I'm looking to submit this game to GDQ. The VS. COM mode in the SNES version has been featured, but never the NES version, nor round mode. (At one point, GDQ required "full game" categories, and I'm guessing that's why round mode has never been featured, but that's no longer true.)

I think that the bosses in type B would make for a more interesting/varied run in a marathon setting, as well as better show off the differences between NES and SNES... but a 99-level run is going to be way too long and repetitive. So I'd like to request a 50-level category, which lines up with what type A has.

I'm not personally looking for a 20-level category, but it could be added to keep type A and type B in sync.

(Honestly, it would make sense to end at 19 and 49 after the bosses, but it would have also made sense to end the type A categories before the cutscenes instead of after, so I think the most reasonable proposal is to keep the numbers in sync between the modes.)

This category could be backfilled from the existing 99-level runs.

Info: Can you not submit this game regardless of a submission-specific category on this website? Is there an actual dependency between what can be submitted to GDQ and the existence of a category on the leaderboard of the game submitted?

I'm looking through the submission guide for SGDQ 2025, which I can still see. Here's what they say about categories:

"Submissions must include a video of the game and category indicated, played by the submitter to completion."

"Runners may submit categories that do not include completing the game. Examples of this include, Path of Legends in Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, Paladin% in FFIV, or Bingo submissions. Such submissions should still include a video of the category being played to its point of completion and comply with all other noted guidelines."

"Is the runner's time a competitive time? We look at public leaderboards such as speedrun.com - we may look unfavorably at runs that are far from a world record in time/standing."

So I don't see a strict requirement. I do have a hunch it makes it less likely to be accepted compared to a "real" category, especially if they can't evaluate the submission time. (Maybe they'd just look at my type A time.)

I know it's a long shot submission in the first place - they don't accept many NES games and I'm a good distance behind Prisi in Type A.

Beyond that, as a huge fan of the bosses, the disparity in category availability between A and B always bothered me. I understand that's a bit historical, but I do wonder if it would get more love if it had a shorter category.

Thank you for the breakdown, but I don't think it would be a good idea.

Historically, the shorter categories existed as the original moderator of this leaderboard created them, but they have always been extremely arbitrary and carry no real value as to the run as a whole, since they do not represent true endings, or anything like that. Duplicating the already existing shorter categories to create a slightly different version of them does not really make a lot of sense to me, so I don't want to generate more categories of that same kind if I can avoid it. I understand there is a category disparity between Type-A and Type-B, but moving forward I would rather keep it non-arbitrary if new categories were to be added to the leaderboard.

If anybody else wants to pitch in on the matter, they're more than welcome to of course as always, but I personally struggle to see anything that would make me change my mind.