I'm planning to submit Super Dodge Ball to RGLtv's Retrothon. While I'm willing to submit it as a typical solo run, I thought it would be even more compelling as a 1v1 race.

As such... anyone here up for being my race competitor? I'd prefer the any% category both to increase awareness of it and because I think it would be a more dramatic race ending :-)

Related note: if the idea of Retrothon has piqued your interest, then find out more at http://rgltv.com/

Hi everybody! Everybody is many more people for this community than it was a few days ago, which has already led to a new Red Dragon segment and a new WR!

However, this has also brought extra validation traffic, as well as many relative newcomers to speedrunning. It has also shined a light on the lack of rules for any%.

As such, I worked with SubStylee to form some baseline rules for any%. They are based off of the rules for a much more popular NES game and are intended to keep things as fair as possible without making running or verification onerous.

You can find the new rules by clicking on the "View Rules" button at the top of the leaderboard. To introduce and explain the reasoning behind these rules, I'll run through them here.

Beat the game as fast as possible. All glitches are permitted. This is the typical definition of any%.

Turbo/Autofire and left+right/up+down are banned. This is usually assumed, but this makes it explicit. Neither turbo nor being able to hit opposite directions simultaneously were possible on the original NES controller, therefore it is prohibited to use either in a run.

If using an emulator, please note which emulator was used in the comments. This is important, as emulators vary in their fidelity to the original hardware. If a specific emulator is found to have an unfair advantage over others for this game, then knowing which runs may have been affected is required.

Using savestates to the title screen is prohibited. Use the reset function on your emulator or console and the reset must be shown on the video. This is to ensure that the run is happening from fair initial state.

If you used a flash cart (like Powerpak or Everdrive) or some other way to play the game not on original cartridge, please add that in the comments as well. Flash carts, like emulators, vary in their level of fidelity to the original carts. If you are using one, just note which one in your run comments.

Time starts when you press start at the title screen. That is, start your timer and press start at the same time. Having a good start time in your video makes it much easier to validate.

Time ends on the first frame of the credits screen (i.e. when the screen turns black after the final boss kill). This is a little harder to time exactly, but generally speaking, you should favor hitting late instead of early. Hitting late still allows you (and the validator) to look back at your recording and view the time at the transition more accurately than your ability to stop the timer at just the right time.

Timing must include milliseconds. That means two things. First, your timer needs to be counting down to milliseconds. Second, when you submit your run, fill in the milliseconds part of the time.

Due to the popularity of the game, times below 4:05.00 are treated with suspicion. To maximize your chances of having a run verified it is highly recommended that you stream all of your attempts. This one deserves a little more explanation.

In short, not all runs get the same amount of scrutiny. Mods are volunteers, and have lives outside of validating runs. As such, we adjust our approach to validating a run based on how competitive the time is. 4:05 is where execution in the run needs to be pretty polished. Much farther below that will involve some of the trickier and less accessible tricks of the game. Being able to see your attempts (both successful and failed) becomes useful to build confidence that a your submission is genuine and not falsified.

Are these rules perfect? They are not. I hope they are a reasonable compromise, though. If you have any questions or concerns, please reply to this post or catch me on the Strider Discord: https://discord.gg/VWB4vru

Anyone else seen this?

Is there a discord server where Strider runners chat? The discord servers for other games have been great for both tips and for easy organizing of races.

If there isn't one already then I could make one...