I don't think I've told anyone, but I now have a way to play PSP on my TV, and I have been attempting to record a speed video through Royal Monument stage to submit either to SDA or to aaron's site.

I have actually bought two different thingys to play PSP on my TV, but unfortunately I cannot recommend either one. The one I'm using, PSP2TV, requires you to take apart your PSP and add equipment very deep inside. The honest truth is that when I attempted to do this myself, I ruined both my PSP and the PSP2TV. Now I have one that I bought preinstalled. But I REALLY don't recommend trying to install a PSP2TV unless you are very very good with electronics and mechanical things. The other product I bought was one of the devices that attaches a camera that takes the image right off your PSP screen, but the problem with this is that the picture is blurry, and even at the highest brightness setting the picture is very dark. So I don't know of any device to play PSP on TV that I would actually recommend.

I was hoping I wouldn't, but inevitably I did find that I am fastest in specific areas as I go through Royal Monument stage. The game randomly picks an area for you three times, so each time I play there is a 1-in-27 chance I will get all the areas where I'm the fastest. So far I've only gotten them all once, and I got a 6:55 (translates to 1205sec on the ranking board). This was with 20 seconds of bad mistakes, so I still could improve.


Here's roughly my route, in case anybody want to try to beat my time:

SHIMANO HOUSE

Start outside, and pick up lots of Horsetails and then the funky takoyaki worms. Grab the row of magnets, but don't go in that door. Enter the girl's room and pick up the stacks of batteries. Get about half the stuff in a circle around the Lovely Mascot until you're 16cm, then get the socks, then the cans with a baseball, then the milk bottles.

SAKURA TOWN "Roll Me In"

Before the King is done talking roll over to the lollipops with balance toys balancing on them. Grab four lollipops, then little shoes, then everything in front of you. Turn right and get a row of masks and then mayonnaise; turn around and get the other row. Enter the door; get the paper tigers until you're 38cm6mm, get bottles and then round things. Go outside and get round things, then the dancing dolls, then the hammers and round things on the way to the 75cm barrier.

Grab the whole barrier. Turn left and go down the first road. Get a stack of birds and then all the stacks of crates and laundry stuff, and turn right to cut across the shrine's yard. At the other end of the yard get the stacks of coolers, then turn right and get more crates; eventually turn left for the big white cylindrical things stacked in threes and then left again for the fish statues.

STRAWBERRY CITY "Que Sera Sera"

Begin on the hill. Grab the tortoise and the hare from the podium, then both race queens, then the stuff the sumo is standing on. Go in the building and do one lap around the inner part with all the walls. Go out through the middle door and turn left to get the cabinets and stuff. Grab flowerbeds and ship wheels on the way to the 4m barrier over water.

Cut a swath through the next area getting large things. Rush toward the tents and get both rows at once (skip the very last tent), then get medium trees and then cars from the parking lot to reach 10m.

POTATO LAND "The Moon And The Prince"

Grab the breakwater blocks, then wrestling rings, then everything on a path toward all the rocks on raised ledges. Get most of those rocks, then the big things at the bottom of the hill, then the big things at the top of the hill.

Quickly reach 50m, then grab some of the presidents' mansions on the way toward the runway. Turn around and go between the big buildings next to one of the 30m barriers. You should hit 70m before you reach the water.

Katamari On The Funk Yeah! :D I like that song

Grab islands, skip the first big island you see, and raid all the little islands off the next big island you see. Turn a little left and raid the next island then the city. Grab the city under clouds. Turn around and get the big rocket. Turn around again and get Marny. Grab islands on the way to the "500m barrier."

Once past the 500m barrier roll over the first island you see, you should pick up enough small islands to reach 600m. Go clockwise around the huge volcano getting small volcanoes, then nab Odeko and the dragon carrying him. Roll under the future city, then through all the icebergs, then enter the continent to your left. Pick up pieces of continent until you're around 1450m, then the mountain. You're 1500m :) , the clock stops counting and you have many minutes left to try for 4290m (which I haven't reached yet).


One way to go about reaching all the right areas would be to pause and Square to save your progress right before each area ends, then keep restarting from your save until you get the right next area. That's just in case if anybody doesn't want to let the game choose each area randomly.

I haven't tried any of these products but this online store is one of my favorite when "looking" for gaming accessories. A lot of the stuff they've got here you'll most likely not be able to find available anywhere else. The only thing that keeps me from ordering from them is their selection of delivery options *grumble*...

Anyway, here's their listing of PSP TV Adapters @ Lik-Sang.com

I should have thanked you, Moshun. Thanks for the info.



I am going to copy and paste a lot of the info I posted at SDA about my videos.

...

...

I have one thing recorded already for Me & My Katamari, and I am in the process of recording two more ...

For this game I use PSP2TV. I am now using the 16x9 widescreen mode because Nate says it is preferable over the 4x3 full screen mode. Just to let you know, you can ruin a PSP by trying to connect a PSP2TV. I did. The one I am using now is a different one preinstalled to a PSP by modchipworld.com and still seems like it might not work all that long. But it's held out thus far :fingers crossed

(you already know a lot of this :P) Me And My Katamari is made up of a tutorial, 16 animal stages that each cover one or more of 16 map areas, 5 themed stages, and three 2-D bonus stages. The 2-D don't work for speed-running, and neither do the tutorial or 4 of the 5 themed stages, so what's left are the animal stages and one themed stage (the rocket stage).

Running a single-segment through the game and running all 16 animal stages are both not feasible. This game is not made for speed-running the way that the previous katamari games are. When you reach the goal size you cannot cancel out and see your results; you have to wait for all your time to run out. And, optimized runs through all 16 animal stages would repeat the same fast map areas over and over.

But there are three things I can think of that will work when running this game - a run through the longest animal stage that covers all the territory of all the other stages, 16 individual level runs through each map area rather than animal stage, and a short speedrun through the rocket stage. I am already working on recording all three of these.


[ *slo_bro edits out some stuff you already know] In Royal Monument stage you always start in the same 5cm-20cm map area, but then it randomly chooses for you a 20cm-1m50cm area, a 1m50cm-10m area and a 10m-70m area, then you get the 70m-500m area that corresponds to your last area and then the 500m-1500m area. My current best is 6:39; if everything went right I could get a 6:30.



Then there are the 16 individual-map area runs and the rocket stage run. For these I will need permission from Radix for two things: they have to be timed manually, and I would like to time them the way that katamari games time things - don't start the clock until you pick up the first object. Does anybody know if these things will probably be acceptable?

I have recorded all but two of these videos; the other two are the two 5cm-20cm areas not covered in the animal stage I ran, and I need to practice these tons to work out decent routes. I've saved the hardest two for last. Of course I will still run the other stages more to try to improve my times too.



[ *slo_bro edits out more mumbo-jumbo]

Any thoughts? Anybody want to help? Anybody interested in watching these :)

Woohoo! :woot I got a 6:34 in Royal Monument stage :) It wasn't perfect but it's probably the best I'm going to do without saving at various points and restarting as many times as I want, which I don't plan to do unless people at the Speed Demos Archive website say they'd like to see a video done that way. It does include a 2-3 second mistake and several 1-second mistakes.

damn bro, that's some nuts stuff.

Royal Monument Stage time:

I started going for this a long time ago, so I am practiced. My best in all the time I played the Japanese version was 11:50 or so. Then after I got the American version I quickly reached 10:08 I think. Then I got serious about recording; I soon broke 10 minutes, and eventually got so I could consistently finish between 8:30 and 10 minutes. Then I started insisting that I got all the areas where I am the fastest, and restarting whenever I got the wrong area. It took a while but the first time I got all the right areas I just barely broke 7 minutes. Since then I've been practicing, practicing hard when I went through recording individual areas for example, improving and becoming more consistent at each area, and within a few hours of starting over again and again when I messed up or got the wrong area I finally got a 6:34. I don't think I'll try this stage this way anymore, but if I did 6:30 would be about the best I could hope for without learning new routes or strategies.

Woohoo, my 6:34 corresponds to a 1226sec. time on the ranking board.

:P :) It would be neat if others tried to run this stage fast. I laid out my route in an eariler post.

Where's the movie??

I only have it on VHS tape so it is not on the internet yet.

I did finally submit it to Speed Demos Archive. If nothing goes wrong, it should be on their site within a couple months.

you sended the VHS 2 Speed Demos Archive?

Yup, I sent SDA my video of Royal Monument stage, along with a video of the rocket stage and videos of the 16 map areas in the normal stages (videos of Shimano House, Joushima Villa, Model Shop, Sakura Town, etc.)

If my videos get accepted, they will probably cut off the last three minutes of Royal Monument. They will probably only include up until I hit 1500 meters, since it's Speed Demos Archive and the rest of the video has nothing to do with speed. Oh well.