Will anyone ever hold the DK, DKJr, and DK3 records at the same time?

[DiggingInNY]

Greg is correct at least to the extent that it's not the same ROMset played in the US, but rather the original Japanese version. (Proof is at 12:45 on the last part, where Goro is called "Nyamco"). Is the Japanese version easier? I don't know.

It's also worth mentioning that we know very little about that video, the player, etc.

For all we know, this performance was cut together from save states or involves some form of tool assistance. We really can't know without the original INP. If the INP is on that ReplayBurners site I can't find it.

I have to say, my instinct is that the gameplay is almost inhumanly perfect. Throw in a death or some botched bonus stages or something and I would say "okay, this is legit, he's just really good," but when a performance is flawless from first to last board, I can't look at it without at least some skepticism.

I was reviewing the Mappy video George posted and compared it to a brief test game I played on MAME and I can tell you that the YouTube performance was done on Difficulty A. Here is the proof. In Round 1, I timed how long it takes from when the stage music begins to the Hurry alarm. In Difficulty A it takes about 84 seconds and in Difficulty B it's 72 seconds. The Hurry alarm comes sooner on harder settings. Also there are differences in the number of enemies for each stage across different difficulty levels. The first difference in number of enemies per stage across Difficulties A and B is Stage 10. On Difficulty A, there are 5 Meowkies and 1 Goro, as seen in the video, while in B, it's 6 Meowkies and 1 Goro. I can understand why Greg is skeptical, the game was done on easy settings. I have played Mappy enough to know that some techniques that I use in Difficulty A, do not work in Difficulty B.

[DiggingInNY]

Chris, I agree with your comment. The performance looked too polished. I don't care how good you are in a game, you're going to fuck up a lot, even if it does not result in a loss of life.

[marky_d]

Yeah, I saw a list of Japanese arcade scores from Gamest magazine that listed a 20m Mappy score. Problem is there were a lot of other questionable scores in the list. One that comes to mind was a 90k Pole Position score, so who knows.

[danman123456]

Didn't think about that but its really not that hard to splice together a bunch of save state replays you save locally via twitch and make it look like you did a single"perfect" game. I practiced mappy one night and got to 300k without dying because i kept trying the boards to clear it without dying to practice. If I put all that together it would look like I got 300k on my first man.

When you really think about it 50 rounds in Mappy even on Easy is hard to fathom you don't make ONE mistake or error or have one set of mice that don't cooperate and kill you. It's very easy to splice a video from "screen start" and make it look like you had this "perfect" run which sucks if that is what someone did. He may very well be a great Mappy player because the skill was there but to never make a single error for over an hour on such a fast paced game seems odd. Guess people could say the same for Georges Q-Bert run where he went several hours before his first death but it just seems so unlikely and Georges was camcordered too.

[gstrain]

For all we know, this performance was cut together from save states or involves some form of tool assistance. We really can't know without the original INP. If the INP is on that ReplayBurners site I can't find it.

The original INP file is attached.  It is a MAME .78 replay, but it will play back fine in WolfMAME .78 which you can download at http://wolfmame.marpirc.net/wolfmameplus-078.zip

You'll need both the mappy and mappyj romsets to play it back as it is a mappyj replay.  As others have commented, this is on the Japanese romset and on difficulty Rank A.  This isn't suprising since it's a Japanese replay and Rank A is default settings, and Japanese players usually use default settings.

I don't know much about the background of the recording and whether it might have been tool asissted or not.  Some of the Japanese members (or GEMANT) on MARP might know more about its origin and authenticity.  I first saw it in 2004 on a now defunct Japanese replay site.  Here were a few comments on the site (translated from Japanese) regarding the replay:

Post #1
Mappy no mistake 50Round
MAME 32Plus!0.78
My friend did it for me.

Post#2
The sophistication of the feel of the cat leading the way, including outside of the screen, the way it avoids 6000x2... It is impeccable in every way. I will make it my family treasure.
 
Post#3
Too good to be true.

[gstrain]

I asked GHEMANT from MARP about the Mappy replay and if it was legit.  GHEMANT is very knowledgable of the Japanese arcade scene and I trust his judgement on the Japanese scene highly.  He said that Afterburners has only legal replays (no TAS), so the replay is legitimate.

-George

[ChrisP]

Well then. I'm extremely impressed. I will make it my family treasure.

It would be cool to see what Bondo could do on "A" difficulty. And I guess his criticism of this game was technically correct.