Hey all! I'm a judge at tasvideos.org. Arc and ShesChardcore have submitted a TAS for NES Maniac Mansion that I believe it's worth a Star classification (a distinction given to the best TASes in the site).

The submission notes from the authors are here: https://tasvideos.org/9092S

Since not all of my fellow Judges are adventure game connoisseurs, it's rather hard for me to fully advocate for the distinction. I'm therefore wondering whether I can get some kind of community endorsement to help me make my case.

I'm looking for feeback as to what's the most impressive aspect of this TAS and technical details about how intricate and advance the tricks and glitches used are.

In my opinion this is a top notch TAS and any help in getting it its deserved recognition will be highly appreciated.

Could you elaborate what "Star classification" implies?

I know nothing of TASing, but I think it is common for tool assisted runs to include inhumane tricks that are practically impossible to replicate in real time. I don't think this TAS has much of that, but it really has perfect excecution. It really showcases what the pinnacle run could look like!

Thanks Niss3! Star classification means that the TAS is particularly interesting and is featured on the site. Not much more than that; it's just a small distinction we give to absolute dedication to TASing.

I think it's star worthy, I think it's definitely a step above the most previous TAS as far as entertainment goes. Plus the 20 years ago today meme, that's pretty impressive in itself that the same main person has been TASing the route for that long and has been willing to come back and integrate all the random crap the community has discovered over the years.

The most "technical" thing I see is that they implemented a couple screen transition skips. RTA, it's really just timing and getting lucky imo. As far as I'm aware there are 3 times this can be useful, the TAS does 2 out of 3. Niss3 has one in the WR run, and I got a different one in my 2nd place run. I think RTA getting 2/3 or 3/3 would probably be like winning the lottery. The TAS does not get the transition skip that Niss3 got in the WR run, I question why, or if it was thought to try. I had conveyed the transition skip info to Chardcore to pass along, but maybe I didn't explain well. Or maybe it was found to be slower. Who knows.

The other super interesting thing to me was that the TAS was so far ahead on time, that time was able to be taken to give the Silver Key to the non essential character used in the route, which really reorganizes the inventory to save what seems like a significant amount of time on the very last screen of the game.

Aside from that, like Niss3 said, it's executed perfectly. I think the cursor fancy movement has been kicked up a notch since the most recent obsolete TAS so that's also nice.