I was messing around in an TAS editor to achieve the Fastest Mario and Rad-Racer and i found some interesting things which i haven't seen being discussed. Mainly about how to ACTUALLY have a perfect Rad-Racer.

Mario: You can actually achieve 12 coins from the multi-coin block instead of 11, this is something that has been known in the SMB1 community for years but has not found it's way to NWC '90 because it is not humanly possible. It requires 11 frame perfect jumps and has 0 frames of wiggleroom for errors. But this can be done in a TAS which pushes the 50-coin TAS down to 44s150ms, two whole seconds faster than the WR:[] There is a way to achieve 12 coins from the multi coin block in a RTA setting but the setup requires you to atleast hit 4-5 frame perfect jumps in a row and it's barely even faster than the standard method, if not slower

Rad-Racer:

1. The game only pulls inputs every other frame, meaning that 1 frame inputs are quite easy, and there is an element of luck whether your inputs will be read the frame you press it or the frame after you press it. This also means that your inputs can be ignored if you press a button for only one frame.

2. the ending score in rad racer is directly correlated to how fast you ended the stage.

This is a very weird concept, the reason for this seems to be that: if you slow down more on the dirt before crashing into the tree you will reach 0 speed faster than if you were driving or accelerating at full speed into the tree.

I've messed around for many hours, messing with A releases, pressing B for breaking, and every right press input timing and have yet to find a single instance where the score doesnt correlate to the frame the "great Racing" message pops up.

(assuminga mario score of 10300) The score you normally encounter at the end of rad-racer will be 72250 to 72220. Ending the stage at 72220 will grant you the fastest segment, and each 10 points over 72220 adds an aditional frame until the "Great Racing" text pops up: here's the timetable using a framerate of 60.09881fps.

Score: 72260 --- 6653f / 60.09881 = 1m50s701ms (from holding up)

Score: 72250 --- 6652f / 60.09881 = 1m50s684ms

Score: 72240 --- 6651f / 60.09881 = 1m50s667ms* - official WR

Score: 72230 --- 6650f / 60.09881 = 1m50s651ms

Score: 72220 --- 6649f / 60.09881 = 1m50s634ms

(* thousands digit could be rounded up to 668)

i got the frame timings from seeing that frame 4832 is the first where you get control over the car and tire smoke shows(in my TAS) and frame 11481 is the fastest you can end the stage at (in my TAS). leading to 11481-4832 = 6649 frames of Rad-Racer.

This part is only applicable to Rad-Racer only speedruns.

The frame when the timer should start is a bit vaguely specified in the rules, it states that :

"Timing starts when the car begins to move and ends when the "Great Racing" on the blue score screen fully loads."

This is because there isn't one specific frame where the car "begins to move" In this post i've assumed that the start of Rad-Racer is the frame you get control of the car and tire-smoke is seen, but you can also start timing a few frames later.

it takes 2 frames to show the speed increasing from 0 km/h -> 16 km/h and 4 frames for the car to visually move a pixel after getting control of the car.

all three points can be argued as when the car "begins to move" but ultimately its not too important because of this being a small side-category.

Regardless of timing method. The times in the Rad-Racer only category can likely be beaten easily with this knowledge.

In the Original PAL cartridge, if a player holds Select while placing piece it gives the player 10,000 points which means you can get a PAL maxout in under 10 lines.

This seems like something that should be disallowed in the rules.

i estimate that 80-90% of ALL top NES Tetris players use some form of the TetrisGym Romhack instead of the main cartridge. Most of the latest top runs and almost all future top runs will be preformed on it and it would be good to have some confirmation by moderators that this romhack is permitted for use in runs.

If you're not familiar with TetrisGym then here is the rundown:

TetrisGym is a Romhack that mainly combines a few quality of life improvements but importantly does NOT change A-Type or B-Type gameplay in any way. the main changes are an elimination of cut-scenes and Score-uncap to make the time between games as smooth as possible. This in combination with some seperate training gamemodes and a "SamePieceSets" mode for online Matches means that this romhack is used by all top players who are able to use it.

So is the use of TetrisGym on A-Type permitted since no gameplay is altered and in the base form there is not a single pixel changed that could tell TetrisGym and a regular Cart apart.

It has come to my attention that RNG Manipulation is not mentioned at all by the rules, and therefore by default allowed. And I think this needs to be discussed and decided on.

For a recap of what RNG Manipulation is: In NES Tetris, the RNG is random, however that randomness is still predictable. If you start a game 500 Frames after the console is turned on, then the start RNG you get is the exact same every single time you do so. (there is a bit more to it involving the music screen but thats not important)

This isnt a big deal as the next pieces are determined by the time the current piece hits the stack. so if you had 2 games both started on frame 500 with the same rng and make any differing placements between them. Then the RNG will quickly branch into its own sequence away from whatever moves you might have made any other time, leading to two completely different games and completely different rng.

(pushind down also changes the time a piece hits the stack making the rng different to not pushing down, so 100L 0start, and 0-19 speedruns won't be affected if rng manip is allowed as there is no way to meaningfully do rng manip if the scramble the rng every single piece you push down.)

But this leads to the possibility of engineering a TAS on 19 Starts (where you never push down) for the 300k and 100 Lines Speedruns where you can be as risky as you want, even making dubious moves in order to force longbars at perfect times. You'd only be limited by your horizontal speed (tapping) which due to Rolling is starting to become less and less of an issue.

For an example of what RNG manipulation can do. Here is a video of a slow DAS player replaying his TAS in real time on a console with controller getting 1,504k points before killscreen: (). This was done when the record for the game was barely a 1,300k by one of the fastest tappers, and 1.5 has yet to be beaten by anyone, even as many people have gotten 200k and even 300k+ on killscreen.

if RNG Manipulation is allowed, then it has the ability to drastically change the top of the leaderboard category for 300k, and maybe 100L in time. It'll make the speedrun more similar to SMB1 where people are simply replaying stages trying to get the same inputs every time. But for tetris it'll be just replaying moves done by you or a friend in a tas.

Personally im mixed on if it should be allowed. most games i'm aware of allow for this sort of thing. it allows you to know enemy patterns, and in some games its impossible NOT to notice the game giving you the same rng if you play optimally. But allowing this will change the leaderboard for 300k...

I think the leaderboards need to introduce smaller increments of time to list the Tetris(NES) Runs in all categories.

Currently All tetris categories only count times to the full second. And in categories like the 300k category, this leads to many people being listed as having the same time as eachother. While in reality one of them is over half a second faster than the other.

This lead to Pixelandy Not getting listed as having the world record in the 300k Category after getting a Low 1:40. Because Joseph already had a high 1:40.

Maybe the best solution is to introduce only 1 extra digit instead of all 3 for milliseconds. but regardless, somethig needs to be done. Because I don't want to next person who beats my 300k WR time by 0.7 seconds to not get the recognition they deserve.