+1Quote:
Originally Posted by datagod
The evidence is all there.
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by datagod
The evidence is all there.
The 6 month ban is laughable. Anything less then a life time ban just makes look TG really bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by TWIN GALAXIES
Well, not anymore. You see that is the thing. No one cares because they won't be records anymore. As far as before, well I could have given some philosophical ponderings, but all that is now meaningless.Quote:
Originally Posted by MK Wizard
Also you do know that Twin Galaxies is close partners with Guinness again? That means that most likely that company will also get wind of what you have done. Your actions are not limited to this website. Most likely you will probably be blacklisted by many speed running sites. Youtube is definitely an option, but you may want to disable the ratings.
Hello there TG. My name is Matt Turk. I used to hold the fastest time on Mike Tyson at 2:13xx from 2007-2014 until zallard improved it to 2:10 in September of this past year. I just wanted to give some thoughts and analysis and help clarify a few things for those who may be unfamiliar with this game and speed running in general. Although I have not been active playing the game the past several years I have been involved with the game since 2002 and even helped write a complete, unreleased encyclopedia entitled "Pixel Perfect" for the game from 2011-2013 so I think I am qualified to talk on this matter. First off I want to congratulate Jace Hall and his staff for bringing TG back and implementing this new submission process. I think that this submission in particular demonstrates that the process can and will work
Before I start I want everyone to know that the facts I am about to state are in no way an attack on the submitter of this video or an attempt to ruin that individuals reputation. I know that this is the new era of TG and that old bones should be left buried but I think that there is 1 "bone" that I must mention that needs to be brought back up in order for everyone to understand the history leading to this submission. Back in 2010 there was a submitted time of 2:18.82 for Mr. Sandman on this game for a player going by the name of "MKWizard. (the same username that is submitting here). At first me and another member of the SDA community did not think too much of it. However, a series of emails were exchanged between the 3 of us and "MKWizard's" strategy did not add up. Around this same time we discovered that "MKWizard's" real name was Michael Girard. We attempted to duplicate the strategy that he provided and came to the conclusion that it could not be done by a human on NTSC. On the basis of this an official score challenge was sent in to Patrick Scott Patterson under the premise that Girard played under improper settings playing a PAL cart on NTSC settings which allows for Sandman to be beaten much faster. Patterson responded and upheld the challenge and the Sandman time was removed. He also decided to remove the rest of Girard's times as well (a decision which could be debated). Girard never officially admitted to any wrongdoing but instead went on a tirade such as the one seen in this topic. If anyone is interested I have the official challenge document as well as a link to a gamefaqs topic that describes this entire event in more detail. In 2011 Patterson was replaced by Tim Stodden as the NES referee and suddenly a few of Girard's times which had been taken out suddenly reappeared including the Sandman time. In October 2012 TG went dark and reemerged under new ownership and once again all of his times were back in the database again.
Fast forward to December 2013. Suddenly I get an email with a link in it from him saying he got a 2:08 on Tyson and had beaten the record. I was only able to watch the video once before it was set to "private" and subsequently taken down. Fast forward again to April 2014 and the video pops back up on "MKWizards" youtube page. This time I was able to download it before he removed it so I could look at it closer (I believe this is iteration video #1 in Zack's rebuttal post). A second iteration surfaced in late July-early August and that is iteration video #2 in Zack's rebuttal post. Finally a third iteration appeared this time using the name "Dave Landrus" in July (iteration #3 in Zack's post). All of these videos were saved and heavily scrutinized by myself, zallard, sinister, McHazard (MTPO TASer) and other SDA members. We all came to the same conclusion on the videos: that there was definitive evidence that each iteration of the video including the version submitted to TG had been doctored. Below is a summary of main points discussed by Zack as well as a summary of what we found as it relates to this submission for those who may be largely unfamiliar with speedruns and/or MTPO. I apologize in advance if I insult anyone's intelligence.
1). Zack mentioned the concept of a "frame perfect" trick. I realize that most people on this site play for high scores, biggest blowout etc. In that case the unit of measurement is usually a number corresponding to a final score. Players with higher scores are obviously ranked above players with lower scores in the database. In the case of a speedrun the unit of measurement is usually referred to as "frames" although there some exceptions to certain games (in-game timers etc.) Speedruns with a lower number of frames are in most cases considered to be faster than speedruns with a higher number of frames. I will be using the term "frame" for the rest of this discussion since that is what pertains the most to this submission. There are 60 frames per second. So when Zallard is referring to a "frame-perfect" trick he is referring to a trick which has a very small window for it to be successful (1/60th of a second). The best way to think to about it is to imagine opening a door about a quarter inch and then closing it as fast as you can. Another way to think about this is to consider an arcade game that should be familiar to TG: Pac-Man. If you are attempting a high score for Pac-Man and you are using continuous forward motion patterns, you must be frame perfect at every turn or you will risk the pattern breaking when you hit the energizer. The reason for this is because if you happen to be 1 frame late and you hit the energizer slightly later than expected then the frightened blue ghosts may move in different directions than what was originally intended due to different PRNG values occurring when you hit the energizer. In the case of the Mike Tyson fight there are a total of 24 frame perfect punches in order to achieve a "perfect" fight. There are 10 in phase 1 (prior to the first knockdown), 6 in phase 2 (prior to the second knockdown), and finally 8 in phase 3 (before the final knockdown). In my experience the phase 3 frame perfect punches seem to be the hardest to land. Since there is such a strict requirement for these types of punches the SDA team and I noticed in an irregularity in the some of the earlier iterations of Girard's videos (video #1 in Zack's rebuttal). We found that some of Girard's phase 3 late hits may be landing earlier than what is possible. We found that the "perfect" frame that he can be hit on occurs when Tyson's glove is extended straight out in front of Mac, almost touching Mac. Any punch thrown after Tyson has retracted his fist and is just standing there should be 100% blocked (see GIF #3 in Zack's post). Yet there were several instances in Girard's videos of that particular punch landing when Tyson was just standing there resulting in the required 5 damage on the stamina meter. This is not as noticeable in the submission sent in to TG since some frames are missing (most likely edited out) to mask this which causes some punches to take a shorter amount of time to complete (in terms of frames) when they all should take an equivalent amount of time.
2). Zack mentions the statistic 1/1000000. That number corresponds to the number of attempts that a human would have to make in order to achieve the same luck as seen in the tool-assisted video which gets Tyson at 1:58xx in R1. Also, it is important to note that Tyson can pause anywhere from 2 clock units all the way up to 8 clock units after any punch he throws in phase 1 and 2. When you combine that with human error even if Tyson were to give the absolute fastest pattern you are probably looking at a 1 in a billion shot of a human ever coming close to pulling off the TAS strategy. A 2:08 time is theoretically possible by a human but I peg the human limit closer to 2:10 which is the time that Zack has achieved.
3). The crowd is key. One of the most overlooked aspects pertaining to this game and especially pertinent to this submission is crowd behavior. I did a detailed analysis of crowd movement in this game and came to the same conclusion Zack did: The maximum rate of crowd movement is once every 2 frames. During a normal MTPO fight specific crowd moment (heads bobbing up and down etc.) is random. There are certain characters in the crowd that are only capable of 1 specific type of movement and others capable of more. There are some characters in the crowd that do not move at all and during a knockdown there can be slightly more detailed, specific crowd movement but there is never a time when the entire crowd is moving all at once. These are important concepts to keep in mind since it all but guarantees that every game of MTPO should be unique as the crowd movements should be different for any given game. One of the more telling things we noticed with Girard's earlier iterations of the Tyson fight is there was a strange shift in the crowd movement immediately following the second knockdown (see GIF #2 in Zack's post). As stated above this should never happen in a real game. It was also discovered that the crowd movement, knockdown times for phase 1 and 2, and Mac's movements were identical in all iterations of the video including the one submitted to TG. Once again it is theoretically possible that this could occur randomly but I think we are looking at another 1 in a billion shot on that. To make this more clear I will use another analogy from another arcade game that TG should be familiar with: Donkey Kong. I once heard Hank Chien say that the odds of a wild barrel on any given barrel board are about 1 in 8. The odds of identical crowd movement as well as Mac's movements being identical as seen in all of Girard's iterations would be nearly equivalent to seeing Donkey Kong throw 20 wild barrels in a row. My point, once again, is that you should never see that happen in a real game. So what conclusion would be drawn about a "crowd shift?" The only logical conclusion is that it must have been used as a splice point in which phase 3 (prior to the final knockdown) had been erased and/or edited and new footage added. For those of you familiar with emulators it would analogous to using a save state at that particular point and then just reloading until you get the proper luck. In this case it just would have been a little more tedious and require good video editing software. In a nutshell then what we are looking at is a legitimate phase 1 and 2 (first 2 knockdowns) followed by a game genie enabled splice most likely using the game genie code ANUAIZSY which essentially makes the punches in phase 3 non-frame perfect and therefore easier to land. One other important takeaway from this is since Girard's phase 1 and 2 were so well executed he could use them as a "template" for future spliced iterations so he would not have to try and reproduce the same performance again. In hindsight this was probably the biggest mistake he could have made.
4.) The music is key. This is something that I did not hear zallard touch on but another inconsistency that I found. Normal MTPO music during a bout is continuous without any breaks and/or "hang-ups." The music does change when a knockdown occurs but still remains continuous. When I was examining Girard's videos I noticed a slight "hang-up" in the music just after the second knockdown. It is only for a split second and is barely noticeable but it definitely was there. To make sure I compared his videos to some of my performances that I recorded to VHS from years ago to make sure I wasn't just hearing things. Sure enough I did not observe any sound hang-ups in any of those performances. More importantly the sound "hang-up" occurs at the precise instant of the "crowd shift" as noted above. The specific mechanics of the sound hang-up are hard to describe but is sounded like for a split second the music didn't quite know what to do. Once again this is more noticeable in the earlier iterations of the video rather than the one submitted to TG where it was cleaned up.
I apologize for the long post and realize that a lot of it may have been redundant to what Zack had already said but I just wanted to add to this in the case someone didn't quite understand speed running terminology or the odds involved in this fight. Once again I am not telling anyone how they should vote. I think the evidence speaks for itself. You know when TG reopened submissions last month a part of me hoped that "MKWizard," Dave Lanza, Michael Girard etc. would not submit here unless what was submitted was legitimate since I knew that if he submitted something illegitimate (as it appears is the case here) it would result in a flame war like we have seen in this topic. However, he has deliberately tried to pull the wool over everyone's eyes and will now have to deal with the consequences. I really can't judge Mike's character since I have never met him personally. I have received a few emails from a "dummy" account which I believe to be his going by the name "hay seuss." Although I can't prove that it really is him he accuses me of being a liar, cheater, fraud etc. Does that kind of language sound familiar to anyone? There is language in some of the emails I have received that almost matches verbatim to some of the language used in his tirades in this topic. Knowing that should I accept his apology as sincere? Unfortunately, I think the odds of him being sincere are also 1 in a billion. I will be fine with whatever decision Jace and his management team make regarding this and I know you have a difficult decision. There is one final concept I would like to state that needs to be abundantly clear. Since this is the new era of TG and the first incident of foul play I feel that the punishment needs to be severe enough so that it 1) sets a precedent for how future incidents of foul play will be handled and 2) serves as a deterrent to those who may be thinking about cheating in the future. In my current career I am manager in the pharmaceutical industry and of the toughest and most undesirable aspects of my job is potentially having to discipline my fellow workers. One of the hardest things I have had to do in life was to terminate a particular co-worker who I considered a close friend. I don't envy Jace's position and I am in no way telling him and his management team what to do about this situation. However, if it were up to me based on the incident from 2010 combined with the rebuttal evidence put forth for this submission I would recommend the maximum penalty, up to and including a lifetime ban. I thank everyone who took the time to read this.
Unfortunately I cannot comment on the submitted Don 2 video since I only saw it once. I can say there were at least 4 iterations of Don 2 videos released in the last year by this same submitter in a manner very similar to the Tyson videos and all 4 of them were proven to be hoaxes by myself and the SDA community. Also, in case Girard goes on another tirade after reading this post I have found that completely ignoring him is the best remedy.
I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated that post mrturk. In addition to the clear explanation of your analysis, I'm blown away by the depth of knowledge that has been acquired on this great game!
I remember buying this game and playing it to no end. Brings back a lot of memories. I simply can't vote on this one though because of all the yes it's good or no it's not real stuff. What would happen if the votes end up at like 50% accepted / rejected?
Please keep in mind that people can change their vote at any time, so if they say that they voted one way in a thread earlier they may have changed their vote since then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ripper
You do realize that this MK Wizard/Michael Girard account on here is just an alternate account of mine. That's another reason why I didn't want it on here. I have many records on various TG accounts. But that's going to be my little secret on who I really am and what those accounts are. LOL.
Attachment 1591
Truly, you are an evil mastermind. What diabolical schemes could you possibly be concocting? Filling out the registration form multiple times - pure genius! Twin Galaxies will be helpless against the machinations of your enormous intellect!Quote:
Originally Posted by MK Wizard
You're 39-years-old man, don't you have better things to do than to troll on a site that you claim to have no interest in? Shouldn't you be out sticking gum in locks or something?
No more posts in this thread are going to constructively contribute one way or another. It might be best to ignore this until it is rejected regardless of what Mike Girard posts, and then let the ban sit.