Recently, after testing BAR! on a variety of different emulators, we have determined that the age-old problem of accurately emulating the game's physics has been solved. The latest versions of Project64 and Mupen64Plus, 2.3 and 2.5 respectively, have both shown very promising results in our tests. The car no longer sticks to the ground where it shouldn't, and all things considered, gameplay feels true to console. Also, with use of the LLE graphics plugin "angrylion-plus", emulator gameplay footage is no longer trivially easy to distinguish from console footage. We are proud to say that BAR! now looks and plays great on modern emulators.

As a result, we have made an adjustment to the rules: Project64 2.3 and Mupen64Plus 2.5 are now the only approved emulators for running BAR!. All previously-approved emulators (namely Project64 1.6 and 1.7) are now no longer approved. Since their inaccurate physics emulation provided somewhat of an advantage over console, a few years ago we hid all emulator runs from our leaderboards by default. From now on, and until further notice, emulator runs will again be shown by default, as our newly-approved emulators are deemed to be more-or-less at par with console. If any future versions of Project64 and Mupen64Plus are released, they will be approved by default, unless we determine that they hinder the console-emulator equivalency.

As a consequence of deeming older emulators invalid, we must also retroactively reject and remove all old emulator runs from our leaderboards. This will put future emulator runners on an even playing field, as they will not have to compete with times that were achieved on emulators that provide an unfair advantage. A document archiving all of the retroactively rejected runs has been created so as to not lose any historical record of these achievements. It can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vM2t_quPIe6Bmt-rSJB-OxCClKkv9ez7G_37HoFcKtY/

To get started with emulating BAR! accurately, check out these links:

Project64: https://www.pj64-emu.com/download/project64-latest m64p: https://m64p.github.io/ RetroArch: http://www.retroarch.com/?page=platforms angrylion-plus: https://github.com/ata4/angrylion-rdp-plus/releases

I use Project64 with angrylion-plus, myself. I recommend it.

m64p and RetroArch both use Mupen64Plus as their core. Just ensure that you're using a recent build and that your core is up-to-date. If you're still unsure, just make sure that BAR!'s physics aren't broken, and you're good to go.

Thanks for reading, and we hope that everyone finds this to be a positive and enjoyable change.

Yes, from what I've seen of that version, I think it's similar enough to the EUR / PAL version of BAR to be submitted to the leaderboards as such. I wish this website would let me add an "AUS / PAL" region to the dropdown, but that's not an option. Other options would be to create a completely separate page for HSVAR, or a separate set of leaderboards here, but I think that won't be necessary if there is indeed no difference from the European version, aside from car models and audio files.

If andypanther could give us a second opinion, I'd like to hear it, but I'd personally say that you can go ahead, and I'm surprised and glad to hear that someone is interested in running the Australian version of the game. The Australian and European runners we've had so far both own NTSC N64s and USA copies of the game, so every run on our leaderboards is from that region at the moment.