Hey guys, I just added a character variable to the main leaderboard and we also now have Individual Level leaderboards for all the characters and difficulties.

Obviously, many runs from the main leaderboard would qualify for these already but I don't have the time to copy them across at the moment. If you wish to duplicate your submission for those categories so I can verify them, you are welcome to do so. Eitherwise I will get to copying them at some point eventually.

Also in regards to character variable on main: I only did the PB's. If you have obseleted runs that are incorrectly marked with the wrong character value, feel free to modify/fix them yourselves and I will verify them.

Hi guys, We were in talks a while back about a load time removal method so that we can combine platforms on MK11. The technicalities of doing this sort of fell apart on us. However I'd like to hear opinions on going for an "in-game-time" calculation method.

To do this we would simply take the in-game timer of each round in your run and subtract the starting value: e.g. if at the end of the round you had a 231 and the timer started at 240, then that would be 9 seconds. Add together those values for every round in your run and we would have the total time of your run.

The downsides, however:

1. The in game timer pauses during Krushing blows, Fatal Blows and certain environment interactions. This means the amount of time spent in the round won't really be accurate to the In-game timer. So, this could actually change up what would be "optimal gameplay" for the run. It may actually mean that routing to include a Krushing Blow or Fatal Blow might give you an "incidental time gain" because it would pause the in-game timer, thus gaining you time.

2. It doesnt factor in milliseconds in case of a tie. When two runners have the same IGT we normally prefer to have a deciding factor that would break the tie, but that wouldn't be possible in this case.

3. It would also eliminate the "Fatality sequence" completely as well, so it wouldnt actually matter how you delivered that final hit during the "finish him" section, as the timer stops before it. It would also mean you could just .. do a fatality and not be penalized by it

I realize this method is going to make things a little wierd "in a speedrun sense" since it wont really reflect an accurate measurement of the run as a whole. However it should cover most of the important aspects of gameplay and most importantly it would be a feasible way to allow us to combine all platforms under 1 leaderboard.

Anyway, let us know what you think by replying to this post and/or talking to us on Discord.

Hi Guys,

We would like to make a few minor changes to the current category setup and would appreciate any feedback before we go ahead with the changes:

While there aren't "many" runs on the leaderboard that run under these rules, there are still remnants from past runs which would qualify from before HPT was discovered to work on MKT. NHPT/NME has been a pretty successful category in MK2, MK3 and UMK3 and reflects what I think a lot of people see as the "glitchless/legit" way to run these games. I see no reason why it shouldn't be treated the same on MKT.

#2. Using the "Individual Levels" Leaderboard for Character specific runs Similarly to the other classic MK's, this idea has proven effective to providing a place for people to master specific characters while not affecting the main leaderboard. While it may take time to populate every characters categories, this allows people a means of being recognized for their mastery of a specific character.

#3. Add a true Any% category Currently on category extensions exists an Any% (No Bosses) category which was originally just called Any%. However there has been some demand for a proper true "anything goes" category. This feels like a good opportunity to add it. This category will exist separately from the currently run "Bosses" category and will allow the selection of any difficulty and any tower on top of allowing the overpowered boss characters.

#4. Category name changes There will be 4 main categories as follows:

• Standard (The same as the current "No Bosses" category)
• NHPT (No High Punch Trick, transferred from Category Extensions)
• Any% (New category in which anything is allowed including any tower, difficulty and/or the use of boss characters)
• Bosses (The same as the current "Bosses" category)

"Standard" will be the new name for the main category which defines as "hardest difficulty, hardest tower, no bosses, anything goes". This is something that has worked out well in UMK3 in a similar way and serves a good way to indicate what is considered the main category.

We would like to give everyone a chance to give their thoughts and feedback before implementing these changes. We will implement these changes in the next few days if there are no significant objections.

We are looking to add verifiers/moderators who are willing to undergo the task of load-time removal. This is a very tedious task, so please only put your name forward if you think you are ready for it.

For example, the moderation process would involve - at the very least - downloading every video and using a video processing tool (such as Avidemux) to find the time stamps of every start/end load time segment in a run.

We already have 2 volunteers so far. I am skeptical that we have enough, but we are in discussions on the logistics of how to proceed. If this works out and everyone is happy with their positions we may be able to combine all or most of the platforms into a single category.

Please reply to this post or contact me on discord if you are interested in helping out.

Hello everyone.

Just so that everyone is aware, the Category Extensions leaderboard is now available. You can find it on the side-bar already or linked from here: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_alpha_2_category_extensions.

Category Extensions Leaderboards are made to hold an abundance of "miscellaneous" categories. This is done to keep the main leaderboard focused on what should be considered the most competetive categories.

Many of the existing miscellaneous categories such as Survival, Shin Akuma Challenge, Dramatic Battle and "Maximum Alpha" will be now listed on the Category Extensions leaderboard.

We have decided we would also like to move the "Max Damage" category to the Category Extensions leaderboard as well. While the Max Damage category is a rather enjoyable run, we generally believe that Max Damage doesn't really represent what would be the standard way of playing the game.

Moving Max Damage runs to Category Extensions will allow us to simplify the main leaderboard, reducing to just "Normal Damage" runs and either Normal or Expert difficulty within the chosen platform.

I would like to give everyone the opportunity to voice their opinions before we implement such a big change. Please do so by replying to this post, or contacting us on the Street Fighter discord.

If the majority of the community is in favor or indifferent to the change, we will begin moving runs in the next few days.

Thanks for your attention.

I have created a discord channel for this game. It has been linked to the leaderboard web page, and can be found on the side bar.

Otherwise you can join it here: https://discord.gg/YBma9yyUKv

Shoutouts to @kurtisconner for an amazing video and an amazing new WR.

Thanks to the newly generated interest in this game, we have decided to add some new moderators to help out. We would like to welcome @brocis420 and @FFRPro21 to the moderation team.

Cheers guys!

Hi guys.

We have just had a run submitted that uses "infinite jump"/"out of bounds" strategies in the All Medallions category. It is not claiming a WR as of yet but it is not far behind, it's evident that similar strategies to any% can be used effectively in the All Medallions category.

I would like to see if there are any strong opinions about having a glitchless category which would ban these strategies as it does drastically change the gameplay for the All Medallions run. I'm currently of the opinion that a glitchless category would be better as most people seem to want to do All Medallions to get away from the Any% strategies.

However, there is still no reason why the game can't/shouldn't be ran All Medallions with glitches.

Please post your opinions in this thread. If there are no strong responses we will rename the current All Medallions category to "Glitchless" and create a new category for the new runs exploiting glitches to obtain all medallions.

Edit: This is the run in question:

https://www.speedrun.com/mksm/run/y42ldkdm

@skill8d

This run did not show difficulty, is performed on an innacurate emulator on mobile phone and has a listed time of 4:50 when even in the video its shown as 9:58.

Edit: Also the run is cheated. It uses an artificial speed up method (probably an emulator fast-forward button) to gain time inbetween matches/rounds. Easily noticeable at 1:19 where the "round 1 / fight" message is sped up (impossible to do via in-game means).

Please reject this run. I mean you already had the leaderboard wiped once due to people not properly following the rules regarding difficulty.

I don't really understand how it can be too hard to just look at a video before verifying it even if its for just a few seconds to check that it follows the rules.

If you are having trouble performing your moderator duties, please give moderator to someone who is willing put in a little more effort. I'm willing to help out myself. If you are uncomfortable with that, then there are a number of people I could nominate for the job such as @DustyTokyo or @habble.

Hi guys.

I wanted to make sure everyone is aware of a new rule we have added for the Klassic Towers runs. We have implemented a new rule for runners who perform their run offline:

• Runs recorded offline must include the final run summary screen shown after the credits.
• Runs that are live-streamed are not upheld to this requirement.

The decision to add this rule comes after we have had to reject a run for splicing. The summary screen contains information regarding the run on it and will show any round losses as well as flawless victories/brutalities etc. This should make it considerably harder for someone to splice a run as they would have to also fake this screen as well.

We are still fairly confident in all of the currently submitted runs on the leaderboard and don't see the need to remove any. However we ask that all future runs show the summary screen from now on, specifically if your run was not live streamed.

It is a fairly simple requirement which just means you have to show or skip the ending/credits and return to the tower select screen after the run.

Please adhere to this new requirement as we are going to begin enforcing it heavily from this point forward.

Sorry for any inconvenience and good luck.

-Tenka

Hello everyone,

As the community slowly continues to grow and different categories and different ways of speedrunning the games are becoming more popular, there have been many requests to change some of the ways in which the categories for each of these games are represented on the leaderboards.

The following are some changes that we feel may help make certain categories more approachable and better represented on the leaderboard.

1. Moving No HPT/ No Major Exploits / Any% categories from category extension into the main categories as a sub-category.

We feel that the NME/NHPT categories represented a much desired way to speedrun the game. They are essentially the equivalent of what could be considered "Glitchless" as far as Mortal Kombat is concerned. While “High Punch Trick” (HPT) is a lot more challenging and a lot more fun than it looks, it does devolve the speedrun significantly by removing a large strategic portion of the game which can otherwise be a very complex and enjoyable part of speedrunning.

The NHPT/NME categories have since received a considerable amount of competition proving that there is a desire to run the game this way and therefore we feel it deserves its spot on the main leaderboard as opposed to being on the Category Extensions Board.

In Regards to WolfMAME INP requirements on No HPT/NME/Any%: Our approach to the Category Extensions board has generally been "its for fun, its for the memes" etc, and we have not enforced any harsh requirements for them. However we feel that moving it into a main category does necessitate the need for more appropriate legitimacy requirements on the top runs. Therefore we would like to require WolfMAME INP's for NME/No HPT/Any% for any top time runs in these categories going forward.

This requirement will be implemented the same way it is required for the current main category runs (only required if the run is faster than a certain threshold). NOTE: We aren’t disputing any currently submitting runs for these categories and current runs with no INP will NOT be removed, it is specifically a requirement "from this point forward" and will NOT retro-actively disqualify any runs from the leaderboard.

Most people who are running in these categories are already using INP's anyway, but the ones who aren’t are strongly advised to learn how to record a WolfMAME INP if they wish to continue running these categories at sub-threshold times. You can find a guide on how to do this in any of the guide sections for MK1,2,3,U3 and if you have any trouble getting it to work PLEASE CONTACT ME. I will walk you through it.

Currently we are only intending to make these changes for the "Arcade" platform categories. However if you would like to see similar sub-categories implemented for some of the consoles where these categories can apply, please let us know.

2. Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Renaming of "Credit Skip" category to "Standard".

As it currently is, whether or not Credit Skip is used is a binary choice and the category names reflect that. However with the addition of NME and Any% sub categories it then becomes a little bit more confusing which category is the "main" category to anyone observing the leaderboard.

We feel that "Credit Skip" should still be considered the main category, it represents what we feel is the basic way of running the game (Hardest difficulty, Hardest Tower, Anything goes). To reflect this, "Standard" is the best name we could come up with to make it obvious to anyone observing. Suggestions for a better name are welcome.

3. (SNES) Mortal Kombat 3/ Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Separating Soundless runs into a sub-category.

Back when the Soundless exploit was found on SNES MK3/UMK3, there was some discussion about whether or not it should be allowed. The community was smaller and there was no complaints or issues about allowing the exploit and the main runners at the time were happy to go ahead using it so we allowed it.

However since then multiple people have made it known to us that they don't wish to run the game this way and it has squashed any appeal the speedrun might have had. We don’t believe in unnecessarily disqualifying runs on a technicality so we are planning to move all runs that abused turning off sound to a separate category that we will call "Soundless". Hopefully this will make running MK3/UMK3 on SNES much more appealing to onlookers and hopefully generate some more runners.

4. Using the "Individual Levels" Leaderboard for "Character Specific" runs.

The main categories have done a lot to keep the speedrun simple and approachable and digging into the game to find "which character is the fastest" for any given category has been a fairly challenging endeavour. Seeing the title of "Optimal character" change over the years has been quite interesting and in some cases I believe it is still yet to be proven, (MK3 in particular).

However there is a lot left to be discovered and lot more fun to be had running the game by trying to master certain specific characters. The current method of just using a filter with the "Character Variable" is far from satisfying, and frankly most people dont even know how to use filters on the leaderboard so any visibility or credit you could get from mastering a specific non-optimal character of your choice is basically non-existent. We would like to give runners a better way of going for these goals, however we also like the way the current speedrun categories work and don't want to disrupt it or convolute the leaderboard with 10+ main categories to support every character.

The best alternative we have found on some of the other leaderboards we moderate is to use the Individual Levels leaderboard and make each character a "Level", see Example for Street Fighter III: Third Strike - Main category: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike , IL categories: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike/individual_levels. The individual level leaderboard will not affect the main leaderboard categories in any way and if you dont like it, you can literally just ignore it. Any runs submitted can qualify for both the main category runs AND its respective Individual character run simultaneously and you may submit the same run to both categories if you wish.

We hope that these changes accurately reflect community desires. Making these changes will cause a lot of work for us since we will need to copy a lot of runs from one leaderboard to another. Please give us feedback on your thoughts about these changes, we will NOT be making any of these changes if there is any significant objection from the community. We want to make sure that any decisions comply with what the community wishes to see, so please comment down below with your feedback.

Hello everyone,

As the community slowly continues to grow and different categories and different ways of speedrunning the games are becoming more popular, there have been many requests to change some of the ways in which the categories for each of these games are represented on the leaderboards.

The following are some changes that we feel may help make certain categories more approachable and better represented on the leaderboard.

1. Moving No HPT/ No Major Exploits / Any% categories from category extension into the main categories as a sub-category.

We feel that the NME/NHPT categories represented a much desired way to speedrun the game. They are essentially the equivalent of what could be considered "Glitchless" as far as Mortal Kombat is concerned. While “High Punch Trick” (HPT) is a lot more challenging and a lot more fun than it looks, it does devolve the speedrun significantly by removing a large strategic portion of the game which can otherwise be a very complex and enjoyable part of speedrunning.

The NHPT/NME categories have since received a considerable amount of competition proving that there is a desire to run the game this way and therefore we feel it deserves its spot on the main leaderboard as opposed to being on the Category Extensions Board.

In Regards to WolfMAME INP requirements on No HPT/NME/Any%: Our approach to the Category Extensions board has generally been "its for fun, its for the memes" etc, and we have not enforced any harsh requirements for them. However we feel that moving it into a main category does necessitate the need for more appropriate legitimacy requirements on the top runs. Therefore we would like to require WolfMAME INP's for NME/No HPT/Any% for any top time runs in these categories going forward.

This requirement will be implemented the same way it is required for the current main category runs (only required if the run is faster than a certain threshold). NOTE: We aren’t disputing any currently submitted runs for these categories and current runs with no INP will NOT be removed, it is specifically a requirement "from this point forward" and will NOT retro-actively disqualify any runs from the leaderboard.

Most people who are running in these categories are already using INP's anyway, but the ones who aren’t are strongly advised to learn how to record a WolfMAME INP if they wish to continue running these categories at sub-threshold times. You can find a guide on how to do this in any of the guide sections for MK1,2,3,U3 and if you have any trouble getting it to work PLEASE CONTACT ME. I will walk you through it.

Currently we are only intending to make these changes for the "Arcade" platform categories. However if you would like to see similar sub-categories implemented for some of the consoles where these categories can apply, please let us know.

2. Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Renaming of "Credit Skip" category to "Standard".

As it currently is, whether or not Credit Skip is used is a binary choice and the category names reflect that. However with the addition of NME and Any% sub categories it then becomes a little bit more confusing which category is the "main" category to anyone observing the leaderboard.

We feel that "Credit Skip" should still be considered the main category, it represents what we feel is the basic way of running the game (Hardest difficulty, Hardest Tower, Anything goes). To reflect this, "Standard" is the best name we could come up with to make it obvious to anyone observing. Suggestions for a better name are welcome.

3. (SNES) Mortal Kombat 3/ Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Separating Soundless runs into a sub-category.

Back when the Soundless exploit was found on SNES MK3/UMK3, there was some discussion about whether or not it should be allowed. The community was smaller and there was no complaints or issues about allowing the exploit and the main runners at the time were happy to go ahead using it so we allowed it.

However since then multiple people have made it known to us that they don't wish to run the game this way and it has squashed any appeal the speedrun might have had. We don’t believe in unnecessarily disqualifying runs on a technicality so we are planning to move all runs that abused turning off sound to a separate category that we will call "Soundless". Hopefully this will make running MK3/UMK3 on SNES much more appealing to onlookers and hopefully generate some more runners.

4. Using the "Individual Levels" Leaderboard for "Character Specific" runs.

The main categories have done a lot to keep the speedrun simple and approachable and digging into the game to find "which character is the fastest" for any given category has been a fairly challenging endeavour. Seeing the title of "Optimal character" change over the years has been quite interesting and in some cases I believe it is still yet to be proven, (MK3 in particular).

However there is a lot left to be discovered and lot more fun to be had running the game by trying to master certain specific characters. The current method of just using a filter with the "Character Variable" is far from satisfying, and frankly most people dont even know how to use filters on the leaderboard so any visibility or credit you could get from mastering a specific non-optimal character of your choice is basically non-existent. We would like to give runners a better way of going for these goals, however we also like the way the current speedrun categories work and don't want to disrupt it or convolute the leaderboard with 10+ main categories to support every character.

The best alternative we have found on some of the other leaderboards we moderate is to use the Individual Levels leaderboard and make each character a "Level", see Example for Street Fighter III: Third Strike - Main category: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike , IL categories: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike/individual_levels

The individual level leaderboard will not affect the main leaderboard categories in any way and if you dont like it, you can literally just ignore it. Any runs submitted can qualify for both the main category runs AND its respective Individual character run simultaneously and you may submit the same run to both categories if you wish.

We hope that these changes accurately reflect community desires. Making these changes will cause a lot of work for us since we will need to copy a lot of runs from one leaderboard to another. Please give us feedback on your thoughts about these changes, we will NOT be making any of these changes if there is any significant objection from the community. We want to make sure that any decisions comply with what the community wishes to see, so please comment down below with your feedback.

Hello everyone,

As the community slowly continues to grow and different categories and different ways of speedrunning the games are becoming more popular, there have been many requests to change some of the ways in which the categories for each of these games are represented on the leaderboards.

The following are some changes that we feel may help make certain categories more approachable and better represented on the leaderboard.

1. Moving No HPT/ No Major Exploits / Any% categories from category extension into the main categories as a sub-category.

We feel that the NME/NHPT categories represented a much desired way to speedrun the game. They are essentially the equivalent of what could be considered "Glitchless" as far as Mortal Kombat is concerned. While “High Punch Trick” (HPT) is a lot more challenging and a lot more fun than it looks, it does devolve the speedrun significantly by removing a large strategic portion of the game which can otherwise be a very complex and enjoyable part of speedrunning.

The NHPT/NME categories have since received a considerable amount of competition proving that there is a desire to run the game this way and therefore we feel it deserves its spot on the main leaderboard as opposed to being on the Category Extensions Board.

In Regards to WolfMAME INP requirements on No HPT/NME/Any%: Our approach to the Category Extensions board has generally been "its for fun, its for the memes" etc, and we have not enforced any harsh requirements for them. However we feel that moving it into a main category does necessitate the need for more appropriate legitimacy requirements on the top runs. Therefore we would like to require WolfMAME INP's for NME/No HPT/Any% for any top time runs in these categories going forward.

This requirement will be implemented the same way it is required for the current main category runs (only required if the run is faster than a certain threshold). NOTE: We aren’t disputing any currently submitting runs for these categories and current runs with no INP will NOT be removed, it is specifically a requirement "from this point forward" and will NOT retro-actively disqualify any runs from the leaderboard.

Most people who are running in these categories are already using INP's anyway, but the ones who aren’t are strongly advised to learn how to record a WolfMAME INP if they wish to continue running these categories at sub-threshold times. You can find a guide on how to do this in any of the guide sections for MK1,2,3,U3 and if you have any trouble getting it to work PLEASE CONTACT ME. I will walk you through it.

Currently we are only intending to make these changes for the "Arcade" platform categories. However if you would like to see similar sub-categories implemented for some of the consoles where these categories can apply, please let us know.

2. Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Renaming of "Credit Skip" category to "Standard".

As it currently is, whether or not Credit Skip is used is a binary choice and the category names reflect that. However with the addition of NME and Any% sub categories it then becomes a little bit more confusing which category is the "main" category to anyone observing the leaderboard.

We feel that "Credit Skip" should still be considered the main category, it represents what we feel is the basic way of running the game (Hardest difficulty, Hardest Tower, Anything goes). To reflect this, "Standard" is the best name we could come up with to make it obvious to anyone observing. Suggestions for a better name are welcome.

3. (SNES) Mortal Kombat 3/ Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Separating Soundless runs into a sub-category.

Back when the Soundless exploit was found on SNES MK3/UMK3, there was some discussion about whether or not it should be allowed. The community was smaller and there was no complaints or issues about allowing the exploit and the main runners at the time were happy to go ahead using it so we allowed it.

However since then multiple people have made it known to us that they don't wish to run the game this way and it has squashed any appeal the speedrun might have had. We don’t believe in unnecessarily disqualifying runs on a technicality so we are planning to move all runs that abused turning off sound to a separate category that we will call "Soundless". Hopefully this will make running MK3/UMK3 on SNES much more appealing to onlookers and hopefully generate some more runners.

4. Using the "Individual Levels" Leaderboard for "Character Specific" runs.

The main categories have done a lot to keep the speedrun simple and approachable and digging into the game to find "which character is the fastest" for any given category has been a fairly challenging endeavour. Seeing the title of "Optimal character" change over the years has been quite interesting and in some cases I believe it is still yet to be proven, (MK3 in particular).

However there is a lot left to be discovered and lot more fun to be had running the game by trying to master certain specific characters. The current method of just using a filter with the "Character Variable" is far from satisfying, and frankly most people dont even know how to use filters on the leaderboard so any visibility or credit you could get from mastering a specific non-optimal character of your choice is basically non-existent. We would like to give runners a better way of going for these goals, however we also like the way the current speedrun categories work and don't want to disrupt it or convolute the leaderboard with 10+ main categories to support every character.

The best alternative we have found on some of the other leaderboards we moderate is to use the Individual Levels leaderboard and make each character a "Level", see Example for Street Fighter III: Third Strike - Main category: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike , IL categories: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike/individual_levels. The individual level leaderboard will not affect the main leaderboard categories in any way and if you dont like it, you can literally just ignore it. Any runs submitted can qualify for both the main category runs AND its respective Individual character run simultaneously and you may submit the same run to both categories if you wish.

We hope that these changes accurately reflect community desires. Making these changes will cause a lot of work for us since we will need to copy a lot of runs from one leaderboard to another. Please give us feedback on your thoughts about these changes, we will NOT be making any of these changes if there is any significant objection from the community. We want to make sure that any decisions comply with what the community wishes to see, so please comment down below with your feedback.

Hello everyone,

As the community slowly continues to grow and different categories and different ways of speedrunning the games are becoming more popular, there have been many requests to change some of the ways in which the categories for each of these games are represented on the leaderboards.

The following are some changes that we feel may help make certain categories more approachable and better represented on the leaderboard.

1. Moving No HPT/ No Major Exploits / Any% categories from category extension into the main categories as a sub-category.

We feel that the NME/NHPT categories represented a much desired way to speedrun the game. They are essentially the equivalent of what could be considered "Glitchless" as far as Mortal Kombat is concerned. While “High Punch Trick” (HPT) is a lot more challenging and a lot more fun than it looks, it does devolve the speedrun significantly by removing a large strategic portion of the game which can otherwise be a very complex and enjoyable part of speedrunning.

The NHPT/NME categories have since received a considerable amount of competition proving that there is a desire to run the game this way and therefore we feel it deserves its spot on the main leaderboard as opposed to being on the Category Extensions Board.

In Regards to WolfMAME INP requirements on No HPT/NME/Any%: Our approach to the Category Extensions board has generally been "its for fun, its for the memes" etc, and we have not enforced any harsh requirements for them. However we feel that moving it into a main category does necessitate the need for more appropriate legitimacy requirements on the top runs. Therefore we would like to require WolfMAME INP's for NME/No HPT/Any% for any top time runs in these categories going forward.

This requirement will be implemented the same way it is required for the current main category runs (only required if the run is faster than a certain threshold). NOTE: We aren’t disputing any currently submitted runs for these categories and current runs with no INP will NOT be removed, it is specifically a requirement "from this point forward" and will NOT retro-actively disqualify any runs from the leaderboard.

Most people who are running in these categories are already using INP's anyway, but the ones who aren’t are strongly advised to learn how to record a WolfMAME INP if they wish to continue running these categories at sub-threshold times. You can find a guide on how to do this in any of the guide sections for MK1,2,3,U3 and if you have any trouble getting it to work PLEASE CONTACT ME. I will walk you through it.

Currently we are only intending to make these changes for the "Arcade" platform categories. However if you would like to see similar sub-categories implemented for some of the consoles where these categories can apply, please let us know.

2. Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Renaming of "Credit Skip" category to "Standard".

As it currently is, whether or not Credit Skip is used is a binary choice and the category names reflect that. However with the addition of NME and Any% sub categories it then becomes a little bit more confusing which category is the "main" category to anyone observing the leaderboard.

We feel that "Credit Skip" should still be considered the main category, it represents what we feel is the basic way of running the game (Hardest difficulty, Hardest Tower, Anything goes). To reflect this, "Standard" is the best name we could come up with to make it obvious to anyone observing. Suggestions for a better name are welcome.

3. (SNES) Mortal Kombat 3/ Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - Separating Soundless runs into a sub-category.

Back when the Soundless exploit was found on SNES MK3/UMK3, there was some discussion about whether or not it should be allowed. The community was smaller and there was no complaints or issues about allowing the exploit and the main runners at the time were happy to go ahead using it so we allowed it.

However since then multiple people have made it known to us that they don't wish to run the game this way and it has squashed any appeal the speedrun might have had. We don’t believe in unnecessarily disqualifying runs on a technicality so we are planning to move all runs that abused turning off sound to a separate category that we will call "Soundless". Hopefully this will make running MK3/UMK3 on SNES much more appealing to onlookers and hopefully generate some more runners.

4. Using the "Individual Levels" Leaderboard for "Character Specific" runs.

The main categories have done a lot to keep the speedrun simple and approachable and digging into the game to find "which character is the fastest" for any given category has been a fairly challenging endeavour. Seeing the title of "Optimal character" change over the years has been quite interesting and in some cases I believe it is still yet to be proven, (MK3 in particular).

However there is a lot left to be discovered and lot more fun to be had running the game by trying to master certain specific characters. The current method of just using a filter with the "Character Variable" is far from satisfying, and frankly most people dont even know how to use filters on the leaderboard so any visibility or credit you could get from mastering a specific non-optimal character of your choice is basically non-existent. We would like to give runners a better way of going for these goals, however we also like the way the current speedrun categories work and don't want to disrupt it or convolute the leaderboard with 10+ main categories to support every character.

The best alternative we have found on some of the other leaderboards we moderate is to use the Individual Levels leaderboard and make each character a "Level", see Example for Street Fighter III: Third Strike - Main category: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike , IL categories: https://www.speedrun.com/street_fighter_iii_3rd_strike/individual_levels

The individual level leaderboard will not affect the main leaderboard categories in any way and if you dont like it, you can literally just ignore it. Any runs submitted can qualify for both the main category runs AND its respective Individual character run simultaneously and you may submit the same run to both categories if you wish.

We hope that these changes accurately reflect community desires. Making these changes will cause a lot of work for us since we will need to copy a lot of runs from one leaderboard to another. Please give us feedback on your thoughts about these changes, we will NOT be making any of these changes if there is any significant objection from the community. We want to make sure that any decisions comply with what the community wishes to see, so please comment down below with your feedback.

Just posting this here for anyone else to look at. I havent dived into it myself yet, but this happened on Kombat King's stream a few weeks back.

Spawning OOB: https://www.twitch.tv/the_kombat_king/clip/CrowdedPunchyWalrusBabyRage?filter=clips&range=30d&sort=time

Talking to Sindel before the fight: https://www.twitch.tv/the_kombat_king/clip/JazzyAntsySalmonPeteZaroll?filter=clips&range=30d&sort=time

If you notice how he talked to sindel it repositioned his character. I believe this caused him to be placed OOB, so that when the fight ended it would spawn him there. He couldnt find any way to get back in bounds though but he was only streaming casually at the time and couldnt put much time into it.

Theoretically if you can reproduce this, then somehow get back in bounds at will you could place yourself at the trigger point to exit the area and load the next one. I plan to investigate this myself at some point, until then .. anyone is welcome to try and make something of it.

GL!

After it was brought to our attention that emulation speeds may be innacurate to real hardware, I did some testing. It turns out that specifically both Fightcade and 30th Anniversary run slightly faster. However MAME is pretty much accurate to real hardware.

You can see my comparison of this here:

(Yes I know I mis-spelt Anniversary lol)

The footage clearly shows that fightcade, while innacurate to real hardware, does match the speed of 30th Anniversary, which is also innacurate to real hardware.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

After it was brought to our attention that emulation speeds may be innacurate to real hardware, I did some testing. It turns out that specifically both Fightcade and 30th Anniversary run slightly faster. However MAME is pretty much accurate to real hardware.

You can see my comparison of this here:

(Yes I know I mis-spelt Anniversary lol)

The footage clearly shows that fightcade, while innacurate to real hardware, does match the speed of 30th Anniversary, which is also innacurate to real hardware.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

After it was brought to our attention that emulation speeds may be innacurate to real hardware, I did some testing. It turns out that specifically both Fightcade and 30th Anniversary run slightly faster. However MAME is pretty much accurate to real hardware.

You can see my comparison of this here:

(Yes I know I mis-spelt Anniversary lol)

The footage clearly shows that fightcade, while innacurate to real hardware, does match the speed of 30th Anniversary, which is also innacurate to real hardware.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

We have discussed at length and we have decided to disallow the further use of ANY modifications, including but not limited to the Black Bars fix for fightcade and color/visual modifications.

Please note - this rule is only effective moving forward from today. No runs will be removed from the leaderboard in its current state, however FUTURE runs will be rejected if they use modifications of any kind.

We are really just trying to maintain a sense of authenticity with the runs, no current runs are suspected of being illegitimate. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

• I just made one for us: https://discord.gg/JG26QTQ

Anyone is welcome to join. Be nice to have a place to freely discuss/share strats and help each other out.