I had something I wanted to discuss regarding this document, since it is now required to submit future emulator runs. I figured it would be best to post here, so everyone can see the discussion in case they plan on running Contra III on emulator in the future. The document can be viewed in the "Resources" tab on this website, under "Tools".

According to this document, Snes9x performs the Stage 4 tunnel in 1777 frames on Easy with 1 frame +/- of tolerance. Meaning a 1776 frame tunnel run would be accepted, but anything lower is grounds for rejection. Can you demonstrate this 10x in a row in a video, with identical frame-counts between 1776 and 1778? Because I've frame-counted every Snes9x run currently on the Contra III Easy leaderboard, and there's quite a variance. I've also listed the version if the runner did:

UltrosGambini 23rd place - 1777 frames (Snes9x 1.60)

Dewystine 29th place - 1766 frames (Snes9x Retroarch)

xenkaroshi 34th place - 1774 frames (Snes9x 1.60)

shwabteeve 40th place - 1766 frames (Snes9x no version listed)

HowDoUPlay 43rd place (current PB) - 1774 frames (Snes9x 1.60)

Headshotguy 44th place - 1775 frames (Snesx9x 1.60)

Kippe 49th place - 1778 frames (Snes9x 1.60)

HowDoUPlay 49th place (previous PB) - 1776 frames (Snes9x 1.60)

raffa_gs 51st place - 1774 frames (Snes9x 1.5.67)

NickBGoHard 55st place - 1777 frames (Snes9x 1.56.2)

combustibledan 63rd place - 1776 frames (Snes9x 1.60)

Sideswipe 83rd place - 1772 frames (Snes9x no version listed)

I think this is important, because it shows that people using Snes9x 1.60 have achieved between 1774 to 1777 frames for this count. It also proves that some Snes9x runs did have less lag. Two runs had only 1766 frames in the tunnel, but one is confirmed to use Retroarch and the other did not list what version. Maybe that's something worth taking a look at, but I don't think the majority of Snes9x runs are anything out of the ordinary.

I compared two of my own runs as well. My old 13:39 PB was 1776 frames, and the newer 13:11 PB was 1774 frames. I used the exact same emulator, exact same settings, on both runs. By these new rules, one PB would be accepted, and one would not. That is silly, and if this rule persists without change, I won't be running Contra III. I'm not going to frame-count future PBs and hope I have 1776-1778 frames in the tunnel so it will be accepted. Especially when I've shown my newest run, and over half the current PBs using Snes9x have variances bigger than this.

Thé problem is existing longer, but is only recently discovered when some top 3 runs were affected. We will further work on this file and adapt things if needed. For sure there are some runs on the boards that are emulatingt too fast, but for now we wont delete existing runs on thé boards. You don't need to framecount thé tunnel every submission, but be aware that changes in settings and hardware can affect things.

hi ! thanks for your input! the document is intended to guide runners to check and ensure the emulator used is running as expected, is not required for each submission. I will clarify that on the doc. And yes, as Tsjerno mentions this is something recent, that came into light as runs became more and more optimized. Probably we would not apply retroactively these rules on old runs, unless more interest and discussions occurs within the community

Okay, sounds good! I just wanted to talk about this, because I am not sure why my tunnels vary between 1774-1776 frames, but I would hate to get a new PB only to find the tunnel frame-count is reason for rejection.

I understand that emulators need to be comparable to SNES hardware and this will help ensure that. Thank you mods for clarifying on this.