Lets racing time

Along the lines of Ancient Caves, it occurred to me the other day that the original Diablo would make a decent race: Same deal, lowest floor at the end of the timer wins, except with two additional tie-breaker metrics:

• In the event of a tie, highest level wins
• In the event of yet another tie, highest amount of gold wins

I like the two hour and a half hour long beasts just fine, but I'm totally down having scaled down alternatives, if only because getting four-ish people together for any length of time can be tough, let alone an entire slice of the day.

Here's another idea. You take a suite of games that are high-score based, or have some other clearly measurable metric (eg, coins collected in Super Mario Bros.). You give all the racers 1 hour to spend however they want, setting their highest score in each of the games in whatever order they please. Award points based on their relative positions in each game, say 5 points for first place, 4 for second, etc. You would get a ton of different strategies as players tried to figure out the best way to be 1st overall once all the results were tallied. In order to work, I think that the players would need to have access to the scoreboards for each game, so if you asked someone how they were doing in a given game, they would have to tell you truthfully (barring some kind of amazing technological solution to the problem).

I'm a big fan of races that can be approached using different strategies, so this sounds like a lot of fun to me. Spend a lot of time on one game so that you set a score no one else can dethrone? Try to come in 3rd place in every game and hope that's enough? Skip 2 games entirely and try to take first in all the rest? It's all up to you!

I've been trying dammit. It's hilarious to me that Luke won't join, but aturtledoesbite joined without me even asking him.

...besides, you raced him.

That's because I butt into everyone's business.

Also, there's a chance I might be able to start participating in these races in a couple of months or so, when I can use my college's internet (hopefully it's fairly fast).

Are we really that intimidating?
I joined right after the racing started, but I've been lurking(reading LPs) for a long time.

I would love to race Nethack or some other roguelike this way. The added time pressure could make for some really hilarious deaths.

Let's see, what games have I spent enough time playing that I could pretend to stand a chance against a Brickroad calibre player?

NES:
Kirbys Adventure - Extra Mode would make a good 1 hour race, you guys have no idea how hard this game really is (if you're going fast)
Mega Man 6 - I can't really see this being raced normally
BATMAN - It's also not normally raceable, but might make a 1 hour race
FF1 - HAHAHAHA
Treasure Master - I can almost reliably reach the second level

Genesis:
Thunder Force 2 - Nobody cares about this game
Ghouls 'n Ghosts - Nobody with a SNES cares about this game, but otherwise it's a good 1 hour candidate (because I still haven't beaten it once nevermind twice)
Super Volleyball - First person to lose to the final team, because it's only theoretically possible to beat this games ai with all of its limitations removed
Zoom - Endurance match. First one to game over or quit loses

Although I'd need to actually get a gamepad to really make those work.

I might be up for a FF5 or Lufia 2 ancient cave run.

Just to throw a silly pipe dream out there: wouldn't it be neat if we could run team races? We could have 4 screens of Contra Hard Corps with 8 people playing! I'm not sure where I'd find a 2p myself, but it would be a way to squeeze more peoples commentary into a race.
Of course the real fun would be everyone yelling at their partners for screwing up, right?

Ooh ooh. Solo Thief run. Score metric is the number of ASTOS deaths.

*shot*

Solo Thief wouldn't reach Astos in an hour. He'd be too busy grinding at sea.

and you automatically get first place if you somehow manage to beat the odds and win against ASTOS.

If I ever get a recording setup up and running a Spelunky race sounds like it'd be a lot of fun.

Nonsense, Red. I am 82% sure solo Thief would still be grinding IMPs for GARLAND.

Error 404: Phrase "win against ASTOS" not found.

It's not impossible. It's just... not probable. Or even practical to attempt.

The only reason to even attempt it is because you've got lots of time on your hands, and you really REALLY wanna be "that guy who succeeded at solo thief in original final fantasy". Or your name is brickroad and you want people to stop asking you about it.

Anyone down for a Lufia 2 Ancient Cave score attack? We need a fourth somewhat now-ish.

Would it be okay if I've literally never played the ancient cave? I'll be good in like 30 mins to an hour.

Totally cool. We're going to wait though and record it later, probably tonight. Will you be around?

Ahh, no I won't be, unfortunately.

What's the time frame you're looking at? I just got home from work and need some sleep, but I'll be up for it.

I'm going to do a stream tonight, and we're probably going to do the race after that, so maybe around midnight-ish EST.

If it's that late... I MIGHT be around! I dont know. I'll bug you on your stream if I am.

I think I could make that, too. Haven't played Ancient Cave in years, though. Pretty sure my SNES recording rig is working, I'll double check today.

I've never played Lufia 2, but I'd totally do it blind for hilarity if this is a timed thing.

Haha, I'm also available for Lufia 2 tonight if you somehow still end up short a person.

Sounds like we have a ton of our hour gamers.

Could be quite the thing.

It's a whole lot easier to plan for a race when you know it'll only take a little over an hour, and I know I like races where I'm not expected to finish the game better. There's some of these score attacks that I'm REALLY excited to try. Even if I suck it's not like it'll be a terrible way to spend an hour.

Maybe we can wrangle the overflow into something else.

The Ancient Cave run was really fun! Should be pretty exciting to watch, too, considering it's a pretty good race all the way to the finish. I'd love to watch some dudes do a second heat of it.

Maybe we'll wait six months and do a two-hour Ancient Cave attack. I think it would look a LOT different and probably be just as exciting.

It would undoubtedly be very different too, since the AC is never the same twice. Even if you're very proficient at running the early levels for blue chests, and know the bestiary well enough to optimize fights for the later levels, having good items to carry you through the lower levels is pretty luck dependent. Even if one player knows what they're doing better than the others, he could still get screwed by blind luck! Though doubling the time is a step in the right direction for mitigating that factor.

I look forward to watching that race. I'm curious to see how the AC knowledge of other tyrants compares to mine.

Lufia 2 is processing and should be a pretty good watch. It took longer than usual because I had to modify the timer code to count down rather than up.

Sovan says he's down for a Yoshi's Island score attack this Sunday. Not sure what time yet, but who are we to deny Sovan?

I too am interested in Yoshi's Island Score attack.