Great! Expect a run from me in the near future then :)

Man, I'm kinda kicking myself over here for not finding this leaderboard sooner. I really loved playing this game a few years ago, and I'd certainly love to put up a run just for the memes.

So in short, if I were to do runs using Flashpoint I'd be able to upload them here?

If you check the Any% - Kid Mode category for DreamCast (DC), you'll see that there's already an uploaded, verified run that runs on emulator, so I believe you're good to go on that front.

That being said, you might want to specify which emulator you're going to use, given that some emulators aren't as accurate as others. I don't know much about DreamCast emulators myself, so your best bet would be to ask around to the folks at the discord server: https://discord.gg/XDKvnpa

PS: If any mods read this, perhaps it'd be nice to also include the link to the discord in this leaderboard's menu.

Hello everyone!

So, after a bit of talk about the possibility of adding "Game Time" to this game's runs, I ended up making a Load Remover for this glorious meme of a game, which you can find here in the Resources section.

For those unfamiliar with Load Removers, it's basically a tool that'll allow your LiveSplit to automatically start & stop the timer whenever the game starts or ends loading levels, allowing us to exclude load times from the final time of the run. Load times include:

• Whenever the Pepsi logo appears at the bottom right corner of the screen (usually at the end of the scoring screen at the end of each level).
• Whenever Pepsiman is running in the dark at the beginning of the first level of each stage (it's basically the loading screen for the level).

Now, the only caveat this sort of tool has is that it only works for the few emulator versions it was originally programmed for. What this means is that, should we start to use this tool, we'd need to define which emulator versions and which BIOS we want to support for runs.

For the time being, I already made it compatible with both ePSXe v1.7.0 and v1.9.0, while using BIOS SCPH-101. With the current build, if you're using any other bios, emulator or any other ePSXe version, the load remover will not work properly. This is by no means an extensive list of what everyone's currently using, so if you guys want this tool to work with other emulator/BIOS versions, you need to tell me so we can work on making them compatible as well.

With all of this in mind, I leave this thread open for discussion. What emulators and which specific versions should we use? Is there any bios version in particular we'd like to favor?

PS: Personally, I have absolutely no problem with trying to make the load remover compatible with as many versions as you guys want to suggest, provided I get some help from the interested party.

Ok, first we need to clarify what in-game time means, because there are two alternatives for "Game Time":

1. The current timing method (RTA, Real Time Attack) but without loads. This can be easily achieved with a load remover and would certainly not substract from the experience. Loads in this case would include any time the Pepsi logo appears at the bottom right of the screen at the end of the scoring screen, and whenever pepsiman is running in the dark at the beginning of the first level of each stage.
2. Using the in-game timer in each level, which is the actual "In-Game Time". This option would then disregard both load times and the scoring screen, meaning there'd be no pressure to do canless strats anymore. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it does impact a bit on the possible strategies for the game, so it's worth making sure everyone is comfortable with it first.

If Game Time is to be implemented, I'd personally go with the first option. Given that we currently time full game runs using RTA already, it just feels more natural to transition to RTA without loads rather than using the in-game timer, and we also get to keep the extra challenge from canless.

That being said, a change of this sort would require re-timing the currently active runs so that they also present a Game Time. We can accurately measure how long the scoring screen lasts taking into account the amount of pepsi cans that were picked up, but since load times may vary between platforms, I'm guessing that manually re-timing runs will end up being mandatory either way.

Tl;dr if it's RTA without loads, I'm cool with it, but dealing with older runs is gonna be a bit of a hassle

Oh it's nothing, it's just Mr. @chongchua here posted an irrelevant link, just like a bot would.

I spy with my little eye... a bot.

I found it useful to just do a few practice zips on the slope leading to the lower part, since it helps you to get accustomed to the timing, but overall expect to die quite a bit there.

I remember reading someone suggest using R2 + L1 to zip right back up in case you miss the R2 (which might help you save a few fails), but I personally don't use it. It's a bit ballsy to use that strat on an Easy Mode run imo (but it's nice if you pull it off).

Hard Mode though, that's a whole different story.

Alright, that actually covers most of the inner workings of the skip! Thanks for relaying those comments.

The only thing that'd be missing now is why this pause when taking penultimate damage only happens when playing on the highest difficulty setting, as opposed to happening on all difficulties, given that they aren't all that different aside from this.

EDIT: Took too long to write and tako beat me to the punch :P

I understand perfectly how to do it, but my question was aiming more towards why it actually works, which is a mystery to me. Replicating the skip's setup is very easy to do, but I wanted to know why all that setup results in us being able to jump that high and skip the boss.

I just tried it on PC on Disney's Classics to feel things out myself and sure enough, I got it to work (and it seems very reliable too).

How does it work though? I understand that the skip setup requires you to have exactly 2 HP, but why does it work with that amount of HP and not with more (and why only on that difficulty setting as well)?

That's how Mafia works :P

As I mentioned earlier, I'm OK with either decision, and taking into account the WR being done in Normal it makes perfect sense to make that sub-category the default. Normal's pretty active on it's own as well, so no objections here!

I'm personally OK with either choice really, though I agree that separating the difficulties makes it seem like the game has less runners than it actually has and I don't see much point in doing it.

Setting that aside, if we're going to stick with this decision, I'd suggest we make Practice the default sub-category instead of Difficult, given that it's the sub-category with the most runs submitted and better represents the game's community.

Hey there!

I've also been checking out the runs for the game, since I was playing with the idea of running this myself as well. While watching the WR run, I stumbled upon a youtube comment made by @Yhabby himself where he explains the basic strategy for the route. I'll now paste this here for future reference for new runners:

"- Choose adventurer difficulty, skill at navigation, 1640 start, then choose the Spanish captain. - Adventurer is the lowest accepted difficulty, and will save you time with easier swordfights. - Skill at navigation makes sailing faster and easier, which is what most of your time in any% will be spent doing. - 1640 with the Spanish start gives you the mail runner as a starting ship. This is one of the fastest ships in the game, and has more crew capacity than the pinnace.

• Sail into the Spanish city and recruit crew from the tavern, then leave
• Sail to the nearest Jesuit mission. These will spawn randomly around the Caribbean but they are fairly common. Quicksave (shift + S) right before sailing into it.
• Talk to the abbot. He will tell you the starting location of Baron Raymondo. If it is not very close by, leave and quickload (shift + L)
• Sail to and battle Raymondo, saving right before you attack him. Don't bother using cannons on his ship, just sail into it as fast as possible.
• Beat Raymondo in a swordfight, he will give you a map piece. If you cannot figure out where the location of your sister is from this single map piece, load and re-do the fight. If you can, keep his ship and its cargo and go to your sister.
• Rescue your sister, saving right before you reach the cabin. She will tell you the starting location of Marquis Montalban. If he is not very close by, load and re-do the encounter.
• Repeat the same process that you used for encountering and battling Montalban. If you cannot find his hideout with the given map piece, re-do the fight.
• Now, you want to get between 150-250 crew before going to Montalban's hideout. The issue is that Spain will hate you now and won't let you enter. French, English, and Dutch cities are typically too far away to visit, so your best bet is pirate havens. You can also try to get some crew between the Raymondo and Montalban fights.
• Go to Montalban's hideout and defeat his Indian army. usually it is faster to kill off all the units, but it may be faster to rush the gate, depending on the map layout.
• Finally, battle Montalban for the last time.
• Defeat him, watch the cutscene, and you're done!"

Again, full credits to @Yhabby for compiling all this information. Hope this helps and good luck!

PS: If you need any pointers for land battles as well, you can check out @Yhabby 's guide on the subject here

Well, turns out I got my hands on another version of the game and actually managed to get it working on v1.9.0 after all, so I'll be running on that either way.

Hello everyone!

I've had my eyes on this game for a while and want to give it a go. However, I was wondering if you guys accept ePSXe v2.0.5 for the runs, or if you restrict the runs to v1.9.0 (as is usual for speedrunning).

I personally have no issue with running in v1.9.0, but I've been having issues trying to run the game on that version, so I'd like to know this first before I start tinkering with settings to make it work (also, if you guys could give me some pointers on this, I'd really appreciate it).

Thanks for reading!

Alright, that clears that up. Thanks!

Hello everyone!

Recently I've been kinda itching to do a speedrun of this game (just for the fun of it). However, I noticed that in the rules of the game you guys specifically mention ePXSe v1.9.0 as the version to use.

Now, this makes me wonder whether using ePSXe v2.0.5 (the newest version available to date) or any version higher than 1.9.0 for that matter would be ok to use for the run, or if there's some sort of restriction to use that version and only that version. Is this the case?

Thanks for reading!

As far as I know, emulator runs are bunched up alongside their respective console counterparts (playstation emulator runs go in the PS category, N64 emulator runs go in N64 category, and so on). I've personally uploaded a few emulator runs myself and they've been verified, so I see no reason that should be an issue, as long as you mark the "emulator" checkbox when uploading the run.

That being said, I use ePSXe for my runs (which is fairly standard by this point), so I can't say I'm familiar enough with OpenEmu to know if it's a valid emulator. Hopefully someone else can clear that up.

Good luck!

Personally I started running the hard mode category, and I can say that easy is a lot less stressful. For example, the underwater trench (that level with the lasers) has no path going through the middle of the room on hard mode (unlike easy mode), meaning you gotta swing almost directly at the lasers, which is kind of a pain.

That being said, the fact that it is so unforgiving in some aspects helped me learn how to run the game properly, given that if you don't adjust to the difficulty you just can't go on at all. I say if you are up for a challenge, hard mode proves to be quite fun in it's own right.

PS: Kid Mode's controls are straight up made by the Devil himself though.