[OBSOLETE] NES Super Mario Bros.: World-Record TAS vs. World-Record RTS

EDIT 2017-2-7: Evidently, you can delete videos *from your channel* using the Chromecast video queue. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea. Anyway, re-upload is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHL-W....

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EDIT 2017-1-27: Good grief, when did this hit 22K views? I guess I better get on making that follow-up video.

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Here we have two videos: On the left, the TAS (tool-assisted speedrun) of the quickest any% Super Mario Bros. run; and on the right, the RTS (real-time speedrun) of the quickest any% run of the same (each as of the dates indicated in the video). The sources for these videos are http://tasvideos.org/1715M.html and http://www.twitch.tv/darbian/v/21376369. (I definitely recommend watching the RTS on darbian's Twitch channel, as he has a heartrate meter tracking his BPM as he gets closer to the end -- very impressive!)

First thing to note is that the nominal times for each are determined in different ways; thus, the actual difference is somewhat greater than the difference of the official times:

• Per TASVideos, the timing of a game run begins at the very frame the player can provide any input at all.
• Per SpeedDemosArchive, timing begins at the moment a player gains control of the /character/, not simply of the software itself.
• Both timing systems end at the last input the player provides which initiate's the game's ending sequence.

Given the varying timing requirements, I have thus synchronized the videos to each start the moment the player has control of the character, which in the case of Super Mario Bros. would be the third frame upon the loading of World 1-1. Thus, we can see the raw difference between the two playthroughs in terms of time as would be recorded for a real-time speedrun (4:57.621 for darbian vs. 4:53.983 for HappyLee's TAS, an astounding-and-narrowing 3.647s difference).

To get a better sense of performance, I will later be layering the two videos on top of each other, stage-by-stage, with each level's start synchronized to the other and a counter to accumulate the difference between each stage.

You'll note some tricks, such as wall-jumping off a pipe in stage 8-4, are performed by darbian by hand in the same way as HappyLee by programming. The TAS features many input tricks to shave off time; while these are certainly within the realm of achievment by humans, the frame-by-frame performance of them can require significant effort in timing to pull off. However, knowing where these differences exist between a TAS and an RTS should make anyone performing an RTS run better at reaching their time goals.

Some additional information:
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1) Aspect ratios of the original videos have been adjusted for a better viewing experience; this includes removing overscan and correcting for pixel shape from the hardware capture created by darbian (http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Ov...).
2) You may notice, in World 1-1 (while the videos are still much in sync) that the in-game timer may not be identical frame-by-frame, sometimes off by as many as two frames in either video's favor. This is due to how the emulated or actual Nintendo hardware is drawing the timer on the screen when it also has to draw other events on the screen; the in-game timer is thus not a reliable indicator of passed time for this game.
3) TASes need not necessarily be emulated, and RTSes need not necessarily be on actual hardware; that is simply the case for these two. HappyLee's TAS run of Super Mario Bros can be seen played on actual hardware at http://www.instructables.com/id/NESBo....
4) This video's audio is split for stereo sound; the TAS by HappyLee is played on the left channel, and the RTS by darbian is played on the right channel; you can use your computer or device's mixer to change the channel levels or channel balance if you want to focus entirely on one video over the other.

For more information about each kind of speedrun's requirements and rules, see http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html (for TAS) and http://speeddemosarchive.com/lang/rul... (for RTS).

NES Super Mario Bros. Tool-assisted Speedrun Real-time Speedrun TASVideos Twitch SpeedDemosArchive darbian HappyLee