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Movies / Pipe Dream / M7024
Nintendo Entertainment System maximum scoreImported

Pipe Dream

by eien86

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Imported from TASVideos This run was originally published at https://tasvideos.org/7024M and entered this archive as a voluntary import by its author. The notes below are the author's own; text not written by the authors has been removed. The original publication was verified and reproduced by TASVideos staff, a trustworthy TASing source, so it is marked fully verified here without passing through this site's standard procedure. The movie file and notes were obtained freely from tasvideos.org and are redistributed in observance of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license under which they were published there.

Author's notes

Introduction

Pipe Dream (a.k.a. Pipe Mania is a 1990 puzzle game for the NES where you are tasked to build a pipeline using the pieces given to you at random (Tetris-style). Each level has a requirement for the length of the pipeline -- if you reach it, then you pass the level. Stages have different complications (pre-placed pieces, holes in the wall, end pieces) that make the gameplay more interesting.

https://i.ibb.co/R17v8qN/gameplay.png

The game has a time limit. Once the initial grace period expires, ''flooz'', a white-ish liquid, will start flowing through the start piece (marked with an S). If the flooz reaches the end of your pipeline before you reach the required number of pieces, you will lose a life. As flooz passes a piece, you will receive points that count towards your score.

The general strategy for scoring in this game goes as follows:

  • Try to place as many pieces as possible in advance before the grace period runs out.
  • Press "Select" to accelerate the flow of Flooz as soon as possible for double points.
  • Try to get as many 4-way crossings as possible: they grant huge bonuses that multiply the more crossings you get.
  • If you end your pipeline on the ending (E) piece, you will get a 2x multiplier on your bonus.

In this movie, I used JaffarPlus to try and achieve the highest score possible on a single level at the hardest difficulty: Game "C", Level 16, Speed 16. To achieve this, I configured Jaffar to (1) automatically detect all the incoming pieces (determined at level start), (2) run the highest scoring solution, and (3) applied the solution manually, wasting the least amount of time.

Here I get 8414850 points, plus 114600 bonus points which are not accounted for because the game simply crashes!

Enjoy!

Software + Hardware

Rom Information

  • Name: Pipe Dream
  • ROM: Pipe Dream (U) [!].nes
  • SHA1: 7AE08F6C3358B434D2782D646482FA37BC3FBE21
  • MD5: 6FF5C5DA9F7FF2600E18F0F168CD8389

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