FYI, the old run on the board by ヴァーサタイル seems to be miscategorized. That video is actually a 100% run (it's labeled as "全要素回収, basically meaning "collect all points of interest").

This is that same runner's current PB in any% (28:44):

The rules say that "use of the English patch is allowed"... that would imply that playing without the English patch is also allowed, right? Even though Japanese text is presumably somewhat faster?

(Is there actually a way to play without the English patch? All the downloads I've seen already have it baked in.)

I've started running the MSX1 version of this game (), and will probably move on to the MSX2 version eventually. Should the MSX versions be included on this board, or should I request them as separate games?

My thought is that they should probably be considered distinct games, since they both have completely different game worlds from the SMS version, but I figured I should probably check in here first before creating a new board, just in case any other runners disagree.

JP does have passwords as far as I can tell? Same "Start"/"Continue" options on the title screen for me. Only difference is that they're called "prayers" instead of "mantras," and they use the kana keyboard (same as name entry).

I don't know why I've never seen this forum thread until today!

There is no English patch as far as I've been able to find; this doesn't seem to be a particularly well-known game. I've looked briefly at it myself; I did find the text in the ROM and dumped it a while ago, but Game Boy games are so limited on space (both screen space and ROM space) that trying to actually fit a translation of any quality in would be a pretty intimidating project. Maybe I'll still take it up one of these days, if no one else gets to it first.

(A less challenging project would be a Lua script or something that overlays a translation over the game within an emulator, which wouldn't help much with running the game on real hardware but would at least be useful for enjoying the story casually or learning the menuing.)

If you're just interested in speedrunning and aren't worried about understanding the plot, it's probably a fairly approachable run to learn even if you don't know any Japanese. (I think @Megami_infini was able to do so just fine!) You really just need to recognize a small number of item names, plus learn how to recognize the correct answer in a couple of "riddle" sections.

My advice to anyone wanting to speedrun Japanese games would to be to spend a couple of weeks learning enough hiragana and katakana to at least sound out words in menus and recognize them by sound (especially since half of the item names in these games are English words anyway). In theory, that would be a small-ish time investment that would let you run pretty much any Japanese game you're ever interested in. But, plenty of speedrunners don't do so, and just learn visual cues for the particular words they care about in the game they're running.

We'll see! The last few times I've tried Faxanadu, I've struggled to even get through the first section and the Wing Boots grind consistently. I haven't really prioritized it for a while, though, so I might improve quickly once I start doing focused practice with save states.

I'm probably going to be declaring next month to be "Dragon Slaypril" on my stream, and focusing on various Dragon Slayer-related runs that I've been meaning to get to. So maybe I'll be able to get some Faxanadu attempts in there. Assuming I'm able to get through Legacy of the Wizard improvements, regular old non-Fa Xanadu, the last character type in Dragon Slayer Gaiden, Dragon Slayer 6, maybe something with the original Dragon Slayer......

Not that I necessarily think adjusting times between versions of Faxanadu is worth the trouble, but it could probably be done just by counting the frames per character and the frames per page transition in one message, and then just multiplying those by the number of characters and pages in every other message along the route.

I'm nowhere near good enough to run this yet, so I don't really have a stake, but...

Would it be possible to time the differences in text speed in the dialog encountered in the typical route, and adjust the times of JP runs accordingly? The difference should be pretty predictable, as long as text is the only thing that's affected.

(There's also a name entry screen on JP that doesn't exist in EN, but I think that's before the start of the run timer and, as far as I know, doesn't affect anything other than dialog.)

I personally only have the JP cart and will probably run that one, fwiw, if and when I ever get good enough to do so.

Are you swinging your sword to help buffer the input, maybe? If I remember correctly, that works on the left side of the screen, but not on the right side (because you can't use your sword too close to that edge of the screen). Screen-scrolling on the right does require a one-frame dpad tap, without using the sword.

(Personally, I'm pretty okay with scrolling on the right, but I still have a hard time getting sword-buffering on the left to work properly for some reason.)

I run games for a couple of obscure platforms—mainly the MSX—and I often wish that there was a forum specific to the platform rather than any individual game to ask questions pertaining to the platform in general. Like, if a platform is known to have emulator settings or particular hardware models that aren't good for accurate runs, it would be nice to have a central place to look for that information, rather than trying to figure it out for each individual game.

It would also be nice to search for recent runs by platform, in order to find the games for each platform that have an active community. You can search for games by platform currently, but that doesn't distinguish which games have runs specific to that platform. Most of the games listed for MSX, for example, are classic games that were released on every platform ever, but have never been run specifically on MSX, so it doesn't really help me when I'm trying to find MSX-specific information.

Probably no one is really thinking about MSX2 this week (Pixel Remasters are great, btw!), but here's the highlight video I mentioned. Still nearly a 2 hour video!

This run by CMDR Sho, right?

Their commentary (starting at 6:13) says you can do it on NES by pressing opposite directions on two different controllers. I'll try and test it sometime and confirm.

This past weekend, I spent 8 hours straight running the MSX2 version of FF1, so you don't have to. So I'd like to request a category for that version.

Here's the video, for reference:

I'm in the process of editing down a highlight video that focuses on explaining the differences between this version and Famicom, so I'll be including that in my submission when I finish it.

I also wanted to start the conversation around how to handle load times in MSX2. For my sanity, I ran this from disk images on a Carnivore 2 flash cart, so my run has very little load time. A run that attempts to use original floppies will have significantly more (by my tests, it would lose 4.4s every time it opens and closes the menu, and 7.7s every time it enters and leaves a battle, at least on the world map).

Are there best practices runs in this category should follow to control load times? I think disk-based games tend to try not to count them, but removing that many loads from an 8-hour game seems like it would take quite a bit of effort. Maybe it's better just not to worry about it, and assume that hardly anyone will ever run this category anyway, and the few who do will probably either emulate or use a flash-based storage format for the same reasons I did?

Thanks so much!

Famicom and MSX1 are the only platforms I've run all the way through, so I can't speak with too much expertise beyond that. I think MSX2 should be basically the same as MSX1 with better graphics, but it might have less lag in areas with lots of sprites? I'll probably be recording an MSX2 run pretty soon for comparison, so we'll see.

Based on walkthroughs, I believe PC-88 and PC-98 have an exploit where you can do karma grinding in heaven by using the lamp on the angels flying around, so routing for those would probably be different and faster, if anyone ever runs them. (I don't have any plans to do so myself.)

Just wanted to request that categories be added for the MSX releases of Romancia, since I've started running those and they are very different from the Famicom version.

The rules should probably also be different to reflect the version differences as well; there's no blue orb to mark the end of the game on non-FC versions. I'd propose something like this for the MSX rules:

[quote]Timing begins when Fan Freddy's sprite appears in front of the castle. Timing ends when the dragon's head leaves the screen after being slain.[/quote]

I'll submit it formally once the categories exist, but here's my current MSX1 PB, fwiw. Sorry for the missing audio! :-/

It looks like the submission page doesn't currently have an option for the JP version of the game. Is this deliberate? Are there enough differences in timing that JP isn't considered valid for the current categories? I'm interested in learning the run on the JP cartridge, since I already own it, but wanted to check on its validity before putting time into that version.

Thanks! That will simplify starting my splits.

As long as I'm thinking about it, do you know if there's any reason why the MIDI patch for U5 would affect timing? I've been using it so that my streams aren't mostly dead silence, and so that I can use the Ctrl+E feature it adds to reset quickly, but it's not technically running with the original game as published.

I'm working on getting a DOS run of this completed; hopefully I'll make it through Doom without any fatal mistakes pretty soon here.

As of right now, there are no explicit timing guidelines for either version, but the NES runs seem to consistently use the frame when "New Character" is selected as the start of the run, and the frame when you enter the mirror as the end of the run.

The one DOS run is just using the total length of the original video, though, which includes the title screen plus the full ending up to the congratulatory scroll.

So I just wanted to see if the mods think that the DOS run should use the same timing rules that are being used by the NES runs, and the DOS record's timing be updated accordingly. At a glance, it looks like the time for the DOS video would be around 34:16 if timed in the same way as the NES videos.

I can confirm that I've successfully executed block clips, ladder clips, and horizontal screen scrolls in both the US and JP Switch Online apps.

Tangentially related question... the Switch OS has a feature where you can double-tap the Home key to zoom in on a portion of the screen. This is pretty useful for checking whether you're aligned with the right pixel for screen scrolling. Would it be valid to use the Switch's screen zoom feature in a timed run? Or should it only be used for practice purposes?