If you don’t know, the SRC Series is a lineup of challenges we're rolling out semi-regularly, funded entirely by Speedrun.com. SRC Series challenges are designed to be fun and engaging, focusing on community involvement. The prize bounties are smaller compared to sponsored challenges, providing a break from the stress of high-stakes competition! We hope SRC Series challenges will continue to bring speedrunners from all kinds of communities together to discover new games and meet new people.

Here’s everything you’ll want to know heading into the challenge:

**Starting Date:** July 19th, 2024

**Duration:** 10 days, until 11:59 PM UTC July 29th, 2024

## **Prizes!**

We’ve got a whole LOAD of prizes this time around! Have a look at the list below:

**First Place:**- Mad Jack Figure

![](/static/blob/3nv1x78n.png)

**Top 3:**

- $500 Prize Pool

**Top 5:**- Your name in the credits

- Artbook & Soundtrack Steam Key

**All Participants:**- 1 Month of SRC Supporter

- “Mullet Mad” Title

Big thanks to Mullet Mad Jack developer HAMMER95 for providing the figurine, credits spots, as well as the artbook and soundtrack keys!

**Prize Pool Distribution:**

The $500 prize pool will be distributed among the top performers for fastest completion time in the Any% category. The distribution is as follows:

**1st place** - $250

**2nd place** - $150

**3rd place** - $100

Please note that in order to comply with international tax law, **the challenge cash prize may be subject to tax withholding based on the winner's country of residence.**

## **Participation Prizes:**

As usual with all of our SRC Series Challenges, we are bringing back participation prizes!

First of all, any runner who submits any runs to the Mullet Mad Jack challenge will receive **one month** of SRC Supporter, if you haven’t heard of Supporter before you may learn more about it [here](https://www.speedrun.com/supporter)!

Secondly, any challenge participants will be awarded with the title “Mullet Mad”. If you’re unfamiliar with Titles, they are a unique descriptor that goes alongside your username on your profile (as well as profile popovers) which can (as of right now) only be acquired by participating in Challenges right here on SRC. To find out more, check out our last article about Titles! [https://www.speedrun.com/news/17vr795x-introducing-titles](https://www.speedrun.com/news/17vr795x-introducing-titles)

## **Eligibility:**

Open to players aged 18 and above worldwide, with the following exceptions: North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Somalia, and Venezuela.

If you are under the age of 18, not to worry! You can still participate and win the participation prizes, but unfortunately you will not be eligible for the cash prizes amongst the top 3.

## **Category:**

The category of choice for the challenge this time around is Any%! Go as fast as you can on any difficulty you’d like (except for “NO TIMER”) and complete the game!

## **Submission:**

Record your speedrun and submit it via[ our Challenge leaderboard here on Speedrun.com.](https://www.speedrun.com/challenges/lwp40yez-Mullet_Mad_Jack-mullet-mad-jack-speedrun-challenge)

Follow the guidelines provided for video formatting and submission requirements, found in the rules section. Please note that a new requirement has been added to this challenge, requiring that prize eligible runs must have been live streamed.

## **Rules and Regulations:**

All speedruns must adhere to the official rules, available on the Speedrun.com Challenge leaderboard.

Contest Rules:[https://www.speedrun.com/challenges/lwp40yez-Mullet_Mad_Jack-mullet-mad-jack-speedrun-challenge/contest](https://www.speedrun.com/challenges/lwp40yez-Mullet_Mad_Jack-mullet-mad-jack-speedrun-challenge/contest)

Category Rules: [https://www.speedrun.com/challenges/lwp40yez-Mullet_Mad_Jack-mullet-mad-jack-speedrun-challenge/rules?view=challenge](https://www.speedrun.com/challenges/lwp40yez-Mullet_Mad_Jack-mullet-mad-jack-speedrun-challenge/rules?view=challenge)

## **Preparation Suggestions**

To find tips & tricks for the speedrun, visit[ the Mullet Mad Jack leaderboard right here on Speedrun.com.](https://www.speedrun.com/Mullet_Mad_Jack) Follow either the game or the challenge to receive notifications about challenge activity! You can also join[ the Mullet Mad Jack Discord server](https://discord.gg/47S9Ms6zme) and chat in #speedrunning to keep up with the community!

**Good luck, and have fun!️**11:59 PM

Are you an 80’s anime, synthwave, or otherwise a first-person shooter fan? We've got some exciting news to share – the next challenge as part of our SRC Series will be… Mullet Mad Jack!

SRC Series: MULLET MAD JACK Speedrun Challenge!

With the release of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for ELDEN RING, developer FromSoftware really managed to up the difficulty of the game once more. Introducing new, [hard-hitting bosses](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Promised+Consort+Radahn) that really love to throw punches like Mike Tyson, a new [NPC 'gank' fight](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Leda+and+Allies+Boss) for players to despise (hehe), the elegantly brutal fight with [Bayle](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Bayle+The+Dread), likely the hardest fight with a dragon FromSoftware has created so far, a wide variety of new weapons, spells and items, a whole new map to explore and more!

But.. what if all of that wasn't even enough? What if the speedrun community just has to push things even further once again? Well Souls veteran and speedrunner @Distortion2 just had that exact idea...

# **Defeat All Remembrance Bosses at Rune Level 1 (aka RL1 DLC%)**

Announcing the **RL1 (Rune Level 1) DLC%** competition, which requires runners to beat **all the major bosses of the DLC**, also known as **Remembrance bosses** as quickly as possible at **Rune Level 1** which means **no leveling up is allowed at all**.

![](/static/blob/1n57klme.jpg)

As if this wasn't big enough of a feat already, Distortion2 announced there **would be even more restrictions** added to make things even more interesting. To name a few (but not exclusive to):

## **ONE Scadutree Fragment upgrade PER defeated boss**

Debuting in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC: **Scadutree Fragments** are optional consumables that can be used to enhance simultaneously offensive and defensive capabilities at any Sites of Grace, acting like a permanent boost to your DLC damage dealt and damage negation.

![](/static/blob/1n73w70e.png)

Quite a few of these can be collected pretty early in the DLC through some clever routing, making some boss fights (a lot) easier because of the signifcant damage and defense increases that these Scadutree Fragments offer.

So to spice things up further for the competition, **participants are only allowed to use one single Scadutree Fragment upgrade per defeated DLC boss** which further increases this challenge's difficulty, forcing participants to really think about their equipment and routing.

## **DLC equipment and items ONLY**

Apart from that, **participants may only use equipment found in the DLC along with what is provided on the character through a pre-made savefile** meaning no base game equipment that can be used to quickly become overpowered with. Wow!

.. and there are even more restrictions though you can look these up in the Discord server for the event below!

Such a huge challenge doesn't come easy at all.. and thus offers a huge reward for participants.
The total prize pool for the competition is a whopping **$10,000** divided between 1st to 10th places, plus **a bonus prize pool from donations** that Distortion2 graciously offers on top of this already huge prize pool, as per Distortion2's last message:

![](/static/blob/rnq1kgre.png)

This is surely going to be one hell of a competition!

Interested in participating in the competition?
Or to hunt for boss strategies or glitches?
Or even simply to specatate the event?
We would love to see you!

Join the ELDEN RING RL1 DLC% [Discord Server](https://discord.gg/DYT4rDatk5) to learn about the complete ruleset for the competition, prizepool information, boss strategies, routing, other participants and more!

Good luck to all the participants!

Its been barely one month after the popular DLC "Shadow of the Erdtree" released for ELDEN RING but already a huge new speedrun competition involving this new DLC just got announced..

HUGE $10,000 ELDEN RING Competition by Distortion2

# The Gold Split Newsletter - Week #24

The Gold Split offers a free, weekly digest of news from the world of speedrunning and beyond.

This **Story of the Week** is all about all about arbitrary awards to wrap up the year of speedrunning and was featured in this week's issue. The full post includes **more news**, briefly, as well as this week's top times and recent TAS movie publications. Check it out **[HERE](https://goldsplit.substack.com/p/week-24)**.

## ![](https://www.speedrun.com/static/blob/wzxxw3qz.png)

# Story of the Week ✨

After realising that anybody can give out any award for any reason, I thought: why not give it a shot? ***The Gold Split Speed Awards*** (working title) are guaranteed to be subjective and arbitrary.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of people, runs or other entities that do deserve to be mentioned here. I hope the list successfully showcases some of the high points of 2024 and makes it harder to forget them.

I consider myself to be immersed in the scene, but I definitely missed someone or something that should be featured here. Let me know in the comments below!

Next year I’ll plan further ahead and we’ll have a proper ceremony with trophies and booze. Definitely. But without further ado, let’s get into the categories!

## Speedrunner of the Year 🏆

There was never any doubt that this awards wouldn’t go to @Suigi . The entire speedrunning community has been tripping over each other while coming up with new superlatives to describe his most recent achievement, something that has never been done before: holding all five records in all five main categories for *Super Mario 64*. I, too, consider it to be among the greatest achievements in speedrunning history, ever. Nobody else came close this year. 🐐

Check out the main story in *[Week #21](https://goldsplit.substack.com/p/week-21)* of *The Gold Split*, where I use fancy graphs and many more words to explain the when, how and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP-GOoGqA8w

## Speedrun of the Year 🏆

@Summoningsalt is primarily known for their video essays on world record histories. But they’re also the best at *Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!*, holding impressive records in five of the game’s categories. This year, they achieved a huge improvement in the isolated final fight against *Mike Tyson* himself. It is by far the hardest one in the game and a good time does not only depend on dodging, ducking, and hitting frame-perfect punches, but also on randomness.

In June, @Summoningsalt **defeated *Mike Tyson* in 2:00.00**. This run improved the previous record by eight frames. This might not sound like much, but according to them, the luck necessary to get this time has a 1/6,000 chance of occurring. And even then, it’s still necessary to hit all 21 frame-perfect punches (each 1/60 of a second) and lose as few frames as possible while dodging and ducking.

It is as much about execution as it is about luck, and the persistence to put in tens of thousands of attempts over many years to achieve it deserves a special place here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_wvPExoOg8

## Glitch Discovery of the Year 🏆

I admit that there many other glitches this year that were potentially more impactful, saved more time, trivialised complicated sections, or changed speedruns entirely, but the award goes to the ***Disc 1 Skip* in *Final Fantasy VII***.

While it did also have huge implications for the speedrun, prompting major route changes and saving a good chunk of time, you may argue that it had an even bigger effect on the game’s story. By skipping from the end of *Midgar* straight to *Disc 2* the cutscene in which *Aerith* is killed by *Sepiroth* still plays, but she remains in the party and can be used throughout the rest of the run. I dare say that *Aerith’s* death is one of the most iconic ones in video game history. And the fact that this glitch saves *Aerith* and is actually useful in the speedrun at the same time makes it the winner in this category.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bANC9Nqdyf8

## Video Essay of the Year 🏆

In 2024, @Summoningsalt alone put out five high-quality long-form video essays, and it’s awesome to see the amount of content creators who put in so much effort to explain glitches, strategies, or the history of world records in any given game.

The award this year goes to the crazy scientist that brought you *Super Mario 64’s* parallel universes: ***[pannenkoek2012](https://www.youtube.com/@pannenkoek2012)***

Their **[lecture about invisible walls in ](https://youtu.be/YsXCVsDFiXA)*[Super Mario 64](https://youtu.be/YsXCVsDFiXA)*** not only captivates casual players and viewers, but it’s something even the most seasoned veterans of *Super Mario 64* speedrunning can still learn from. Outstanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsXCVsDFiXA

## Speedrunning Game of the Year 🏆

For me, ***[Chained Together](https://www.speedrun.com/Chained_Together)*** is the best game for speedrunning released in 2024. It has everything you might look for in a tense run and more. Tough execution, high stakes, no downtime, and a good *Any%* runtime all contribute. In addition, the game’s coop feature is hilarious and it’s been a while since I’ve seen good coop speedruns from a new game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3s0STN7bb4

## Non-Video-Game Speedrun of the Year 🏆

In May 2024, ***[Baking](https://www.speedrun.com/IRL_Baking)*** was invented. More specifically, baking twelve chocolate chip cookies. As fast as possible. Popularised by streamer @QTCinderella, it quickly gained some traction on its leaderboards, but it took a few months for the ruleset to be well defined. Too many corners were cut to get ahead of the competition. By now, the recipe no longer containes quantities, just a set of mandatory ingredients, and each cookie must be measured and tested for quality control.

Nevertheless, applying the speedrunning formula to real-life tasks is hilarious to me and something every speedrunner can probably relate to. What do you mean by you’ve never tried to speedrun your shopping?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sO9cK2hWG0

## (New) Speedrunning Event of the Year 🏆

This was a tough category and I considered not including it. In order to avoid AGDQ or SGDQ taking the top spot on metrics every single time, I felt like I had to restrict it to events that newly arrived to the scene in 2024.

Amongst those, ***[Fast50](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOQLqxudEz9N4JcPpvniPlYHNqn1PkL6e)*** stands out to me. It broke with a lot of conventions, but in doing so it did an undeniably great job at bringing speedrunning to an almost entirely new audience. It successfully combined live speedruns with reaction content from popular streamers and raised $250,000+ for a good cause on top of being incredibly entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FLs_lPfvvY

## Non-Speedrun Achievement of the Year 🏆

Many feats of gaming excellence qualify for this category, but I can’t think of a better one than beating the (potentially) final milestone in a 35 year old classic: @dogplayingtetris**[ achieving ](https://youtu.be/fXhbti5SneE)*[Rebirth](https://youtu.be/fXhbti5SneE)*[ in NES ](https://youtu.be/fXhbti5SneE)*[Tetris](https://youtu.be/fXhbti5SneE)***.

*Rebirth* is considered the true end of *Tetris* happens when the player finishes level 255. The level counter rolls over and resets the speed and score multiplier. There are many challenges on the way there though. Starting at level 29, pieces come in at the maximum speed, and it is a long and tough battle to get all the way to 255. This is further aggravated by level 235, where the player needs to clear 810 lines to advance instead of 10 like on any other level. Additionally, after level 138, pieces start to no longer appear within the standard colour palette and are sometimes barely visible against the background. The entire run took @dogplayingtetris more than 80 minutes, clearing more than 3,300 lines, most of them at ridiculous speed.

The video below does a good job at putting this insane achievement into context and expanding on some of the intricacies that led to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z97tkKKlWA

## Top Dog of the Year 🏆

Shiba Inu ***Peanut Butter*** and his human @JSR_ entered the big speedrunning stage with a [remote speedrun of ](https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8)*[Gyromite](https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8)*[ at ](https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8)*[AGDQ 2024](https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8https://youtu.be/wwP5N44Lcd8)*.

At *SGDQ 2024*, it was then time for the literal stage. *Peanut Butter* showcased the speedrun for *Ken Griffey Jr. Presents MLB*, putting all that training and practice to the test, demonstrating nerves of steel and absolutely [knocking it out of the park](https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/1dvmobh/the_game_winner_from_best_boy_peanutbutter/). What a good dog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2FZKJ4QBdA

## Personal Quest to Perfection Award 🏆

This award solely exists because @Bubzia showed up every other week whenever I did research for *The Gold Split*, continuously pushing for more optimisation and better times in his blindfolded *Super Mario 64* speedruns.

Many thought the pinnacle was reached two years ago when he collected all 120 power stars blindfolded in 11 hours, 22 minutes and 43 seconds. But he was just getting started with optimising strategies and categories and has not stopped throughout the whole year. This would already be impressive, but is topped off by his showcase of *Super Mario 64 Randomizer* at *SGDQ 2024*, where @Bubzia was able to show off not only execution, but also the learning and memorisation elements of his blindfolded speedruns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfzOc97vYEk

![](https://www.speedrun.com/static/blob/rz251jdz.png)

Thank you for reading! If you're curious about more of this week's news or would even consider subscribing to the newsletter, you'll find the full post over **[HERE](https://goldsplit.substack.com/p/week-19)**.

Finding new stories to cover can be challenging. I encourage you to think about what happened recently in the communities you are a part of. If there are any stories, articles, glitches, events, or other topics I should be taking a look at, go ahead and **[submit them here](https://forms.gle/F1VJ4PG68FTZKqn49)** or in the **[Gold Split Discord](https://discord.gg/SpbFCgsYkU)**! 📨

The Gold Split is a free weekly newsletter focused on speedrunning. This week's main story is all about arbitrary awards to wrap up the year of speedrunning.

The Gold Split Week #24: The Gold Split Speed Awards

Twitch recently announced a 100-hour storage limit for Highlights and will be deleting anything outside the limit on April 19th, 2025.  This is, of course, alarming as many speedrun submissions make use of Twitch highlights.

# Downloading Runs At Risk

Before I dive into the rest of the article, I would like to spotlight a community effort to mitigate the damage caused by Twitch’s actions here. A sincere thank you to @Matse007 and the team behind the Speedrun Rescue Script which detects runs submitted (either from a specific individual or for a whole game) with Twitch Highlights and downloads them for you. With your footage safely preserved, you can re-upload your runs to another platform and update your submissions as needed. At the very least, this script ensures that the valuable content you’ve worked hard to capture remains accessible to you.

[You can get it from the Github page here, alongside the installation instructions.](https://github.com/Matse007/SpeedrunRescueScript)

![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf7VPdIDDg0u-BzbdpG9VcE_xenHcsOBwisYIn85awtk48SvMZAHQwOs9kcv8kmRXeVtt0UGdblLG1eGIC6t0TfAQ5soJtcU1nmZMSTUIV_2Wty1qTASnvLxZEbE2-NB51eh5bq?key=uq53moH6c6uD_CQPJZjukOHE)

The Speedrun Rescue Script requires installing Python and some other dependencies, so it might not be the most beginner-friendly - but if you’re comfortable with a more technical setup, it’s the best option for backing up all of your runs that are potentially at risk.

If you’re not comfortable with the more technical approach, [Clipr.xyz](https://clipr.xyz/) offers a web-based option for downloading individual VODs. This tool works in a pinch if you only need to save a handful of VODs.

![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeD8I35HWNZaxXjneeptn7oDVP2ZBwyvtB6pJJ-DuxAxgpcEA_hSr86KBZl1GiIxt_N4MT7Eau4TmKN2uin1MNjmim5U0GhhxACWm74kzCsB04euDuK_AttSoxFeFh4AT_R8W2E?key=uq53moH6c6uD_CQPJZjukOHE)

You can also export VODs directly to YouTube right from within the Twitch Video Producer, although it’s worth noting it’s only one at a time and quite slow.

![](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfL1ycfd-_mBPJ_aybnbGqdBB59S7lFf6jNQ_ASz1Jqhgrsz-3PkzTEqC_72E-ClF9XmTkRDrsuf-UQnBHHEiHhDhmn6k0uFeO_cfhfK113GfAKNtcPUHiseY-uN4eRwqu2fuTFrg?key=uq53moH6c6uD_CQPJZjukOHE)

If you have any other suggestions or know of alternative tools, please share them in the comments - I’ll review them all and potentially add them to the article.

# Highlight Lock

Adding to the urgency, Twitch is preventing users from creating new Highlights until their stored content is below the 100-hour limit - meaning many runners with **hundreds or even thousands of hours of archived footage** are currently unable to save their runs. **For many, sorting through that amount of content is completely unreasonable.**

# A Troubling Pattern - Long-Term Solutions

With the short-term stuff out of the way - let’s talk long-term. Those of you who have been around for a few years may remember similar previous events with YouTube’s unlisted videos and with older Imgur content (frequently used for guides). This is a disturbing pattern that is repeatedly threatening the history of our community.

While we don’t have immediate answers, I wanted to let you know that we are *very* well aware of the situation at hand and are **actively discussing long-term solutions to protect speedrunning history** from similar issues in the future. If you have ideas you would like us to consider, by all means, feel free to drop them in the comments for me to review.

# A message to Runners and Moderators 

We understand that many runners will be re-submitting potentially dozens of runs in the near future. Please be patient with your moderators, as they will be handling a significant influx of submissions while also balancing the rest of their responsibilities outside of speedrunning.

Moderators, once things have settled, we kindly ask that you refrain from deleting any run submissions that were previously verified with video proof, even if the footage was later removed by Twitch.

# Conclusion

This situation is frustrating as hell - but it’s also a reminder of how resilient and resourceful the speedrunning community is. While Twitch’s changes put years of history at risk, efforts like the Speedrun Rescue Script show that we’re not powerless. In the short term, take action to back up your runs, and in the long term, let’s work together to find solutions that protect our community’s archives.

Please be sure to thank the team behind Speedrun Rescue Script personally or in the comments.

We’ll keep you updated as we explore better ways to safeguard speedrun history. In the meantime, **if you have any other tools, insights, or ideas, drop them in the comments** - we're all in this together :)

### *Cam // Meta - Speedrun.com Community Manager*

Let's talk about Twitch and their 100 Hour Limit.

Twitch Highlight Limit & Speedruns At Risk

# The Gold Split Newsletter - Week #36 - Consoles Can Go Faster, Too?

The Gold Split offers a free, weekly digest of news from the world of speedrunning and beyond.

This **Story of the Week** is all about consoles that might appear to become faster with increasing age. and was featured in this week's issue. The full post includes **more news**, briefly, as well as a fun fact and this week's top times. Check it out **[HERE](https://goldsplit.substack.com/p/week-36)**.

## ![](https://www.speedrun.com/static/blob/wzxxw3qz.png)

# Story of the Week ✨

There are several factors outside of player skill that can make a difference in a speedrun, but that are usually accounted for in order to level the playing field: different emulators, console generations, storage mediums… the list goes on. But usually, console hardware between identical consoles of the same generation is assumed to perform perfectly consistently. This assumption of consistency is necessary in order to make runs comparable.

### Tool-Assisted Woes

In the world of tool-assisted speedruns, **the humble SNES** has troubled the community for a long time. Attempting to play back a tool-assisted speedrun on a real console rather than an emulator would more often than not lead to desynchronisation issues. When inputs are scheduled to happen down to the individual frame, consistency is key.

![A picture of an SNES console](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd99a4d8e-1643-49cf-a348-d828e5e55d75_1200x850.jpeg)*Image credit: JCD1981NL via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)*

As reported by [ArsTechnica](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/03/this-small-snes-timing-issue-is-causing-big-speedrun-problems/), [404media](https://www.404media.co/super-nintendo-hardware-is-running-faster-as-it-ages/), and [IGN](https://www.ign.com/articles/speedrunners-left-scratching-their-heads-after-new-discovery-suggests-the-snes-works-faster-as-it-ages), Allan Cecil, better known as **[dwangoAC](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkij8hgkomFCsXGAFtv1sgg)**, keeper of TASBot, has recently launched a large-scale investigation into the underlying issues. On [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/tas.bot/post/3lj47u3fga22n), he asked community members with an SNES and a flash cart to run a software test on their console and report the outcome.

More than 100 people responded, and the results were consistent. One specific frequency measurement seems higher on average than it was more than 20 years ago, implying that this part of the console may be becoming faster as it ages.

### Technical Details

The aforementioned articles do a much better job at explaining the technical details, so I’ll keep this short. The SNES uses an audio processing unit (APU) with a digital signal processing rate of 32,000 Hz, at least according to the documentation. This sample rate is set by a ceramic resonator, and these types of resonators are known to be affected by external factors like heat.

Emulator developers had already noticed a trend toward a faster sample rate in the 2000s. In order to compensate and to make the emulator work for all games, the emulated sample rate is set slightly higher than the documented one, at 32,040 Hz.

dwangoAC’s collected test results from the community suggest that it might now be even higher with an average of 32,076 Hz, while heat fluctuations had a much more minor impact than expected.

In practice, a faster sample rate means that audio data is being delivered slightly faster. This often happens during room transitions or between levels. During regular gameplay the game still runs identically, but loading times will be sped up ever so slightly, not noticeable to a human.

### Real-Time Speedrunning

We all want to know: what does this mean for real-time speedrunning on SNES hardware? Well… it’s complicated. The consensus so far seems to be that the difference in loading times between consoles is not big enough to impact RTA speedrunning, and that even on longer runs we’re far away from deviating by even a single second. Secondly, the true impact also depends a lot on the individual game, the audio driver and the interactions between them.

There are however plenty of games played at a very high level on real SNES consoles that measure their leaderboard times down to the millisecond. Hypothetically, if two runners in a longer run like Super Metroid (Any%) or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (No Major Glitches) finish less than a second apart, could the difference in sample rates be enough to matter? I can’t say.

Ultimately, there is not enough reliable historical data to confirm the trend that the speed of the SNES consoles has increased with time. The only other sources are Nintendo’s documentation and single measurements on a smaller scale. It might very well be that the speed is consistent over time, but varies more widely than expected between consoles. It’s an important reminder that perfect consistency is difficult to achieve.

### Further Reading

Besides the already mentioned articles by [ArsTechnica](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/03/this-small-snes-timing-issue-is-causing-big-speedrun-problems/) and [404media](https://www.404media.co/super-nintendo-hardware-is-running-faster-as-it-ages/), I recommend the much more technical [blog post by undisbeliever](https://undisbeliever.net/blog/20250313-smpspeed.html#what-does-this-mean-for-speedrunners).

You’ll find the data from the community’s test results on [Grist](https://docs.getgrist.com/fpwWkqDcnxXR/SNES-SMP-speed) and can stay up to date with the most recent developments or join the discussion on the [TASBot Discord](https://docs.getgrist.com/fpwWkqDcnxXR/SNES-SMP-speed).

![](https://www.speedrun.com/static/blob/rz251jdz.png)

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The Gold Split is a free weekly newsletter focused on speedrunning. This week's main story is all about consoles that might appear to become faster with increasing age.

Consoles Can Go Faster, Too? - The Gold Split - Week #36

crumpet is crying in the corner right now, gg

this is such a braindead decision by twitch, i hope saving on server costs is worth 50% of speedrunners moving to youtube 

first . . . bepis (please don't make a chain and DO NOT make it difficult for mods with this comment section XD)

You serve a very good point. The last run that was verified by mods was 4 days ago.