Elevator Action World Record
As I mentioned in my previous Elevator Action post, Taito did an excellent port of this game to the NES. It was so well done, that Taito added screen shots of the arcade game to the back of the box:
Arcade screen shot (notice the pink bar at the top and the credits at the bottom)
NES Elevator Screen Shot, no pink bar!
It was common in the industry for game companies to "fib" on their boxes and show arcade screen shots for what was clearly not going to be an experience that even came close to the arcade counterpart. I remember reading somewhere about Street Fighter II being released for the Sinclair with a disclaimer that the actual game would look nothing like the screen shots presented on the box.
Anyways, I started to pick apart the scoring, then I looked up the manual on http://www.nintendoage.com/ and just my luck the manual lists all of the scoring... duh! You get the most points by jump kicking an enemy, especially if the lights are out.
But I did learn something new, apparently there is a 2nd enemy in the game: a security guard! I still haven't seen this character so I can only assume he appears on much later levels of the game.
The current Twin Galaxies world record for this game is 73,400. A casual game for me recently was about 16,000, with about 8000 points per level. In theory I'd only have to make it to the tenth round to accomplish the Elevator Action World Record, however you get a 1000 point bonus multiplied by the level number at the completion of each level. So it might be possible to get it by completing the 8th stage.
In addition to picking apart the points I also made some determination on how the AI works. It's completely random which is good and sucks at the same time. It's good in that you can have an awesomely fantastic game if luck is in your favor, or it can suck if the randomness is so unpredictable that it reaches a point where the game is impossible to advance. Games with random elements ultimately become endurance contests and generally require patience over skill. Speaking of endurance contests... all of this Elevator Action doesn't mean I've given up on the Popeye record... I still work on that pretty often, but I'm to the point on Popeye where its purely an endurance contest more than anything else.
Arcade screen shot (notice the pink bar at the top and the credits at the bottom)
NES Elevator Screen Shot, no pink bar!
It was common in the industry for game companies to "fib" on their boxes and show arcade screen shots for what was clearly not going to be an experience that even came close to the arcade counterpart. I remember reading somewhere about Street Fighter II being released for the Sinclair with a disclaimer that the actual game would look nothing like the screen shots presented on the box.
Anyways, I started to pick apart the scoring, then I looked up the manual on http://www.nintendoage.com/ and just my luck the manual lists all of the scoring... duh! You get the most points by jump kicking an enemy, especially if the lights are out.
But I did learn something new, apparently there is a 2nd enemy in the game: a security guard! I still haven't seen this character so I can only assume he appears on much later levels of the game.
The current Twin Galaxies world record for this game is 73,400. A casual game for me recently was about 16,000, with about 8000 points per level. In theory I'd only have to make it to the tenth round to accomplish the Elevator Action World Record, however you get a 1000 point bonus multiplied by the level number at the completion of each level. So it might be possible to get it by completing the 8th stage.
In addition to picking apart the points I also made some determination on how the AI works. It's completely random which is good and sucks at the same time. It's good in that you can have an awesomely fantastic game if luck is in your favor, or it can suck if the randomness is so unpredictable that it reaches a point where the game is impossible to advance. Games with random elements ultimately become endurance contests and generally require patience over skill. Speaking of endurance contests... all of this Elevator Action doesn't mean I've given up on the Popeye record... I still work on that pretty often, but I'm to the point on Popeye where its purely an endurance contest more than anything else.
Labels: elevator action, twin galaxies
posted by Staff at
8:22 PM
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