Just a reminder for everyone that the rules were expanded last month to include some points that I thought were important. Things like game audio needing to be reasonably clear, and resetting between attempts, are standard practice for a lot of NES games, but are sometimes overlooked when recording attempts. These help determine authenticity of runs, and resetting in particular affects RNG. I also added a specific list of accepted emulators that should be used, and these are generally accepted for a lot of NES games. My personal recommendation for emulator is MesenRTA, but they are all reasonably good. Timing has also been elaborated on a little further, but the main difference is that there is no longer a set order for completing mini games. If you want to start with Ernie's Big Splash games first, go for it.

As of today, the Sesame Street ABC & 123 compilation is no longer accepted on this board, as was discussed in another thread.

When going through various runs on the board, I noticed that there was some slight inconsistency in how people were timing runs. I've gone ahead and retimed everyone's runs according to the rules. Runs on the No Cutscenes category were left as is, since the rules are odd compared to the rest of the leaderboard and the times are fairly spread out anyways. It did not seem urgent to frame count these runs yet.

Perhaps in the future, there could be a solution to convert those No Cutscenes times to be comparable to Any%, such as calculating the missing animation time and adding it to the run time. That way, the existing No Cutscenes times can be merged into Any% and all future runs would follow Any% rules. This is just me thinking out loud at the moment, but it may become a separate proposal to be discussed in the future.

Thanks for reading everyone. Now go learn your ABC's. :)

Updates to the leaderboard:

-Fruit Fallout category added. -Groove and Move category added. -Rules for Four Scoops have been changed to read [Time begins when "CHOOSE A FLAVOR" text disappears. Time ends when final scoop lands. The "YOU WIN" screen must be included at the end of the run.] -Rules for Conga Line have been changed to read [Time begins when "PRESS X TO PLAY" text disappears. Time ends when leading character falls. The "YOU WIN" screen must be included at the end of the run.] -Game rule requiring resets has been removed.

The new categories were requested by Wenduitz. The rule changes, and the rules for the new categories, reflect a need for clear visual cues for timing that also don't include any loading screens. I have taken suggestions from Wenduitz and PullMatrox into consideration and I hope the new rules are agreeable for everyone. The rule requiring resets has been removed since it currently does not seem possible to abuse save states to any advantage, and the long loading times involved in resetting the game is a burden for such short runs. Thank you for your patience while everything with this leaderboard gets sorted out.

So I kinda realized an issue with how rng works in this game. Seems like all rng, including how the computer opponent reacts to your moves, for each game is set somewhere between startup and the title screen. It then only changes once you've gone into a game. It also follows a set pattern of changes determined by the seed you get at the beginning.

The problem with this is that you can then repeatedly save state before a game until you find the optimal rng pattern, then just load the state to keep repeating it.

I would like to include a rule to make resets mandatory in all future submissions so that save states aren't abused to achieve perfect rng with every attempt. Current runs on the board will remain since I have no suspicions that this is being done already. For my own runs, I will gladly re-attempt them with the new rule if that's what other runners want me to do.

Resetting unfortunately adds about 15s to every attempt, so I am thinking that a good compromise would be to not make resets mandatory for every single attempt. Instead, you can make several attempts on the same rng seed, as long as a reset is visible at some point in the video before the run being submitted. This way, we will be able to be certain that save states aren't being loaded.

Please let me know if you have any feedback. I would like to add this rule soon before more people submit runs, but I always like to hear from the community.

Recently, a new game was requested for the Barbie series, via direct messages to all of the series moderators. In response, two separate leaderboards were created by two separate series mods within a day of each other.

https://www.speedrun.com/detective_barbie_in_the_mystery_of_the_carnival_caper was created on 2021-04-13.

https://www.speedrun.com/detective_barbie_carnival was created on 2021-04-14.

As a series mod myself, I don't believe I can edit existing games. I would contact the mod of the duplicate leaderboard, but as far as I know, mods cannot delete boards. Also, I did not see anything in the Support Hub or in the sticky threads about this either.

Does anyone know how to handle these situations? Thanks in advance and sorry if I'm missing something obvious!

Due to the short length and precise nature of this run, as well as the increasingly large number of tied times (especially at top ranks), I feel that it might be appropriate to begin timing runs with milliseconds. However, that is my personal opinion, and as a moderator I would like to only make changes that reflect a general consensus of the community.

Therefore, I will be privately contacting every player on the leader board on whether or not milliseconds should be added to all runs. This thread will also remain open for 30 days for anyone that would like to share their opinion publicly. On February 11th, I will post the resulting majority opinion here, which will decide whether or not this change is made.

Currently, there are nine tied times for Lvl 1 NES, which includes a four-way tie for 1st place and a three-way tie for 5th place. There is also a two-way tie for 2nd place for Lvl 2 NES and no tied times for Lvl 3 NES. The Amiga version currently only has one player.

Below is a list of all current tied times after frame counting.

Lvl 1 NES: 00:57.483 DexterClaire 00:57.600 ShesChardcore 00:57.667 k0zzx 00:57.700 Yoho9000 00:58.067 repusoiram 00:58.215 Rayquaza911 00:58.833 authorblues 01:04.481 Roamus 01:04.833 cornshaq

Lvl 2 NES: 00:55.500 ShesChardcore 00:55.900 Yoho9000

If anyone has concerns about not being able to accurately frame count their own runs, I will always be glad to help.

Due to inconsistent timing methods being used on the boards, I have gone ahead and updated the rules to include the exact frames to use for timing runs. This is based on authorblues' run, which also seemed to be the most common timing method used by other runners. All runs are being retimed with the new rules in mind. The complete rules are as follows:

Category Rules:

-Player must be set to "Level[1/2/3]" and opponent must be set to "CPU" and "Level[1/2/3]."

Game Rules:

-Timing starts on the first frame that the cursor is visible on the game map.

-Timing ends on the first frame that the screen is completely black after the final battle that results in victory.

-The game must be reset between runs. A visible reset must be included in submitted runs.

-Game video and audio must be clear in submitted runs.

-For emulator runs, please state the name and version of the emulator used. Smartphone emulators are banned.

With the release of Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King, which includes an emulated version of The Lion King (Genesis/MegaDrive), some changes have been made to the leaderboard.

First of all, PC, PS4, Switch and PC have been added as platforms. Secondly, a line has been added to the rules banning features exclusive to this new release, such as use of saves, level select and rewind. Another line has been added banning L+R, as it is generally a banned emulator function for most speedruns and should have been on the rules already. This new release allows for L+R, so this really needs to be clarified.

This new emulated version of The Lion King (Genesis/MegaDrive) appears to be accurate to the original game, so in the meantime, we will accept such runs on to this leaderboard. If significant inaccuracies are discovered with this new release, we can address them.

I have come up with an updated, more defined set of rules that I would like to apply to our leaderboard. However, I am of the belief that mods should communicate such things with the community and allow for an open discussion to occur. After all, it is the community that makes the speedrun. If you are a past runner, and especially if you are currently an active runner, please post your thoughts and help make this the leaderboard that we all want. My proposed rules are as follows:

-----START-----

Complete the game from start to finish on the difficulty setting associated with this category. The difficulty selection does not need to be visible in your run.

Timing

• Run starts when selecting "START" on the main menu.
• Run ends at the start of Simba's animation for the final attack that successfully throws Scar off of the cliff.

Banned Functions

• Turbo is not allowed as it provides an unfair advantage.
• Loading from a save state at any point in a run, or to start a new run, is not allowed as it provides an unfair advantage and is not a native function of the original hardware. All runs must begin with a reset that is visible in the submitted video.

Video Quality

• Video quality should be reasonably clear.
• Excessive missing frames / lag may be grounds for run rejection. Mods cannot accurately determine the legitimacy of a run if portions of the video are missing.

Audio Quality

• The game audio should be reasonably clear.
• Missing game audio may be grounds for run rejection. Mods cannot accurately determine the legitimacy of a run if portions of the audio are missing.

-----END-----

My first goal was to make sure that the timing method is clear, especially since the rules have always been vague about "end of time". I am simply reflecting what most runners, including top runners, have always done in this speedrun. It is a good place to end time because it is also the point where we lose character control.

As far as banned functions goes, not allowing turbo should be an obvious rule, but it really should be stated in the rules. I feel like not allowing save states is an important one, since it is common practice for most speedruns to start runs from a reset. Besides being an unfair advantage over console runners who cannot just immediately jump right into the next run with the press of a button, it is simply just a function that cannot be performed on an actual copy of the game. Even by principle alone, this should be reason enough to not allow save states in runs. I realize this might not be a popular idea with some of the emulator runners, but please try to understand where I am coming from with this.

The rules about video and audio quality should be common sense, but these types of questions always seem to come up in speedrun forums. Even this forum has an old thread where the question of video quality was brought up.

Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy post.

Side note to @The_Retro_Challenger , I was going to run this by you first, but it does not appear that we use any of the same types of social media. :P