There has been discussion lately about splitting up the leaderboard due to version differences. There are three distinct versions of this, and the notable differences are as follows (please correct me if these are incorrect):

• US-PRG1 (Black Label/White-Green Title Screen): The Border Raid is Scene 3. This version of the stage has slow rolling, fast cursor/aim, cursor disappears while rolling and bottles are worth 4% evidence. The Railway Station has slow movement.
• Famicom: The Border Raid is also Scene 3. This version of the stage has fast rolling, fast cursor, cursor disappears while rolling and bottles are worth 4% evidence. The Railway Station has fast movement.
• US-PRG2 (Blue Label/Blue Title Screen): The Border Raid is now Scene 2. This version of the stage has slow rolling, slow cursor/aim, cursor remains active while rolling and bottles are worth 5% evidence. The Railway Station has fast movement.

These seems to be enough gameplay differences to warrant splitting the board. The only downside I see is that the board is already small as it is, so splitting it up is not ideal. That being said, it still probably makes sense to make a separate category for each version.

This open for discussion before I make any changes to the leaderboard, and I appreciate any feedback.

Having looked at and ran each version of the game, there is quite a bit of variance that can happen on the border raid stage despite the movement speed changes and bottle values. As researched in the TAS notes for this game https://tasvideos.org/7725S we see that the bottle locations are determined by the frame you shoot them on, so it's possible for someone to have amazing luck here and get a really low border raid time on any version of the game. My best time on the border raid stage over all the versions of the game is on the blue label revision. The railway stage will be slower on the US versions, although you can push the carriage to speed things up a bit and due to the slower speed of the stage that strategy is much safer. It seems like based on my splits that you lose about 30 to 40 seconds on the railway stage vs the Famicom version.

I don't have much of an opinion on splitting the board besides the lack of players, I'll run each version if the board is split so it doesn't matter much to me.

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.