The Problem with Perikles

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BIL
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BIL »

Lags wrote:his thesaurus
Oh I get it, his posts are obviously hax too mirite guys lmao
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Sumez
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Sumez »

I always just assumed Perikles was using direct translations of German words. I know I have a similar habit of using uncommon English expressions due to, well, not being very familiar with casual English.
Mark_MSX wrote:Sure, give me all the awards and downplay me as much as you like.
I'll give you the "making a lot of baseless assumptions and judging people based on those" award then.
People are trying to remain positive and civil here, I don't understand why you need to try and twist it into something it's not.

It's fine if you think that he cheated, the suspicion is still out there (vague as it is) but most of your points here make no sense. BIL and Kitten already responded appropriately, so I'm not going to go into more detail.
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Mantrox
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Mantrox »

Being this adept at organizing and aquiring knowledge about shmups, and having your precious time allotted very rigorously, so much so in fact that you don't want to, EVER, disturb that time slot by playing shmups you have played before.
That surely is really convenient in this case.

I'm still on the fence, as i don't have enough experience on specific games for the evidence to jump out at me; but your willingness to just throw it all away by being asked for a bit of proof is rather damning, and as you pointed out, the usual response of someone guilty.

If you can still point out that several skilled players have validated your work on your videos, as being able to provide them with some new ideias for their own gameplay, you do seem to care about all of this.
- You cared enough to curate your threads and lists to exhaustion.
- You cared enough to review in detail shmups that most people don't know that exist.
- You cared enough to make the videos and respond to the comments.
- You cared enough to have all of your scores registered and updated regularly on the proper threads.

Most of the people here care about your content.
Why all of a sudden did you just stopped caring?
Why would a simple request for proof make you give up everything and just disregard everyone?
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Lags
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Lags »

BIL wrote:
Lags wrote:his thesaurus
Oh I get it, his posts are obviously hax too mirite guys lmao
Indeed, one could say that most of his posts are TAS.
[T]hesaurus[AS]
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Perikles The Wise? I thought not. It's not a story the Farm would tell you. It's a shmupg legend. Darth Perikles was a Dark Lord of shmups, so powerful and so wise he could use cheat engine to slowdown the game… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even make the runs he cared about look legit. The dark side of shmups is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He cheated so much… the only thing he was afraid of was getting caught, which eventually, of course, he was. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice, Yace, everything he knew, then he exposed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could catch others cheating, but not himself.
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PerishedFraud ឵឵
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by PerishedFraud ឵឵ »

Lack of proof does not equal an admission to fault. This is all I'll say about the situation itself. It's great to see a resolution.

Meanwhile...
Spoiler
I see.

After an actual post by Perikles, the users who previously clung to suspicion and guessing games are now openly shaming and flaming, if not just messing around.

This, despite it being well-established that a proof of skill is far more significant than the recovery of old files.

The fact that Perikles agreed to such a demonstration (though not immediately) only makes the posts of said users more noteworthy.

How predictable.

I give props to the others, who maintained reason (and maintain it, too).

You both know who you are.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Gus wrote:As for the Yace run, I'm going to be bold and suggest that we are looking at splices.
They're definitely splices, but he's already responded publicly to the concerns about the video. He's well aware how bad the videos look from the perspective of looking sketchy; apparently he's got a dinosaur of a computer from 2011 and the way he is recording apparently isn't very professional and produces split AVIs he has to then squish back together in Windows Movie Maker before uploading, or something along those lines. The reason the inputs seem to stop right before a jitter apparently is because his computer literally can't handle the AVI split without the game freezing for a second.

I actually think I did something similar when I first started recording. I used Virtualdub to record my first 2 or 3 videos ever on Youtube (don't do this, it's a terrible idea) and then had to splice together split AVIs into smaller 12 minute chunks because of Youtube's old 15 minute video limit or whatnot. There's probably obvious jump splices in my old Streets of Rage 3/Streets of Rage Remake videos, ick.

Regardless of whether or not you believe his explanation, Yace explicitly says he's never cheated in his runs and as far as I'm aware Yace has been seen playing in-person by BOS who is unquestionably a good player and would almost certainly vouch for Yace's skill.
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blossom
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by blossom »

No, but you see BKR... that means BOS is next! This community must find and eradicate all da cheatahz!!! /sarcasm

Wholly separate from the Perikles situation, I'm already getting sick of the coming months where certain people will make it their mission to examine all prominent players just to see if they did or didn't cheat. If this were done for any honest reason, perhaps I'd be forgiving of it, however it's clear these guys have the only goal of creating drama.
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
Gus wrote:As for the Yace run, I'm going to be bold and suggest that we are looking at splices.
They're definitely splices, but he's already responded publicly to the concerns about the video. He's well aware how bad the videos look from the perspective of looking sketchy; apparently he's got a dinosaur of a computer from 2011 and the way he is recording apparently isn't very professional and produces split AVIs he has to then squish back together in Windows Movie Maker before uploading, or something along those lines. The reason the inputs seem to stop right before a jitter apparently is because his computer literally can't handle the AVI split without the game freezing for a second.

I actually think I did something similar when I first started recording. I used Virtualdub to record my first 2 or 3 videos ever on Youtube (don't do this, it's a terrible idea) and then had to splice together split AVIs into smaller 12 minute chunks because of Youtube's old 15 minute video limit or whatnot. There's probably obvious jump splices in my old Streets of Rage 3/Streets of Rage Remake videos, ick.

Regardless of whether or not you believe his explanation, Yace explicitly says he's never cheated in his runs and as far as I'm aware Yace has been seen playing in-person by BOS who is unquestionably a good player and would almost certainly vouch for Yace's skill.
Alright, let's take a look at the points where the video splits, credit to shoe.

6:30
13:52
17:29
20:38
24:35
33:18
35:39
36:47
38:14
44:39
50:21
52:19

If these splits are the automatic product of some sort of software he's using to capture the videos, you'd expect either them to systemic or totally random. Just by looking at these, we can throw out the systematic explanation. Are they random? Let's take a look at where of some of them are... right before stage 1 boss, stage 3 boss, before/after the infamous stage 5 section, final boss... If they're random he sure got lucky as hell splitting at the exact points that would be convenient if he were savestating his way through the game. Take note as well how his ship seems to shop shooting at the points where the splits happen, and never seem to happen while the action is hectic. This guy really should try to win the lottery if all this is just random noise from an old computer!

Sorry but this is one of the most blatantly cheated replays I've ever seen and I'm honestly kind of shocked anyone could believe it's legit. I've seen guys labelled cheaters in speedrunning for runs that were far less obvious than this. The guy might have proved his skills live before, but that's irrelevant to this replay and the facts that I've presented. It's a solid example of why you shouldn't blindly trust a replay because of a guy's rep.
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Lags
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Lags »

blossom wrote:This community must find and eradicate all da cheatahz!!
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Look, at this point I'm super hesitant to jump on any "cheater" bandwagons for anyone unless we've got really explicit evidence and nobody willing to vouch for them. When you're really keyed up and looking for evidence of foul play there's the real danger of false positive labelling. In this case, the splitting does look extremely sketchy, no doubt about that, but when it was noticed, several people were immediately declaring him a cheater without leaving any room for doubt before Yace even been given a courtesy chance to respond. With the timezone he's in, he would have been asleep at the time the allegations exploded, and he responded in less than 24 hours.

I don't think it's too much to ask that people at least keep an open mind and give whoever you're accusing a chance to respond within a few days before calling for their head on a silver platter.
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

I'd really hesitate to call this part of any sort of bandwagon. As best I can tell, people from different parts of the community came to the same conclusion independent of each other solely due to Perikles bringing attention to the run. The evidence in here goes far beyond the questionable dodges people took issue with Perikles, and it's really about as clean-cut as evidence for cheating gets barring invincibility or a save/reload text being displayed. For comparison, no one batted an eye at any of the other dodges Perikles posted for the simple reason that they weren't suspicious at all. It's great that Yace took the time to respond in such a timely manner, but it really does nothing to address the core of why people think the run is so sketchy. I'm actually starting to wonder if Perikles drew attention to such a sketchy run from a known player to try to take attention away from his own controversy.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by andrew_F-91 »

While there was a lot to read, and I'm sure I should have dug further. I did read the entirety of the first page. While it is certainly not someone's responsibility to want to meet up in person. The fact that it is something so common in fighting games, that one would not jump at the opportunity to share a common interest especially one so niche.

I'm inclined to lean towards the fraudulence. I'm a scrub but I take pride in every mediocre clear I upload. I also don't know why someone being a valuable community member would come into play in regards to the issue of cheating. If anything that would cause a bigger red flag.
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BIL
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by BIL »

Lags wrote:Indeed, one could say that most of his posts are TAS.
[T]hesaurus[AS]
I'm relieved! For a moment I thought you were just sniping cuntily at his diction under some flimsy premise of civil enquiry. I see the investigation has entered a productive new phase. They almost had me there, lads.
andrew_F-91 wrote:While there was a lot to read, and I'm sure I should have dug further. I did read the entirety of the first page. While it is certainly not someone's responsibility to want to meet up in person. The fact that it is something so common in fighting games, that one would not jump at the opportunity to share a common interest especially one so niche.
I think this is the most fruitless line of enquiry, and it's been understandably backed away from. There's a million reasons people keep internet shit separate from IRL. It used to be de rigeur. I would be eating out of a dumpster by the end of the month if half the Justice Shoes I've landed on Brianna Wu's gurning internet terror mask got linked back to me. Could even go to jail actually lmao!

Fighting games revolve around head-to-head competition, ideally two players competing on the same machine. There's far greater cachet in IRL meetups. It's a false equivalence imo. (I'm not knocking STG gatherings, I think they're great)
I also don't know why someone being a valuable community member would come into play in regards to the issue of cheating. If anything that would cause a bigger red flag.
I don't think anyone has once argued ITT that contributions = clemency. It's the stirring method acting that'd have gone into his forum output for things like "why no CAVE" to hold any water.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Eaglet »

I thought people in here were grown up enough not to snipe cuntily at people with personal defamation attempts when we're discussing fucking video game shit. Sadly, I'm disappointed. It's one thing to question the validity of very suspect runs and behavior, another to make ad hominem attacks.
This bitchy behavior is beyond pathetic.

Perikles, you are not helping your own case when you're basically saying "I'm not going to directly admit to any cheating even if that's exactly what it looks like so please remove my scores so my legitimacy can remain in limbo and I won't have to directly admit anything embarassing". Too many convenient excuses.
Any of the hard clears you've gotten will be easy enough to back into if you actually got them.
Just record your screen and hand when you practice Same3 again and everyone will be very easily able to tell if this was something that you theoretically could have achieved in the manner that you did or not.
moozooh wrote:I think that approach won't get you far in Garegga.
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DDDP
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by DDDP »

The thread reeks from top to bottom, if the opinion from an outside observer with no community cred means anything. If you aimed to incentivize new players and experienced players to try for score, this sends a clear message: don't ever let your guard down! The community might randomly comb through your past runs and arbitrarily demand that you prove yourself. Cam footage might be okay today, but who knows what the self-appointed experts will require in 5 years or 10 years? I can already see input files becoming a new standard under the logic that "if you're really so serious, how hard is it to run an emulator with input capture? Must be a faker".

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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by third_strike »

LOL!!!
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Zil
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Zil »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
Gus wrote:As for the Yace run, I'm going to be bold and suggest that we are looking at splices.
They're definitely splices, but he's already responded publicly to the concerns about the video. He's well aware how bad the videos look from the perspective of looking sketchy; apparently he's got a dinosaur of a computer from 2011 and the way he is recording apparently isn't very professional and produces split AVIs he has to then squish back together in Windows Movie Maker before uploading, or something along those lines. The reason the inputs seem to stop right before a jitter apparently is because his computer literally can't handle the AVI split without the game freezing for a second.
If this were the case, either the splices would be seamless, or some footage would be lost (i.e. the video would seem to skip ahead). What actually happens is they "rewind" slightly. That means extra footage somehow materialized out of thin air.

Also, it's possible to be both skilled and a cheater.
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Ako
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Ako »

The weird jumps are in this video as well at always convenient times https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8PBr1Ggnt8

The only explanation I can see other than cheating is that mame would be smart enough to cut when it detects a period of low input. Mame just gives me a huge avi file with no cuts so I can't test it myself.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by chum »

I have checked several videos and the cuts always happen in convenient times (stage transition, before boss, before tricky parts, etc) and always has loss of input right before the cut, which isn't really supported by yace's explanation that the cuts cause loss of input.

Furthermore the loss of inputs last for random amount of time, and appear a random amount of time before the cut occurs; could be as little as 1 frame before the cut, up to 10+ frames before the cut. then the inputs come back after the cuts. This never happens during "gameplay" and never causes any problems due to this. He could even move into the corner, then cut, then move back up.

So essentially I'd believe half of the explanation (The avis being written into multiple randomly sized/lengthy video chunks could be feasible) but because of the cuts are placed and because of when the loss of input happens I don't believe the explanation. Of course I'm as confused as everyone else as to why any of this is even happening.

People can assume whatever they want based on that information, it's up to them
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by pegboy »

At this point I must admit that it looks like Perikles cheated. His long post reads more like a tacit admission of guilt rather than a repudiation. Not once has he ever actually denied using slowdown or cheating, instead he seems to try and deflect by pointing out potentially cheated runs by other players. And why would someone who is innocent want all their scores thrown away and then threaten to delete their entire youtube channel on top of it? Makes no fucking sense at all.

Also that Samurai Aces run by Yace looks extremely fishy with the weird "blips" at key points (right before bosses mostly). Honestly I probably never would have noticed it if not for people pointing it out here. When I messed around with MAME generated .avis it always generated a single, massive file, not a series of small files, so why would they need to be spliced? Can he actually prove that it does that, because I sure as hell have never seen that.

Is he using some other software to capture the runs and then somehow manually starting/stopping recording in different areas during the run in order to split it up into chunks and then splice it all together after the fact? That's the only way this would make any sense without save states or other shenanigans. There is no way the parts where it "blips" in his videos are random, it's always before a boss or another key segment. It sure looks like splicing a run together using save states with from what we are presented with.
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CyberAngel
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by CyberAngel »

pegboy wrote:And why would someone who is innocent want all their scores thrown away and then threaten to delete their entire youtube channel on top of it? Makes no fucking sense at all.
Okay, everyone, gather up, I'm gonna open your eyes on something. Make sure you're prepared to have your whole worldview turned upside down. Ready?

People can lose interest in their hobbies. Even if they used to be pretty serious about it.

Mindblowing, I know. But believe me, it can happen. Take me for example. I used to be into Touhou games big time, but nowadays I don't think I'll pick one up ever again. I also purged my YouTube channel several times by this point, even though I've had hundreds of hours of stream footages there at one point. People change, their values change, and some internet nobodies starting shit about their old stuff can be no longer worth spending any of their time on anymore.

Seriously, you people are just ridiculous at this point. He didn't say he never cheated so that means he cheated? Please, as if actual cheaters wouldn't ever say they didn't cheat. It's like you people fancy yourselves master psychologists, nitpicking Perikles' posts to hell and back, but in reality show logic capabilities of a pre-teen. This is sad.

Oh well. At least this thread demonstrated real well who here has some basic human empathy and who would gladly push a fellow player under the bus. And no, the latter doesn't mean "everyone who says he cheated", there are actually reasonable people among accusers. But many did expose their own coldhearted nature. And all I have for them is pity.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Vludi »

Yace's run in Sengoku Aces indeed looks fishy :shock:, lots of risky/weird movement and most of the bombs aren't well placed, my route for that game wasn't very polished at all (less than a week of practice) but you still need some routing to clear the game, which I don't see much in this run, it feels more like he was "learning" in the way. Compare stage 1-5/2-5 to BOS' runs for example, there is like 0 planning in comparison, the minibosses section is especially fishy with none of the essential point blank strats. In 1-6/2-6 the way he approaches the triple miniboss is too careless as well with no planning, then in the next miniboss of the same stage, in the first loop he had no idea about the safespot in the center but somehow dodges the pattern anyway, but in the second loop he somehow knows the safespot now lol. In the final stage the prority are the center turrets (and before the midboss the side turrets), but he risks himself moving erratically, almost focusing on the harmless zakos which is super weird. Later on the TLB, he again doesn't pointblank at all and does some weird dodges before he pretends to be killed, and then he finishes off the TLB with a terribly placed bomb. That's just some of the stuff I noticed, but the whole run smells suspicious.
Last edited by Vludi on Wed Dec 11, 2019 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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pegboy
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by pegboy »

I watched Yace's R-Type and R-Type II runs and that also has the strange blips in them as well, mostly in the beginning of stages or right before a boss.
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copy-paster
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by copy-paster »

Speaking of cheater though, anyone familiar with user named tv1ks? I remember saw this user back when I was new on this forum and claimed to have cleared Gradius III Arcade without power-ups/speed only. There is also their youtube channel too.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by avri62 »

This thread has become the shmups forum equivalent of the #metoo witch hunt.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by wiNteR »

copy-paster wrote:Speaking of cheater though, anyone familiar with user named tv1ks? I remember saw this user back when I was new on this forum and claimed to have cleared Gradius III Arcade without power-ups/speed only. There is also their youtube channel too.
If you are just talking about tviks, he is a gradius expert (from a long time ago). For example, the 16-loop record in GradiusV (which is also wr I think) and many others in other gradius games. I think the user DEL could tell you more about it.

Edit:
Also, if that matters, as far as I can re-call, the 16 loop record is supposed to be before the PS2 emulation took up (someone else can expand on this if they remember better).
chum wrote:I watched all the clips and to be frank I see nothing weird about most of them, but they are also mostly for games I lack experience in. However it is worth mentioning that many people have accused sikraiken of cheating before (I think most of this happened before I entered the community, so I don't know that much about it, but STGT 2012 was definitely crazy suspicious) ......
Just describing things as they are, I think around 2003-2004 he seems to have gotten 500M+ score on ddp in a period of about one year (which, as far as I remember, according to him was nmnb till the last few boss battles ..... meaning maximum bomb bonus). This is according to him.

He also seemed to have very good (meaning in-depth) knowledge about few points (in dp and ddp for example) which most people here (or possibly anyone on these forums) weren't of (in particular, say 10 to 12 years ago). So he did seem to have fairly in-depth knowledge.

Regarding the accusations, I will edit this post.
Last edited by wiNteR on Wed Dec 11, 2019 7:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Gus
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by Gus »

wiNteR wrote: Just describing things as they are, I think around 2003-2004 he seems to have gotten 500M+ score on ddp in a period of about one year (which, as far as I remember, according to him was nmnb till the last few boss battles ..... meaning maximum bomb bonus). This is according to him.

He also seemed to have very good (meaning in-depth) knowledge about few points (in dp and ddp for example) which most people here (or possibly anyone on these forums) weren't of (in particular, say 10 to 12 years ago). So he did seem to have fairly in-depth knowledge.
Should be noted that Sikraiken's 530m DDP score was also considered highly dubious due to him never backing it with anything more than a screenshot and him shying away from discussing it, despite it seemingly being a huge achievement for him. Regarding his knowledge of the game, here's what Prometheus had to say about that.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by wiNteR »

But at that time replays or videos were not the norm. With a lot of respect, I don't agree with much of what Prometheus has to say unfortunately.

One of the reasons why he might have been so dubious about it was that there was a guwange competition some time before (or after?) that I think (it was a competition extending about a month or more) and sikraiken only submitted a very weak stage-5 score. But how does this make anything dubious at all. If you play one or two runs of a game and submit a weak score, how does this make other scores suspicious?

Regarding the knowledge, you can ask Plasmo probably as he is more knowledgeable about nuisances. I do remember sikrariken posting a video on 1-3/2-3 stage of ddp regarding a safespot trick on the green ships (needles) section. This is a very long time ago (I am pretty certain it is 10 years or more) when videos were very uncommon. Even though I had seen a few superplays of ddp, at least I think I had not seen that trick before.

At any rate, regardless of this even if I am not sure admittedly, I don't agree with reasoning of accusations. Would I like to see him doing live or recorded run of a bullet-hell game (like ddp) to put this to rest? Yes of course. I think this kind of thing would be good in general too for the genre.

P.S.
I do agree with the sentiment expressed that re-learning some games (after a long time) can sometimes take much more effort than one would expect. I feel that with ddp in particular (and to varying extent with other games). But that's really a separate topic.
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Re: The Problem with Perikles

Post by EmperorIng »

If someone gets emotionally upset, it doesn't surprise that they may do something drastic or cataclysmic (ie, ask for full-scale removal), even if I almost always think that is a bad idea. I mean, just think of suddenly being forced to defend yourself, with the added hurdle that none of your explanations are believed. Whether the suspicions justified or not, this quickly can make a person say "Whatever. I'm done."
Perikles wrote: The 10m+ run on PCE Gradius II was furthermore done on a real PC Engine, a console which doesn't even have any Gameshark/cheat engine equivalent as far as I'm aware (I might be horribly wrong on that, though) - on account of the nasty flicker on higher loops, this is about as difficult as getting 10m+ scores in the arcade version, which is not exactly trivial, either.
I wanted to chime in and add to this thought. Being a little more intimately familiar with the console in recent times (getting a large number of pce clears over the last few years), I hope I have a little to contribute.

Perikles uses everdrives for all his console runs last I recall (and I'll say half-jokingly that he has far bigger problems in his life if he willingly bought copies of Rock On, Barunba, and Toilet Kids to competitively score in). If you look through Perikles' score topics for these console games, an accompanying picture is almost always provided - given that the hosting site hasn't shat itself, which has happened several times. Example 1. Example 2 that is taken from a tv and I presume real hardware. As an aside I wish the image he had posted of his large mosaic of all his pictures of console clears from tv pics didn't die with the hosting site. Not only was it a cool collage, it also showed how he really took pride in clearing all of those games.

At least as recently as 2 or so years back, krikkz wasn't able to find a way to enable save-states onto the everdrive hardware, due to problems with the interface between the micro-SD, the everdrive, and the console. Magic Engine apparently has some cheat-patched roms, to be fair, that works on their proprietary emulator. The everdrive doesn't have a cheat menu, and you have to patch the hucard roms with home-made (or pre-made) cheats yourself if you want in a hassle of a process (get the rom, ips patch it in, etc.). This process might have been made earlier in more recent versions, but for quite some time the interest in making a cheat engine did not seem to be there.

I don't think until -very- recently were there FPGA emulation devices (like from Terra Onion) that are offering CD-based emulation, and even then I've tried looking for CD Rom and SUPER CD Rom2 cheats to patch to ISOs and I am getting dead ends. On the site gamehacking.org it appears there are a number of really... hacky cheats for use in mednafen which continuously assign certain hex values in-game with the occasionally weird/disconcerting caveat (e.g. "Seirei Senshi Spriggan invincibility - make sure to disable this cheat after every boss"). Getting this to run on real hardware is really dubious in my eyes, given the sheer effort involved for such a low payout (someone with more technical knowledge should chime in though!). Given that things like invincibility/infinite lives would be easily detectable and utterly break some of these CD games, when combined with all the hoops jumped through, ON TOP of taking photos on a large enough CRT monitor to fake being a TV... it's almost certain that instead these were done on real hardware, in real time.

Now that I've wasted time with that explanation, I'll say why: I wanted to establish at least on the PC Engine, and especially the CD, there are few avenues available for cheating if playing on real hardware. Laugh all you want, given how many of these games have questionable or broken-scoring, or are generally easier. Nonetheless, they exist as a metric of skill; in fact, echoing Plasmo, I am positive all his console scores are real accomplishments.

So why bring that up? One of (many) of the issues brought up is a question of verifying skill. Having some knowledge of PC Engine shooters, while many are indeed easy, at least to 1all, some are annoyingly hard.

Take RayXanber II for instance. This is a game I enjoy - that nonetheless has some of the most annoying Irem-wannabe-isms I've encountered on a console. You need to do exactly what it tells you, or you die. There is no improvisation, or almost none, because the game has the route it wants you to follow. Your pea-shooter isn't equipped to kill anything other than small zako. You can't even kill every enemy in stage 1 unless you position yourself strictly (and if you don't? death!).

The game isn't impossible, of course. Just demanding - it is a precise puzzle that wants to be solved. I'd welcome people to give the game a serious try to see how they fare with its 'tricks.' Perikles, on his own arcade/16bit difficulty list, equated it to roughly a RayForce ALL or a Raiden 1ALL among others (speaking subjectively as someone who has, lol, -almost- cleared all three, this isn't terribly off the mark imo).

The score he posted for Gradius II also deserves some mention, as it involved looping Gradius II's pc engine port 16 times. The above Gradius score was done, by his account, over three days (with pauses/breaks, of course). I remember him telling me in pm how he was getting nervous about having the console overheating all that time due to using voltage converters and the like. I think it's worth pointing out that several times he's admitted here to almost unthinkable (to me) marathon sessions with multi-loop games. Part of me wonders if you sit down and try something for 4-7 hours at a time will you just naturally come upon something... miraculous? Let me state that I am not so naive as to think that this is exculpatory, nor do I even think friendly requests for INPs or streaming are far-fetched (though you ultimately can't force anyone to do something - but there are logical consequences for washing one's hands).

I also feel like it's worth bringing up the exchanges in the Parodius score thread. After posting another console 2ALL photo (up to 3-6), it has a rare instance of Perikles plotting out/discussing strategies to a game he ultimately wasn't able to beat.

So why do I bring up all of this? Why muddy the waters? On one hand, some explanations into PC Engine ports is not going to convince people concerned about the 'bigger' prizes - like Same! Same! Same! and Tatsujin Ou. The difficulty does not compare, I agree. I think a lot of minds were made up long before the OP was posted, and no amount of hand-cams or whatnot would really change anyone's views. Do I even think it's unreasonable to ask for further proof if possible if you are posting community records? Not necessarily! There are some seriously lucky dodges that happen and sometimes people want to know how you could possibly pull something off. However, the conversation about verification seems to have quickly congealed around a narrative regarding a lack of knowledge and/or skill that can only be explained with hax and elaborate play-acting (post-confirmation bias if you will), which I think needs a little bit of pushback and wider perspective.

I don't have the answers for all of perikles' arcade runs. I can't pretend to know his decisions on 'routing' - even for games we've both played where his videos differ from my own experience (e.g. Skull Fang, where I improbably took 'the community record' from Perikles - with him more than likely notifying NTSC-J for that because I certainly didn't). I also don't begrudge folks like chum, or Mark, or even Plasmo or pegboy for finding those moments suspicious, or wishing to see replay files. However I also think that the clears I've mentioned above show someone who can and has displayed some real skill and methodical approach when it comes to certain games within the genre - coupled with the stamina to clear them. It'd be a disservice to the years I've talked with him if I didn't say as much.

This is why I hope there is some type of ultimately satisfactory conclusion, even though it is starting to feel dangerously as if too many feelings have been hurt and bridges burnt. I like to think, like BIL, that we're all "shmup bros" - whether playing seriously for score, going for survival clears, or somewhere in-between, and that trying to hold ourselves to appropriate standards doesn't have to involve futile acts of self-cannibalization and balkanization.
Last edited by EmperorIng on Wed Dec 11, 2019 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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