I don't know how he does it, first with the Pitfall2 time and bat cheat and now with Solomon's Key.

Here I am innocently watching his recording. Very well played but everything above board. Then in level 30 (where the jumping enemies occur) he ducks down at the bottom of the screen and actually manages to build a block on top of himself - this was surprising enough. The next part was even more astonishing - he falls through the bottom of the screen and disappears!!! Then the level ends and he goes to the next level. How the hell does this work?

He tried the same trick later on (can't remember which level) but got stuck half on the bottom, half on the top of the screen and died when his time ran out.

I'd like to know where he pulls these tricks from. Too bad he won't respond to any of my email.

-- Tim Morrow (tjmorrow@bigpond.com), December 20, 1999

Answers

These might be just a game inconsitancies in the real arcade as well, but one thing i noticed is that Alex started with one more life than all the other recordings did. I'm sure this was unintentional, but if the defaults lives for the game have changed in later mame versions, the respectfull thing to do is to change settings to what ever they were that people have recordded before .

at anyrate, he plays very very well.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), December 20, 1999.

yep, in his 7M recording he started out with 2 more players that you normally get (and than the other recordings received to begin the game.) you should proly tell him this too in your mailings :)

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), December 20, 1999.

Guys,

T. Alex has replied to my email on the matter of Solomon's Key.

In his Solomon's Key recording If you watch carefully you will notice that he is using the following modifications to the default dip switch settings -

1. Lives Set to 5 (rather than the default 3)

2. No Bonus Lives (rather than bonus lives at 30K,100K,500K)

He changed these because when he was awarded a life from score his game would crash through what he assumes is an emulation bug. He therefore had to disable the bonus lives. He upped the lives to compensate. He certainly wasn't trying to gain an unfair advantage.

Anyway just to set the record straight for all critics/skeptics he has uploaded a recording with lives set to 3 and no bonuses which is surely acceptable as it is undoubtedly harder than the default settings. In this recording he gets a higher score than in his previous best! Check it out!

As a side note, T. Alex has sent me a solomon recording where he gets a high score of 60 Million (yep!) by exploiting the abovementioned 'ducking' trick in the last level of the game. I am urging him to upload it to MARP under the 'weird' section.

-- Tim Morrow (tjmorrow@bigpond.com), January 06, 2000.