If you need help locating a copy of the game, have some questions about the run, or just need to contact me at all, just @ me in the game's Discord Server.

Direct messages are fine too, I check at least once every day, but you'll probably get a faster response in the Discord.

Although the game isn't too hard to figure your way through without knowledge of Japanese (I don't know it) some things can be unclear. I'll have a guide up sometime here eventually, but I've got other runs and stuff I'm working on. You can always open a thread or ask your question here as well.

Have fun!

As a general answer, real time and in-game time are measured by different means, very often creating differences. The short answer is that in-game time is measured by the game itself, and can often be somewhat inaccurate.

Real time is measured with an external timer and specifically framecounted to get an accurate read of how long it takes a player from starting input to win condition. This is usually the standard for most speedruns these days.

In-game time is measured by the game itself, and in general can often have some inconsistencies such as removing load times, not counting time in menus, not counting time lost from deaths, being subject to lag, and even just counting at a rate slower or faster than actual time in some games. Some games are still measured by this standard, particularly racing games which tend to be rather accurate, and it originally was the standard for all games.

Oh, yeah, that one! The one with the guy who does the thing and then, that was a good one.

Say didn't also that one person also doing that one thing happen in this one? There was, y'know, that famous person who did the role, you know, that one that like everyone likes. That sure was something.

It might not be my favorite game, but it's still a great one because that part where they say the thing but then

5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel... but modified to also be simultaneously Multidimensional Minesweeper.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to send my bishop back in time, across three universes in order to escape to a better region of the minefield as well as stop that incoming check on board 14.

(The serious answer is that it's rather hard for me to choose a single specific one out of the many I could say!)

Saw GDQ a long time back, discovered speedrunning from it. Speedrunning turned out to be rather fun, so I just kept doing it. For me, it's kinda like solving a puzzle in a way, and some part of me really likes the challenge it puts forth. I suppose I can summarize this better:

haha, game go zoom

(That's how the cool kids do it these days, right?)

It's mostly been a lot of setting up a leaderboard and working on creating a nifty theme, a process that has taken most of my day. And it's not entirely done yet.

But I only just got this role today, so my experience may be ever so slightly, just possibly, in a strange sort of way, skewed from the other responses in this thread.

I'll let you know in a year, I guess.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I do it for a good number of the reasons already listed here.

Sometimes I do runs when I'm creatively blocked on other projects. That way, it's kinda procrastination, and kinda not, and doing some routing can often get me back to working again.

That, and few things do beat that feeling you get when you really start mastering the mechanics of a game.

When it comes to region modding between US SNES and SFC, apparently you can also swap the cases of two carts rather than actually modifying the console itself. The cart and board won't match anymore, but if that doesn't bother you, it's all good. You need a specialized line bit screwdriver to do so, but that's about it. Haven't tried doing it myself though.

Just, y'know, don't forget which board is in which.

I'm not in Europe, and I'm no expert on the SNES but I do know a few things that might be of help. Any SNES experts out there can feel free to correct any of this.

Functionally, a US SNES and the Super Famicom work the same overall, and the only thing region-locking their games from each other is simply the cart's casing- you can really pick whichever is more accessible to you. For whatever reason you'd want to run PAL games on said non-PAL console, they're locked with a special chip that can be disabled on older games, but later ones sometimes are resistant to doing that. I can't give any specifics on how that goes on. (As a side note, some games did receive changes to their physics to account for porting to PAL, so it's not impossible that running PAL at some point could prove to be advantageous depending on the game.)

The SNES 101/SFC 101 exist as smaller form-factor redesigns, but they don't have native support for S-Video or RGB, which ain't great.

Speaking of the video output, it seems that if you're playing on a CRT there can be some oddities with the refresh rate differences and color encoding if it's not 60hz.

In general, while it's not specifically targeted at SNES, this guide for SM64 covers a good bit of information for older consoles: https://www.speedrun.com/sm64/guide/u54mn

I've been planning for trying to run some SNES and N64 games soon myself, so I'll be watching this thread to see what kind of information pops up.

As the title says!

It doesn't even have to be a game you've done a full run for. Maybe it's a run you find interesting, but you don't think others find it interesting.

...Or it can even be simply a run that's actually very fun, but it's just not as fun as the others you've done.

As for mine: I'd once practiced a bit of Pokemon Battle Revolution, and well, it definitely wasn't a game for me. I might still do it one day, but I'm more likely to take up a different game from the series than that one.

There's also that run of getting married in Rune Factory 1 I did recently, which is a lot of nothing across nearly 2 in-game years. I liked doing it, but I can't imagine most folks would see much in it. Heck, even if I did like it, it's not a run I'm likely to do on a regular basis.

Long, long back before I ever did anything here, I originally did many, many runs of Sword Master on the NES, but eventually dropped it for the sake of my hands.

In the more recent past, the closest I have for a main speedgame would have to be Rune Factory 1- I've spent more hours with that game than most people likely ever will at this point. While I still do stuff for it on occasion, the hand strain running of running it on hardware prompted me to start branching out as I have been doing of late.

I'm mostly aiming to bring life to games with smaller communities or neglected categories these days. That just so happens to come with the advantage of being able to use controllers that are much better on my hands.

Outside of the most recent two games I've picked up, I've lately had my eyes on the River City series and an unrelated obscure title I'm hoping to bring to the site soon. Yet, I'm always on the search, and that list is bound to grow. In fact, there's been one other run that's definitely been on my mind a lot of late, but learning it, let alone running it would prove quite a challenge...

It's shorthand for World Record.

Keeps video titles a little shorter, I guess.

I suppose to answer the question as briefly as possible, I could just say GDQ and that's that, but at least a little more went on behind the scenes I reckon. It's still pretty much how I discovered the existence of speedrunning though, on a lazy afternoon looking up glitch videos and eventually finding a speedrun of, oddly enough for me, Oblivion. I don't think it was even a GDQ run or anything, but I inevitably found it not too long after and it kinda just became a staple of what I watched over the years.

Speedrunning originally did hook me because of glitches and such, and the high skill performances kept watching, but oddly, the routing is what eventually got me doing it myself.

I've always liked when I can find "puzzles" that have many factors and where there's a defined end goal, but the means to reach this end isn't so clearly defined. Chess, tactical RPGs, optimizing daily routines in Harvest Moon games, randomizer runs, those kinds of things. Eventually, I realized the routing aspect of speedruns was this same kind of "puzzle" that I liked with the end goal just being beating the game as fast as possible and you needing to figure out how to do just that. Realizing this finally pushed me to start trying it myself to see if I could have some fun with games I'd already kind of exhausted.

Rune Factory 1 just happened to be one of those games, and I just happened to pick it up just in time to both contribute to the runs as well as see the time for it be utterly demolished over the two years.

(I'd originally tried to get into speedrunning with Sword Master, a NES favorite of mine, but never could get a particularly competitive time due to both skill and simply how physically exhausting it was to run. Changing course to runs where routing played a major role instead of being wholly skill and execution has really suited me far better.)

Well, WR, I held you for a month and a half, which was a new record in and of itself. Can't be too bummed though, because this is pretty rad.

I always joked to myself that the time wouldn't get any lower until we got a credits warp, and well, this is pretty much that. @suittyo, holy heck, you legend, I'd never thought I'd actually see it. I might as well play around with it on my own side to at least document it for the guide, but I already told myself I wasn't running Any% again and I'll stick to that.

Just figures it's the cooking glitch again, though. This thing's single-handedly sliced most of the time off this game at this point. Unfortunately for me, I never did like having to use the stylus or do the odd finger acrobatics for it, and well, this is now a lot of that.

I'll get around to that Marriage% run, having fully determined that every route but Felicity's is painfully sleepy, but I've no idea if my thumb will tolerate the ODS d-pad enough for finishing routing on All Bosses/Glitchless- at the very least, I'll put up my notes on them.

(Been looking into things I can run with analog sticks or a Switch Pro, since those are nicer on my hands by a mile.)

Still looking forward to seeing how much more nonsense the cooking glitch can create.

Back again with some routing scouting stuff I've discovered, haven't been on actually running much recently as my hands haven't been in the best of shape. I find the DS pad rather rough on my hands, and I really ought to find something else that I can run with an analog stick.

• The rune door in Kasimir Cave only requires one 3x3 patch of vegetables grown to open. Presumably, the one in Danaan is the same way.

• For All Bosses and Glitchless, you want to complete the caves up to Misty Bloom as fast as possible as dealing with the wild field growth is incredibly slow otherwise. It's best to minimize it.

• For Misty Bloom, it's a bit of luck whether or not you can till all 100 tiles inside without an axe. It's not that slow to have to go back for upgrading one after the boss if you do happen to be unlucky, but in theory you can do it before too many stumps spawn.

• A powerful, viable weapon for Glitchless is in fact the watering can. When upgraded to Lion Waterpot (silver level) and at full charge, it easily does 100 - 250 damage to enemies based on their defenses and your level. It can also stunlock well, if needed.

• I still cannot say what the exact requirement for Mist is, but goodness is tilling that field immensely slow. Occasionally I've noted a visual bug that appears to till and water the entire field, but it is purely visual and doesn't seem to count.

Phew, okay, All Bosses is still quite the tricky run so far. Clearing the bosses up to Misty Bloom as early as possible definitely seems to be the better plan thus far, because the field clearing otherwise is a major slowdown. Have to spend a little more time healing, but the level cannon really maintains you for quite a while in this run.

Still gotta test some things between Marriage% and All Bosses, but we'll see where it takes me. As a fix to a previous note, the thing I thought that was a mystery potion is not. It's a... Vitalizer, I think? Regardless, it restores like 80 RP so it makes progression rather smooth.

Oh, and another thing I've found is that at least for Toros, leaving the cave and re-entering respawns all the minable rocks. Sure wish I'd known that when playing the first time.

The guides...

...have been updated.

An outline of what I did for Any%, a compiling of the two long outdated guides, and a brand new one covering everything about glitches and tricks and all those sorts of things.

Marriage% testing has gone well, and I think I've gotten a nice baseline of information regarding everything around to start it on. Some of the runs would likely be of just an unbearable length, but hey, Felicity's run's pretty snappy all things considered. Mist's is... well, less so and is kind of the second fastest. I've still yet to actually determine her requirement on game completion. I'll be cleaning it up and I'll have it up when I do finally get a better full run of it done. I want the one with my new routing to be the one I actually send up.

I've done some work for All Bosses and Glitchless on my side as well, mostly in the terms of Glitchless. I think I can bring some interesting routing to mix up that 6 year old category. The only problem is actually executing it all... I'm not that rusty at it, but playing the game underleveled and after all the reckless invuln glitching in Any%, it's going to be something else. Here's to hoping I don't muscle memory into trying to heal during Grimoire's thunderstrikes instead of the other way around.

Still, I'll be looking into the other games a bit soon. I have to wonder how my old RF2 route stands up to the new one, as well as seeing what I might be able to do for Frontier and Tides. 5 hour runs really aren't my specialty or preference, but they do open a lot of room for routing, and well, that's what I love doing.

(And after all, It'd be just great to drum up more interest in running these games!)

Hey, back with an update on progress again. I've been doing some scouting runs and such for Marriage% categories and been making good progress on figuring out the specifics of certain mechanics.

The theory still remains that Felicity is the fastest category, with Mist being the possible second (though I've still yet to completely nail down what her requirements are.) I'll hopefully have a run to put up sometime here soon, but each run takes a while and I want to make sure I've nailed the main details for everything.

I do want to get around to routing All Bosses and especially Glitchless sometime though. I'd love to be able to play on my US copy again.

Sometime here soon I'll have a full guide up of all the glitches and tricks we know about. I've got a rather comprehensive guide for Marriage% in the works as well as some routing stuff for the other run categories in general.

I've also fully documented everything I can about the Cooking Glitch thus far, and well, while it produces interesting results, only one result can be considered potentially useful, a very high level Mystery Potion (600 HP heal).

Alright, got a scouting run of Marriage% done in 1 hour, 48 minutes on the dot. There's definitely a good bit of room there for improvement because I did spend a bit of time doing extra stuff or being generally inefficient. I kind of want to do a cleaner run of it first, but it's also quite the lengthy run with more than a few potentially run-ending mistakes.

Out of the available routes, I tested it with Felicity given she's the only one whose favorite gift is easily gotten with Cooking Glitch. The fact her sidequest requires both a rainy non-holiday (as well as needing it to happen before a specific time in the run), and a non-rainy holiday (for the proposal) makes it a bit bothersome to line everything up. But, even given that, she's probably the fastest thanks to requiring no dungeons, we have the better gifts, and no other requirements than her questline.

The only thing is, I have to wonder if we're going to have a category for each bachelorette like RF3 or if we just keep it at just Marriage%. While in RF3 the marriage is required for completing the game by default and can have notable effects on the routing, here it's not and, well, arguably most of the runs wouldn't be that different.

Every run's going to spend until Summer 26th in the second year trying to make up that lumber cost for the house, and mostly consists of focusing on festival days for the most efficient amount of FP/LP gain possible.

Each of the routes do have some unique parts, though. Rosetta and Tabatha require at least Carmite Cave to be completed, Lara requires Toros (and less pass-out strats), Sharron requires Mt. Gigant, Lynette requires an Any% run done beforehand (the 8 FP across everyone isn't nearly as hard as you'd think).

(Melody and Bianca in theory just take a really long time, while Mei really isn't possible unless you've got two trade capable consoles. I've not tested if the trade is region-locked, but I imagine it is. I'm still entirely unsure of Mist's specific requirements, but her run also requires you to get at least a level 2 axe and a level 3 hammer, I believe.)

I guess it's all a matter of how we want to organize things and whether or not others will go in for the other routes.

Anyways, this does give me the opportunity to test the full extent of Cooking Glitch now so I'll be getting that done and readying a full glitch guide here soon.

Oh, and here's a fun thing I forgot to mention in the last post: you can use Teleport to escape your house during windstorms/snowstorms. Alas, nothing particularly interesting happens as far as I've explored. All NPCs are missing regardless of time of day. I never checked the caves, but I doubt it's the same for them given that the sleeping bag is a thing.

Although... what would happen if you slept in a cave and it storms the next day? You wouldn't be able to leave in theory, but you also couldn't sleep if you'd already used all your charges. Does the game prevent windstorms if you sleep inside a cave?

I'll have to check it out on one of my scouting runs.

I should probably make a new thread for some of this stuff, but I wanted to give a quick run-through of the various stuff I've found in the meantime.

• The Cooking Glitch is actually really simple compared to what I used to think was involved. You've only got to hit A once while in just the general vicinity of the crafting bar. The sashimi will be there regardless.

• I've gotten extended versions of the Cooking Glitch to work on hardware. This is mostly in part to me forgetting a specific factor in the situation that wasn't immediately obvious, but yeah. I've so far documented about half of what it can do, and will get around to the rest later.

• Marriage% is most definitely possible now, though I'm still fully reworking the details. Whether or not we want a category for each bachelorette is something we'll have to consider though. The current devised routes are for Felicity, Lara, and Rosetta. I know theoretically what can be done for the others, but I've been focusing these three.

• I've no clue if Mist simply requires you to have triggered the credits, or her requirement is actually something more arbitrary like having the Greed Cave Pass.

• Everyone has a specific position on each festival, per festival. I'm working on documenting all of them soon.

• The Carmite Cave pass is required to do the Adventure Contest. I suppose that makes sense, but I'd almost figured they wouldn't have bothered. Eh, tilling 100 tiles really isn't that bad and makes passing out easier.

• Bosses defeated and story progression seem to be stored separately. Unfortunately, this means no sequence breaking the game back in time.

• Doing the Cooking Glitch backwards is a thing, but, er, it doesn't really do much so far but just reveal some oddities in the programming. I call it Reverse Cooking Glitch because I suppose that makes it sound cooler than it is for now.

• Eating food that lowers RP when it would send you under zero does underflow. It's effectively infinite, but crashes the game on triggering map transitions or opening a menu.

• The orc in the intro does so little damage to you compared to the others for a reason. Aside from it's lower HP values, the intro also gives you a defense buff.

• Using the start button once to buffer the Invincibility Glitch makes it far easier, though it is still very possible to land the exact frame without needing it.

• Occasionally when mashing inputs for eating, hitting a specific frame seems to eat the next item in the stack as well, instantly. You can do this for picking up items too, but it just duplicates the sound.

• Some villagers behave oddly based on seeing events. For instance, if you enter Carmite on a Holiday and trigger Ivan's event to give you the detector, he disappears for the rest of that day. It's odd. If you enter Leo's on a rainy day, he'll still be there after the cutscene and functions as normal.

• Based on some rough calculations, the Claymore has the highest base DPS on basic attacks of the basic weapons. In the case of it vs. Battle Axe, the Claymore will deal more damage over time and consumes less HP/RP provided the target doesn't have too high of defense. Charged Battle Axe is still supreme at destroying the shifts given their high defensive values.

• When charging a weapon, you can hear the charging noise start before the weapon itself is actually charged. That tripped me up way too much. There's still a frame or so just before the visual effect shows that the charge is fully functional at, but it's a lot safer to just wait on the visual.

• The biggest enemy to Any% is the RNG, I think. Damage variation, misses, enemies resisting topples, and Grimoire's AI.

• You can lose full seconds to mashing through dialogue.

• The R button on my DS is very worn out now.

• I will actually get out some new notes and a glitch guide sometime here soon. I really need to take a break for a day or two after that grind.