Cheating scandals in the shmup community?

[Sumez]

This response is pretty much what I expected. It's what I always hear from these kinds of cheated runs. "It's ok because there's no expectation of us not cheating."

To be fair, mate, that's what cheating means. If the run makes no claims of being legitimate (and the description straight up spells out that savestates were used lol), it's not really trying to cheat anyway. This is such an absurd claim.

I like the TAS tag idea. It's easy to add, solves the issue perfectly, and might even boost views because TAS has its own audience

I don't see any issue with implementing it. It conforms to exactly what SCHLAUCHI's stated goals were in his post.

Wouldn't that be incredibly dishonest towards the actual TAS audience though? Suggesting straight up mislabeling the videos is obviously much worse.
Why are people on this forum so absurdly determined on misunderstanding what the purpose of World of Longplays is? Even right after the guy himself literally spelled it out in this thread lol

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

It's tool assisted, only the S is faulty, but TAS is a well known phrase with a short name, and thus more functional than calling it something else, purely for awareness. It's not entirely accurate, but it gets the message across. Sure, though, if push comes to shove just use (tool assisted) even though it's statistically worse.

Secondly, I fully understand what WoL is doing. I also fully understand the unintended effects it has. I still like the tas idea, but I take no credit for any further opinions here (other than my own). Putting it in titles works because the average viewer doesn't look at anything else. Move it to descriptions and you already get a horde that thinks its legit. Move it to site and most viewers will think it's real.

TLDR Intention =\= effect

Now, an important note:
Does WoL have to listen to any of us? Hell no. It's what I think would stop the deluge of unaware viewers...but the entire issue is incredibly minor and not what I would label a scandal to begin with. The reasoning: Most viewers won't devote time to practice a game to begin with. Thus my attitude towards WoL is entirely neutral. Hopefully that part is crystal clear.

[Sengoku Strider]

We lost one of the best members on the forum, and I don't think we came out ahead after all of it was said and done.

I mean, he (obviously imo) lied, then picked up his ball and went home. He had plenty of people in his corner and he left them in the lurch too, he hardly lived up to his end of the bargain. Just the opposite, he ramped things up with indignant rants and insults, and caused others to argue with each other. Like let's not forget, it wasn't a couple of scores, it was like 80 of them or something, with him claiming #1 on a lot of them.

I wouldn't even remember any of this except for how insulting to peoples' intelligence the defences were, and how aggravating it was seeing people falling for it. He deletes the video, which is practically proof of guilt by itself, but whatever. Then "Oh, I don't have the files" - suss, but ok, could happen. "I have no backups" - bad idea, but his life. "My computer's too old to be compatible with any kind of proof" - but can run everything in MAME and capture video just fine. "I'll record a new run, I'm just busy with life stuff"...weeks or months go by, then instead of just playing the game for 30 minutes to prove he at least knew how, he spent time posting huge rants instead. That last one was the most undeniable sign. Anybody who wasn't guilty as charged, and who was as obviously upset about the whole thing as he was, would have just done something - anything - instead of directing all that effort in all the different avoidant directions he did. Even just pointing a smartphone at their computer showing them playing and shut the haters up and taken a victory lap.

[iconoclast]

Can someone find examples of people caught cheating in other communities, only to have a sizeable segment of the players (or "players") trip over themselves trying to defend and excuse it? You can acknowledge he cheated, or was at the very least extremely sketchy, and just say yeah well I liked reading his posts anyway, I don't care about scores and clears. Okay, whatever. Going ostrich mode and pretending he was some hero who got done dirty by the nefarious Synth is just bizarre. Pretty much every time I've seen people caught cheating in other games, they get crucified and the community celebrates getting rid of them.
Saying maybe he just didn't care enough about the community to defend himself is also ridiculous. This guy wrote walls of text about all kinds of games, nobody on Earth cared more about being part of the community.

In shmups, by default, nobody ever thinks you're cheating because nobody cares about these games, so what's the point? In the extremely rare occurrence that you post videos, someone who actually has some understanding of the game (or just the genre, for the especially inept cheaters) watches it, and they spot some odd instances of nonsensical strategy, it can raise some questions. If this happens across multiple games, with multiple players finding suspicious segments, then there's nothing wrong with making some accusations. And all you have to do to put the whole thing to rest, while potentially making the accusers look like fools, is post some decent proof. Nobody would demand anything rock solid, just a simple live stream, or a hand/screen cam replay would be perfectly fine. Instead, he dropped his cancel folder of other cheaters, nuked his account, and chicken bolted. Nothing suspicious here!

[BIL]

This is really why it's important to not be a cunt. IRL it will eventually get you punched in the teeth, of course, but it makes even verbal communications difficult. Sandblast the barely-verbal aspergers off the affair, and you have a reasonable case with a definitive ending. I'm leaning more towards that over time, simply because of the lack of further comment from him.

Kicking things off with a "LOL LMAO CHEATED TO DEATH / WONT SHOW HE FACE" hitpiece and a raft of piss-weak examples, followed by a graspingly vacuous shitshow of a thread - y u no meet??? - is precisely the blundering reach I'd expect from the wall-smearing "Jarpig hunter" spastics who were regularly shitting this place up around then.

I've got £2,500 worth of Famicom, Mega Drive and Super Famicom games sitting on the desk here, a tiny shard of my queenly shelf. My 2009 PC is so shit it cannot handle twitch, because I do not give a single rat fuck about streaming, or watching streams, or capturing. Or PC gaming. I had to turn down a playtesting request from a dear friend for his sidescroller, recently, the first time I've remotely considered upgrading. I also don't do meetups. I love this community, and try to contribute where I can. But I value the ability to hit "x" and shut off the internet even more. Nothing personal, and most definitely nothing to do with anyone here. Just how I like it. So the conjecture on his setup and social mores does nothing for me.

I find the difficulty of most 1ALLs tremendously overrated in a post-savestate world, so the sheer numbers don't impress me either, given his apparent work rate. I'll give the two most relevant titles in question a go, compare with his runs, and that'll be that from me.

I'm not of the opinion that it doesn't matter if he cheated. It actually would affect his contributions in my eyes, on some level. I want to hear about games from those who've played them legitimately. But given the noted value and passion of his work, if this all came about from a fellow enthusiast playing a part, I could understand. It's not something I would ever do, but I can see the temptation. I would rather he let me forgive him that and move on. I don't believe this is the case. Limbo provokes speculation, that's all.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

This post really hit hard for me tbh. In hindsight The Perikles Thread "scandal" had almost nothing to do with Perikles and everything to do with other people posting garbage.

If we got definitive proof of cheating or innocence it would certainly make some people excited, but it won't undo what was done.

Bleh

[To Far Away Times]

Can someone find examples of people caught cheating in other communities, only to have a sizeable segment of the players (or "players") trip over themselves trying to defend and excuse it? You can acknowledge he cheated, or was at the very least extremely sketchy, and just say yeah well I liked reading his posts anyway, I don't care about scores and clears. Okay, whatever. Going ostrich mode and pretending he was some hero who got done dirty by the nefarious Synth is just bizarre. Pretty much every time I've seen people caught cheating in other games, they get crucified and the community celebrates getting rid of them.

I think because our community is so small, and the number of people writing long expose's on highly obscure games is even smaller. He did some of the best writing we've ever had on this forum.

I do think scrubbing his records was the right call, I don't have a problem with that. I just didn't like the way it was handled with that supersized 20 page thread. He did too much for the community to deserve that.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

This is really why it's important to not be a cunt. IRL it will eventually get you punched in the teeth, of course, but it makes even verbal communications difficult. Sandblast the barely-verbal aspergers off the affair, and you have a reasonable case with a definitive ending. I'm leaning more towards that over time, simply because of the lack of further comment from him.

Kicking things off with a "LOL LMAO CHEATED TO DEATH / WONT SHOW HE FACE" hitpiece and a raft of piss-weak examples, followed by a graspingly vacuous shitshow of a thread - y u no meet??? - is precisely the blundering reach I'd expect from the wall-smearing "Jarpig hunter" spastics who were regularly shitting this place up around then.

I've got £2,500 worth of Famicom, Mega Drive and Super Famicom games sitting on the desk here, a tiny shard of my queenly shelf. My 2009 PC is so shit it cannot handle twitch, because I do not give a single rat fuck about streaming, or watching streams, or capturing. Or PC gaming. I had to turn down a playtesting request from a dear friend for his sidescroller, recently, the first time I've remotely considered upgrading. I also wouldn't deign to meet anyone from this site. I love this community, and try to contribute what I can. But I value the ability to hit "X" and have the internet vanish without trace from my life even more. Nothing personal, just how it is. So the conjecture does nothing for me.

I find the difficulty of most 1ALLs tremendously overrated in a post-savestate world. I'll give the two most relevant titles in question a go, compare with his runs, and that'll be that from me. I'm not of the opinion that it doesn't matter if he cheated. It actually would damage his contributions in my eyes. I don't want to hear about games from someone who didn't play them legitimately.

At the 2013 California Extreme, I had brought in my Cave DDP-DOJ BL pcb that was placed in shmupper gibbous' Astro City candy cab and both shmuppers Blackoak & Dave_K. show up. Blackoak plays a single session of DDP-DOJ BL on 1 loop setup and 1CCs it while Dave_K. and I watched this jaw-dropping event take place/unfold. Later, I asked Blackoak about his incredible DDP-DOJ BL 1 loop 1CC and he hadn't played/touched it in about two years prior to that eventful day at CAX '13 and admitted that he was rusty at it -- it was still legendary! BIL, you'd be missing out on meeting up with some of your fellow shmuppers, especially in the UK area.

The upcoming 2024 California Extreme show is scheduled to be hosted at the Santa Clara Convention Center on July 28-29th indeed: http://www.caextreme.org (I don't know what arcade stg pcbs will be shown/hosted this time around).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BIL]

At the 2013 California Extreme, I had brought in my Cave DDP-DOJ BL pcb that was placed in shmupper gibbous' Astro City candy cab and both shmuppers Blackoak & Dave_K. show up. Blackoak plays a single session of DDP-DOJ BL on 1 loop setup and 1CCs it while Dave_K. and I watched this jaw-dropping event take place/unfold. Later, I asked Blackoak about his incredible DDP-DOJ BL 1 loop 1CC and he hadn't played/touched it in about two years prior to that eventful day at CAX '13 and admitted that he was rusty at it -- it was still legendary! BIL, you'd be missing out on meeting up with some of your fellow shmuppers, especially in the UK area.

The upcoming 2024 California Extreme show is scheduled to be hosted at the Santa Clara Convention Center on July 28-29th indeed: http://www.caextreme.org (I don't know what arcade stg pcbs will be shown/hosted this time around).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Thanks as always for the great road stories, PCEFX! That does sound wonderful. I don't mean to sound dismissive. (of you guys - here's hoping the Jarpig crew someday figure out how to go a post without getting banned) I always feel bad turning down the odd meetup invite. It's just never been for me, I guess. Maybe I don't miss what I never had, re: arcades. As I say, they just weren't a thing where I grew up, and all the hobbies I still have from back then are noisy outdoors stuff with tons of people about. I just like to switch all that off on here.

At any rate, pending a little research of my own to draw a line under things, I return to sharing Plasmo's opinion at the time of the thread.

And icycalm's, which gave me a much-needed laugh. ("Perikles is a Greek name, if he's Greek he definitely cheated." )

[XoPachi]

I know I'm about to cheat in RefRain! This fucking game's driving me nuts! About to be in a video that starts with "Hello, you absolute legends"!

[pegboy]

How much harder is tatsujin oh compared to truxton ii? It allegedly took perikles a mere 3 hours from his first clear of truxton ii to clear and post about tatsujin oh in the hi score thread. That seems extremely suspicious considering the game takes like an hour to beat just by itself. He's such a god he can just beat them back to back like it's nothing?

I always had suspicions about him just based on the speed and quantity of his clears combined with also usually placing high or #1 on the leaderboards. Never brought it up to anyone because I don't like making accusations about that sort of thing unless I'm 100% sure like in the case of edusword, nintendocomplete, shadowserg, paul eales, and probably a few I'm forgetting.

One other odd thing that always bothered me was how he rated dodonpqchi ii so high on his difficulty list. I wonder if he was actually playing it legit (wasn't it for one of those trap 15 tournaments?) For bee storm? Thus the rating was much higher than it should be relative to most things on his difficulty lists that were likely faked.

He claimed he was just "bad at bullet hells" or something which never sat right with me consdiering he ranked progear, ddp, doj bL, espgaluda all much lower.

To think he'd rank bee storm, a game that can be completely cheesed through, on the same level as something like sonic wings 2all, exed exes, gun smoke and freakin twin eagle is just incomprehensible.

[Sumez]

It's tool assisted, only the S is faulty, but TAS is a well known phrase with a short name, and thus more functional than calling it something else, purely for awareness. It's not entirely accurate, but it gets the message across. Sure, though, if push comes to shove just use (tool assisted) even though it's statistically worse.

You said it yourself, TAS has a dedicated audience.
The audience of TAS runs is interested in seeing the theoretical optimal ways a video game can be pushed, possibly beyond human limits.
They aren't interested in seeing people making magical dodges and trodging through a game they've never played before.

"TAS" does not get the message across at all. "Longplay", ironically, does.

[Sima Tuna]

It's tool assisted, only the S is faulty, but TAS is a well known phrase with a short name, and thus more functional than calling it something else, purely for awareness. It's not entirely accurate, but it gets the message across. Sure, though, if push comes to shove just use (tool assisted) even though it's statistically worse.

You said it yourself, TAS has a dedicated audience.
The audience of TAS runs is interested in seeing the theoretical optimal ways a video game can be pushed, possibly beyond human limits.
They aren't interested in seeing people making magical dodges and trodging through a game they've never played before.

"TAS" does not get the message across at all. "Longplay", ironically, does.

"Longplay" accurately conveys a dude playing a game at 1/4 speed using save states to segment the run, then editing software to piece it back together in post so it looks like a single segment? WoL disclaimer says "most runs use save states" but does not say how they are used or anything about playing the game at slow game speed.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Personally I don't find the longplay part misleading. All it means is seeing the game from start to finish. Been saying to just add a tag to it from the start. If tas is disingenuous just say tool assisted.

[Van_Artic]

I'm utterly gobsmacked by the fact that schlauchi made an account here in 2024 to defend his TASes. wild.

[Nahar]

The shmup community will never stop surprising everybody.

[To Far Away Times]

How much harder is tatsujin oh compared to truxton ii? It allegedly took perikles a mere 3 hours from his first clear of truxton ii to clear and post about tatsujin oh in the hi score thread. That seems extremely suspicious considering the game takes like an hour to beat just by itself. He's such a god he can just beat them back to back like it's nothing?

I always had suspicions about him just based on the speed and quantity of his clears combined with also usually placing high or #1 on the leaderboards. Never brought it up to anyone because I don't like making accusations about that sort of thing unless I'm 100% sure like in the case of edusword, nintendocomplete, shadowserg, paul eales, and probably a few I'm forgetting.

One other odd thing that always bothered me was how he rated dodonpqchi ii so high on his difficulty list. I wonder if he was actually playing it legit (wasn't it for one of those trap 15 tournaments?) For bee storm? Thus the rating was much higher than it should be relative to most things on his difficulty lists that were likely faked.

He claimed he was just "bad at bullet hells" or something which never sat right with me consdiering he ranked progear, ddp, doj bL, espgaluda all much lower.

To think he'd rank bee storm, a game that can be completely cheesed through, on the same level as something like sonic wings 2all, exed exes, gun smoke and freakin twin eagle is just incomprehensible.

Clearing Tatsujin Oh that fast definitely does not sound achievable. I took one look at that game and noped right the fuck out.

I haven't played DDP Bee Storm beyond a casual credit or two, but I thought he had the best difficulty list around. Way better than the Japanese one.

I went back and looked at that thread and saw that I didn't agree with all of his placements, but I could see the rational on some of them. Here was a quote from three years ago:

The placing of DOJBL 1-ALL *below* R-Type 1-ALL is fascinating. What is the rationale for that?

I've beaten both games, and I definitely wouldn't agree with that. I used heavy save state practice for both though, and you absolutely can't wing it in stage 6 and 7 of R-Type, where as you can kinda wing it a little in DOJ BL. But R-Type is pretty easy to consistently execute with practice, whereas DOJ BL is not. R-Type is hard but totally doable with practice, but DOJ BL is the hardest game I've ever beaten.

[Sengoku Strider]

How much harder is tatsujin oh compared to truxton ii? It allegedly took perikles a mere 3 hours from his first clear of truxton ii to clear and post about tatsujin oh in the hi score thread. That seems extremely suspicious considering the game takes like an hour to beat just by itself. He's such a god he can just beat them back to back like it's nothing?

I have no experience with either, so someone who does should chime in as to what difference these changes actually make in practice, but according to the shmups wiki:

Version Differences
International

Outside of Asian territories, Tatsujin Ou was released under the name Truxton II. In this international release, the player's weapons deal more damage, and the enemies shoot less frequently than in Tatsujin Ou. The difficulty increase from loop 1 to loop 2 is also not as high.

[DietSoap]

I'm utterly gobsmacked by the fact that schlauchi made an account here in 2024 to defend his TASes. wild.

I'm more confused about people complaining about his TASes to begin with.

snib

snab

Thank you for these posts. Brings back some much needed sanity and context.

[maximo310]

Some guy during TRP-STGT 2017 who claimed he got a 1-ALL of Mad Shark but iirc didn't have any evidence/ his story didn't add up.

Probably me, actually. My recording quality was abysmal due to IRL shenanigans. What really stung about this one was that way later I heard that apparently it had nothing to do with it, and my routing was just off. Still annoys me. Since then, after getting better hardware, I tried my hand at Calice and did streams/better recordings for my runs and obv everything was fine. So, scandal averted?

Ah ok, I guess that makes a bit more sense.

Re: Perikles, I don't think my stance has changed all that much. Dude bit off more than he could chew with Tatsujin Ou/Same3!/ F/A among a couple of other examples and basically decided to bounce & delete everything on his channel after a few long responses & a sengoku-blade 2-all promise which never happened afaik. I've played a lot more same3! & F/A since then ( & cleared the former), and its still very hard for me to believe that you can get away with some of the dodges I saw in his replays. Especially for Same3!, his stage 5 route is incredibly dangerous especially on the middle gunboat sections, and most players would take far safer approaches to deal with the constant snipers & enemies popping from the sides (such as using a 10-15hz autofire rate for stages & slowly streaming on certain sections so that you can pick off more enemies & deal with the stupid green items bouncing around). Stage 7/10 are also pretty baffling with the flailing too which was mentioned by other posters ( jaimers/chum iirc), but in general there's many parts of the replay that are at odds with what I usually see with 1st clears (such as late-game recovery via checkpoints in many of the later stages or ways to make certain tough sections more consistent.
I think i sent his gallop 2-all replay to a friend of mine ( who later 2-ALL'd the game with other replays), and he thought that the strategies in his replay were basically useless for learning the game.

So yeah, while I think his difficulty lists & writeups were pretty informative, I think that he most likely cheated on quite a few replays based on what I've looked at, didn't do much to address the issues, and basically completely ghosted while dropping a comment about edusword cheating instead of just focusing on sengoku blade, then moving on and playing other games. It's kind of disappointing to have people still defend his actions years later, or blame other people for finding certain replays suspicious because of the social dynamics that were in the original thread & how that somewhat determined where people stood on the issue.

[ScHlAuChi]

edit: lol, totally missed that ScHlAuChi or someone claiming to be him posted.
Your first post and we're already off to a rough start. As previously stated

It is indeed me! Is it a rough start becasue I´m not saying what you want to hear?

So yeah, that sums it up nicely. Your descriptions on videos still often fail to mention that they are tool-assisted runs and not skill displays, which results in you receiving many comments praising the skill involved and gives a flawed impression on many games of how natural play would actually work. In order to find an explicit disclaimer about tool assistance I had to click your site link, click FAQ, click General, scroll to the bottom and click another tab. It's extremely odd you'd make people do this rather than simply put under each video description "This is a tool-assisted run that uses slowdown and savestates in order to record the whole game and is not intended as a skill showcase!". Your defense that it's fine because there's a disclaimer buried deep on your website

The disclaimer that we use savestates can be found:
- On our website
- In our YT channel info
- In every video description
So you cant really claim its buried when the info is everywhere!
However, that info only matters if someone cares enough to look it up.
One of the most reoccuring comments is: How does a single person have so much time to play every videogame?
How can such a question happen when the info who played a game is pretty much everywhere, including the video itself?
The answer is simple: 8% of the WoL YT visitors are subscribers, 92% are randoms - and the randoms simply dont care about any info!

Oof. So, by not doing a good job of differentiating between actual legitimate runs and tool-assisted runs, you're creating confusion for your viewers and you're devaluing the work of people who've put effort into learning to play the game well enough to record it vs the people who play it by simply savestating their way to the ending. That's bad.

As established above, the viewers simply do not care! No one of our team of longplayers cares about the differentiation either, we only care about our goal and how to reach it.

If I could erase my memory of this Progear longplay from my mind, I would. Can shmups footage that doesn't even attempt to learn the game mechanics be said to be worthwhile?

I agree that it isnt worthwhile to hardcore players, but back then we did not really have standards, like with every community, standards develop over time.
Alot of videos that were acceptable back then, wouldnt be anymore now, and we have been replacing bad ones over time.
I wouldnt record such a game anymore unless I´m sure I can show it correctly. But the easiest way to get rid of that video is when someone records a better video, so we can replace it.

Holy fuckin shit, this thread summoned ScHlAuChi.

One of your forum members, a fellow gamedev friend informed me about this thread, so I thought I come by to clear things up

This response is pretty much what I expected. It's what I always hear from these kinds of cheated runs. "It's ok because there's no expectation of us not cheating." "It's ok because we show off the games to a wider audience than would see them." "It's okay because we put a disclaimer on our website nobody visits, instead of on YouTube where everyone was finding them for years." "It's okay because (after community pressure) we added the disclaimer to descriptions."

The disclaimer is on Youtube everywhere now - the only reason this was added is so people like you would stop annoying us. You call it "Community Pressure", I call it hassling.

All you have to do is look at the comments section to any of your playthroughs on world of longplays and you will see the majority of commenters believe you are playing the game legitimately, without cheating. So whatever WoL is doing to notify people the runs are cheated is clearly not sufficient. To me, there is a very strong element of Stolen Valor in the youtube culture of cheated/unmarked TAS runs. You create a false impression of yourself, the games (because your strategies do not work) and longplays in general.

Those commenters simply do not care! There can be no stolen valor if those people dont value valor! You cant force them to be not ignorant!

Some may disagree, but I don't think a tas or cheated run is a fair longplay of a video game.

You can have that view, but you have to accept that there is a giant community out there, who does not see it that way.

In my opinion, the titles for all WoL runs should include either (TAS) or (SAVESTATE) in them.

Adding that in the title is a surefire way to confuse people and the Youtube algorithm.
"Tool Assisted Speedruns" is a completely different category of videos, its like pancakes vs crepes, same same, but different!
We have no interest for the TAS community to go after us for "stealing" views by mislabeling our videos.
And even if it was added, it wouldnt solve anything, as random YT viewers dont know what a TAS or even a savestate is!

Now, an important note:
Does WoL have to listen to any of us? Hell no. It's what I think would stop the deluge of unaware viewers...but the entire issue is incredibly minor and not what I would label a scandal to begin with. The reasoning: Most viewers won't devote time to practice a game to begin with. Thus my attitude towards WoL is entirely neutral. Hopefully that part is crystal clear.

This here, is a very good point. When people started to hassle us, we could have just told them to fuck off, ban and ignore them, but instead we did listen and we did offer reasonable solutions!
For some people this obviously still isnt enough, but there is a point where the demands are just getting too unreasonable to bother with.
At the end of the day, it is exactly as PerishedFraud says, the viewers of those longplays arent hardcore players that want to learn the game, it is just random people who want to see old games.

[ScHlAuChi]

I'm utterly gobsmacked by the fact that schlauchi made an account here in 2024 to defend his TASes. wild.

You mean like this one?
https://youtu.be/1BfIUD7SB4g

[BIL]

Re: Perikles, I don't think my stance has changed all that much. Dude bit off more than he could chew with Tatsujin Ou/Same3!/ F/A among a couple of other examples and basically decided to bounce & delete everything on his channel after a few long responses & a sengoku-blade 2-all promise which never happened afaik. I've played a lot more same3! & F/A since then ( & cleared the former), and its still very hard for me to believe that you can get away with some of the dodges I saw in his replays. Especially for Same3!, his stage 5 route is incredibly dangerous especially on the middle gunboat sections, and most players would take far safer approaches to deal with the constant snipers & enemies popping from the sides (such as using a 10-15hz autofire rate for stages & slowly streaming on certain sections so that you can pick off more enemies & deal with the stupid green items bouncing around). Stage 7/10 are also pretty baffling with the flailing too which was mentioned by other posters ( jaimers/chum iirc), but in general there's many parts of the replay that are at odds with what I usually see with 1st clears (such as late-game recovery via checkpoints in many of the later stages or ways to make certain tough sections more consistent.
I think i sent his gallop 2-all replay to a friend of mine ( who later 2-ALL'd the game with other replays), and he thought that the strategies in his replay were basically useless for learning the game.

Great detailing, cheers for that.

Particularly with his grounding in console titles - something I share - I have to entertain the notion he got in over his head. Since M2 are quiet re: Toaplan atm, I'll probably end up 1ALLing Same3 before the year's out, just so I don't have to read the inevitable next incarnation of this thread feeling quite so uninformed. I was thinking of your old exchanges with him while doing an initial credit feed of F/A's recent ACA release, too. I am especially appreciative of one-loop arcade games, so I'll probably give 1CCing that a go, as well. (these are all games on my bucket list; might as well get some closure while I'm at it)

It's kind of disappointing to have people still defend his actions years later, or blame other people for finding certain replays suspicious because of the social dynamics that were in the original thread & how that somewhat determined where people stood on the issue.

I feel I should reiterate and clarify, given I dislike the Jarpig set, and would hate for that to be misconstrued towards anyone else. I don't blame anyone for finding his replays suspicious, let alone because of what went on in the original thread. The former vigilance is to be encouraged, the latter are irrelevant spackers.

I went over his Gun.Smoke 1CC with a fine-toothed comb, and found one crazy dodge where he ran rings around a bullet travelling downscreen. I was willing to write it off - that happens to me and it seems other 1CCers too occasionally, it's a twitchy game - but it wasn't for a lack of looking.

Given how weak the hitpiece was, and what a casually shit-slinging waste the thread became, my problem is an established pattern from our Jarpig friendos: big claims, ambiguous evidence, and screeching meltdowns with a generous side of pity partying, when challenged. And a long-established history of creeper behaviour underpinning it all, which makes "lol lmao he run away" far less of a slam dunk it would've been.

Here's our old friend "Jarpig Slayer." He popped into the ACA thread ca.2020, to warn us ACA Gradius is to be avoided, due to it running slower than "both the PCB and MAME." (as he equated them) He went on to proclaim nobody should trust Hamster with their money, because if they messed up this massively popular game, they surely did a bunch of others.

Lengthy digression continues

Your being familiar with Metal Hawk via MAME, and its crash woes, you can probably guess how this sounded off, given Hamster's repute for solid performance. And the considerable list of games that are board-perfect in ACA, and either broken or flat-out unplayable in MAME. (no disrespect intended to Haze and company; they are heroes undertaking a herculean task and, to paraphrase new friend Schlauchi/Schlongi, have done much more for arcade games than I have)

But, Hamster's good rep is no reason to dismiss such a claim. Complacency is no good for anybody. So, after requesting basic elaboration out of him - this quickly made him angry, I'm sorry to say - it turned out he was talking absolute nonsense. Anyone with a basic knowledge of how shooting affects the game's speed would've understood, what he claimed to be "extra ACA slowdown" was merely a fully-powered, aggressively attacking player. The PCB guy shoots less, safespots more, and dies frequently, losing his Options.

This revelation finally provoked the kind of seething personal attack that I find very hilarious, in the correct environment, ie an imageboard hellhole full of incipient classroom shooters avidly discussing who lives and works where.

But in this nice polite place, it's just never been allowed. So it was goodbye to interchangeably sociopathic Jarpig Enthusiast #15363. I'm sure the narrative is that I requested it, a popular refrain from this set. I'm sure some members would, and they would be right to; this isn't that kind of joint. But as noted, this stuff cracks me up.

Regardless, I'm not blind to how fucked it was. I have no internet presence outside this forum. I had no idea who our new friend was, and it wouldn't have changed my inquiry of his claim, regardless. He apparently not only knew all about me, but also had a very specific grievance he intended to avenge. My asking him to substantiate his extravagant claim triggered an explosion of vitriol.

I wish I could link the thread where I apologised to chum via PM, because I had no idea the other Jarpig Fan I was playfully antagonising until the whole thread got nuked was a serial doxxer who'd leaked his private correspondences to "better him." The untreated aspergers was absolutely ripe off that one, I actually Waybacked it but sadly no luck.

As I said, Perikles had been telling me of these encounters for almost four years, when the thread happened in late 2019. And as I said, I saw firsthand that he was no good at defending himself from even the most truculently moronic randos. I wish I'd told them to neck themselves, looking back, like I would if they'd been slagging me off. At the time, I thought it'd be patronising towards him.

So I was unsurprised at the paucity and meaningless personal attacks of content, yet very surprised indeed to see it enshrined here. It's a black mark on this forum. And as this thread has continued to show, vanishingly little productive has come out in the half-decade since.

Again, just wanting to clarify. I'm not trying to fence-sit, when I say I get why so many accomplished players, like yourself, believe he cheated. There's some likelihood I'll add my unlettered self to the ranks when this is all over. And it will be over for me pretty soon, once M2 says something about that Ou port.

Holy fuckin shit, this thread summoned ScHlAuChi.

One of your forum members, a fellow gamedev friend informed me about this thread, so I thought I come by to clear things up

I hope you don't mind my repeating Roo's "Schlongi" nick, I just find it hilarious.

The discussion is somewhat outside my interest, but I am enjoying reading along! WOL is certainly an institution, at this point.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

You mean like this one?
https://youtu.be/1BfIUD7SB4g

Disclaimer: Most videos by World of Longplays use SaveStates!

Keeping in mind that tool assistance is definitely possible in Xbox 360 games now that emulators for the system exist, a video with a description that very ambiguously suggests it's likely to be tool assisted is quite the strange link to post as a "gotcha".

Again, by not marking/categorizing the legitimate runs clearly, you ultimately waste the effort and impact, thus devaluing them. Didn't it occur to you this is likely one of the reasons no shmup players want to contribute to your channel (as you claim)? Nobody interested a skillful playthrough is going to come to your channel expecting to find legit Bangai-O footage.

Those commenters simply do not care! There can be no stolen valor if those people dont value valor! You cant force them to be not ignorant!

You have rather a low opinion of your Youtube audience considering they've helped popularize your channel, don't you? I'm not sure what's worse, that or the fact that you admit you're too lazy and/or apathetic about it to take even basic steps to educate them.

I hope you don't mind my repeating Roo's "Schlongi" nick

Sorry BIL, I think that was Sima Tuna's doing. I don't have any personal beef with the guy other than he's a godawful communicator, which frankly is the root cause of his channel's problems.

[BIL]

I hope you don't mind my repeating Roo's "Schlongi" nick

Sorry BIL, I think that was Sima Tuna's doing. I don't have any personal beef with the guy other than he's a godawful communicator, which frankly is the root cause of his channel's problems.

Oh Christ, sorry buds Typing with matchstick eyes.

[pegboy]

It's obvious why worst of longplays won't educate his audience, he wants them to believe his low effort videos are real.

He hides the fact that the videos are cheated in the description, which you have to expand to even see where it says that. Clearly this was done intentionally so that 99% of people watching wont even see the disclaimers.

While not straight up lying like legendary frauds shadowserg and nintendocomplete, he's obfuscating the reality of the situatiin as much as possible. On top of that he craps all over his audience saying they wouldn't even care or understand if they knew what was really going on.

If he wanted to be honest he's just put "tool assisted longplay" in the title of every video. He won't do it because he wants casual viewers to think what they are watching is real.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

I can't take this post seriously. Call me a Schlongi simp if you want, but putting descriptions about savestates and the like in two different places...it might be "not trying hard enough", but to label it as a non-effort or even worse, deception...is this the new hit piece attempt?

Cut the damn hostility. And to Sch and WoL, if you end up caring enough, i do think the conclusion reached in this thread was to put something like [tool-assisted] in the titles, since TAS wasn't accurate enough. This will also be the last time I bring it up though, enough with the horse beating.

On on unrelated note, what I'm getting from this thread is that whoever 2-alls sengoku blade 2 from here becomes the new Perikles, Arthur-style.

If he wanted to be honest he's just put "tool assisted longplay" in the title of every video. He won't do it because he wants casual viewers to think what they are watching is real.

Entirely matter of execution lol. Compare:

Tool Assisted Longplay: Game Title [etc] - Unusable
Game Title Longplay [etc] [tool assisted] - Harmless Execution
Game Title Longplay [etc] + 3 second intro disclaimer about methods at video start - Incredible

[Sima Tuna]

It's obvious why worst of longplays won't educate his audience, he wants them to believe his low effort videos are real.

snip

If he wanted to be honest he's just put "tool assisted longplay" in the title of every video. He won't do it because he wants casual viewers to think what they are watching is real.

This and also:

The disclaimer is on Youtube everywhere now - the only reason this was added is so people like you would stop annoying us. You call it "Community Pressure", I call it hassling.

He considers it hassling to be asked to clarify what, exactly, his videos even are.

He is using tools to record these runs. Maybe they're not the same tools a TAS would use, but he IS using tools. The tools he is using are:

-deliberately slowing down his emulator to half speed or slower
-save stating and then spamming saveloads until he can clear a small segment of the game hitless
-editing software to piece the run together so it looks seemless

You can't force audiences not to be ignorant, but you CAN make as much effort as possible upfront to be transparent about exactly how you arrived at your end result. Maybe his response would be that his audiences still won't care, but you can't know that until you try it. "Tool assisted longplay" (or a more elegant phrasing) added to the title of every video would let viewers know that tools were used in the creation of the run and that it is not a skill demonstration.

I don't have a personal beef with Schlauchi btw. I just heard "schlongchi" somewhere else on the internet when discussion of WoL came up and thought it was funny. My beef is with WoL and their labeling practices generally and his name just comes up the most as the person who "played" the game in video descriptions.

[wiNteR]

If a game video mentions in the description that it was not played genuinely then shouldn't it be OK? At least I would think so.

Now of course I do agree that ideally one would want some more detail on it. For example, whether it was just segments stitched up after being played on normal speed [or whether, for example, something like slowdown or other possible methods were used].

Nevertheless, it still seems to me that mentioning (in video description) that the video is not genuine is "reasonably sufficient".

[MJR]

To me it seems that most of the criticism is coming from just few posters who just happen to make the most noise. In a forum that's already considered niche. Put it against that, and I'd say that their concerns have been given a lot of attention and consideration.

I hope they can get at least some fraction of satisfaction from this. And I hope they also understand that no one can keep all the people happy all the time.

If Schiauchi acted defensive, perhaps it's because the criticism also appeared to be in rather attacking tone? Maybe it wasn't meant as attack for those who wrote it, but tones, intentions and nuances always get lost in written text at the internet and overreacting is almost guaranteed.

To be honest, if I found someone writing about me in such manner, I would piledrive their ass. But I am also sure that if I got to sit down with those people, face to face, we could find mutual understanding.