Lets racing time

Well I am dedicating today to getting the SMB3 race as close to finished as possible. ^_^ (hopefully that is all the way lol)

"Nari, you're not Michael Bay, we don't need giant explosions every time someone dies."

"...or do we?"

I'm working on putting together another pentathlon, and while I have most of my ideas, there are one or two that I wouldn't mind parting with if you have something clever and fun. I'm trying to select challenges that can all be done from the start of their respective games, however.

The only rule there is "no Moogle Charm." Other than that, it's exactly "start here, do this." The only question is where "here" is, exactly.

Also, Wizzrobe appeared as a mid-boss in Majora's Mask.

Of course not... the video would be one long explosion. XD

Wait, how do you even abuse Moogle Charm in the tower with three parties? Is there some way to get all three to avoid encounters? Because they all need to make it to the end, having a dedicated cham+boss killing group and making three runs shouldn't be faster than dealing with encounters, right?

You can swap who's carrying the moogle charm pretty easily, can't you?

Only one character can wear it.

I don't really have a dog in this race, since I don't have much interest in running an FF6 race, but my gut feeling is to not ban anything that can't be shown to be absolutely detrimental to the race. I don't think that case can be made for the Moogle Charm, Offering, or really anything else in the game.

An RPG race would boil down to interesting decisions. Choosing who to put in a team with Mog is a series of interesting decisions. Just off the top of my head, I would probably put Mog (w/Moogle Charm) in a party that is equipped only to handle the bosses on its particular route, thereby freeing up more powerful general-use gear for the other two teams.

FFV Ancient Cave Race?

No, that's dumb.

Racing to what? Not-death? Seeing who makes it the lowest on a single run?

I suppose I should have been more clear. That's what I mean when I say "No Moogle Charm."

These are all pretty sensible and I like them. I was thinking of just one of each relic to force everyone to diversify a little more. The exceptions would be Sprint Shoes (3 sets, one for each party) and the Moogle Charm (banned).

With a few exceptions like running to get the Offering or Ragnarok, I'm not entirely keen on the idea of leaving tons of endgame stuff for people to run around to get. Kefka's Tower to THE END is long enough a proposition as it is.

edit: Brick's case for the Moogle Charm is compelling though. Using/abusing it also would mean you're stuck with a party that isn't going to benefit from any exp. or magic point gains along the way. So... I dunno.

I am rendering out my MM3 race footage now, I had to do some fixes on audio and such when I dropped from Skype. and had to resync everything after that...

However I fixed the frame skipping problem I had in the pentathlon! ^_^

Yeah, I was wondering what the heck was up with your footage there.

If you're going to play this one: practice.

I don't even know that it would work, because failure is hash. Took me about an hour and a half to clear the Mavrick stages, and I'll be damned if I have it in me to do the castle tonight (Vile killed me on his last point of HP ). The main issue is death, since you don't get any weapon energy back you often may as well suicide at that point unless you've been doing a mostly pacifist run. My first attempt at Mandrill I ran out of energy and had to let him kill me twice and replay the stage thanks to needing to kill the mini-boss. Also really RNG dependent, farming for weapon energy seems to be rolling the dice and it seems like you'd want to farm subtanks before attempting the Sigma stages.

Also the fights get looooong. I did Sting third, and that fight goes on forever. I couldn't find a way to hit him when he went to the corner and used cameleon sting without taking a hit, so every time he does that it's just 10 seconds of you standing there, waiting. RTJ was also a good 3-4 minutes, which just makes Sting just a huge slog in general. And god damn is his tongue mean if you actually stay close.

This would be a fantastic challenge or LP where you can throw away segments, but as a race it just seems really harsh.

Also: Ride armor, yes or no? Makes sting third almost a no-brainier since you can refill for free after RTJ, but that's a rough fight to take third since you can't get the subtank.

The idea I had for the FFIII race was for every player to use what they're given to beat the Tower. No leaving to get other stuff or level up or learn magic, all gameplay would be within the Tower.

The rules might have to be a little too specific though.

EDIT:

Also, providing a save where the entire party knows all the same spells defeats the point. I think this would work a lot better if certain party members only had certain spells, to make it more challenge-like. Characters with high potential without needing magic (Sabin) would likely have none and characters many people usually don't bother with would have a larger assortment.

The idea behind it was to throw off the usual tactics. At most one, maybe two characters would have Ultima, Quick would either be not included or just given to one character. Cure 3 and Life 2 would be limited to a handful of characters, though Cure 2 would be more commonly spread around. There'd be either no Offering or no Fixed Dice (I forget, is there a Fixed Dice in the Tower? Might have to make it no Offering then) and certainly no Moogle Charm.

At least, I think a setup like that would be more interesting that 'here's the same party setup just about everyone tackles Kefka's Tower with'.

What might be interesting (though a lot of work on the moderator's part) would be to give each racer a list of spells to distribute to their team and they submit their lists before the race starts. I don't know what sort of tools are available to make this easy for FFVI , but looking at a guide it doesn't look like it'd be too difficult to do it manually if needed (and I imagine a lot of folks could help out).

I don't know FF6 nearly well enough to race.

But it sounds like it could be AWESOME.

Giving high-level magic to certain characters to encourage use is an awful idea. Not only does it de-emphasize their innate skill set, it devalues the characters that are naturally good at it.

As an example, let's take Cyan. Most agree that he's pretty lackluster in the endgame. As a remedy, you give him Ultima to "balance" things out and encouraging folks to use him. Now not only have you shoehorned a character with an ability that doesn't match his innate skills and stats, but you've also given him an attack that would most assuredly outpace all of the natural magic users, devaluing all of them.

As another example, you could give Relm Ultima. In this case, her innate magic stat (the highest in the game), is not highlighted but rather rendered completely moot.

Ultima's an extreme example, but you could make a similar case with any higher-tier spell.

It will also encourage homogenous setups, not discourage them. If, for example, you give three characters (or even two) Cure 3, is anyone going to even consider putting them together? Be honest. And, again, depending on who you put them on, you cheapen the value of the games' natural magic users. Why would you even waste time having Celes cast Cure 2 when some other mook is packing the next tier up? Both character's natural aptitudes are totally wasted.

I think there's a case to be made for giving the natural mage-type characters some extra spells to further accentuate their stats, but the high-level stuff absolutely should not be passed around as some sort of balance. A consistent, universal spell list (nothing higher than the mid-tier) will encourage racers to play to individual character strengths.

And I don't really buy the idea of everyone having these homogenous setups in the first place. You've got to form three parties of four from a cast of fourteen, in any combination you like. Sure, there might be a lot of sameness in the overall character choices, but when you consider that only two of fourteen are getting left behind, that's totally inevitable.

And remember kids, if you give one character Ultima, you've automatically given two Ultima. Gogo will thank you, but the viewers might not.

P.S. You cheapen Gogo doing this as well. Rather then diversifying and making creative use of his Mimic ability, he just becomes ULTIMA CASTER #2. Dull to play, and I can imagine even more dull to watch!

I'm not going to race this, but my setup would be to have one uber-boss-killer in each party (I'd research beforehand which bosses were on which route, but I imagine they'd be Sabin, Terra and either Locke or Edgar), nine garbage characters who don't matter, run from every random encounter, and then one-shot Kefka with an Offering user.

The degree to which you guys are overthinking this is bizarre.

You guys are going about this all wrong. The endgame of FF6 is fun and awesome but it's not hard. It was never meant to be hard. Themetically, the game is about a crazy villain that becomes god and your gang of heroes becoming little gods to take him out.

What you do is this:
You have someone take a fast, low-ish level run right up to the floating continent. Clear the airforce bit, run like hell back to the airship. The save point is right outside the airship, the goal is to be the first to destroy the world (clock stops when you jump back onto the ship (sorry Shadow!). No picking your builds or abilities, and because you only get to pick three players, part of the challenge is quickly accessing what you have in terms of abilities learned and equipment.

Ready, set, go!

You guys know I was joking about "settling in for our fifth Final Fantasy VI run" during the SML race, right? You understand jokes?

Put Narcodis playing 8-2 in one window.

Put Brickroad playing Final Fantasy in another.

Winner is the first person to beat their game.

IKA and RUGA have ANOTHER CHANCE

You know what might be interesting? Some Mega Man game with a no buster run.

You'd need to either wave this for the first level, or start everyone with a save that has one boss dead going in. You'd also want to make sure it wasn't with a game that has a straight-up buster replacement (Metal Blade, Splash Trident)... can anyone think of the game/starting weapon that'd make this most interesting?

Great idea.
But couldn't it work to allow the buster for the first level? With 4 racers picking 4 different starting levels, there could be some interesting results just from that.

Say, if one race Mega Man 3 this way(example because I know the game fairly well).
Top Man is obviously the easiest one, but his weapon is not one anyone would want to use for an entire level. Same with Hard Man, he can be killed by just trading hits, but one wouldn't want only his weapon for an entire level.
One could pick Shadow Man or Needle Man first, for good weapons, but those are difficult to kill. Magnet Man or Snake Man are other easier starters with good-mediocre weapons.

There could probably be 3-4 different strategies for 4 different players.

That's a neat sort of idea, though it would also have its own issues. When you get to the Fortress Stages and no weapon energy refills in between them, for instance, we'd probably see a LOT of 'welp I'm out of ammo, might as well die over and over to get a Game Over refill!'.

How about doing this with Mega Man 5? It's the one NES game with an M Tank (I'm pretty sure they're not in 6?) which might add an interesting element to it. Plus it might offer a few more valid 'starting points' than 3 would (I'd think either Gyro Man or Crystal Man would make decent starters, Napalm Man or Wave Man for trickier starters, and Charge Man and Stone Man for players who are just insane)

An M-Tank would give players another option than wasting time Game Over-ing in the Fortress Stages, and I'm pretty sure there's an M-Tank or two somewhere in the end-game so you could use the one you take from the first 8 stages early on without worrying TOO much.

Mega Man 3, Top Spin.

ALTERNATE ANSWER: You start from the beginning, but you have to do the first stage with Rush Coil equipped the entire time.