Was more ment as a joke, but sure.

Why is an "on rail shooter" speedrun-friendly and not an "autoscroller"? What is the difference? Most Star Fox games, excluding Adventures and Command, is built a lot around the rail shooter concept. A rail shooter is a (section of a) game that automatically proceeds forwards throughout a fixed path or a fixed set of paths. The concept is that you can not stop and explore or backtrack your adventure but instead have to constantly move forwards towards the end of the rail.

A game being on rails does not necessary mean that you can not affect the speed of which you are processing through the level. It only means that you have no possibilities to diverge the route in the game.

An autoscroller on the other hand is a (section of a) game where you can not affect the speed or the time of that section by any means. The part of the game which is built around an autoscroller always takes the same amount of time each time you play it.

In theory, an autoscrolling game with boss fight sections and/or different paths would be possible to speedrun if the bosses and/or paths can be done in a different amount of time, although the speedrunning values of such a run would be questionable depending on a lot of factors like difficulty and time cutting boss strategies.

Games like Star Fox 1, Star Fox 64, Star Fox Assault and Star Fox Zero on the other hand, which all have a lot of on rail sections, can all be speed up by different strategies and techniques, including different precise boost patterns, lag reduction, enemy spawns, routes, powerups, flying patterns, kills etc. In fact, for the Star Fox series specifically, different techniques throughout the levels can save or waste tens of seconds during each mission and minutes throughout the run.

EDIT: Besides, the on rail sections for the Star Fox series is still just a part of the games, not the entire games' play style.

• Hello fellow speedrunners - Ignore this section if it is TL/DR

My name is Pottoww, and people who watch different Star Fox games has probably seen me before. The Star Fox community is a growing community in the matter of speedrunning and has grown far bigger today than it was back in 2012 when I pushed the community together. Today we have competitors in every Star Fox game, from the NES Star Fox 1 and unreleased Star Fox 2 to the latest entry i the series Star Fox Zero. People are regularly improving world records and personal bests and the viewer base has grown a bit stronger the past couple of years.

But, we want more. One of the major obstacles in the Star Fox speedrunning community and an often recurring "criticism" for our runs even to these days is that Star Fox is, in many cases, not a speedrun-friendly gaming series. It is "casual", "only based on RNG" and "too autoscroller" to be taken seriously. Even though events like AGDQ and ESA has helped out proving the worthy of the runs, many are still not convinced. And even these major marathons have their doubts about the interest value between the games.

• We are planning to showcase our community and the games within with the use of a relay race - Important section At the moment, the planning for this event is at a very early state. But, we hereby seek out to you for the interest in a relay race to show the series full potential. This means, the interest to participate.

We know that there are a lot of people in the speedrunning community who is not very familiar with our community. And we know that there are a lot of people who wants to, or already are, speedrunning games in the series but is not involved in the community so far. That is one reason why we put this thread in the main forums.

You do not have to be a speedrunner of any game in the series right now. You only need to show us interest in participating in a relay race. This race is going to happen at earliest during the fall 2016.

"But, Star Fox is 90% autoscroller!"

• No it isn't. It is on rails. It is far from autoscrolling.

If you have any interest in this event, please submit your interest to this form. This is not binding by any means, it is just helpful to create a first look at what we can create. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Tnn8dL6l8GE1n8KiLMB58dHIcKE_j5CLh9qUjDKFNks/viewform?c=0&w=1

Star Fox Discord Server: https://discord.gg/0ZumT4PFmqz6AXtS Star Fox on Speedrun.com: http://www.speedrun.com/star_fox

A lot of the reviews on Youtube are from people who played the game ones and never got used to the controls. Take Skyward Sword as an example. Speedrunners all agree on the fact that the motion controls for Skyward Sword works out extremely well, although no one else agreed on it to begin with. Now SS is such an old game that people start to enjoy it - because they are used to motion controls.

The same goes with SF Zero, it takes time to get into. And honestly, if you can not play the game for more than 5 hours before saying the controls are bad and you won't play it, then the game is not for you. Zero is not a "Play though it ones and finish the story" kind of game, but rather a "Improve yourself over time" kind of game. And a lot of reviews has missed that fact.

I really want to know why SMG2 was cut. I have practiced that game the past week and starting tomorrow I will have a lot of free time, so I thought I would show it off this weekend and write it in the second round cuts thread since the limit for this cut was June 5th. Feels kind of bad tbh, I thought my SMG2 run was pretty safe after last year's discussion. And I certainly thought I would have until 5th of June to prove myself.

EDIT: I mean, if the reason is "we can't know for sure you are going to be able to perform" I would like you to re-think the cut. If the reason is "We had too many good games and we felt like we could do SMG2 some other time" it is perfectly fine. I don't want to sound obnoxious. I just want it to be explained.

Maybe we should try to include a Japanese restream as well, to gain some viewers from the greatest speedrunning country in Asia? I understand this might already have been thought of and the restreams are set up completely by voluntary people, and not by the ESA crew, but if it could be done in any way I think it would definitely benefit the event.

Also cool that there will be a Russian restream!

Getting better times in Star Fox Zero, mostly RNG standing in my way atm. Definitely one of the top 3 competitive players for Any%.

I will also do more SMG2 runs from now on, ensuring my consistency before the marathon as well as trying to lower my PB. I'll update you how this goes closer to June. :)

Count me in for sure!

Ordered, of course! Good initiative guys! :)

Emulator and iQue are different things, and emulators are eve faster than iQue. Also we agreed on banning emulator from SF64 a long time ago so I don't see why this is even up for discussion. iQue is official. There are no differences in buying an iQue to get a faster time, than it is to buy NTSC for getting a faster time if you live in the PAL region. This discussion is bugging me so much.

About the argument "we should have different sub categories because you play it differently on different consoles" is not a good argument. Then we should split every single game out there as well. A lot of different games is ran differently depending on console and region. Should be split Star Fox Assault in JP/US/PAL as well since all the three different versions has different runs in theory?

No, if you split it up, I won't be happy. I do not like this idea at all.

Alright so now when the day has come I have improved Star Fox Zero and taken the world record. Estimate 50 minutes is VERY safe so maybe an estimate of 45 should happen instead. Anyhow, now I feel like I managed to prove that I am trying my best! :)

EDIT: When it comes to SMG2 I have been doing some runs in a tournament we have in the community and I feel very confident with me being able to deliver a first class run in time for the marathon. The tricks are still intact for me and if the game makes it in I will deliver a first class experience. (y)

I see what you did there Flicky! ;-)

Taz Express NG WR is kinda meh atm and I won't go for optimizing it more until I know if it gets in or not. I am aware that this goes against everything, since you want us to optimize before it get's in. Therefore I say to you, if you want a silly AwfulGDQ-like game with funny commentary to cheer things up, keep it in and trust me on it. If you feel like I am a jackass who writes this, keep it out, haha! :)

The only reason why I am not going for optimizing Taz is because I want to work harder on actually getting Star Fox Zero into the marathon. I have been practicing levels the past days and this is what I am really trying to prove worthy. You guys know that I can deliver SMG2 and SF64, so I am not worried about those two games when it comes to my skill level (I know that if you cut them it is not because of me). I do want Taz in as well, but it kind of gets overshadowed by Zero.

Also it seems like Zero can be done in less than 30 minutes IGT, a bit under 40 minutes RTA. I still want my estimate to be a bit higher though so for now I would say think of Zero as keeping the 50 minute estimate and we should be fine. We can discuss this more if the game actually gets in, but just so you guys won't have to fit in the 2 hour estimate I set while submitting it. Tomorrow I will do runs and you can follow my progress on the SF Zero leaderboard.

At 5PM EST we will have a vocal discussion live in the Star Fox discord. If you want to be there and discuss the game, feel free to do so.

Join here: https://discord.gg/0ZumT4PFmqz6AXtS

No. Apparently you can achieve the same thing you can with Amiibo's without actually buying them, only by completing the game with all medals. This means that I don't want Amiibo to be a sub category because it would be literally exactly the same thing.

All Missions is weird. Where do we do that? Do we clear the file? This can not be happening until we know what to do. I don't like the idea with "Hey just go into main game and select all stages, doesn't matter the order" because that isn't a speedrun for me.

Also with 100%, besides the exact same problems as above, we also need to define it. I could open up Any%, but I won't get Amiibo as a thing and I won't add 100% and/or all missions until we have that down properly.

Also, people will run all routes, and people are going to ask us to have separate categories for them. I have always said "If people compete in it, it's a category" and this won't be an exception. How do we handle this? Because I don't want there to be 19 categories but I can not see how we can avoid that.

So, Star Fox Zero is now down to about 40 minutes in an Any% run. Therefore I am lowering the estimate for that game to, well, let's say 50 minutes for now.

How are you guys looking at these things btw. I mean I have the WR in Star Fox 64 Red Line, and in Taz Express. Do I still need to optimize those two before the deadline or are you believing me that I can do it on the marathon? Obviously I would practice all and any game I get in, but I want to pay focus on Star Fox Zero and SMG2 for now, especially Zero, to make sure it has some more ground to stand on before the deadline.

I really want IGT to be the real thing, and I highly doubt that Nintendo will take it away. But sure, we can have both in, but then IGT should be the standard.

We need to discuss the 19 different routes as categories (yikes...) and also the definition of 100% (Adventures, here we go again! :D).

I know that not released games are very hard to submit and fit into a marathon, but what are your opinions on submitting Star Fox Zero, which will be released in April? The biggest problem is to find a fair estimate, but if it is submitted, would it be considered as a backup or for the second stream? Newer, hyped games normally bring attention.

Well I only have a problem with the resets. In 100% you need to reset after the solar system overview has loaded, because otherwise the medals wouldn't be recognized as received. For me it kinda feels weird with resetting before the stage would be recognized as beaten by the game. But then again, there is no real reason to wait for it since you don't need the medal. But idk.

Well that's the deal with everything. Every since I created the first google doc leaderboards when the community was small I always told people that the community decides, I do not. And I stand by that, even if I do not enjoy some ideas myself, the community is for the community. If people run it, then I will add it (or someone else).

Blue Line was the same thing. No one of the old school guys (me included) wanted Blue Line to be a thing in the past. But since a lot of people ran it I discussed it in the SF64 IRC and we came to the conclusion to add it since people obviously wanted it. Although with that example we did some changes to it, being that no warps could be used. The reason for this was that Any% earlier was the same route except for Titania and we felt like if Blue Line would become a thing it should stand by itself. 2 bosses that was never seen before made it in and there you go, the community got themselves a new category.

So even if a new category is going to happen we need to discuss it. What are the restrictions and rules? I know one thing, I won't accept a "do not complete the game" category as a true category. And in that discussion I won't change my mind.

However, as Zewing said, if people start running "all stages" and compete in it, it will get added. Although first we have to make clear when to reset etc. And 1 person running the category won't make it on the leaderboards.

One main reason why I don't like the idea of running all stages in a speedrun is because that is basically 100%. You would speed up Katina and Bolse a lot, but otherwise the stages would look the same except for the score. Collecting score costs you make 5-10 seconds in each stage, at most. So if you want that, just run 100% instead.