‘At this point, it’s less of a game and more of a program’
“If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you pressed your buttons perfectly — if you pressed them a little bit earlier, a little bit later, or if you had perfect timing, perfect reactions, and you knew exactly what was going to happen — that’s basically what a tool-assisted speedrun is.”
The early highlight out of livestream marathon Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 has got to be TASBot, our new overlord. The tool-assisted speedrun robot “played” familiar games like Mario Kart 64 and Pokémon Red in unfamiliar ways resulting in, among other things, live Twitch chat being streaming to a Super Nintendo “through a rather absurd method.”
That’s putting it mildly. Skip to 36:25 to see what is now affectionately referred to as Pokémon plays Twitch. There’s commentary in the video, thank goodness, but for further reading, Ars Technica has a good summary. Earlier in the stream, there was a crazy tool-assisted Mario Kart 64 gauntlet (starting at 3:05) that four human players attempted to to survive (11:50).
And building off last year’s stream which saw Pong and Snake inside Super Mario World (what?), the TAS crew brought a new treat I won’t spoil here. Skip to 25:50 to watch the madness unfold.
For more archived Awesome Games Done Quick footage, check this page, or watch live on Twitch.
