I didn't think the four-hour mark would fall, certainly not so quickly. This game's starting to look like a legit speedrun!

Hey, so I wanted to give a brief overview of why the rules are as they are. At the time of this writing, the community for speedrunning this game is very small and very new. I'm always open to inquiries and suggestions, and will always be willing to explain my decisions.

First, the Expansion Pak is required. This is to ensure a better experience for runners. Removal of the Expansion Pak will remove some encounters and could theoretically allow a faster time -- it also increases the likelihood of a game crash. Making the game more unstable and losing runs to crashes will make the game far less accessible, and I'm not in favor of that.

Second, I'm allowing emulation of this game. I've seen no evidence of an unfair advantage provided by emulation -- in fact, I've seen the opposite. The Aidyn Chronicles game was not widely distributed and carts can be harder and harder to get your hands on. I'm not looking to increase the barrier to entry for this community.

Project64 1.6 is the closest emulation to original hardware and is approved to run this game. Later versions of Project64 (for example, 2.3) are allowed but inadvisable -- there's evidence that they lose frames upon opening the menu. Other emulators may be allowable, but I ask that you give me a chance to investigate them first -- ideally before you get a PB you really want to submit.

Finally, while I'll not use one myself, I have elected to allow Turbo controllers. This is after looking at the precedent set by Final Fantasy IX, where the excessive repetitive mashing can be dangerous to the wrist. I don't want there to be any accessibility issues with this game. Final Fantasy IX has created a separate category for runs completed with Turbo -- this is and will remain an option, but for now I see no reason to create a bunch of new categories.

In that vein, for the Any% category, cheats are disallowed, but if someone's interested in putting together a route that uses cheats, they're more than welcome, as long as they understand a new category will have to be created for them.

If you have any questions, feel free to post here or contact me directly.

I'm running an obscure game with only one mod and some of the rules he's posted are... odd. I'm trying to figure this one out -- anyone heard of this rule or know why it would exist?

"Runs must be performed without powering the console off/on in the middle of the run. Saving and loading a save file of the current run is allowed as long as the console is not powered off."

I haven't been able to find the rule on other games yet, but maybe it's out there.

So I took a look for differences between Project 64 and original hardware. I found that the later version of Project64 (2.3) creates lag whenever the menu is opened or closed, or when changing menu screens left and right. In battle, there isn't much difference, except that the emulator has a little bit of lag when mashing quickly between turns. I wasn't able to find any difference on the world map.

Gandair, you mentioned timing them side by side. Was that ever done? I'm trying to find your reasoning on disallowing emulators.

Incidentally, other N64 games (Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time) allow Project64, but specifically an older version (1.6). This is because on some games, the later versions have less lag than original hardware, as you can see:

Weirdly, Aidyn Chronicles seems to be an exception to that -- the 2.3 version of Project64 creates lag that isn't found on original hardware, but the 1.6 version doesn't. From the limited testing I've done, it seems that running on 1.6 would match original hardware, while later versions pose a disadvantage.

I'm investigating a "glitchless" route that doesn't dupe items or cheese Drake. Basically requires using Freeze on Drake and using more computers/Arena fights to make up for lost nuyen.