I was unaware until today that our fellow moderator and Superman NES speedrunner StTommyBoy passed away in April 2020. Although I did not know him personally, do not know how he passed, or anything else, I did indeed research this game by watching his (among others') runs, and he seemed like a really great person.

His spot as moderator will remain indefinitely, as a memorial.

Rest in peace.

A few years ago, I ripped my SAV file from my G&W gallery cartridge for a friend so he could play it. I forgot I had done this.

I'd like folks to be able to play it without grinding. This SAV should unlock all the games on an Everdrive or on a GBA emulator. I cannot test this sadly atm, so if someone wishes to, it's now available for download in the resources tab.

EDIT: IIRC it IS possible to flash your GBA cart with a SAV file but I cannot say how, I used a modded DS to rip the SAV file back in 2019 or so.

Since the 3DO, PC, and Web versions all have different dialogue for the different choices, please ask if you have any questions. If necessary, I can change the timing instructions for categories and/or make a guide for those that are confused. Thank you!

I'm using it for a public service announcement.

Don't play this game. It's bad.

Hello! I was granted moderator status recently, and upon being granted access, I noticed a lot of the runs were inconsistently timed. I wanted to make the timing consistent, as there were no clear rules in the board rules on timing, and at least 3 of the 5 existing runs were all verified with different timings.

I went ahead and retimed every run to fit these guidelines: US TIMING: Time starts when you press "START" on the title screen, as this begins your run. JP TIMING: Time starts after you select your blood type, and on your final menu button press (meaning that after you press that button, if you didn't touch the controller, the game would still start, if that makes sense).

The two are roughly the same timing.

Time stops on the very last hit on Zod; when he begins exploding, your run is completed.

If there's any feedback I'm all ears. This way, the board will have accurate timing for the future across all versions of the game. Thank you.

Hello! I just learned Any% with the manip, and I plan on attempting it tonight on stream. However, I quickly realized as I tried this on hardware that my capture card won't sync back up until a few seconds into each run. Is this acceptable? My Atari 2600 outputs RGB; I tried 3 different capture cards as well as 2 upscalers (Framemeister and OSSC) and there's always about a second minimum between my power on and the picture coming back, which usually shows ET coming down (I haven't gained control yet).

Hello! I'm preparing to run this game. In my research, I've noticed that the Saturn version has different load screens and times. Since the game is unable to compete with the PS1 version directly in that regard, do you think the board should be split?

(Edit: by "load screens" I mean not only the obvious ones... PS1 has an animated crow, Saturn does not and takes longer... but also on screen transitions between areas, a lot of the time the Saturn version hangs and loads mid-level.)

I have the Limited Run Games NES cartridge of this game. Is it legal for speedruns?

Hello! I will be speed running this in the near future. I was hoping there might be some people out there that know how to get this running on Modern windows machines. Are there any tips to making it run correctly?

Just my 2 cents, but it seems like having the actual super scope would actually be a disadvantage. Since that's how the game was intended to be played however, I am curious as to why there's only one category. I understand things are different and harder today with aging hardware and CRTs going extinct etc. But still, just curious is all :) thank you!

Hello! Again, just want to thank the mod team for their hard work in accommodating the community and allowing for the current any% category to flourish. The competition is insane and awesome!

Would anyone be interested in a 50 lines any% as a separate board? I think it's becoming evident that 25 Lines has allowed for more parity in the community, and 50 lines would open that up even more! In addition, since the RNG of Tetris is manipulatable, it makes it MUCH harder to memorize 50 lines worth of moves compared to 25, making the ceiling much higher and potentially more competitive.

These are just thoughts. The only downside is that, without dipswitches, some runners might have trouble getting to 50 lines before the time limit expires, so this would be a very difficult board to qualify for. But this isn't too foreign a concept, a lot of NES boards have tough categories to post runs to.

Is there a separate board for this, or would it fall under the NTSC-U board?

There is an existing leaderboard I'd like to link here for anyone that is curious. Rezovayix has been curating this leaderboard for a little over what, 2 years now? This leaderboard is seperate from the RTA boards, and as of now there's no plans to move it here (that might change eventually)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fF2bndrjO3ONyxjOCsHYji0HwoDGswaRTbDah42Fikw/edit#gid=0

It was brought to my attention that emulator runs might be different in this speedrun than console in some ways. I have no way to test this theory, and I cannot say for sure, but I wanted to ask everyone here. Is there anyone that will vouch for (or vote against) doing this?

This is an attempt at being transparent and open for the community to decide. I won't split the board if there's any opposition, unless there can be proof of a difference.

Hey all! What, in your opinions, are the best options to play this game today?

Will the original game work on a modern machine? Can it be emulated? Is there an alternative way to play it at all?

Thank you for your time :D I'll be learning this game eventually!

Anyone else been able to figure it out? I was close to being able to skip the boss on the bridge just before the dragon in the final Middle Ages stage. Did it 3 times in practice, never in a run.

Is there a board (or option) for this? Myself and a few other runners just did a run on a real machine here at SGDQ :)

I am interested in an 8-triforces run across all games in an RTA, where time stops the moment you enter Ganon's chamber (like how NES Zelda's swordless run ends entering Ganon's chamber). If I were to run this as a proof-of-concept, could we get a category made?

A few of us in the NES Z1 community are planning an 8-triforces race April 1st, so it would be neat to see :D

The rule's wording in the category's rules was incorrectly stated, and that was an error on my part. Unless there's any major reasons why I should reconsider, effective immediately, the wording "you only have three lives!" has been replaced with "you cannot game over or it doesn't count!"

(At 50,000 points, you receive an extra life. This is an intended mechanic of the game).

gsampson35 showcased that it's possible to get 50,000 points in this game and did so quickly. if there's interest in another category we can add another category :) just let me know!