So with this correct setup, you have 5/60 of a second, which is .08333 total seconds to get as many mashes in as you can. If you can get 3 smashes in, you have a 1- (2/5)^3=93.6% chance on average of making the jump. 2 smashes is 84% chance. 1 smack is obviously 60%. However, these percentages assume a sort of 'random selection type' probability and are therefore just rough estimates. The specific nature of your actual pressing rate, that is, how your 1, 2, or 3 mashes fit into the timeframe (e.g. was your rate relatively consistent? were all the smashes bunched together in only one area of the timeframe?), can affect your results in either direction.
Mitch, you're still not getting it. There's no such thing as "getting as many mashes in as you can". The game requires the button to be pressed during one frame AND THEN BECOME UNPRESSED FOR THE NEXT FRAME before you're even allowed to attempt another button press. Therefore, if you miss frame #1 and land on frame #2, there is ONLY ONE MORE OPPORTUNITY to press the button, and that's at exactly frame #5. Of course, as I said before, you could miss in the other direction and land on frame #0, but this is obviously outside the 5-frame window and therefore if we're counting mashes WITHIN the 5-frame window, the only meaningful numbers are 1 or 2. (You could get 3 mashes in by hitting exactly frames #1, 3, and 5, but what's the point? Once you've hit frame #1 you have your superjump already, so this hitting pattern is meaningless.) So, again, if you miss by landing on frame #2, you need to press the button again EXACTLY 0.05 seconds later to hit frame #5. Pressing the button too quickly, such as 0.033 seconds later is bad because you're hitting frame #4, another miss. Pressing the button slightly later, such as 0.066 seconds later is also a miss.
As you can see, your notion of using 0.08333 seconds in any calculation related to this issue is simply wrong. On top of that, your probability calculations are also wrong since you cannot simply pick 2 or 3 slots out of a hat filled with 5 slots -- some of them CANNOT be picked because the game will not register inputs that come too quickly. Furthermore, the notion that pressing the button once should yield 60% success -- I have a problem with that logic as well -- again, we're not simply picking one ball out of a hat filled with 5 balls, 3 of which are good ones. No, we are pressing the button in the midst of an "every other frame" sequence . . . I would say that 50/50 is more like it UNLESS the player does have the skill to land on a single frame of his choosing like Graham is suggesting.
To know that the springboard is 'broken' and doesn't work 'correctly' it would seem one would have to make a judgment about the intent of the programmers.
Absolutely. I've already explained what I believe the intent of the programmers was. Not only do I believe it, but I'm basically 100% sure of it, and the people that know me know that I almost never claim to be 100% sure about anything, so it's really an extra strong statement that I'm making about the subject. The programmers intended for there to be a 6-frame window where the player could press the button and a superjump would result. This would require some skill, timing and knowledge, but once a player popped enough quarters and he had a decent amount of skill, he would be able to learn to do this maneuver basically every time. Let's be clear, I'm ABSOLUTELY sure that this was the intent of the programmers.
I'm sure they had people test the game out, and I'm sure most the people that tested it out weren't experts at T&F mashing, so if the programers heard any word back about how the game was maybe 'broken' or lacking with respect to the springboard, why didn't they 'fix' it? It seems more likely that the programmers would have known about it (at least after some testing) and where ultimately ok with how it has ultimately ended up.
I absolutely 100% disagree with this. First, I think it WAS tested, and it was likely tested by people on staff who were novice video game players (back in 1979 - 1981 were there many EXPERT video game players working at these corporations? They were occasionally able to get the superjump. When they couldn't get it, they probably assumed they were not doing it correctly. It worked for them often enough to assume that it worked.
Saying that the programmers likely would have known about this problem is a massively gigantic assumption. These games were created extraordinarily quickly with very little staff and with extremely primitive software tools (both for development and for testing). Do you know how WE discovered this problem? We used MAME, paused and slowed the game down, used save states and tried to press the button on every frame of animation during the springboard animation sequence to see what happened. Do you think the developers of this software had ANYTHING like that at their disposal in 1979 - 1981? You are absolutely fooling yourselves if you think so. With the technology that was available in those days, it's a wonder any game could be created at all. Not to mention that software development design and best practices didn't really even exist back then -- the way the code is written is just filled and riddled with all sorts of bugs, many of which could be avoided just by using some basic software best practices that are common today and have been around for a while (but not THAT long).
As far as I've heard, a key component to DKjr's 'clunkiness' is that it only registers inputs on every other frame. The programmers wanted this feel -or at least for this to be a fundamental aspect of the game.
I've actually never heard this before. Where did you find that information? Even if this were true (and I'm extremely doubtful), to say that the programmers wanted this feel is just nonsense. Programmers want their games to be good, not bad.
However, to have this 'clunkiness' aspect but also make the springboard a timing-based element to the game, necessarily created the added fact that the spring jump would also be luck based.
This is a huge leap of logic and I reject it.
Go back and reread specifically what causes this bug. It's because Junior's animation is out of synch with the spring's animation (not just the animation, but the underlying x,y locations for the objects are out of synch). So, Junior rises off the platform, but the springboard does not rise. Then, the springboard rises up to meet him and he has not moved. Then, he moves up again, then the spring moves up again, etc. This is CLEARLY a bug.
My argument for it being deliberate, from a "level design" basis, is that making the springboard a matter of simply pressing the button a single time would render it almost totally devoid of challenge. The "long path" must be there for a reason. Why put the long path there at all if the superjump was trivially easy to perform?
Chris, I absolutely 100% disagree with this statement. Pressing the button within a 6-frame window (1/10th of 1 second) and having to time this button press at a precise moment during the animation is NOT a lack of challenge at all. Sure, for extraordinarily skilled players, we could learn to hit the jump pretty much 100% of the time after some trial and error (maybe $5 - $10 worth of quarters), but for the average 8 year old playing on one of these machines in an arcade setting in 1981, it would have been extremely challenging and they would have likely been successful only once in a while. Again, go back and play Super Mario Bros. and tell me you've never missed the superjump on one of those springboards?
Then again, the randomness may have been an intentional attempt to "hide" the superjump as a sort of easter egg.
Wrong. This is a BASIC design feature of this level. There are only four screens in this game and this is a prominent feature in one of them. The intention was for it to work correctly, but it doesn't.
I am partial to this theory that it may indeed have been an accidental bug, but was kept in the game anyway because they liked the effect.
This is also wrong. I think you guys are reading way too much into what programmers were trying to do with their games in 1981. This is CLEARLY an element where randomness was NOT part of their thinking.
Ok, let me try and spell it out this way. This board is basically the Elevator board from Donkey Kong. A lot of the design and even the code was just flat out stolen from Donkey Kong so that they could crank out this game even faster. The Donkey Kong Elevator screen has TWO possible paths. You can jump across the gap and take the upper path, or you can ride the elevator down to the bottom and take the lower path. WHY EVEN HAVE A LOWER SECTION THERE AT ALL IF JUMPING ACROSS THE GAP WAS TRIVIALLY EASY TO PERFORM? Yet, it's there.
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NOW, suppose we had a situation where you jumped across the gap, and at the moment you landed, every other frame, you fell through the floor and ended up on the lower section of the Elevator screen . . . That's Donkey Kong Junior.
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IF that's how Donkey Kong played, would we say that was intentional design or a bug? It would be extremely stupid and just would not fit with how the rest of the game plays -- so why would it be intentional? CLEARLY, it would be a bug.
The springboard is a fundamental part of the gameplay in Junior and there is no possible way that they weren't aware of the superjump issue by the time the game was brought to America, and certainly not by the time Nintendo released the Easy and Hard upgrade kits. The behavior of the springboard persists to the last upgrade. Whether it was originally a bug or part of the design, it was intentionally not fixed.
I absolutely and totally 100% disagree with this. You are forgetting that the Springboard WORKS SOMETIMES, AND it was meant to be a relatively difficult maneuver that was possible to miss just based on poor timing. Again, there would have been no way for them to know the CAUSE of this bug, the out of synch animations between Junior and the Spring because in 1981 they were not pausing and going frame by frame through the game with a tool like MAME. So, just because it persists to the last upgrade DOES NOT MEAN they were aware that there was a bug. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee you that they were not aware of it just based on the nature of it.
So, I don't believe it was intentionally not fixed -- although that's also possible, again, just based on how these companies were operating at lightening speeds, with limited staff, and always working on their next project -- fixing a bug on an already released game was probably at the bottom of their priority list.
It's printed right on the instruction card.
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If jump button is pressed with RIGHT TIMING.
I think it works exactly as intended.
LMAO! That's outrageously funny, I was with you RIGHT up until your last sentence. Based on the first two sentences, I would come to EXACTLY the opposite conclusion . . .
It's printed right on the instruction card.
If jump button is pressed with RIGHT TIMING.
THEREFORE, it's CLEARLY a bug.
I am in full agreement with your thoughts here, but who exactly has said they have "mastered" the springboard? I don't remember anyone saying that. Maybe I missed it somewhere?
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I suggest if you can master single press it will definitely help you master the jump as you can double tap to double your chances but knowing the single press makes it a lot more successful.
I'm not really trying to pick on Graham here, it was just the easiest example to find. Literally dozens of people have claimed to have mastered the springboard jump over the years in various threads -- particularly, before it was pointed out to them that the springboard is broken and cannot be mastered.
It is what it is....it's been this way for over 30 years, it's not going to change. Just track and field it and hope. Most folks at this point seem to get a very reasonable success rate.
FINALLY, a statement in this thread that I can agree with. Thank you Steve!
Love it?
No.
