The Problem with Perikles

[Shepardus]

I'd just like to restate that this isn't a "witch hunt", and the people insisting that it is are causing far more drama than the actual topic itself.

I think I see where you're coming from, but permit me to remark that setting off with "The Problem with Perikles" as a thread title is not conducting it in a particularly prudent way either.

That's one of the better ways to put it, actually. The "norm" is to make the topic title "<x> is a cheater" or "We need to get rid of <x>".

These kinds of threads can easily spiral out of control even if the opening post is fine. Thankfully this thread has been relatively civil so far, which I think is in no small part due to Perikles' own friendliness and indubitable contributions here. Let's keep it that way.

I'd like to add; that was many years ago but I've doubted BOS for a while on the french forum, because he appeared out of nowhere and started chain-posting stuff of serious skill and knowledge, at high frequency. Though he made that into a show with a partner and really I doubt something was fishy, but it was a bit surprising because no one knew him nor had seen his level of play evolve.

I realize you're not saying you still suspect him, but BOS did a live 2-ALL of Dragon Blaze on stage at Stunfest 2015. Guy's got some serious skill.

[BIL]

Good friend of Perikles here, no secret if you read the Off-Topic Ninja Gaiden thread. Just my 2c for now.

That being said, I would like to see him clear at least one shooter live, even if it ultimately wouldn't prove much.

Einhänder (PS1) Clear

Might as well chuck in his Undeadline Crazy 1LC, too. (asked him if I could host it on my channel after I was done upscaling it for him, because I dig guerilla footage)

I'm nowhere familiar enough with the games in the OP to comment, but I do know Gun.Smoke pretty well. FWIW there's some crazy dodging in there VS the sixth boss, where he is running rings around enemy bullets. Happens after he misses the quick kill strategy I recommend, and the crowd drives him into a corner. (21:40 approx)

I've missed my shot and had the game go apeshit on me in the same way, only to survive in a similarly fraught manner as well, so I never so much as raised an eyebrow - particularly as he continues to demonstrate good fundamentals during the close shave. This is obviously just one example VS many, but I thought I'd mention it in case it came up later on.

[Plasmo]

I'd like to add; that was many years ago but I've doubted BOS for a while on the french forum, because he appeared out of nowhere and started chain-posting stuff of serious skill and knowledge, at high frequency. Though he made that into a show with a partner and really I doubt something was fishy, but it was a bit surprising because no one knew him nor had seen his level of play evolve.

Doubting BOS made a lot of sense back then and I did so myself. And then he showed to us just how amazing he actually is. His Stunfest performance of Dragon Blaze was one of the most incredible live runs I have ever seen. He's a terrific fella!

If you have doubts about someone there is no "wrong" or "right" to begin with. It's a feeling of uncertainty and nothing more. Only the player himself can ease that situation. BOS did so in one of the most impressive ways possible. I wanna see Perikles go that road as well! Noone says he's a cheater. There is no witch hunt. Please, Perikles, make a fool of every single one of us!

I think what would really convince me would be an external recording of a more advanced arcade game clear. Console games cannot really compare but it shows you got the right equipment at least. Record an advanced clear (rank 35 or higher on our list?) and show us hand movement and the playing screen. As these clears only take you a couple of days, it should be an easy task.

Thankfully this thread has been relatively civil so far, which I think is in no small part due to Perikles' own friendliness and indubitable contributions here. Let's keep it that way.

This so much!

Whatever your opinion is in regard to this matter, let's just have a civil discussion on this. I know it's a difficult topic. Let's just not get emotionally involved too much.

[blossom]

I think what would really convince me would be an external recording of a more advanced arcade game clear. Console games cannot really compare but it shows you got the right equipment at least. Record an advanced clear (rank 35 or higher on our list?) and show us hand movement and the playing screen. As these clears only take you a couple of days, it should be an easy task.

That's an awful lot to request from one player and I would say it's an unfair request. If you aren't going to demand the same from JHA submissions, why make Perikles an exception?

[Xyga]

Doubting BOS made a lot of sense back then and I did so myself. And then he showed to us just how amazing he actually is. His Stunfest performance of Dragon Blaze was one of the most incredible live runs I have ever seen. He's a terrific fella!

Of course not, I don't doubt him! just iirc back then he joined the french forum quite some time before the Stunfest began to become a thing for shmuppers. I think it was even before public superplay demos began to be a thing.
Just like that, afaik no one knew him from anywhere else, he joined and shortly after he started owning game after game, score after score, so for a while it was weird indeed. But only for a while, his co-presented YT show kinda cleared doubts for us back there least.

We have to admit that they exist, sometimes a player which happens to have excellent predisposition, who's on fire and with a lot of free time (probably more than they want to reveal) appears and shines brighter, shoots faster than the other stars.

The question of 'is it real until proven before peers' always remains, but who knows, maybe BOS trained like crazy by all means using replays and savestates, until he didn't need them anymore and could show off his skills and continue to grow ?

More people than we want to admit have done this really, but who cares if you get where you are on cocaine and EPO but stay there without needing that anymore ?

Question remains that indeed, some of those dodges are really wtf, I was never a great player yet even I can tell. So we don't know if Perikles is a kind of BOS+ on steroids, or...

[Squire Grooktook]

Just took a quick look at the highlighted dodges in daisenpu and batsuugan.

The daisenpu one is clearly just an "oops" moment. Happens all the time in any run, and he dodges the next instance of that spread the "correct" way after. It looks like a perfectly ordinary case of "I got distracted and fucked up but survived thanks to a miracle dodge" moment.

The Batsuugan one I'm not sure if it's just flailing through a barrage and getting lucky (I do this ALL THE TIME in games like Mushi Original, and Batsuugan is A LOT like Mushi Original), or it might be completely viable to just tap through that pattern. Either way, nothing that looks shady to me.

Like BIL said, sometimes these games fuck you up and throw you out of your comfort zone, either due to RNG or your own lack of execution...which results in miracle dodges / luckshit to salvage the situation. I don't have time to look at all the examples but I'm not seeing anything that justifies this threads existence.

[Lags]

why would someone cheat? it's pointless in these unpopular games

There's always the possibility of self-deception being part of the equation. What I mean is the audience is secondary, the real target he wants to convince is himself. This sounds retarded but maybe it goes like this: The player convinces himself that he COULD clear the game since he's beaten all the stages in practice mode and the bosses, and it's only a matter of time before a full run is attained. So instead of spending dozens of hours suffering restart syndrome and tweaking his routes he edits together a full run and calls it a day. People watch his replays, read his guides and give him props for his achievement and immense game knowledge. The audience reinforces his belief in himself and so he feels good.
Not saying this is the case for Perikles, but people do all sorts of strange and seemingly pointless things when competition and audiences are involved.

So we don't know if Perikles is a kind of BOS+ on steroids, or...

What I find interesting is many top players including BOS will comment positively on Perikle's replays and congratulate him for his skills. Why don't they see the red flags that other top players are seeing?

[Xyga]

We could have a smartwatch app recording motion and muscular activity of the players and sending live updates stored on a server to match uploaded runs.

Or a chip under the skin for more accurate nervous sytem reading.

Or gloves with sensors, or colors + move/kinect cams, whatever even a smartphone could do this.

Global Gamer Hands Tracking Network.

Ok I need to talk to my accounts manager tomorrow.

[NTSC-J]

While I did my best to preemptively address these points in my opening post, I do want to reiterate that this isn't exactly a topic I was eager to bring up. I like Perikles. I've always had positive interactions with him. I appreciate his contributions to the forum. I want him to be legit. But the issue of his legitimacy keeps getting brought up in various other places where this community gathers (Discord servers, IRC, etc.)--everywhere but here--and I felt like it needed to be presented up front to try to settle it where Perikles himself can respond without it being talked about behind his back.

I tried to present the information I've seen that would suggest foul play as objectively as possible, but it's just a really hard topic to broach without people getting heated. Even the title I mulled over for a while and tried to come up with something mild, but I guess I failed there, too. I feel like if I had simply titled it "Perikles" I would've been criticized with something like, "Why you gotta use his name?"

If you looked at the replays and read the arguments and he looks a-ok to you, great, that's what this discussion is for.

[Squire Grooktook]

another thing I want to point out is Perikles knowledge of the games.

His little strategy write up on each of his videos demonstrates the knowledge of someone who's genuinely put thought into learning the games. He knows which parts are luckshit (IE Forgotten World's final boss), which parts are deceptively difficult (Dragon Saber zako spawns), etc. He has the kind of nuanced understanding of what exactly kills you in these games that someone who spent 6 days TAS'ing instead of practicing wouldn't have.

Contrary to Chum, I can definitely say his routes have helped me in certain games (Forgotten Worlds, Dragon Breed).

[ZPScissors]

Yeah, the subject of whether or not Perikles cheated has been brought up a lot on shmup Discords lately and I was wondering why.

I don't know how to feel about this one, there definitely is at least some suspicious stuff from him, but I'm not certain if it's enough to definitively say he cheated, so I'll go through each of the 5 points brought up in the original post and give my thoughts.

1. Is it reasonable to clear so many games so quickly?
Probably the most noteworthy thing about Perikles's scores and clears is how quickly he achieves them. In some cases, it's not a tall order (scrubby Batsugun Special clear), but others are remarkably fast (three days for 1-ALL Hacha Mecha Fighter, six days for 1-ALL Tatsujin Ou, etc.). Some games he returns to, and it's hard to know exactly how long he spends on each game, but the clears come fast and they come often, even though many of these games require a lot of planning, which leads to the next point…

This is very quick pace, yes. I'd like to know the source for this though, did he literally say Hacha Mecha Fighter 1-ALL took him 3 days and Tatsujin Ou 1-ALL took him 6 days somewhere? Super short clears are something that can happen, but is this how most of his clears are? If so I'd say this absolutely is evidence against him.

2. Why the strange dodges?
Players that are newer to these games tend to think that reflexes are the biggest factor to top-level play, when, as most seasoned players will probably agree, coming up with a strong route is paramount to success, and most twitch dodging is likely the result of a lack of planning, particularly so with older games (i.e., the kind Perikles spends the bulk of his time with). Perikles himself has noted that he's good at memorization and bad at execution, when the opposite seems to be apparent in many of his runs, which often demonstrate some very ballsy, yet unnecessary, maneuvers. Indeed, it's the kind of thing you'd expect of a player that hadn't spent a ton of time with a game, but that usually doesn't lead to fast clears or top scores, hundreds of times, week after week.

I mostly agree with this one, his play style does seem to be the opposite of what he claims. Not much else to say about this one, really.

3. Are these replays legit?
The short clip posted above highlights some suspicious dodges. Of those, the most noteworthy is probably the Tatsujin Ou clip. It's true he had no bombs and had to do his best in that moment, but dodges that tight, at that speed, are extraordinarily difficult in a game with a hitbox of that size. You might pull that off in a run after hundreds of attempts, but probably not within your first few days with the game.

Others to watch:
Same! Same! Same!
Daioh
Raiden II
Daisenpu (particularly this boss)
Batsugun Special (particularly this dodge)

The thing with this one though, is that flukey dodges happen all the time, even for legit players. For someone like Perikles who has tons of shmup videos you're bound to find a few. I wouldn't say this is enough to say someone cheated.

4. How do you fake a replay?
There are probably a few ways one could cheat using emulators, such as save state abuse. Another way would be playing the game at a slower speed (say, 50%), recording an INP, then replaying the INP at full speed and recording with OBS, etc. Fortunately, this can be verified by looking at the INP, and as luck would have it, Perikles has said that he does sometimes record the INP first and then record the footage later.
I messaged Perikles to ask for some of the INPs for the games mentioned above. He said he didn't have them. I asked for any INP, of the hundreds he's recorded over the years. He said they're all gone after getting a new computer. It's not a crime to delete INPs, but this struck me as especially odd given the care and fastidious nature of his posting, from his diction to his formatting to his generally thorough nature. Plus, INPs are so tiny, I don't know why you wouldn't keep your best ones around just as back-ups; I still have all of mine, some even older than Moglar.*
He then mentioned to me that he used to have a Gradius INP up on Restart Syndrome, but unfortunately, it was gone now because he posted a higher score with a video, which he said caused it to override the old one and its attached INP. I used the Wayback Machine to confirm, and yes, at one time there was an INP uploaded that is now gone. However, Restart Syndrome doesn't work like that—all scores are archived—simply click the date of a score and it'll bring you to a record of every score that user has posted for that game along with any pics, videos, or INPs. Curiously, when I checked his Gradius history, the old score and INP were gone. This means that he would have had to have manually deleted the score and INP.
*Note: Perikles first told me that he didn't have the INPs anymore because he's "been using a new computer for a while now, not having transferred any of the emulators," which sounds like the INPs are still on the old computer, then he said in a later message that he didn't keep the files, so I'm not sure if they were deleted or he just hasn't felt like moving them.

Yeah, this definitely makes me suspicious. I don't think it's to be expected that he has every single INP of his runs, but surely he has at least some. Even if he doesn't, shmup skill isn't something that just goes away, so he could probably do another run of something and make an INP of that.

5. Why not just meet other local players and prove it?
According to some other players that live near Perikles, their requests to meet up with him and play a few credits have been politely declined.

This is a very weak argument, as others have stated before not everyone is trusting enough to meet up with someone they only know from the internet.

So did Perikles cheat? As the last paragraph in the original post says, I don't think there's any way to know for sure, unless Perikles himself did cheat and admits to it. We do have a lot of evidence against him, but not everything here is exactly a strong argument, and I wouldn't say it's enough to be definitive.

I'd also love to hear what Perikles has to say about this, I haven't seen him address this yet.

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah, the subject of whether or not Perikles cheated has been brought up a lot on shmup Discords lately and I was wondering why.

I don't know how to feel about this one, there definitely is at least some suspicious stuff from him, but I'm not certain if it's enough to definitively say he cheated, so I'll go through each of the 5 points brought up in the original post and give my thoughts.

one thing also not being touched here is that it does vary for him. He took like 1-2 years playing Battlantis on and off to clear it IIRC.

Yeah, this definitely makes me suspicious. I don't think it's to be expected that he has every single INP of his runs, but surely he has at least some.

I can say I've probably lost most of my input files and recordings. Some of them might be floating around on one of my older computers, but I've not taken any care to preserve them whatsoever, so they might as well be gone.

[BIL]

another thing I want to point out is Perikles knowledge of the games.

His little strategy write up on each of his videos demonstrates the knowledge of someone who's genuinely put thought into learning the games. He knows which parts are luckshit (IE Forgotten World's final boss), which parts are deceptively difficult (Dragon Saber zako spawns), etc. He has the kind of nuanced understanding of what exactly kills you in these games that someone who spent 6 days TAS'ing instead of practicing wouldn't have.

I don't think I ever noticed Gun.Smoke's sixth boss uses the same lingering bullets as the final one, until re-reading his 1CC notes tonight. My own ST was lacking that information until I updated it just now.

The obvious counter-argument here is that any good TASer will know their games' mechanics inside-out, as well.

Going between parallel bullets seems to be a recurring theme in these highlighted clips. I watched the Daisenpu highlight (edit: fixed timestamp), and it looked like my typical Kyuukyoku Tiger MD stage 2 boss (MD>AC difficulty, at least early on). It's nervous work, but the gaps are reliably ship-width. I'm actually surprised the Gun.Smoke clip I mentioned (which I'll vouch for) wasn't up there too, now.

But it's not as bad as Tatsujin Ou, as others have pointed out in that meme video.

This looks like more of the same. I've no doubt it's highly unoptimised, but I'm not getting World of Longplays vibes here. I'd expect better routing from a 2-ALLer, which Perikles isn't.

I know this isn't a trial, but to be clear: I don't think Perikles is a cheater, just an avid and prolific player. As mentioned I consider him an e-friend (uwu). I've never gotten the impression of a glory-hound from him.

[Squire Grooktook]

]The obvious counter-argument here is that any good TASer will know their games' mechanics inside-out, as well.

I think I'd argue otherwise.

Isn't the whole point of the "weird dodging" angle something like "he's cranking out TAS's once per week and doesn't actually know the game, so he slides in and out of bullet clouds like that dragon blaze longplay"...?

That seems to me to be the argument. That a cheater will make "incredible" and showy dodges because they don't know how the game is meant to be played...but someone who understands those nuances and intricacies clearly knows how the game is meant to be played.

All in all I'd say the evidence is for fair play, personally.

[BIL]

True, but we have to construct the ultimate devil for advocating. A true horrible cunt who produces the most insightful, heartfully-commentated and convincingly shit-losing TASes to torment an already arcade-whipped mankind with dreams of 1CCs. While PWNing their score threads.

God have mercy. (■｀ω´■)

[Sumez]

If some stranger I don't know from some internet forum contacts me in private about wanting to meet me, I'd probably try to politely decline, too.

Plasmo is hardly some stranger in this community and this is hardly some internet forum though, but I digress.

Maybe not "in the community", but he's still someone most people only know as a medal with a Raizing logo and a username. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to meet Plasmo, and I'd love to also meet Perikles, or you, or most other people I recognize from here.
But there's still the fact that a lot of people around here, even among the more notable members, are just internet personalities, and I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of the people in the community prefer to keep their internet personality completely separate from their real life.

I don't subscribe to that - hell, I'm probably the only person around here who actually has a picture of myself as my profile picture - but what I'm trying to point out is the fallacy of trying to project your own perspective on that subject unto someone else.

[Xyga]

if Plasmo comes to your place he will steal your woman (or your pet if you don't have one)

Once I heard someone refused to show his shmups skills, Plasmo went silent, put his shades on, and took off his leather belt...

[Sumez]

What if I have both? Is there an order of precedence?

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

I'm glad that people are just having a nice time in the thread instead of feeding hatred like it happens in some other cases.

As for my own opinion, I think it's unreasonable to pressure someone this much, plus the whole "let's remove the scores" borders on petty, if anything. Simply asking Perikles to play a few shmups live would've been incredibly easy. Instead, we have this thread, with an OP that basically says "Give proof or get fukt."

Just goes to show that if you're good at something (that doesn't benefit others), you shouldn't share it on the internet.

Spoiler

Unrelated, but feels worth sharing:
I was accused of cheating once and submitted a video of a 1cc afterwards. It didn't have anything unreasonable in it. I was told it wasn't enough due to the bad quality (couldn't do better back then). Many months later, I would hear second-hand that it was actually my unusual routing that made it suspicious. Interesting, eh? (I'm also gonna pull a Perikles and gracefully refuse to go into details. Whole thing's just ugly to me.)

Suffice to say that I haven't had the urge to post scores or play competitively in general since then.

I guess the message here is to think of the other person before accusing them?
Personally I can't decide who's sillier - the actual cheaters or the people making accusations.

[Xyga]

No it's good to share it, problem is just there aren't reliable-enough solutions for that yet besides live streaming, where you can't just upload your best performance but have to commit to performance at a precise time before an audience, not everyone can do that.

Filming/recording oneself playing, screen and hands well in view, is the second best option. It is hard to fake but still a hassle, say you do 10 runs in a day before getting your best, well that's a crapload of video to record, then you have to upload which can be a problem for those stuck with miserable upload speeds (many, many hours for 1GB kind-of-hell)

The idea of a non-video real-time inputs recording alternative would be alright if only even that wasn't fake-able, but recording the hands motion/muscles activity along at the same time wouldn't be as that's something one just cannot simulate.
The amount of live-recorded data to stream or upload would be negligible compared to video, but the implementation sounds complicated.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

then you have to upload wich can be a problem for those stuck with miserable upload speeds (6 hours for 1GB kind-of-hell, if not worse)

Ima just say that the software Handbrake has been a great help with making videos smaller without much quality loss for me.
I did a quick search and easily found an updated tutorial on how to use it.

Maybe this'll be good info for someone

[NTSC-J]

Instead, we have this thread, with an OP that basically says "Give proof or get fukt."

As I posted in my last reply and what I tried to say in the OP, I think Perikles is a nice guy, I've always gotten along with him, and I would love to be able to verify that his scores are legit, but I wanted to pose the issue to everyone here to get a group consensus.

Please understand where I'm coming from: I'm trying to organize the Hall of Records in a way that's useful to everyone here and Perikles plays a prominent role in the thread. I have people on one side telling me that some of these runs are probably fake, then when I try to pose it to the community, I get responses like this. It's just kind of disheartening.

[Sumez]

Yeah, I didn't read the OP like that at all.
However, I find the stuff inside PerishedFraud's spoiler tag super relevant.

[Xyga]

I get responses like this. It's just kind of disheartening.

But Perishedfraud is right too, technically this is what it means, Perikles shows proof or he gets fukt.

While it's been said before but less prominent players have probably cheated already yet weren't bothered because not all eyes are on them.

Do all entries have hands-on-controls + screen recorded at the same time ?

Did some players abuse run-ahead without telling ?

etc

[donluca]

maybe BOS trained like crazy by all means using replays and savestates, until he didn't need them anymore and could show off his skills and continue to grow ?

I think this is spot on and I like to think this is how things went down.

Thanks to replays and savestates you can learn a game in a very "unconventional", if you will, way and imho this will clearly show through your playing.

If you've spent months (if not years) using savestates to do a certain thing, move in a certain way to dodge bullets in a pattern instead of routing it properly, you'll still find your way through but it may look somewhat suspicious to those more accustomed to proper, safer routing.

[Jaimers]

Routing is routing, regardless whether save states were used to learn it or not, and that is not at all what's being questioned here trust me.

[blossom]

"His play style does not copy each frame of the highest scoring replays like I do, therefore he must be cheating." That's kinda the impression I'm getting from those so eager to wield their pitchforks.

[chum]

"His play style does not copy each frame of the highest scoring replays like I do, therefore he must be cheating." That's kinda the impression I'm getting from those so eager to wield their pitchforks.

I wish I could say this in a NICER way but you keep butting in with idiotic comments despite being completely ignorant, you are too ignorant to take part in this discussion... take a hint. these kinds of comments based entirely on feeling by a player who doesnt understand shmups at all adds nothing of value. NOONE is on a witchhunt, Idk why you are so touchy about this...

FYI I used to trust my cheat detection skills more than I do now because I've called out someone who then proved themselves (in my book, at least).

That's why ppl should be a bit careful with being like 100% convinced unless it's obvious VIXYNYAN bullshit where you can see the slowdown usage with your own eyes. Perikles twitchiness at times looks kinda ridiculous but not more ridiculous than what real legit players can already do.

btw seems a post was deleted that I was partly responding to with that... my point is that this is not set in stone at all

[Xyga]

Oh come on the fucking censorship just now... if you have material just post it. I've seen the discord captures before the post was deleted.

And I was about to reply this:

I've been best friends with plasmo for years now, we've both agreed without doubt in private that perikles is clearly cheating and must be challenged, sad to see so many emotional thinkers hiding behind the usual hive righteousness rather than defending integrity.

You have it completely wrong here Mr.
Because not everyone in this community has inside intel and help from whatever discords etc.

Presuming someone is innocent until proven otherwise is right, not 'emotional'. What you said is rather scary.

Now if you guys have indeed found solid proof, well naturally things will change.
(edit: you better be certain and the proof reaaaally solid tho. you know it)

[blossom]

No one's on a witch hunt, and yet we have a thread title of "The Problem with Perikles"...

Also, I think it's rather hilariously inconsequential how a couple of you have noted Perikles rarely plays modern games. "Bullet hell is harder to cheat, must be why he doesn't play them." So it's just not possible that maybe someone doesn't suck off Cave and Touhou like the rest of you? It HAS to be for immoral purposes?