Initially, any% was the only category that existed. After I became a Moderator, someone asked me for a "bad end" category so they could also run it that way.

A part of an any% category is beating the game. In the bad end category you miss the last world and don't defeat the final bosses of the game. Then you end with a screen that basically tells you you have not properly completed the game, and you get a hint to help you on the correct path.

The rules in the any% category mention that you must complete all 8 worlds, and the rules in the bad end category do not. That is the difference. I could change the name of the any% category to "good end" or "happy end" or something like that, but I would never change the name of the "bad end" category to any%.

The 50K and 100K points categories were the only 2 on this board when it was created. Their totals are essentially arbitrary, and while I would never create them today, their continued popularity and the use of 50K in Prolifics grant them longevity. I think 1 million makes a lot more sense as a category; achieving a score rollover fits well here as a difficult but attainable goal, as is the case with so many NES games where it's possible to reach the highest score the game can display. While I still consider beating Wave 49 to be the closest thing to "beating" this game due to infinite repetition afterwards, I think 1 million points is a significant enough milestone to warrant its own category, even if only one person achieves it in the next decade. The board now has 5 categories.

There are many games in which Low% refers to not upgrading your weapon. I see no issue with that perspective for this category. I've updated the rules. Picking up a 1UP is fine, as long as you never change Felix's form in any stage.

Normally this is a really tough one as a Mod. Low% typically means collection of any items is not allowed, and that would include World 8 and runners would have to accept whatever deaths were required to make it happen. But since the category has been inactive for years with only 2 runs total, I'm okay with making the change if people are okay with it. If we were drawing a hard line with the rules, I would have said that collecting inconsequential milk bottles should not have been allowed either, but in reality they have been allowed for years.

A good point (which you already made) is that if healing items aren't allowed in World 8, there is no strategy since you can fly off the screen every time and stay safe. Allowing healing items actually makes the optimal strategy more difficult, so from that perspective there's no real downside.

I'm willing to make the change for the category. I hope you're okay with the F items remaining disallowed, though, since they also give you a 1UP.

The manual option for extra games was an addition in the 165-game season to make it more humanly viable without altering the challenge of the run. The rules for the other categories state that you must play manually as 1 team. I'll add the word "exactly" for clarity. You're allowed to skip other games as opposed to watching them.

The 5 game and 30 game seasons are going to stay the way they are: you must manually play as exactly one team, and you may watch or skip the computer-controlled games. For the 60 game category, since I have a feeling you're interested in giving it a go, and since it might run over 16 hours otherwise, I have decided to allow bean strats for that category as well, with the stipulation that if you manually play any games with teams other than your own, your team must also win a minimum of 55 games, which mathematically guarantees that you would have won the season regardless of the results of other teams.

The rules for the 60 game category have already been adjusted. Have fun!

I'm a huge advocate for having different categories any time a game has multiple versions with different gameplay speeds that directly affect the outcome of a speedrun, and this game is a great example. I don't think it's right that a person running one version is at an automatic disadvantage. I also don't see a downside to splitting different versions into multiple categories. No one moves down in rank, and the people running a slower version rise to the rank they deserve on that version. if Mikie gets the world record on 3 categories instead of 1 that's not a bad thing.

I know a lot of games have multiple versions in 1 category where the only difference is the speed at which text prints on the screen, and as a result a lot of people seem to think that's the norm. The decision to have only one category for all versions becomes harder to justify when there are differences in the gameplay itself. (I personally would still split versions with different text speeds, but I'm not going to make a fuss about it.) As a hardware runner with a US Untouchables cartridge, I personally have no interest in running the game with an automatic disadvantage against runners of a different version, but if the versions are split into different categories I would have renewed interest. I know I'm just one runner, it's not like me running the game will necessarily spark interest in dozens of runners, but I do think it's right to have different categories for versions that differences in gameplay, and I sincerely hope that one day that standard will stretch to all NES games, including Princess Tomato and A Boy And His Blob.

I edited prisiii's date to be 1 day later, feel free to let me know if there's any issue with that.

Yes, there is a "Player Force" option for each submission indicating which side you chose. Everyone has chosen the Dark side so far because it is believed to be faster, but anyone can choose the Light side.

Time starts on the first black frame.

(These all sound like reasonable options, but we wouldn't use "when you press start" because nothing happens until you let go, and "time since reset" is mostly a standard used by Japanese runners. It's not a bad idea, but North American runners have been using a different criterion for so long that there would be no good way to change over.)

As manticor5 said, there isn't really a reason to make a category like that. It would end up looking a lot like the main category, but without playing the rest of the game after getting the Lasers. Other than choosing different upgrades, the gameplay wouldn't really change. If something like this were to exist, it would definitely be a Miscellaneous category, and I don't think it would get much attention, it might just be the run posted above for a long time.

Thanks for posting the idea though, it never hurts to have discussion.

This is absolutely the right decision. We had some fun testing the limits of the dream warp, but if it can't happen in the original game, it has no business dominating the leaderboard for the original game.

I also feel like it shouldn't have its own category, mainly for the reasons above, but also because I've already noticed a significant difference in how the game behaves when performing the glitch on Everdrive versus on emulator. I feel like a glitch that won't work on a cartridge and consistently produces different results based on the program running it shouldn't be entertained with its own category on the boards for the original game.

I just wanted to alert everyone that there is a new "100 Rounds" category. I discovered that the round counter is only 2 digits when I made it to the 100th round, so it displays as "Round 00" and the next round is "Round 01" so it made sense to have a 100 round category as sort of a completion category. The run I submitted is my first completion. Enjoy!

Yes it is. In general, video is required for every game. I'm actually shocked that Super Metroid allows some runs to not have video. Maybe they get too many submissions or something. But they do require video for runs within a certain speed margin.

Anyway, video is required for every NES speedrun, as far as I know.

I maintain my position in general, but I am also inclined to add categories like this when there is visibly high demand. (I did the same for a new Tetris category from the last Big20.) If a new category is immediately going to get at least a dozen submissions there isn't really a downside; if the category eventually goes a year or two without a submission it can be removed at the discretion of the Mods.

I don't think "different enough to be justified" really applies here. When I read this post, my first thought was "Doesn't this exact category already exist?" Then I went and stared at the points% category for about 3 minutes before I realized that the only difference is that you also have to end the game in that category. So if this category were to be created, the method would essentially be "Do exactly what you did for the other category, except get your final points as quickly as possible instead of running the clock."

I have no objections to the speedrun categories that currently exist, and as a speedrunner and Tecmo Super Bowl player I've happily indulged in all of them. But I also firmly believe that the more categories a game has that involve something other than a standard victory condition, the less meaning they all end up having. In this instance I would say that this category would be too similar to the points% category.

It feels weird to me that there are categories where losing is the goal at all. (For some reason, this is especially prominent in baseball games.) I am happy to add clarification that the player is required to win the game.

As is the case with the vast majority of the most illustrious achievements in Tetris, crashing the game doesn't have much to do with speedrunning. If a leaderboard were made for it today, the fastest run wouldn't be from "the person who tried to crash the game the fastest"; it would be from "the person whose game happened to end the soonest." Also, I'm almost certain that, after getting their 1st crash, every player will be focused on avoiding crashing the game for as long as possible in the interest of chasing more sought after records, including lines and score.

TegaMech, I was considering writing another post detailing everything you said that was wrong in the other thread, but you're proving the point yourself. You claimed that no top player would want to consider going for records on original Tetris because of "going back to the slow loading screens between games. the bad UI. the lack of so much quality of life improvements is just... horrible. and most of all it's a massive psychological hurdle to overcome." And yet within the past 2 days or so, not one, not two, but three different players all returned to the original game in order to do something that literally prevents them from further improving the world record high score in the game. I think this is a pretty strong indication that top Tetris players are capable of overcoming the "massive psychological hurdle" of returning to the original format. I just can't figure out how you could see this happen and still believe that top Tetris players doing fewer speedruns has anything whatsoever to do with what version of the game is allowed. When I gave the bullet point in the previous thread, I indicated that I had already stated it in a previous thread, so I'll now say it for the third time: The Tetris community is almost entirely focused on gameplay that has nothing to do with speedrunning. That's not the fault of any individual; it's just the nature of the game.

If anything, what we're seeing could be an indication of the exact opposite of what you believe; we might be about to see top players doing all their high score attempts on the original version because that's what's actually viewed as the standard. All I hear people talking about right now is the pursuit of level 255 on the original game; nobody is waiting to find out who will be the first person to make it to level 160 on TetrisGym.

It's strange from my perspective to observe someone say that if we're going to add a category that is only possible on the original version of the game, we had better allow people to play other categories on other versions. It's even more strange to observe someone say that only 10 people will achieve within 2 or 3 years what 3 people achieved in 2 days. As is the case with virtually everything, now that people have seen it happen, the floodgates are open. I think lots of people are going to go for it, and I think many people will get there. Finally, it's strange to observe someone claiming there's an issue with lack of activity when, as a Mod off 88 games on this site, Tetris is the one getting the most submissions, with new runs on an almost daily basis.

I think you should be open to the possibility that your feelings towards the rules on SRC may be getting in the way of seeing objective reality. Maybe that's why you think I deleted a CTM account when I didn't. Maybe that's why you're complaining about top players being outraged at the rules on SRC when I haven't received one complaint from any of them. Either way, if you really care about the boards, you might want to reconsider responding to future threads with default anger or pessimism; that's far more likely to drive players away than the rules which have been a standard for NES games for years.

100% is a indeed strange title for a single game of baseball lol. I changed them to the often-used "Win a game" and "Lose a game" with a 9-innings note.

In terms of what would be considered the "main category" of the game, I 100% agree, and I'm perfectly happy to put the main category in front.

It seemed silly to me that there was a category (in this case, 100%, which refers to playing through the 9th inning) that didn't have a win condition; wins and losses were all submitted to the same category. With that in mind, I have created a new 100% category that requires the player to win the game. All previous runs that were player wins have been moved to the new category. The old category will remain, with the requirement for future submissions that the player lose the game.