOO and Aranea for submitting to this round’s challenges!!

FINAL FANTASY 5: DEFEAT NEO EXDEATH UNDER “FOUR JOB FIESTA” RULES WITHOUT USING ANY ABILITY MORE THAN ONCE

That ends our non-ersatz submissions for this round. But you know me, I like to clean up the neglected challenges, if for no other reason so I have something to write about for them. My Final Fantasy 5 challenge was definitely the most complicated one I’ve offered thus far – I had to add rules descriptions into the comments because I ran out of character count, lol. So I’m not terribly surprised no one else submitted to this, even if it was timed to coincide with Four Job Fiesta season.

I’ll skip the lengthy description of what exactly “without using any ability more than once” means, since you can find the details on the bounty page. But it more or less means what you’d expect. You can cast all your spells, but each spell can only be cast once. You can use each Chemist mix exactly once. Single use commands like !Dance and !Mug can only be used once, etc. Innate abilities like Monk’s Counter and Samuria’s Shirahadori are unlimited, since you aren’t commanding them. Oh, and on top of that restriction, you have to play by “Four Job Fiesta” rules, meaning you must limit yourself to abilities from only four of the game’s available 20+ jobs.

When I issued this challenge, I had an idea of how it would be conquered. But since nobody stepped up, I went ahead and implemented my own plan, on the final day of submission. First, it’s just a no-brainer to use Bard, both for “Hero’s Rime” (which boosts all your characters’ levels) and for “Swift Song” (which makes your characters faster). What makes these two moves golden is that you use them once, but can gain a massive benefit from those single uses, as long as you can protect your vocalists while they continue singing. Bard also grants access to Apollo Harp, which wrecks creatures with “Dragon” type. This includes the Grand Cross portion of Neo Exdeath, as well as any creature you use the “Dragon Kiss” Chemist !Mix on. In fact, Chemist should just be your second anyway, since !Mix is such a versatile toolbox. (I would’ve also pointed out that almost all your healing will be by items, and that Chemist’s innate Pharmacology ability will boost those items, but really, you should bring plenty of Elixirs anyway.) Mystic Knight is an easy choice for third job, given Break !Spellblade is an insta-kill on the Almagest portion of NED. And I chose regular Knight for my fourth, since that let me throw shields on folks to block tree form’s White Hole move. (I’m assuming each and every one of you has played FF5 extensively, and knows exactly what I’m talking about here.)

I completed this challenge, and then soon after realized I did a stupid and forgot to record my menu configuration, which I had specifically set out as a requirement in the rules. But this gave me a chance to shave off one extraneous !Mix ability I had used during Exdeath’s non-tree-form. I gave !Sing to my Knight, so both he and my Bard could pound out their chori (a word I was not expecting to use), and equipped both with Elven Mantles to avoid being knocked out of their songs by physical attacks. My non-singers got Hermes Sandals, or “Running Shoes” in this translation. My Knight also got Defender, and my Bard held Main Gauche, again for added blockeration. I was reluctant to swap equipment during battle, since this can sometimes reset stats, so I gave Apollo Harp to my Chemist. Since that took an ability slot to do, this meant my Chemist couldn’t equip a shield, and was thus vulnerable to petrification from White Hole. But at the same time, I did give “Equip Shields” to my Bard, and while it wouldn’t have been against my written rules to give that same ability to my Chemist, some might have quibbled over that distinction.

I was able to throw a Hasty-Ade mix on my Knight, which honestly may have been redundant. Even without haste, everyone would get so fast from a sufficiently built up “Speed Song” that it wouldn’t matter. Goliath Tonic !Drink is another ability I probably could have done without, though I preferred the insurance. As expected, Faris the Chemist did fall to White Hole a few times, but her sister Lenna was robust enough to safely revive her each time.

I ended up using the Dragon’s Kiss combo on tree form, since both of the key portions of NED would fall easily. In fact, since I cast Break !Spellblade during tree form, I ended up using no special abilities during Neo Exdeath (although obviously that casting of Break paid off during NED). Flare did end both my “Speed Song” and “Hero Song”, but not before I got sufficient use out of them. From there, I went ham on ol’ Mr. Spooky Tree, and his final form. I never got hit by either Almagest or Grand Cross. Once I was out of danger, I whittled down the front face down before firing off Magic Lamp to insta-kill NED’s last remaining segment (a trick you would know about if you read my Four Job Fiesta guide back in June).

Literally just that easy. My final score was “34”, for each character being at level 34 going into the fight.

It’s a fun challenge. I did have to grind some jobs out and steal some Aegis Shields on an old save file I had laying around. It would be interesting to see how well one could do with added restrictions. Maybe the Bard songs are too powerful? Maybe one could also restrict particular items like Elixirs and Hi-Potions to single usage? If someone feels that daring, I’d love to see it!

NES TETRIS: CLEAR THE MOST LINES / SCORE THE MOST POINTS WHILE CLEARING ONLY TRIPLES

This was another two-way challenge with two different track listings. I’ve gotta be honest, I’m surprised no one submitted anything to this challenge. I posted the Metroid one to a single Discord, and immediately got a massive run submission (albeit for a run the player had already completed within the bounty window). I posted this one to three Tetris Discords, multiple times, just certain that someone would give it a shot. But no dice.

At any rate, when playing around with this challenge prior to posting the bounty, I managed to put together one solid run of 51 lines from a level 0 start:

But I hadn’t attempted any high score run, which would benefit from a higher level start. With about an hour to go before the bounty deadline, I fired up some NES Tetris, hoping to put together something together to show, and to at least beat my 17,473 practice score above.

Unfortunately, triples-only Tetris isn’t as easy as it looks. While regular Tetris routinely finds you with single-piece dependencies, when going for exclusively triples, you often find yourself with double-piece dependencies. In other words, you need an “S” piece and a “J”-piece in order to proceed. I struggled to get anything together for a while. So many times, I made some grand escape, which I thought for sure would herald a giant score, only to fail to get the one piece I needed to stabilize. I didn’t think the added level 9 speed was hampering me. I was sure it was just bad freaking luck on the pieces.

About a half hour in, I still had only a high score of just over 15k. But I kept on. You may notice here the left well. I usually play with a Tetris well on the right, but per some advice in one Tetris Discord, I tried to switch to a left well, since the pieces are able to reach the left wall quicker. When playing at level 9 speed, I could use all the help I could get.

Soon after my first triple, the flaw of my setup became apparent. However, a four-bar bailed me out, allowing me to continue.

As you can see, piece luck was failing me again. That “J”-piece – my equivalent of a four-bar – had to be burned atop a growing stack. I had to figure out a way to fill in that right gap first. Thankfully, my luck turned around, and the game gave me what I needed to stabilize for a bit. Even better, I promptly got three more “J”s for two more triples, taking my score into the 12k range.

As my stack began to grow again, a failed “T”-flip gave me a gap, which would complicate any attempts to stay stabilized for the long haul. Thankfully, I did get an extra “J” to slip into an overhang, allowing me to extend my game just a little longer.

My game seriously started breaking down in the higher elevations. But my persistence paid off. The game finally rewarded me with not one but two “J”s for the final stroke:

And that was it. An inadvertent double-clear ended my run at a score of 18,193:

I kept playing the final half hour, but to no avail. But hey, at least I beat my practice score once. I posted my submission literally within the final two seconds of the three-month-long bounty window.

I am definitely going to revisit triples-only Tetris at some point in these challenges. I find it just too interesting. I’d love to see what an actual accomplished Tetris player could achieve under the restriction, in either the “most lines” or “highest score” variants.

NEW BOUNTY CHALLENGES

With all of that out of the way, it’s time to start talking about our new challenges. But first, from here on, I’m going to be changing up the way these are implemented. I’ve been working on a four- or five-month rotation, resulting in many of these bounties going without any external submissions. Granted, I never wanted a huge number of submissions, since that would just mean more work for me. But I was hoping for like an average of two submissions per challenge – something to write about other than my own game play, which I can write about any time I wanted to. (People have suggested I offer monetary prizes, but let’s be honest, this site is already a money sink for me, and I just want these challenges to be fun and not something folks argue over because they have stakes on the line.)

I’m also just personally wary of deadlines, because if nothing else, you never know how the rest of your life will line up with an arbitrary deadline set four months out. You could find yourself swamped with more trial coverage than you were expecting, and then going “Oh fuck, I’ve gotta write about the bounties now, too.” Wouldn’t it be sweet to have a system where I can just write about these challenges whenever I want, whenever suits my schedule, and whenever there’s enough game play from others to take time writing about?

So going forward, each PPMDC bounty will be slot-based. In other words, I’ll put up a challenge, and there will be three “prizes” to claim, and no more. (As always, we’re using the term “prize” loosely here, lol.) And what’s more, each of those three will be added to our list of “Video Game Players of the Century”, regardless of how the runs stack up against each other.

Of course, this rules out “highest score” style competitions, which will now have to be framed in terms of “score X point or more” as a strict threshold. It also means the challenges will have to be more inherently difficult. I was keeping minimum thresholds low to encourage participation, but honestly (as we saw with last round’s SMB3 challenge) folks get shy about participating at a minimal level when someone else comes in and blows the challenge away. This change will make each submission something meaningful, even if someone else goes for added swag. Oh, and this approach also incentivizes prompt submission, while eliminating last-minute sniping (inclusive of folks who think to themselves “Oh, I’ll come back and snipe this at the end” and then forget about it altogether).

Admittedly, I didn’t have time this month to come up with a full suite of new challenges of this style to my liking. But I do intend to introduce a couple more in the not too distant future. Heck, this approach allows me to add new bounty challenges any time I want, without having to worry about how it lines up with the existing deadlines. Hooray for flexibility! At any rate, I do have two new challenges for you all:

You’ve all played the arcade classic Galaga, right? But have you ever played it without missing any shots? That’s right, instead of going “no-hit”, we’re going “no-miss”. Your goal is to arrive at Stage 7 (the second bonus stage) without missing with a single one of your shots! Can it even be done? I don’t know, but I’d assume so. Note that missed shots on the bonus stage WILL count against you, so you’d probably be wise to give your phasers a rest there. The first three players to submit valid runs will be recognized, regardless of final score.

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/galaga-clear-the-first-six-stages-without-missing-a-shot-ppmdc

Now that we’ve entered the business of repeating games, I’m going to repeat a Mario game. In fact, I’m repeating the last Mario game we featured, SMB3, only because this challenge tickles my fancy too much. We saw previously how Warp Whistles can be used to rack up stage clears by looping through worlds 5 and 6 four times. Now your goal is to collect as many anchors as possible. Start by collecting the anchors from the hidden mushroom houses in world 2 and 4, then get the one in 6, then fire off your Whistles to repeat world 6 three times for three more. It’s maximum anchorage!! Oh, and you can’t die either. Did I mention that? Because otherwise any shmuck with enough time could grind it out no problemma. Since you only get one shot at each level, you’d better make sure you hit your required coin counts when you’re supposed to.

https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/super-mario-bros-3-collect-maximum-anchors-without-dying-ppmdc

That’s all the new bounties for now. I know, it just doesn’t feel like a round of PPMDC bounties without a damageless challenge. Don’t worry, once I come up with a damageless goal I think is appropriate for my new approach, I’ll get another one in. And if you have any ideas for new challenges, please let me know!! As always, thanks for reading. Oh, and don’t forget the ongoing Street Fighter 2 challenge with ThecePlay. That one is a high score competition, and it has actual prizes in the form of free shoes courtesy of LA Gear:

https://www.twingalaxies.com/game/bounty-challenge/bounty-challenges/the-la-gear-retro-fighting-game-challenge-brought-to-you-by-perfectpacmancom