To encourage and promote the growth of the Armored Core Speedrunning community: a 900 dollar Speedrun Bounty for the original PS1 Armored Core Trilogy will be hosted during the month of July! As part of the announcement, the rules for the event will be listed below. A link to dedicated tutorials for all three games can be found at the bottom. Start practicing now, and good luck to all the participants!

Speedrun Bounty Ruleset

• 31 day open period from July 1st to July 31st.
• The runners with the lowest time (or times) that have been submitted within the 31 day time frame to Speedrun.com will be awarded 300 dollars each for “Armored Core Any% No Fail Missions/No Major Glitches,” “Armored Core Project Phantasma Any%,” and “Armored Core Master of Arena Any% no OoB.” A runner can claim multiple rewards for a max of 900 dollars.
• Times and records submitted before the start date will not be counted. Even if you are brand new to Armored Core speedrunning, this is your chance to make your mark and be rewarded for it!
• For the purpose of the speedrun bounty event Legacy Hardware, Emulation, and PS+ versions will all be in competition.
• For runners using emulation: you must use a clean version of Duckstation with no additional plugins or modifications. Console settings must be changed to the following in DuckStation:

Armored Core: All boxes unticked. No overclocking. Read Speedup set to 2x (Quad Speed). Seek Speedup set to 6x.

Armored Core Project Phantasma: All boxes unticked. No overclocking. Read Speedup None (Double Speed). Seek Speedup Maximum.

Armored Core Master of Arena: All boxes unticked. Read Speedup 6x (12x Speed). Seek Speedup None.

Emulation Settings should all be left unadjusted. Runahead disabled. All other boxes unchecked.

• No modifications that change or alter the controls may be used. For example: Analog patches or mouse injectors that allow Keyboard + Mouse control. Only one device can be used for controlling the game. For example, you may not use both a gamepad and the keyboard at the same time (using the controller for general play, then using keyboard to execute glitches).
• After successfully completing a run, the runner must display their Console settings and controller keybinds over the game window without making any cuts or edits in their video submission.
• All other rules on the respective pages for each game on Speedrun.com must be followed.
• You are encouraged to say “Arigatou, Niedle-san!” at the end of every submission (Important!!!! Niedle is our Japanese admin/mod for the PS1 Armored Core games on Speedrun.com)

Payouts will be made via PayPal money transfer. Participate only if you are able to receive money from PayPal.

I have created a YouTube playlist here with speedrun tutorials for each of the three games for those interested in participating. They should give you a general understanding of how to progress in all three games in the correct categories for this event.