Mega Man X & X2 ... at the same time
by James Ransom-Wiley 
{ Aug 14th 2006 at 12:55PM }
TASvideos has posted a clip of Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 being played simultaneously (using one controller). But there's a catch...The TAS community -- that's "Tool-Assisted Speedruns" -- is not about showing off, but rather, creating "movies that are beautiful to watch." Know that this clip was recorded using a controller wired into two SNES emulators and that the player used features like slow-motion and savestates to cast the illusion of a seamless playthrough in real time. So while it's not proof that an 'unassisted' gamer could play two different games with one controller, by exploiting emulation tools, the creator does show that two games can be played successfully using one set of button inputs, and without modifying the games.
Do you find these sorts of projects fascinating? Is this games avant-garde movement? Or just a "silly idea"?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
fwacce @ Aug 14th 2006 1:01PM
Anything to do with Mega Man is never a silly idea.
jabbertrack @ Aug 14th 2006 1:03PM
it's kinda like comparing drifting to racing
rob @ Aug 14th 2006 1:22PM
i like these kinds of things.. nice diveresions and speed runs are fun to watch.. and very interesting..
Monthenor @ Aug 14th 2006 1:41PM
I watched the full video of this a few months ago, it's amazing the whole way through. The guy who did it also had a demonstration of playing X1, X2, X3, and Mega Man 7 at the same time, but it only got through the intro stage(s) before one of them died.
Paul P. @ Aug 14th 2006 1:53PM
They are like the Harlem Globetrotters of speedruns. They're cheating, but they are cheating with undeniable skill that is very entertaining.
I downloaded this last Friday, and man, it is so awesome to watch both games running side by side, X audio in the left, X2 audio in the right, and both games being completed from the same button inputs. It's completely sick and unbelievable. Hop on that torrent and get the .avi, you won't be sorry.
ill trooper @ Aug 14th 2006 2:00PM
My eyes glossed over at "emulation tools..."
What were we talking about again? Pass me my Snapple... Where am I?
KefkaTaran @ Aug 14th 2006 2:25PM
My friend and I watched this video this weekend and both of us were just blown away. Really cool stuff.
Markster @ Aug 14th 2006 2:51PM
haha, so old!
I go to school with the man who made it, and he was showing it off in the student lounge... back in september! I got the vid off of him right then and there and watched it about three times.
It's pretty awesome though. You can actually queue up the same SNES movie file to play each game separately.
Also, I highly reccomend going to the original site this was posted on (http://tasvideos.org/) and downloading the high quality video off using BitTorrent. (a mere 180MB!)
While you're there, check out... well, everything. The Sonic 3 & Knuckles speedrun is a thing of beauty.
Nick James @ Aug 14th 2006 2:58PM
Many think tool-assisted speed runs are cheating, but it's still technically possible to do everything that's done in a tool-assisted speed run. They use the tools to explore the limits of the game's code. Everything is completely and 100% possible with a human using a controller on a console with an original cartridge. It's extremely unlikely however, since you have to be perfect down to a millisecond for every move. That's what makes tool-assisted speed runs great, though, in my opinion. Shows you how much cool shit you could do in these games if you were a God.
No game information is modified. No code is changed. It's all there. It looks fantastic, and is very entertaining to watch.
Alcoholic Zombie @ Aug 14th 2006 3:04PM
Less old school, more zombie/dead teenager movies & games!
Devwar @ Aug 14th 2006 3:08PM
Just watching the first minute or so, I noticed a few spots where one side will jump and the other won't, or one side will turn really quickly and the other won't.
Rootbeer @ Aug 14th 2006 3:19PM
"Everything is completely and 100% possible with a human using a controller on a console with an original cartridge."
Well, in theory. Some moves, like pressing up and down on a D-pad simultaneously would require physical modifications to the controller; others would require buttons to be pressed more rapidly than human musculature is capable of.
And AFAIK, no one's yet tried to feed the input sequence from a TAS movie into a real console, so it's debatable whether some of the feats achieved by the TAS runners would work on real hardware, or are attributable solely to peculiarities of the emulation.
Markster @ Aug 14th 2006 3:20PM
#10, if you don't believe it, go to http://tasvideos.org/ and download the SNES emulator and input file, and then play the single file back on the separate games.
It is exactly the same input for each game.
Paul P. @ Aug 14th 2006 3:23PM
That's because of bugs in the game. For instance, pressing the dash button does nothing when you don't have the dash function. Air dashing has no effect for the X in X1. Jumping has no effect when you are in mid-air. There's a trick to change which way each is facing and make them face opposite directions, all of it is explained in the author's game notes. Yes, it really is the same input in both games. You can prove it by loading the same movie file(which is just controller inputs) into an emulator with each game seperately.
mercatfat @ Aug 14th 2006 3:55PM
The full thing, and on Google video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2509794034861880408
rudimentalist @ Aug 14th 2006 4:19PM
This should be in a museum somewhere. Most TAS movies are interesting in that they show a feat accomplished without the limitations of human reflexes or skill level, striving for perfection at the most discrete level possible within a ruleset (i.e. the code present in the game.) But the focus in those movies is more on revealing the confines of the particular game. Here, the motif itself is center stage. Through the use of technology, man becomes, as Nick James put it in his comment, "a God".
I think the author of this blog post isn't far off. This is an avant-garde work of art. The key sequence was the result of meticulous trial and error. If it's not an artwork, what is it? Does man desire to "cheat" at life through the use of technology? Look at how we've "cheated" death through science and medicine. This video should interest more than simply video gamers, that's all I'm saying. It's a testament to the initiative of mankind to overcome it's own shortcomings by creating the means to eliminate those very shortcomings. The machine. Just as the hammer and the lever evolved into the supercomputer, we evolve as well. Science as the god.
Kenny @ Aug 14th 2006 6:00PM
I saw this mid-school year last year, or someone doing the same thing. It's pretty awesome. I love how he staggers the boss battles.
Fnx @ Aug 14th 2006 11:47PM
I've watched this a LONG time ago too, really cool. I've been watching a lot of speedruns, tool-assisted and "normal" runs. It's fun to watch games being pushed to the limit and all the bugs :D
Check the Ocarina of Time speedrun on tasvideos.org, it's completed in 2h 33min :P