Tony's analysis of the reset is mostly right.
But the only event that causes the game to reset is if the bonus city count hits a number that is between 255 minus 4 to 255 plus 4 (i.e any number between 251 and 259). Nothing else will reset the game.
But it's the 2 other bugs that make it awkward to avoid hitting a number in the 251-259 range. If you have a city count between 75 and 83 and your score hits 810k, the 176 city award will mean you hit a number between 251-259. Game resets. It's all over.
So a marathon player on the approach to each 810k score will need to decide what to do. If his city count is close to 75 he will start dumping cities - i.e. He won't play the waves. The aim will be to have say only 60 cities in reserve, hit 810k, be awarded 176 cities, and therefore have a nice stock of 236 cities in reserve.
Alternatively, the player may have 100 cities in reserve, hit 810k, be awarded 176 cities, taking cities in reserve to 276 (100 + 176) - 255 = 21. But doing such a thing is dangerous for a marathon player. Because after the 810k bug is tripped the game won't award anymore bonus cities until the score rolls over, so the player has to score 190k points (1mil minus 810k) with 'only' 21 cities in reserve.
And the added complication in all of this is, as Tony mentioned, is the 255 'kill screen' on which you can rack up enormous points on each screen 255.
So there's a number of important variables to keep track of, and decisions to be made:
- city count
- proximity to 810k
- overshoot 255 city count or play to keep under
- avoid city count hitting 251-259
- wave count: when will screen 255 occur, what will that do to score and city count
And of course, it's entirely possible that a player will trigger both bugs at the same time (be approaching 810k and screen 255 at the same time). Such an event would not cause a reset, but you'd need to carefully calculate what this twin event would do to the city count. Because if the result was a city count of 251-259 then it's game over.
All of this was only finally figured out about 3 years ago. Some of Bill Carlton's marathon attempts didn't fail because of a reset, but because he overshot 255 cities by e.g 20. So he had only few cities to play with and had to retain those between 810k and a million points, whilst the game wasn't awarding any more bonus cities. Now - it's arguable that any skilled player should be able to do that. But that wasn't the case.
And therein lies to enormous difference between playing Tournament settings where the game doesn't award any bonus cities at all, ever, compared to marathon playing where you can lose 3 cities a wave, every wave of the game, and still rack up millions of points.
The question for me in relation to this latest attempt (and the one that went before it) is whether or not marathoning Missile Command with a machine that's keeping track of your cities is a credible classic arcade record. For me, no.
The game ceases to be a challenge as soon as the first 810k has been accrued - which takes about 40 minutes. The challenge thereafter is keeping track of the cities, and making decisions about when to dump cities, when to play, when not to play. I'd accept an argument that a player would need to keep track of so many variables that it's a difficult challenge and one worthy of recognition. But if the player has a device that's keeping track of those variables, and is telling the player when to dump cities, when to play, and when not to play, then it's no challenge at all. Effectively, it's out of the players hands. A machine is playing a different machine. And that's all it is. Other than being able to stay awake for 4 straight days. Which is nothing short of bonkers. Stretching out a game that stops being a challenge after 40 minutes to last 100 hours? Senseless.
With the recent discovery of the v3 ROMs that removes all the bugs then I think marathoning MC becomes almost worthwhile. But not worthwhile enough for me. Because even then marathoning would still be little more than an endurance test. Fairly decent players would still be able to accrue a decent stock of cities in reserve. But even if they couldn't, all the player needs to do to keep the game alive is score no less than 10k points a wave. And that's just too easy. But playing the v3 ROMs is still more credible, in my eyes, than what Victor is up too.
