Ah, this is familiar.
Decades ago, I had more or less topped out playing Othello against my Apple ][e. A game could be completed in under ninety seconds, with my moves being as fast as that of the computer. I took photos (with actual film) of beating the machine long before the board could be filled, but I was getting stale, essentially training myself to fight against this deterministic opponent who couldn't have been all that bright, given the time. I began to make deliberately bad choices in the early game to see if I could recover, but even that wore out.
I eventually settled on POKEing parts of the memory where the game was held. Typically, this resulted in an un-runnable program, or the program would place pieces on the lines rather than between them, all sorts of oddball behavior. Every so often, though, I would get a working game that would play against me using the usual rules, but differently enough that it would throw me off.
It was primitive but amusing.
I just finished a run of Link to the Past / Super Metroid crossover randomizer. And it's one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. The items for both games are randomized and distributed across both games. For example, I found the first sword in Link to the Past above Samus's ship in Crateria in a secret area.
Reminds me of an indie game called creeper world. The first version of this was released almost ten years ago as a flash game. It came with a random map generator (and all versions of that game have done that ever since). One genius twist was that the free version of the game had a map that refreshed daily. So for nearly three years, part of my morning routine was completing that map. That game had a lively community of people coming back every day to play that map. Sometimes it would be over in seconds, sometimes it would be near impossible. I eventually bought the game and later versions and that broke my routine. Also flash of course stopped being a thing.
It was a very simple game but something about it was just ridiculously engaging and addictive. v3 has a lot of user generated maps (5K+) as well as automatically generated ones and I've been playing this for close to a thousand hours according to Steam since it was released years ago. Judging from the forums and the continuous additions to the user generated maps, I'm not alone. V4 is close to completion and looks like another winner.
I would imagine most randomizations render the game impossible, since the first dungeon will require a specific item to complete, and any other item won't help you. Are players forced to leverage glitches? Or is there some way to restrict only to "viable" randomizations?
I'm pleased to see that the randomizer community has been getting a lot more attention as of late. I made my own randomizer[0] a few years ago (shameless plug), and it was the perfect mix of retro gaming knowledge, low level hacking, and more modern programming and design. It can both be incredibly frustrating and rewarding figuring out how to modify a game into a way that is new and refreshing.
Randomization taken to the extreme: http://www.farbs.org/romcheckfail.php
It's an old one-gimmick game by today's standards yet addictive. AFAIK the author intended it to be a demo for a tile-based game toolkit.
There is a great mod for Dark Souls that randomizes enemy starting placement. I really wish this was a feature built into the main game as I tend to play DS on PlayStation or Switch; it's a surprisingly effective way to make an already challenging game even more engaging.
Randomizers like this are interesting to me because I enjoy seeing people play with them, but hate playing with them myself. I tried one for Link to The Past and thought it was just frustrating. I think the frustration was in that the game was designed in a way without randomization in mind, so when forcing in randomization, it isn't as fun or interesting as a game built with randomization in mind from the start. If anything, it just led me to going back and playing something like Binding of Isaac again. Still cool! Just not for me I guess.
For those asking about how randomizer logic works to ensure that the game is still playable, you can have a look at the Super Metroid randomizer logic.
https://github.com/tewtal/itemrandomizerweb
The randomizer logic, depending on difficulty level selected, will ensure that certain items are available and the game is still playable. There are lots of different checks like this to compensate for various techniques, sequences, etc.
One common technique in Super Metroid is called "hell running", which means getting through the heated rooms of Upper Norfair without Varia Suit, an item that provides protection against heat. In "Casual" mode, the randomizer requires that you are given this protection before making you go to these areas. In "Hard" mode, the randomizer requires you have either 3 Energy Tanks or Varia Suit.
Great topic, Check out Vinny from Vinesauce for a lot of good randomizer examples. He usually plays Zelda II around this time of year. Even watching someone else play such a game can inspire users to return to them. If you search around there is a website that has a big list of randomized games out there.
Randomizers are also breathing new life into chess. Randomizing chess has been around for centuries, but especially since the 90s, when opening theory had become so stable that some grandmasters became bored with the memorization. Computers were especially good at that (though these days they've grown past that.)
So they're holding tournaments now with randomized chess pieces. They've just completed the first FIDE-recognized Fischer Random Chess tournament.
I did a playthrough of the Ocarina of Time randomizer with friends and it was a lot of fun. I can't imagine the amount of work it took to get online multiplayer working as well as it did.
Likely the first computer game to get randomised was Pac-Man. The original Pac-Man boards were deterministic enough that it was possible to memorise and follow a pre-planned route through the game https://archive.org/details/How_To_Beat_The_Video_Games/page... . Apparently this was addressed by an official Pac-Man Update Kit.
When I was 8 and all I had were half a dozen cartridges for my Atari, I would have loved this. Now, this might be interesting to try on a game or two, but I can afford any game I want and there are so many good games to play out there.
I can see the novelty, but I'd rather spend my free time on a well-designed game than a scrambled rehash of something I've already experienced.
Not mention of classic DooM. Many "relative" modern mod WADs, add new variations of monsters and randomize the spawn of these variations. So playing the same map, never is equal. And for my, this make the game far fun and playable.
Anyone, should try Complex Doom mod...
Reminds me of "really bad chess", a version of chess that was released as a mobile app where you play with a randomized set of pieces. was a big hit, and definitely added some new dimensions to one of the oldest games, period.
for my is funny to read this article, since it was one of the points I touched on my final thesis. how genetic algorithm and procedural generation could offer a new game experience every time you play a game.
Why weren't these games properly randomized to begin with?
Love it!
Randomizer speedruns are an awesome recent innovation in speedrunning, where the aim is to beat the game as quickly as possible (in a category called "true any%" [0]).
For most popular speedrunning games, randomizers reward a completely different skillset than standard speedrunning. Typically, world record speedruns are a result of a community collaboration between theorizers, glitch finders, and routers, who devise the optimal "route" through the game -- what are the minimum objectives necessary to beat the game? What is the fastest order through the objectives? Then, running the game itself can require technical skill to move the character at speed with precision (particularly relevant in platforming games like Super Mario, etc) and execute tricky, timing-dependent glitches (notorious are 1-frame tricks, which require a certain input at a specific frame in a game running at 30 or even 60 frames per second).
Route optimization is somewhat equivalent to solving a traveling salesman problem, and is usually performed over the course of days or weeks in online chatting groups. In randomizer speedruns, however, the speedrunner must come up with a good route on the fly, since the particular randomization is essentially guaranteed to never have been seen before, as well as actually run the game. Needless to say, this demands, and shows off, a huge amount of expertise from the runner, and is a big treat to appreciate.
Personally, though, I think bingo speedrunning competitions are even better. Here, the goal is to win bingo on a randomly generated 5x5 grid of in-game objectives - but any square completed by you or your opponent becomes inaccessible for the other player! This retains the difficulty of routing on the fly while adding direct head-to-head competition between speedrunners. In some of the best cases, mindgames can ensue when speedrunners are aware of their relative skillsets which give them a comparative advantage at completing certain in-game objectives. Sniping squares becomes a fascinating strategy.
[0] True any% stands for beating the game with any percent completion. Communities for certain game sometimes rally around other categories that restrict or ban certain un-fun glitches (any% with certain limitations) since speedrunners ultimately want to have fun.