I'm not gonna link anything because that probably runs into piracy even though I don't think you can actually legally buy this game anywhere, buuut I found multiple sources to download from—with one of the very first results being from what might be the most trustworthy site on the entire internet—with a four word Google search where the first three were the name of the game.

So, yeah, no. It's not actually hard to find at all!

PS4 and Switch has been added as platforms.

Yeah it never even crossed my mind that there would be changes to the base game with the expansions, and it was ages since I even touched the game without any expansions. Didn't know the Doppelgänger area was different, but that'll make it an easy check.

I'll reject your run for now, but will wait a few days and see if anyone else wants to have any input before I enact any rule changes and remove times from the boards. For that I'll also need to look through all other runs on the board to see if any others have been done on versions other than Ex 3.

So, as I just learned from the latest submitted run, there were balance changes to base game stuff with the expansions. In this case, it was mentioned that F-Thief's Envenom is a lot better in vanilla than with any expansions.

This means that we can't have runs on different versions on the same board. The game also isn't active enough to keep active boards for several different versions.

My most prefered solution to this would be to simply say that runs have to be done on the complete version of the game—with all three expansions installed. Preferably runs should then also show the title screen, so the version can be confirmed.

Discuss.

So, looking around here, I saw the World Record Progression page under Guides, with the note under Any% that "The early history of this category is very unknown". Well, sit down, make yourself comfortable, and let me tell you about the early history of it - because I am the early history of it! In the west, at any rate - no idea if there were any Japanese Hebereke runners prior to me running Ufouria.

Ufouria was one of the pivotal games of my childhood, so when I got into speedrunning in the early 2000s, it was one of the games I picked to run. This was in the medieval ages of speedrunning - no streaming, no game-centric communities, no cheap and easy capture devices. We had good ol' SDA, and I was the only one interested in running the game, so I had to come up with everything myself. The route, the strats, the tricks. It was kind of the forgotten Sunsoft game at the time - people were running Batman, Journey to Silius, even the holy-shit-this-is-expensive Gimmick, but Ufouria seemed to interest me and me alone. So in 2005, I mailed a VHS tape to nate containing three speedruns: Yoshi's Story, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (which was historic for being the first 2-player run on SDA), and the first, as far as I know, recorded, uh, record of Ufouria.

Any%, deathless, in 41:40: http://speeddemosarchive.com/Ufouria.html

Yeah.

In a pre-Shades skip-world, there wasn't anything super wrong with the route in and of itself, except that I pick up Bop-Louie's secret weapon, but there were a lot of tricks missing. The major one in that one that I had discovered was the way to maintain your speed when walking with Freeon-Leon on ice. Hadn't even figured out the secret weapon switch glitch yet. Since the recording was on VHS tape, it was also a time when it was easier to let some mistakes slide. It's definitely not a run that could be considered good anymore, and not even just by today's standards - I wasn't satisfied with it myself just a few years later. But submitting an improvement was, at the time, problematic for me.

At the end of summer 2006, I moved to a different city to go to university. While I brought the NES with me, I no longer had any means of recording. No VHS, no DVD recorder, no capture device. It was at a NES meetup in the city I moved to very shortly after I had moved there to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of the NES in Sweden that the switch glitch was shown to me by someone else - I don't know who. So already there were possible improvements to be had. I just wasn't able to get a new run done.

So there turned out to be one more person who did something with the game - Blublu, who in 2004 had done a TAS I didn't know about (this was in the days before speedrunners and TASers were good friends), and that wasn't on TASVideos. He was the one who found the Shades skip, though he believed at first what he had found only worked because of running the PAL game in NTSC speed. He stopped working on it, until 2006, when Fihlvein demonstrated it as actually possible. Now, this wasn't done with today's crouch-walljump technique - no, it was done by finding that with precise subpixel positioning, you can make the jump after the ice cave with Bop-Louie. It was extremely precise, and I did manage to do it on console, but it was an extremely frustrating trick and the success rate in RTA was very, very low. In late 2006, Blublu resumed work on it, but dropped it. In early 2007, Adebis picked it up, and with comments and encouragement from myself and Blublu, finished and submitted the first Ufouria TAS to be published on TASVideos, any% with deathwarping, in October of 2008. It was still missing a number of tricks, but skipped Shades entirely, and then nothing much happened for about four years.

At ESA 2012, I made what appears to be the first recorded 100% run of the game, in 52:04: The route was supposed to be deathless, but marathons do what marathons do, and I took a death on Unyo. Still.

And then, in April of 2013, with Blublu's find of preserving Bop-Louie's velocity when swimming with Freeon-Leeon as the kickoff point, I found the light switch skip: Primitive method there, but easily the biggest timesave in the game since the Shades skip, which still was pretty TAS-only while this skip was very RTA viable. At this point in time, I did have a Dazzle for recording NES games, but I still never ended up getting a full run recorded and submitted.

At least I did end up improving my deathless any% record in another fashion - by doing it at ESA 2013, making the new WR at the time 35:58: Just before that, Aglar had also submitted an improved TAS, caused by my light switch skip find, after he discovered that going back and grabbing Shades to do that still saved time over bombing down to the light switch.

In 2013 and early 2014, I also wrote the article on Ufouria on the SDA Knowledge Database.

And that's where the early history ends! 2014, roughly a decade after I had gotten into speedrunning it, was when Nudua picked it up, found the crawljump to more consistently skip Shades, and then more people started running it, Zoda in particular.

I hope you've enjoyed this history lesson!

Oh, yeah. I don't think I added rules since I kind of hastily set this board up when I myself wanted to submit it to a marathon.

I'll be adding some rules. Timing should start when you hit the button to make the how to play screen go away, so slightly before gaining control, and ends when Stage Clear pops up after killing the final boss. Boards for runs with more than one player will happen but using multiple variables gets fucky so it's probably just going to be 2p/3p/4p boards without character selection. I've wrestled with it for another board I moderate and nothing worked well.

While the marathons do play their part, I would also believe that the prevalence of single-segment runs these days also has a lot to do with the rise of livestreaming in general. So many people like to stream while they record, and watching segmented attempts live isn't really as interesting.

And... I might be wrong about this, but I can't remember ever seeing a segmented run featured on any kind of leaderboard on this page. There's IL tables, but all the "main" leaderboard times I can remember seeing are purely single-segment runs. I haven't studied all the leaderboards, but even the 10-hour Final Fantasy leaderboards I just checked are 100% single-segment. A lot of people sadly do find SDA obsolete nowadays, and Speedrun.com is very much considered the main site for speedrunning - and it's practically only showing you single-segment runs.

I absolutely understand where you're coming from and I do agree with your main point, but it's not -solely- the fault of the marathons. Streaming in general, and the by far and wide most popular leaderboard site really only concerning itself with single-segments, ILs and a variety of community-invented arbitrary categories (as if speedrunning categories aren't all arbitrary) definitely plays very big parts in the dominance of single-segment runs as well.

Got a double booked from the 20th to the 29th, so I need a roommate for that.

Edit: Spot filled!

I did send an e-mail trying to book a room but haven't heard back yet, though I'd gladly share a room with some nice people. Preferably quad, for economical reasons, but anything is actually fine. Just, given that I can have some problems falling asleep especially when I'm away, I want to mitigate that as much as possible by making sure I get one of the regular beds in whatever room I end up having rather than the pull-out couch or such.

Sorry for taking so long with this, but for time and money reasons, I personally will not extend my stay in Växjö any. I'm extremely reliant on the people who wanted the spots actually keeping them for that duration now because I can't afford paying for someone not showing up.

Edit: Also, got my train ticket - I will arrive in Växjö at 18:59 on the 19th, it was the best option that day. My train then leaves at 13:02 on the 25th. I really can't justify any extra days for a variety of reasons. The room is available until 12:00 on the 25th.

So the total price for that hotel room is going to be 1800:- per person and if I read this hotel booking confirmation correctly, payment is on arrival, so I'm going to need that money by the time I arrive at the hotel. The price does include breakfast buffet at the hotel, and the other facilities they have - pool, jacuzzi, sauna and gym. So there's that.

Tompa's going to stay in the room as well and will arrive before I do so he's said he'll be getting a room for his own prior to my arrival, so if any of the others in my room was going to arrive earlier as well, maybe talk to him about it.

So Jinny dropped from my room, so there's another free spot now. I still have not finalized my decision on when I'll actually get to Växjö, I'll say.

Can certainly do that. So if Jinny actually wants that spot then all the beds in my room are taken.

Right then, I figure it's about the time when people need to confirm they'll have rooms at the hotel. And while we do have a channel for travel and accommodations on the Discord server, having a thread to keep track of room information seems like a good idea too.

So: If you need a room, or are looking for people to share a room with, here's the thread for you! Post here if you've got spare spots in a booked room, or are looking for a spot to sleep during the event. I'll try to keep this post updated with what's available.

And since I've booked a room, let's start listing.

=Kenny's room= Quad room from 2018-02-19 (Monday) to 2018-02-25 (Sunday) Occupants: KennyMan666, KalalMar, Wiredwicky, Tompa Price: 1800:- per person Full! As the one having booked the room, my only demand is first pick of bed. As I've learned the quad rooms have bunk beds, my only actual requirement is that I get a bottom bunk. Calling final on these days.

Boss Rush exists now. I legit don't know why it didn't exist earlier. Leaderboard has also been rejiggered so that character is now a subcategory of main categories to make it look a little more elegant. As with all leaderboards I manage, any character that doesn't have any runs at all will be hidden until they actually get a run.

And if anyone that's interested missed it at the time, the ESA run is now (well, as of a week ago) up on Youtube:

Was a mostly decent run.

In some kind of halfway chronological order mixed with the order I remember things in:

MLSTRM who I met at the train station in Gothenburg, though I shouldn't have listened to him when he suggested walking to teh venue.

City Gross for the breakfast of champions, consisting of three paninis and one Monster energy drink.

ZodaNOR, for making me play Hebereke/Ufouria again (no, I haven't started running it again yet).

Greenalink, for, well, stuff. For almost lending me his 3DS for my Mighty Gunvolt run before I decided I'd just do it on the PC version.

Pull, whose PS2 controller I borrowed for all my practice runs and live stream runs.

IrregularJinny, for Mighty Gunvolt commentary.

SuccinctAndPunchy, mostly for finally getting to actually meet him.

Herreteman, for all the stuff surrounding that ALBW run.

And last but not least Tompa, who drove me to the train station the day I left.

I probably forgot a whole bunch of people so I'll add them later. Maybe.

I know you kids these days are all about Discord and whatever, but let's not forget about the chat protocol of champions, the eternal IRC! And the ESA IRC channel is still kicking, so come give us a visit some time!

Server is Quakenet, channel is #ESAmarathon. If you've been hanging out in the GDQ IRC channel, you're already on the right server, so just come on by. Or use the Qnet webchat: https://webchat.quakenet.org/

Happy chatting!

I am absolutely always up for CaH.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill is amazing for all the wrong reasons, especially if you have the version that has the Underground Lake on the top floor.

So, not about the things that are on the schedule, but about the schedule itself - on the main http://www.esamarathon.com/ site, there's a schedule tab, but it only shows the schedule for stream #1. The schedule for stream #2 doesn't seem to be found anywhere on the site. That should probably be taken care of.