I'm a member of a gaming community with a speedrunning subset, and it's quite a fun thing to see what obscure games can and have been speedrun. From Skulljagger to Keith Courage, speedrunners will optimize anything. And I bless them for it.
Definitely! It's just generally not something I enjoy doing myself, but it's always impressive to see just how crazy things can get in the pursuit of beating games as fast as possible! :B
NO ONE is ever mentally prepped to work at Amazon. I have a friend who did; it was Hell, and despite hitting his metrics he was ultimately let go in such a way that he was unable to use Amazon as a work reference. :P
It was the last shareware title published by Apogee along with _Stargunner_ . And then _Duke Nukem 3D_ became such a hit, that the Apogee label was basically retired.
Not gonna lie, my inner nostalgia fanboy went a lil nuts when you broke out the Basic code. Went straight back to my high school days when I was first learning it 😍😁
At a very basic level, using BASIC to solve problems like this is still incredibly useful and very fast to do in QBASIC and QuickBASIC. There really aren't many good modern ways to do that kind of thing quickly anymore. :P
My family owned this game on Atari ST back in the day, I think we only had one or two other games. So I'm personally amazed there are speedrunners for it!
omg I used to play this on C64 as a kid... on a green-white screen, so dark red and dark blue were virtually indistinguishable, and playing that toy game was IMPOSSIBLE xD on C64 I remember there was 20 dollar bills, and I remember how slow and tedious paying the bill and TAKING the change was. thank you for this rabbit hole, I will definitely check out the C64 speedruns :D I made a PC port of the C64 version, so I could play it xD
If someone were determined enough, something I don't put behind speedrunners for a moment, there's no doubt some weird tech that can glitch you through animations and such. This looks like it runs on the AGI engine, so anything that works in other games on that engine will probably work here too. :P Also, I like the new logo. The particle splash in particular is a nice touch. Somehow missed 301, so I'll go track that down real quick.
I love you so much for this. My brother used to play this game and I watched as a child. I had no idea what the text meant (I haven't even learn to read German, let alone English). But I found it so fascinating. I shared your video with him :) Thank you for your insight!
I can imagine some future speed-runner , thanking Gemini/Pixelmusement for this video while playing this game, that would be so cool. Strangely enough :-) Great video I might add :-)
You never know! TBH, I'm more excited at the possibility of any games I make at the future gaining notoriety for sake of speedrunning so I'm making sure in my future games ideas I have speedrunner-friendly features, like a game timer that can be toggled, being able to monitor achievements earned in a run even if you already have them from prior runs, and maybe even built in randomizers for any ideas which seem suitable for that! Just have to actually MAKE one of these ideas at some point. :P
Now I'm done. My conclusion is that you're nuts. Bonkers. So much effort. lol ... really nice. well done! :D Not submitting your playthroughs though is kind of a mistake. :)
I'm really not a speedrunner. I enjoy the concept and logistics of how speedruns work, but not the process of performing them. I had to do the Intermediate run THREE TIMES to get it right and was fed up with it by the third attempt. >:(
@@Pixelmusement Patience, Persistance, Perseverance! :D I certainly don't have neither for doing hundreds of runs of the same, over and over again, just so I can shave off a second or so. :D
@@solsticeprojekt1937 For me, it's more the fact that I hate doing things over and over again. At least, not all at once. If something's enjoyable then yes, I want to do it again, but not RIGHT AWAY. :P
08:18- 10:20 wut ?!? 10:21 *WTAF ?!?!?!* Love the video btw 🤗 I played this game quite a lot on the C64 Also super interesting that this game was designed and programmed by none other than Al Lowe who`s most famous for the majority of the not-so-kid-friendly *Leisure Suit Larry* games
I keep an alphabetical list of games covered on ADG on my website in case you want to browse or search that list, plus you can always use the channel search feature here on RUclips! :B www.pixelships.com/adg/index2.html
DOSBox 0.74-3 does not support that effect; it's missing from all AGI titles running in that version of DOSBox as it's not adjusting the pixels, rather it's adjusting the display timing. I think other branches of DOSBox may support it.
30:17 o knew this when this game was new and i played it on commodores. knew that airport was 10x as efficient as trains or produce, toys was way too randon to bother estimating even a rough average.
Impressive work Kris. This would be a good title to run through one of those deep learning machines like Deepmind, and see what other possible optimizations there might be. (Of course, if there's a glitch, as there is with Qbert on the Atari 2600, the AI will find it and happily exploit it.)
Originally, computer hardware ran at 60 Hz and so when you have DOSBox configured for a legacy mode such as Tandy or EGA, you will get 60 Hz. VGA however runs at 70 Hz. In the case of Sierra AGI titles though, they time things out with the interrupt timer, not vertical blanks, so regardless of which display mode you're using it will run the correct speed. (At least, from what I've tested. There may be certain aspects which are affected by this.)
@@Pixelmusement :D Nothing wrong with learning some game stuff and being on couch too! You don't have to run the game itself in the hotseat to have the knowledge~
in general, it wouldn't completely invalidate the run, just like super mario bros 3 and the hands near the end of the run, it comes down to rng and you'd take the time loss; HOWEVER, if that's the rule that the community as a whole comes to an agreement to, by all means do it, and maybe at least record if the train occurred or not welcome to speedrunning my friend, and good luck on your endeavors :)
Glitchless runs are the only ones that count for me, at least as far as legitimate playthroughs are concerned. If you intentionally use a glitch to circumvent part of a game, you’ve effectively cheated, and if you’ve cheated, you can’t be considered to have legitimately beat the game. There are grey areas. For example, I wouldn’t consider a damage boost in Castlevania a glitch, it’s more a mechanical quirk. Some glitches are so obviously cheats though, I’m not sure why they're even considered acceptable, speedrun or not. One example is being able to instantly remove your wanted stars in the PC version of GTA III, by going in and out of a menu. It just renders one of the most important mechanics of the game obsolete. Unfortunately, most speedrunners will use glitches. It’s one of the reasons I lost interest in the scene, it just became a big cheat fest to me. You don’t appear to have used any here though, so good job!
It actually varies depending on the game. Most games with glitches have separate "glitchless" categories, but there are some games out there where the opposite is true and instead, to be allowed to use glitches you need to run a "glitched" category. The main reason it didn't work out that way for the majority though is exactly because of that whole grey-area thing, as it's generally easier to just have a category banning them entirely than placing qualifiers on what is or isn't allowed on a non-qualified category. Glitched categories generally occur on games which had no glitches for the longest time, but then someone found one which was both difficult to perform and significantly altered the game, thus rather than recategorize years of runs, they make a new Glitched category and any% becomes assumed glitchless or minor-glitches only. :B
@@Pixelmusement I’m not saying people shouldn’t use glitches, it’s their prerogative and at least there are categories to differentiate them, but like I said, in many cases those runs just aren’t legit to me. It got to the point where almost every speedrun I watched used glitches. I don’t enjoy that, I’d be looking forward to seeing how they got through a certain part, and they’d just clip through a wall or something, it’s disappointing. Nowadays I take it as read that a speedrun will feature them, unless it says otherwise I appreciate that some glitches take skill to pull off, but using sleight of hand in a poker match to fix cards also takes skill, it’s still cheating though. I guess I just like to see players stick to the rules… and by that I mean the rules of the game, as set out by the developers who created it, not the rules of any particular speeddrun category or community.
I'm a member of a gaming community with a speedrunning subset, and it's quite a fun thing to see what obscure games can and have been speedrun. From Skulljagger to Keith Courage, speedrunners will optimize anything. And I bless them for it.
Definitely! It's just generally not something I enjoy doing myself, but it's always impressive to see just how crazy things can get in the pursuit of beating games as fast as possible! :B
Wow. That music immediately pulled me back 25 years. Talk about a buried memory
"A strategy is to just drop the toys you don't feel like sorting."
Well now I'm also mentally prepped to work at Amazon
NO ONE is ever mentally prepped to work at Amazon. I have a friend who did; it was Hell, and despite hitting his metrics he was ultimately let go in such a way that he was unable to use Amazon as a work reference. :P
Sounds like we're about to cover Death Rally.
It was the last shareware title published by Apogee along with _Stargunner_ . And then _Duke Nukem 3D_ became such a hit, that the Apogee label was basically retired.
Not gonna lie, my inner nostalgia fanboy went a lil nuts when you broke out the Basic code. Went straight back to my high school days when I was first learning it 😍😁
At a very basic level, using BASIC to solve problems like this is still incredibly useful and very fast to do in QBASIC and QuickBASIC. There really aren't many good modern ways to do that kind of thing quickly anymore. :P
My family owned this game on Atari ST back in the day, I think we only had one or two other games. So I'm personally amazed there are speedrunners for it!
omg I used to play this on C64 as a kid... on a green-white screen, so dark red and dark blue were virtually indistinguishable, and playing that toy game was IMPOSSIBLE xD
on C64 I remember there was 20 dollar bills, and I remember how slow and tedious paying the bill and TAKING the change was.
thank you for this rabbit hole, I will definitely check out the C64 speedruns :D
I made a PC port of the C64 version, so I could play it xD
And yet nowadays, you could just use a C64 emulator instead... That's some serious dedication to wanting to play an old game! :o
@@Pixelmusement yeah I trust unreal engine and the flexibility of code more than a free emulator :D
If someone were determined enough, something I don't put behind speedrunners for a moment, there's no doubt some weird tech that can glitch you through animations and such. This looks like it runs on the AGI engine, so anything that works in other games on that engine will probably work here too. :P
Also, I like the new logo. The particle splash in particular is a nice touch. Somehow missed 301, so I'll go track that down real quick.
I love you so much for this. My brother used to play this game and I watched as a child. I had no idea what the text meant (I haven't even learn to read German, let alone English). But I found it so fascinating. I shared your video with him :) Thank you for your insight!
Well congrats you can now add speedrunner to your resume.
Also this was an unexpected game to Speedrun.
I can imagine some future speed-runner , thanking Gemini/Pixelmusement for this video while playing this game, that would be so cool. Strangely enough :-) Great video I might add :-)
You never know! TBH, I'm more excited at the possibility of any games I make at the future gaining notoriety for sake of speedrunning so I'm making sure in my future games ideas I have speedrunner-friendly features, like a game timer that can be toggled, being able to monitor achievements earned in a run even if you already have them from prior runs, and maybe even built in randomizers for any ideas which seem suitable for that! Just have to actually MAKE one of these ideas at some point. :P
There's a Ducktales MS-DOS game which blew my mind back then how excellent quality it was. Every mini game on it was spot on.
Now I'm done. My conclusion is that you're nuts. Bonkers. So much effort. lol ... really nice. well done! :D Not submitting your playthroughs though is kind of a mistake. :)
I'm really not a speedrunner. I enjoy the concept and logistics of how speedruns work, but not the process of performing them. I had to do the Intermediate run THREE TIMES to get it right and was fed up with it by the third attempt. >:(
@@Pixelmusement Patience, Persistance, Perseverance! :D I certainly don't have neither for doing hundreds of runs of the same, over and over again, just so I can shave off a second or so. :D
@@solsticeprojekt1937 For me, it's more the fact that I hate doing things over and over again. At least, not all at once. If something's enjoyable then yes, I want to do it again, but not RIGHT AWAY. :P
I loved this game when I was a kid! fond memories playing it in a C64.
08:18- 10:20
wut ?!?
10:21
*WTAF ?!?!?!*
Love the video btw 🤗
I played this game quite a lot on the C64
Also super interesting that this game was designed and programmed by none other than Al Lowe
who`s most famous for the majority of the not-so-kid-friendly *Leisure Suit Larry* games
Yeah... optimizing units of currency for sake of speed... Only in a game like this would you ever need to do something like that! :B
I wonder if ADG has done an episode on Ducktales: Quest for Gold? That was a Ducktales game that actually involved accounting!
I keep an alphabetical list of games covered on ADG on my website in case you want to browse or search that list, plus you can always use the channel search feature here on RUclips! :B www.pixelships.com/adg/index2.html
The music at the start of the airport made me think of the words "Airport, airport, nothing like an airport"
I really don't know why I'm going to watch this video, but you've made it ... so I'm gonna watch it. ^_^
One of my favourite games... on C64.
That's probably the version most people are familiar with... if any of them. :B
13:50 DosBox does not support the screen shaking effect for the passing train? Or is that only in the C64 version?
DOSBox 0.74-3 does not support that effect; it's missing from all AGI titles running in that version of DOSBox as it's not adjusting the pixels, rather it's adjusting the display timing. I think other branches of DOSBox may support it.
30:17 o knew this when this game was new and i played it on commodores. knew that airport was 10x as efficient as trains or produce, toys was way too randon to bother estimating even a rough average.
Impressive work Kris. This would be a good title to run through one of those deep learning machines like Deepmind, and see what other possible optimizations there might be. (Of course, if there's a glitch, as there is with Qbert on the Atari 2600, the AI will find it and happily exploit it.)
There's also debugging features so you would have to find some way to ensure said AI doesn't utilize those. :P
I'm confused. Why would the game run at 60Hz? Because it's locked to your screen's refresh rate?
Originally, computer hardware ran at 60 Hz and so when you have DOSBox configured for a legacy mode such as Tandy or EGA, you will get 60 Hz. VGA however runs at 70 Hz. In the case of Sierra AGI titles though, they time things out with the interrupt timer, not vertical blanks, so regardless of which display mode you're using it will run the correct speed. (At least, from what I've tested. There may be certain aspects which are affected by this.)
I gotta admit that this is not quite what I was expecting
Whoah! I played this on the C64 a bit at my second cousin's like 35 years ago!
That would've been back when the game was brand new. ;)
See ya at GDQ then~!
Not as a runner, that's for sure. If I ever make a game which someone runs at one though I'd be OK with joining the couch to comment on things! :B
@@Pixelmusement :D Nothing wrong with learning some game stuff and being on couch too! You don't have to run the game itself in the hotseat to have the knowledge~
in general, it wouldn't completely invalidate the run, just like super mario bros 3 and the hands near the end of the run, it comes down to rng and you'd take the time loss; HOWEVER, if that's the rule that the community as a whole comes to an agreement to, by all means do it, and maybe at least record if the train occurred or not
welcome to speedrunning my friend, and good luck on your endeavors :)
Glitchless runs are the only ones that count for me, at least as far as legitimate playthroughs are concerned. If you intentionally use a glitch to circumvent part of a game, you’ve effectively cheated, and if you’ve cheated, you can’t be considered to have legitimately beat the game.
There are grey areas. For example, I wouldn’t consider a damage boost in Castlevania a glitch, it’s more a mechanical quirk. Some glitches are so obviously cheats though, I’m not sure why they're even considered acceptable, speedrun or not. One example is being able to instantly remove your wanted stars in the PC version of GTA III, by going in and out of a menu. It just renders one of the most important mechanics of the game obsolete.
Unfortunately, most speedrunners will use glitches. It’s one of the reasons I lost interest in the scene, it just became a big cheat fest to me. You don’t appear to have used any here though, so good job!
It actually varies depending on the game. Most games with glitches have separate "glitchless" categories, but there are some games out there where the opposite is true and instead, to be allowed to use glitches you need to run a "glitched" category. The main reason it didn't work out that way for the majority though is exactly because of that whole grey-area thing, as it's generally easier to just have a category banning them entirely than placing qualifiers on what is or isn't allowed on a non-qualified category. Glitched categories generally occur on games which had no glitches for the longest time, but then someone found one which was both difficult to perform and significantly altered the game, thus rather than recategorize years of runs, they make a new Glitched category and any% becomes assumed glitchless or minor-glitches only. :B
@@Pixelmusement I’m not saying people shouldn’t use glitches, it’s their prerogative and at least there are categories to differentiate them, but like I said, in many cases those runs just aren’t legit to me.
It got to the point where almost every speedrun I watched used glitches. I don’t enjoy that, I’d be looking forward to seeing how they got through a certain part, and they’d just clip through a wall or something, it’s disappointing. Nowadays I take it as read that a speedrun will feature them, unless it says otherwise
I appreciate that some glitches take skill to pull off, but using sleight of hand in a poker match to fix cards also takes skill, it’s still cheating though.
I guess I just like to see players stick to the rules… and by that I mean the rules of the game, as set out by the developers who created it, not the rules of any particular speeddrun category or community.