No idea if anyone has done this before but it was a fun challenge for me. Time could definitely come down quite a lot, did a lot of safe strats and stupid stuff. Low 18 for sure possible, maybe even sub 18? Maybe someone else wants to give it a try as well ;-)

Since the PC leaderboards switched to Loadless Time, you need a specific timer to display your times without loads. This is how you set it up:

1. You need Livesplit. If you don't have it yet you can download it here. Make sure you start Livesplit with Admin rights.
2. In Livesplit you then make splits by right cklicking Livesplit and go to "Edit Splits".
3. Enter "Bloodstained - Ritual of the Night" as Game Name, then it should tell you below that an Autosplitter is available for this game.
4. Activate the Autosplitter, go to settings and make sure the first four options are enabled. The default options should be correct.
5. Make your splits however you like, the current version has no autosplitting but it starts your timer accurately on run start.
6. You have to compare against GAME TIME, not Real Time. Right click Livesplit again --> Compare against --> Game Time
7. Go Fast!

Make sure the loadless timer is on screen for your WHOLE Run, otherwise it can't be checked and confirmed and we have to take your Real Time instead of Loadless Time.

If you want to display a second timer with Real Time in addition: Right click LiveSplit and go to "Edit Layout". Click on the Plus --> Timer --> Timer Double click on that new Timer you added and switch the Timing method to Real time.

Moving forward we will switch our timing method for PC runs to Real Time without loads. Thanks to the seperation of consoles it is easy to set it up for every PC run without having to worry about how to handle the same for consoles. We use the Load remover built into Livesplit. For the settings of the load remover: Check the top four options, the two below (Pause on Any Key Events and Pause while game is inactive) are not allowed and will get your run rejected. They might get removed in the future. The defaul options should cover this. For setting up the load remover correctly, refer to the forum post about it: https://www.speedrun.com/bsrotn/thread/jv3hc . If you still have problems setting it up, just ask :-) For any run that doesn't use the load remover we will treat Time with loads as Time without loads, so make sure to set it up correctly and have it on screen for your submissions! The unfortunate side effect is that all previous runs get worse to not having removed load times but I'm sure you all can improve on your runs anyway :-) For console runners nothing changes, we still use normal RTA timing, please just leave the "Time without loads" field empty for your submissions.

I have an US NES with an Everdrive. Some time ago I tried to get a pre-run RNG Manipulation for Final Fantasy III which obviously only came out for the Famicom. I could not get it with the Everdrive on my US NES but with the same Rom it was no problem on an emulator. So are there differences between NES and Famicom that alter RNG and such? And would that mean that any run of a Famicom game via Flash card on NES would not be valid? Stuff like Rockman etc.

Same Question for Super Famicom comparing to SNES. I got a SFC, would playing US games on Flashcard differ from playing on Us SNES?