Hello Matichu,

For the time being, you can submit the Switch version under "Others" until the community / mods choose to make any changes.

Other Rules: "Time starts at when you land from the parachute. Time ends when the final boss is destroyed. Autofire/Turbo is not allowed.

Runs done on any other port, "Metal Slug Complete PC Version", "Metal Slug Anthology Version(s)", etc."

The suggestion to have runs more comparable is reasonable.

We can see that overclocking and Steam are significantly faster than arcade hardware as shown on any leaderboard. We also don't have enough submissions for several distinct categories. Maybe we'll have a ton of runners submitting, where we do need to separate categories. But right now, do we need separate categories?

Why is Hard difficulty being excluded? It might not be popular but it's in the game. Why should the Arcade category include MAME, Wii VC, PSN(PS3/4/Vita), XBLA? Do these platforms emulate the game accurately?

The Steam version is an official release by SNK. It's faster, why are we separating it from the other categories? If that's the case, then we should have a PC only category and run Metal Slug Anthology as many believe it's faster than Steam. This game is fairly old and is unlikely that an SSD is faster, but it's possible is there. Should we note people running on SSD or create a separate category?

Now we have a ton of categories, what gets to be the main one? We can argue that official hardware is the front page page or authenticity, or the PC version because it's easily accessible an more people have a PC than console, or the overclock category because it's the fastest.

Lets say arcade gets to be the main platform for Speedrun.com. Everyone who has a Neo-Geo, MAME, Wii VC, PSN(PS3/4/Vita), XBLA remains the same while those on PC has it's own tab, where at this point there would be 7-9 tabs cluttering the page, or we group PC, emulator, and overclock to the miscellaneous drop down, unlikely to be seen by users browsing the game. Someone is bound to ask if PC is an "official" release or not. Not many people know what MAME is, but it's also an emulator. People that own a console may be encouraged to buy an affordable game ($20 for Anthology), or discourage those who don't have consoles as it's an additional barrier(s): financial costs, console for 1 game, a capture card for Neo-Geo.

At this point, I would feel pretty bad having my runs never to be seen by people browsing the game. I'm not saying I'm good at Metal Slug, but I at least put effort. I use a laptop that loses 1-3 frames per second just playing the the Steam version. I might as well drop Steam and run only overclocked emulators. Arguably I could run MAME, but that's also emulating the game.

I just skimmed through a run I could Game Over for the HMG drops. No particular places in mind, just areas of expected speedrun deaths without weapon drops. Start of mission 2 uses pistol, but the speedrun uses bombs to resolve this. First part of mission 5 is an auto-scroller. There's a delay on death and falling on respawn, HMG isn't worth it compared to the 10 bombs. Quick pistol gunslinging should be able to clear out the fodder and damage the tanky enemies; toss a couple of bombs is enough. HMG is one of the lower damage dealing pickups. With the game dropping a number of weapons it's pretty safe to say that Death Abuse is more of a Bombs only thing. unless someone finds a magical HMG exploit that shoot the entire magazine in a fraction of a second.

Based on the video below, it's possible to blow up the cart with the helicopter while the plane with Allen O'Neil is touching it. This will leave his ship with 1 HP. You can find it around time 10:10 http://tvpot.daum.net/v/v0945GZGXfcorllxlIGlZZY

In order for this to happen, the place needs to be low to the ground, and launch a missile as it's first action, or backup up really fast. This will allow you to blow up the car with the helicopter while dealing a large amount of damage to the plane.

There is a possibility that the plane's hitbox clips inside the car while it explodes, but further tests are required.

I have attempted to replicate it and have only succeeded once so far.

Jackafur did it on actual hardware.

There are a few bugs in this game, including enemies jumping into pits, magic gem manipulation, item duplication and being out of bounds.

Item Duplication We can duplicate items in hidden chests if they are picked up before the ¤tick¤ pick up sound and the item pop up in the upper right corner of the screen. This can be done with the Backscratcher, as for some reason it picks up all items in hidden chests, or jumping over the chest and picking it up manually. This second method is a little more difficult, but saving before hand, and some practice, it would be fairly easy.

Magic Gem Manipulation or Gem Duplication This glitch, abuses how the game registers the use of gems. When channeling magic that involves multiple gems, it is possible to interrupt the next gem in line, by picking up another gem. This picked up gem, will have the same properties as the gem initially next in line, but will return back to that colour when dropped. This isn't a viable speed strat, but it is useful to cast Healing with only 2 blue gems. It's fairly tricky to get the the timing down, so practice is required.

Strange Enemy Movements Many enemies have some sort of jump or lunging attack. It is possible to stand near a pit and have them jump to their doom. You won't gain any gems from them, but it's sure safer to have them fall off then to potentially take damage. Sometimes, when you attack and enemy into a protruding (sticking out) corner, it might clip through and fall out of bounds. As for why, no clue. My guess is that some corners overlap and the game is trying to push them back in bounds but they end up being pushed into the second wall instead.

Miasma Out of Bounds It's fairly common for people to stand on top of Zephran Dungeon, Area 1 - Miasma, unintended out of bounds (OoB). But one thing that's confusing is how the map is laid out. If you wear Speed Boots and Winged Boots, jump off the stage and continue dashing in the general outward direction, you'll notice that the minimap loops itself. It is possible that we're too low to see anything, but why would the map loop on itself?

To those of you who have played this game long enough to squeeze out as much damage as possible by chaining various attacks, you know what I'm talking about.

Strong / Heavy attacks sometimes have a very long animation, and it's most noticeable when you miss one of these attacks. However, when you land a hit immediately, you'll notice that another attack can quickly be performed.

But what if the last strong attack was the fatal blow on an enemy? There wouldn't be anything to follow up on and you would continue this long animation. The answer: Weak Attacks.

By following up a successful strong attack, it's possible to cancel the remaining animation with a faster animation; Weak Attack. This is useful because runs generally have around 10 Dex, more for Archers or other passive stats in other jobs that unlock special job, gender abilities.

For example, the F-Merch [→ B] has 2 maybe 3 parts to the attack. The first being the overhead swing, followed by a hard slam into the ground. A well timed [A] can cancel this long, ground smashing animation, resetting the Strong attack counter. So more [ B ] just by pressing [A].

TLDR: TOO BAD READ IT!

I would like to have other categories open for the RBO leaderboards. For now, I would only like to have F-Thief as a category, but others have mentioned M-Merch and both M and F-Aco.

As mentioned, I would personally like to have F-Thief as a category.

If anyone else would like to have other categories opened, feel free to mention them in this topic.

Deviace will float towards the player for 1 full second, 2 times. If you're standing near enough, it will float past you, turn around and float back the other way. Deviace will almost be in the same position it started with. Now Deviace sometimes jumps back and I do belive that's RNG.

Weak attacks can be infinitely chained, with a small damage ramp up. Turns out, you can carry this damage to the next attack, so long as you don't miss or stop attacking for too long. As for exactly how long, I'm not sure. I can only assume it's a couple of frames.

Hm... I should have read that several times over. I thought it was referring to the stream and not physically seeing the splits. Message removed!~~

I know it's frustrating that you get you PB and the video is just plain bad, but honestly, if others can see what you're doing, and you feel good about it, then everything should be fine.

About your lag issue. Have you tried closing all the background programs? If you're lagging in game, then put the settings as low as possible. It will also help to reduce load times. If it's the streaming program itself, try OBS. It's been good to me. Check if your bitrate needs to be adjusted, or if the computer is being pushed too hard.

You shouldn't be too worried about the quality unless it's really choppy. I use a craptop and stream to Twitch with OBS highlight my bad PB videos. I don't know if that'll help.

You should run any game you enjoy. It doesn't matter if you're terrible at the game, you'll learn as you play. If no one else runs the game, who cares! Speedrunning is a hobby. If you've already learnt and ran a few games, you can head over to the many available speedrun streams and look for games that interest you.

As for games specifically, That might be tough to suggest. I'm seeing a lot of platform games so lets stick with that:

Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels Super Mario All Stars Castlevania: Rondo of Blood Super Castlevania 4

Now there are a lot of people who run Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and Megaman series because they are good speed games. ALttP is something I would suggest for people that want to get into the idea of speedruns. Some tech to learn, somewhat easy to remember, and it's fun.