steering barrels while climbing ladders - 8 way stick

[gstrain]

Yeah, I thought of the input viewer, but the problem is that there's plausible deniability there. A person could say "oh, I just hit both there by accident," or "I always do that, it's a habit." And you don't want to get into invalidating games where a person genuinely DOES accidentally hit both inputs.

Well, if you make a recording with a non-doctored version of MAME it won't record more than one direction at the same time, so if you were watching a recording that showed concurrent presses you'd know it was done in a doctored version of MAME.

I'd also argue nobody would ever play DK that way, so I'd call it implausible deniability anyway

And what a pain it would become to have to scrutinize the games that closely!

It's really not that much of a pain.  I usually try and watch all replays I'm actually watching with the -iv 1 option.  I find it more interesting to be able to see exactly what the player is doing with the controls (and it can be useful to notice legitimate "tricks").   Of course if you're just pressing F10, switching to Frameskip 11, and checking the final score, then having -iv on isn't going to help you notice anything.

[corey.chambers]

This is interesting news! This then raises the all important question. From here on out, should we only allow scores where a 4 way plate was used? And would someone like to test out the inp corruption theory? This obviously would rule out other joysticks other than the Nintendo one?

[ChrisP]

There are plenty of 4-way joysticks (easily demonstrable as such) that aren't Nintendo. So I wouldn't say it has to be Nintendo. And I don't understand why TG insist(ed) that it had to be stock. If a bat-top or something is more comfortable to a player, why not, as long as it's a 4-way?

I had to take a generic red balltop 4-way out of my cab actually when I bought it. And I have to say, in some ways that stick is more comfortable on my wrist during long sessions. I've been tempted to throw it in there for the tourneys.

The ol' Nintendo "loose tooth" is still my favorite though for DK.