I'm with you @Bert86 I go into a lot of detail in Goose's original thread on why.

Still an "interesting" proposal if nothing else, best of luck.

Last post here, but going back to the topic of "Chris Murphy" and his alleged 01:02.927

Sure, crazier things have happened. It's not impossible like I said. But after more information has now come up, again seeing how these magazines clearly didn't check these submissions well enough and obviously not only the amount of cheating but the consistency of the cheating ranges wildly between players and between time periods and also even between these two magazines. I'm pretty keen to believe that's unfortunately a cheated time.

I'm not against placing a "bounty" or reward to try and find proof of that time - per se. I do however feel its a bit of a witch-hunt when witches aren't real, if you catch what I'm saying. You may sooner find a sasquatch with a 500$ bounty.

I think short of someone coming forward with full video evidence of this time anyways, it's a dead end. I'd love to see something turn up of course. But it's already not looking good. The time seems cheated. Its unlikely there was video proof even taken as pictures were allowed. Hell, how do you know its a real person or name? For all we know "Chris Murphy" is a group of multiple people cheating. For all we know the editor of the magazine is "Chris Murphy". My point is, chances are slim to none, but, best of luck nonetheless. Though I wouldn't accept anything in this case short of a full video of the run with the exact time 01:02.927 or something better. But if its not exact, even if its a better time and its legit, really at that point its just someone un-hording an ancient WR, which I'm not sure warrants or deserves anyone's money. But hey, to each their own.

Plus, if you're going to hunt "his" SB 1:02 there's a few other runs in these mags that scrape todays WR or at least benchmark times pretty close that I also would be keen on seeing video proof of. Even some a ways off WR that don't actually seem like cheated times and could very well deserve a spot on todays leaderboards.

On the other hand, the 1:02 is one of the most questionable but not too questionable records we find in all of this. For that reason it may be the best choice if one run IS to be hunted down, at least.

When I have some time one day I'll do some more digging as I really find these old magazines interesting regardless, but that's my update for now. Happy reading.

Cheers

After reviewing all of this, thinking on it a while, having a short chat with Shibbypod on the topic and having these even more hard-to-believe times come to light now.. I have to go ahead and say my opinion on the matter is simply that the majority of times we see in these magazines that overtake current WR's are not legitimate runs and were probably cheated using a device such as the Gameshark or Action replay. Major reasons that lead me personally to believe this:

1. Gamesharks/AR's + codes were readily available at the time
2. Both magazines/offices accepted only a mere photo as proof plus seemingly didn't have any "qualified" or knowledgeable enough bodies reviewing submissions
3. Inconsistency in unobtainable level times by todays benchmarks vs. obtainable ones by the same players
4. The scale of the gap of some of these proposed times vs. todays benchmarks
5. Combined suspicions' of today's top players that have pushed the game to its known limits

I still find this whole documented history of times extremely interesting and I'd love to have more information surface on these times, I just have an extremely hard time playing devil's advocate here and trying to picture the world where these times were obtained through a legitimate means.

Something very sad about these 5-6 players blatantly cheating is that it (to me) quickly takes away any credibility from the times that may have actually been legitimate. If you look through the times you notice a patern of the same people submitting quite absurd times vs the same people that submit very plausible ones. I think it's important to keep in mind that many of the slower runs from said legit looking players were more likely to also be legit. We see a few decent Sunny Beach times and a 1'12"xxx Drake Lake that has a good chance of being legit if its NTSC, but really who knows. I think I've seen enough crazy times posted to say that there's little to no chance any of these runs have any backing to them as they weren't proof-checked well enough and sadly probably never had the opportunity to be.

It would be interesting to see if any of these names can be cross-referenced to other media, other games, other times or scores elsewhere. Also my knowledge and interests don't extend much out of WR64, but I've already seen some "impossible" MK64 and DKR times and laps such as @Showsni mentioned above. I'm sure there are a ton of interesting fake and maybe real times buried in these magazines.

Another little interesting bit of information. In the first link in this last post (volume 42), check out the scores for the N64 game "WWF Warzone". Interesting that they made a printing error here and double printed the game... but if you take a look at the two players who submitted scores, you may see a familiar name. It's none other than speedgame legend/Billy Mitchell slayer: Karl Jobst.

(Here) https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-42/page/n67/mode/2up

Now maybe someone that knows him can shine some light on this, direct him here for comment, or maybe this is already known information. But I'm assuming its the same "Karl Jobst" GE runner from the Elite community/youtuber? Has to be, yeah? Even says Aussie. If it is, that's really quite amazing, cool stuff to find so many years later. I notice his name pops up in multiple volumes for WWF Warzone.

@karljobst

Something else quickly worth mentioning; while I was scanning I quickly caught this in volume 8 of this mag

https://archive.org/details/64_Magazine_Issue_08_1997_Paragon_Publishing_GB/page/76/mode/2up

Notice the AR codes red bubble, at the bottom you can find the WR64 "super speed" code and its correct hex speed variable range from 00 to FF. Along with another useful code for cheating; "Misses don't count"

Keep in mind this was released for the PAL version, but still in 1997 nonetheless this code was seemingly common knowledge. You would have to assume likewise for the NTSC version of the game and code.

So lets get to this article; volume #42, as it's really the meat and potatoes here. Once again I didn't fully comb these mags, but as far as I could tell from quickly checking past this one, its one of the last editions that has WR64 scores posted. They also drop WR64 before this article somewhere along the way, and it returns again in the 30's or 40's # volumes

https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-42/page/n67/mode/2up

This one is interesting for many reasons, so lets break it down. By this point, the year 2000, we see all five of the Sunny Beach times are times deemed "impossible" by benchmarks we have set today.

I think it's quite safe to say these are cheated times. Not only have Sunny Beach and Drake Lake been really pushed quite hard to their limits by today's current players and have little to NO time for improvement today (we're talking singular frames on Drake Lake). But take David Ryans 0'57"965 Drake Lake for instance; its claiming a 10+ second advantage on the current DL WR. It's just completely out of reach without some kind of new tech we don't know about, or cheats. Unfortunately, cheats being the much much more likely case due to the clear case of both these magazines openly accepting picture evidence which clearly was not enough.

If we live in the world where these times ARE cheated, it's still quite an interesting phenomenon we have going on here. Not only was this then turned into some kind of weird "cheating contest", but not a very logical one at that, for multiple reasons. The first being that.. with cheats you can achieve much much faster times (on NTSC anyway). Shibby has showed me some example footage of him getting 20'xxx sec times and 30'xxx second times on Sunny B. and to my understanding is isnt that challenging. So they could have in theory submitted even faster cheated runs, especially for Sunny Beach's case.

That's an odd concept in and of itself, but then you notice we still have levels where none of the times really seem farfetched at all, or even very impressive by todays standards. Clearly this David Ryan and Adam Tucker (sound like made up names to me no?) were having a little "cheat-off" and David took things a little too far, but apparently not far enough to get caught. So did they only cheat enough to get what they thought would achieve the top time? Were some of these runs legit? Will we ever truly know? Does it even really matter?

It just strikes me as odd, that he has a plausible time on Twlight C. with 1:28:483, but he submits a 55 sec sunny beach? Not to mention the TC time is probably cheated as it gaps all the other times posted by quite a bit, even the other cheaters. If the run was done on PAL sure, its cheated a few seconds ahead of current WR, but does that then mean all the runs were cheated on PAL? Was the 55 SB the limits of cheating PAL Sunny Beach? Maybe these guys are really having some type of "cheat-off" here and what we're seeing are these guys best PAL times with codes turned on.

The last volume I could find WR64 in is #46, then its dropped never to return to "ScoreZone". The wave race times do not change from volume 42 to 46 whatsoever. After the game is removed the magazine continues to run until 2001 and volume/issue #54 (I can only find up to 52)

https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-46/page/n69/mode/2up

.I don't know when all of the 4 other cheaters show up that post those sub 1 minute Sunny Beach times, but they appear at some point between here in volume #27 and volume #42 which is the first link in the post

https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-27/page/n73/mode/2up

Once again if someone wants to fully scan through all of these magazines scores, I'm sure you'll find more interesting information.

Again I should state I have next to no knowledge of PAL benchmark times and almost no experience playing PAL so I'm mainly speaking on the NTSC times we see in these magazines. It doesn't specify in the "64 Mag" what region the runs are even from, if they're PAL runs they would have even more reason to believe to be cheated or faked. Nevertheless I think it goes without saying that at this point we can assume all of the times past and even some near WR are almost guaranteed to be unfortunately cheated/faked/gameshark times.

Well, I've spent some time the other day combing over more of this series of the N64 UK magazine Goose first posted. It's a bit confusing, as the magazine seem to undergo multiple name changes, but they also edit their format frequently in regards to the high scores/best times sections. Not only that but Wave Race 64 is added and dropped in that section numerous times in all mags.

Cut to the chase, my prior post about the timeline of the mag is correct to that point, but the magazine continues later after a name change. You can read about that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_Magazine

I have not checked past release #22 in my last posts/where the name changes to NGC to see if any WR64 records pop up later on, but IIRC they drop it from the high score section.

So I did some googling with keywords on the name "Adam Tucker" from WR64 leaderboards on the earlier Editions of the magazine. This name sounds familiar to me, I've seen it somewhere before I just can't put my finger on where. That led me to this:

"64 Magazine" which appears to be a different magazine, also from the UK and it also ran during the same era 1996-2001 and collected high scores. It seems Adam Tucker posted times in multiple games in both of these magazines. Cheated or not though - is still to be seen.

Let me go through and just link things I found interesting in relation to everything discussed in this thread, keep in mind I spent a few hours scanning.. but I'm sure a missed a lot and I'm sure there's lots more to be found in both Gooses UK mag and this UK one. Perhaps even the later NGC has N64 scores posted at some point, I'm not sure.

First off this is issue #9 of 64 Magazine and the page where they talk about adding "ScoreZone" the high score section. Check out the blurb. They talk about mugshots of the top players. This becomes interesting based of the scores they've posted in the later issues as you'll see. Heres the interesting part quoted: "Remember, the person whose videogaming prowess has most impressed us each month will win themselves the award of Ultimate Player and a Trident Pad and memory card from Logic 3 - and if you include a passport photo of yourself, you may even get to see your gurning mug in the pages of the world’s best N64 magazine! Yes, that is us, smart-arse..." I didn't come across any mugshots yet but it's interesting https://archive.org/details/64_Magazine_Issue_09_1998_Paragon_Publishing_GB/page/13/mode/2up

Issue #10 has scores for WR64 but its the same as 11 with less scores on the list, so you could say this is sort of the first/second time you see WR64 scores in this mag https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-11/page/n61/mode/2up

Issue #11 I noticed Mark B posted this first time of any relevance to todays benchmark times, he also submits Sunset Bay and Drake Lake

1:05.765 Mark Bonnes, East Kilbride Sunny Beach https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-12/page/n63/mode/2up

This is issue #20 (I don't have time to comb every issue so I skipped through volumes) Here we can see the first example of someone who is most likely cheating; Alan Dundas https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-20/page/n73/mode/2up

1:00:782 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Sunny B. -impossible

1:03:925 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Sunset B. -impossible

1:09:305 Alan Dundas. Arbroath Drake L. -impossible

1:29:522 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Glacier C. -not impossible

1:25:361 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Southern I. -not impossible and not even first place?

This definitely raises some questions without doubt. Not in regards to whether or not the times are cheated as I definitely believe the first three levels are without doubt fake. I'll write a bit more about why later. I just wonder what the motive was to cheat three levels but then submit two clearly subpar times. They are quite poor times even without cheats. Notice to the left of the scores they clearly mention yet again the use of picture OR video as allowable proof for submission, same as N64 Magazine.

The only thing I can think that's happening here is Alan chose to cheat on PAL, and managed to cheat some times much further than others? There's no info in this magazine as to what version was used so its anybody's guess

Needless to say; after spending more time reading the scans of this mag there's a ton of interesting records for various N64 games. I'm curious to know how combed-over it is for other games, even WR64 has 11 or so articles of these same level categories documented from article 6 to 22 of this magazine, though 22 being the newest would be assumed to have the last ever posted and fastest most recent times sent in to them.

I'm sure there's some other interesting info to be found in here, maybe not only about Waverace 64 but perhaps other titles. Anywho, everyone that has read through, do post your thoughts on all of this and I'll be sure to check back. Hope some PAL runners can put their two cents in, I'm quite curious myself. Again I apologize for the full novel sized posts.

Cheers

-3-

The times in article #6 are pretty believable and reasonable for the most part other than "Mr. Mills" blowing the current WR away by a full second with that 1'15

But the article 20 Sunny Beach PAL list is pretty insane, those times are on another level...

So what's going on here?

Gameshark codes turned on such as "always max power" that let you take shortcuts? Maybe super speed GC code or numerous other ones. What are the chances they all used codes and submitted these times with the fact going unnoticed in mere pictures that were mailed in to the magazines' office? Maybe they started using the codes along the way, no one posted times cheating in article 6 but by article 20 maybe they had realized the magazine was none the wiser to gameshark codes?

I feel like after spending an hour or two combing through this magazine for the first time today, these people at this magazine cared enough to at least look through mail that was sent in to them and discern certain "acceptable" entries from ones that were considered not to be. Now how thorough or meticulous their screening process and their ability to catch cheaters was back then at that time, is and was really anyone's guess. But that being said; what's the deal here with these PAL Sunny Beach times and of course the one NTSC SB outlier from ol' Christopher?

Regardless it's all pretty interesting stuff

I noticed multiple times in the mag, it states: "Entries must be accompanied by photographic OR videotaped evidence. So there you go, these runs probably could have been submitted by picture ONLY and cheated with codes or other methods. They claim that unconfirmed means no picture/video. Me own mum could post it in mate.

Here's the scores page for edition #21 one editions scores after the picture goose posted

https://archive.org/details/n64magazineukcollection/N64%20Magazine%2021%20-%20november%201998%20%28UK%29%20%28Max-Rez%20version%29/page/n107/mode/2up

Heres the same as above but article #22 (here we see a 1'04"941 PAL Sunny Beach???)

https://archive.org/details/n64magazineukcollection/N64%20Magazine%2022%20-%20december%201998%20%28UK%29%20%28Max-Rez%20version%29/page/n113/mode/2up

**Side note: check out these beta version screenshots of OoT on page 30 of edition #6 I found while browsing

https://archive.org/details/n64magazineukcollection/N64%20Magazine%206%20-%20september%201997%20%28UK%29%20%28Max-Rez%20version%29/page/n29/mode/2up

-2-

A few other things I noticed.. I think Shibby and perhaps some PAL players should chime in on this to get a really solid perspective, as I've barely ever touched the PAL version

To speak on "Chris Murphy's" 1'02"694 - that time is absurdly fast and I think Shibby would agree, even so much to the point where I automatically said to myself when I saw it: "no shot". I'm not sure if that time has been debunked or not, but it's a very unlikely time for anyone to achieve even (legitimately) today. It's been 6 or 7 years since I put any effort into the level but I've seen Shibby push it over the years and I do have my share of hours dumped into Sunny Beach. Enough to understand that time gap is colossal to put it lightly. Like I say, if it's been proven a lie, then a lie it is. But it IS arguably a plausible time to achieve.

It isn't fair to say its out of the realm of possibilities, especially if this CHRIS fellow knew of something we don't today such as some boundary clip or jump, who knows. It does happen relatively frequently in other games, some glitch or tech gets overlooked for the entire lifespan of the game. But it's EXTREMELY unlikely to say the least. It's more likely the guy turned on the super speed gameshark code and hid it well and submitted it to these guys' mag and was assumed to be legit.

Just looking over these other records from the two articles 6 and 20, I think the most interesting thing for me maybe more so than anything else is these PAL records on Sunny Beach, as they're quite sus.

Interestingly enough the Glacier Coast records don't seem very off or odd from todays achievable times on PAL GC IL but

And this is where maybe some PAL vets can step in - and correct me if I'm wrong here for sure, but in Goose's posted article #20 those PAL Sunny Beach times are so insane... are they not? We're talking 6 seconds on the current PAL "world record" or top PAL time...

On SB forward 3 lap today:

Mahrla has a 1'16"850 on the boards currently (if I'm not mistaken with these times)

Against an alleged 1'10"103 by Stuart Richards in article 20

Against an alleged 1'15"830 by Andrew Mills in article 6

Hey Goose and meaux,

I apologize for the lengthy posts in advance but I find this quite interesting so I thought I'd share some thoughts but yeah TL;DR I get it

I knew I recognized the style of magazine, have you seen this edition of the mag?

https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/N64_Magazine_V6#Madden_NFL_64 *printed list version

https://www.outofprintarchive.com/catalogue/n64magazine/N64Magazine6.html *full hi-res download

I stumbled across this edition (specifially #6) and these records probably 6 or 7 years ago on a completely different website when I started running the game and we were trying to dig up info about the games history and internal code, others on the discord were looking for records. I never made much of them but these were briefly spoken about in the discord way back when, iirc

You can see that "William LAM" has records in three games in this issue of N64 Magazine V6; records in MK64, Turok and WR64. It shows said 1'03"755. This is edition #6 of the magazine, your pic is from edition #20

Ok so let's get down to brass tacks. Big Willy L's 1'03 is an impressive feat for the time period no doubt but also nothing unbelievable (in and of itself). The 1'03 is a reasonable and plausible time to achieve even back then, with some heavy practice. Notice how Will's 1'03"755 is marked as 1st place here in edition 6 in 1997, so you would assume that the 1'02"694 was submitted between article 6 and 20? But sheesh... lets just back it all up here a minute folks...

Is this really a british magazine with a sizable list of BRITISH players playing NTSC SETUPS IN UK?? IN 97' and 98'?? ...I think that's what strikes me as the most wild thing about these record lists, check out how long the list is in edition #6, they have 10 guys playing and submitting on NTSC hardware? That's pretty BUCK wild to me, even back then getting your hands on NTSC hardware (plus a compatible 60hz CRT TV or display that runs on UK 50hz AC grid power) and running it isn't the easiest thing to do by any means. How often do we even have ten UK players simultaneously submitting NTSC WR64 times in todays era? Hats off to those lads if they at least did run NTSC stuff back then..

But to be fair, if you scan through this magazine they make a TON of reference to US/Jap version releases and differences, and also talk about the different hardware being used and imported. They even go as far as to specifically have rules for submitting scores and times that state which version hardware must be used and why. Perhaps running the NTSC setup back then in UK to grind IL's wasn't that strange?? Just doesn't sound right when I say that out loud. Either way, the magazine seems to "normalize" the concept of readers using and dealing with US and JP hardware. But that was not my first guess as to how it went down on her majesty's great islands back in 97'. I'll tell you that much.

I hear ya, yeah sometimes it's just easier. Cool I'll join it.

I was thinking about it too, I think it's a good idea Brionac. I did notice that the also small SR95 community has a discord. It's common for games of the same series with multiple relatively small communities on speedrun.com to merge into one discord. Maybe it's worth popping in there and talking to the admins about us having our own channel. There's only 30 people in said server, one general channel and one for "other racing games". Ideally they can share moderation privilege's for a separate SR2 section. It helps spread interest between communities and it's a good way to grow both.

As for learning how to get that fast.. it's crazy interesting. First thing of note is that the 9 ghosts I downloaded for this level, are actually not the 9 fastest times on the leaderboards I found, for whatever reason. The fastest ghost though, is the world record right now between the DC/PC category, it's the fastest run on those leaderboards between both categories. I went around the first corner about 100 times with the Kenji's ghost to try and figure it out, but it's tough. He takes an outside line on both hairpins on this track, whereas I was actually finding it fastest to "bonk" around the apex and cut it as quick as possible. It seems he's using a combination of the brake and e-brake (handbrake) to take the widest possible line around the corners that force you to slow down, in this level its the two hairpins. In this game when you use the handbrake, they included the animation for the rear wheels locking, like a real car would do when applying the handbrake in real life (very cool design by Sega). Thanks to that, I can tell he's applying handbrake, you can see it in detail in the replay. At first glance that's all I could see... but then I started noticing other things like how he's actually swinging the car AWAY from the corner before he enters his "wide-line". He's quite literally doing an extremely fast "Scandinavian flick" I think with the e-brake as he enters. Whatever his method and settings for it are, it makes him keep a CRAZY amount of speed through the first corner, so even with my best first corner... I've yet to keep up with Kenji after the second hairpin. How crazy is that. His second corner is even faster than the first and I just cant keep up.

That's just the start to the madness... here are some things that just don't make any sense to me yet.

1. He doesn't seem to "boost" when he launches. As you may know, if you time the throttle input to when the announcer says: "GO!" you get a significant "boost" when you launch the car. You cant tell me this guy got this fast but overlooked that quick-start feature, it just doesn't add up. I can easily smoke him to the first corner, but again after that first one he takes off on me. It's almost like he used a +1 gearing or something, where as I was using the -5 gearing for maximum acceleration, as it's way faster (or at least seemed to be, but apparently isn't lol)

2. After doing 50+ first corners alongside his ghost, I started to notice he smacks/hits the wall a lot going around the corner, at first glance they looked like mere error, or just the result of taking a super wide line to keep speed. But then I started to notice that it's indeed.. purposeful. He's strategically bouncing off the outside of the track at optimal locations to create tiny "boosts". These little pushes aren't to propel him forwards, but actually to attempt to line the car up to continue out of the corner exit with maximum speed. It seems that any type of braking slows your speed so I think what he's doing is rapidly applying brakes with little taps of both brakes, one to slow the car to line up the turn and the handbrake to get the car to pivot on it's axis or "drift". It's so difficult to explain, but so mind-blowingly fast to drive alongside. Again.. what a treat..

3. This I think was the craziest one for me and kind of shows that the above may make 0 sense lol... the fact that both Kenji and RYT get sub 1'35"xxx times on this level with not only 3 different cars, but 3 very different HANDLING cars.. I'm not even sure handling is the word, its like the grip physics are kind of completely different between cars. So watching Kenji do this run in the 306 MAXI... yeah I can see it.. the car handles well enough with modified stats that it seems doable. The 037 RALLY? yeah I could also see it, I was using it already and it seemed like the fastest car and had the "grippiest" handling for this level so it made sense, also that first guy I linked on YouTube was using it (though his 1'39"xxx has actually proved to be a very weak time compared to Japan). But come on now... low and behold.. the guy does it in the 205 Turbo16 and gets a 1'35"564... That's a COMPLETELY different beast. That car handles wildly different, you're basically playing a drifting game, or it looks that way watching them use it. I never would have thought that car could be that fast.. never mind get a time like that. And again he goes on and does it in the also completely different STRATOS?

This was all, well... nothing short of amazing to watch I'll tell you that. That was just one level.. I can't wait to go through the rest. I think this goes to show that we have (or at least I do) a very literal "tip-of-the-iceberg" thing going on here. The meta to this game is deep. The large amount of un-seeable settings in replays that can be utilized and optimized combined with the amount of technique and skill you can apply with each is absolutely massive.

@Brionac Just a little confused as to why you'd want to buy an original copy of the PC game? Other than nostalgic value and knowing that you physically own the copy (which don't get me wrong; is pretty cool).

The original CD may have usable "tools" on it but again: they're all functional, if not even more so in the repack that I linked above. I would strongly suggest trying the repackage of the game I linked, it contains the replay import tool you speak of, and while it's not fully functional I have managed to get it working 100% it just functions a bit odd because of its default paths.

And so.. I'll give you a quick update on the ghosts from the Japanese site... they all work. Last night I raced in a two decade old game against two decade old Japanese ghosts. I can not even begin to describe the amount of nerd chills haha. The replay loading tool is picky, but it works and I was able to watch 9 replays on the Riviera 3-lap TT stage. What a treat, I couldn't believe how fast these guys are. You can tell there was a massive effort here to get some of these times, some of these guys probably grinded upwards of 500+ hours into the DC and PC versions.

I'm concentrating on Riviera for now. I've got about 40 hours in it so far, and I have a 1'38"8xx but the record is 4 seconds ahead at 1'34"429.. and it's stupid fast. The two people that submitted for this TT ghost section are "RYT" (he's the site OWNER and I would say the 2nd-4th "best" player in the world) and the legendary Kenji Okamoto or "K. Okamoto". Kenji's times are insane. Absolute master-class for this game, he has some of the only 1'34"xxx times on this track and he did it in 5 different cars under 1'35"xxx again keeping in mind I'm approaching the 50 hour mark and I'm 4 full seconds back. These guys spent multiple years perfecting these runs, the game seemed to be very popular in Japan during the PSO1 era.

This just keeps getting better and better... check this out...

http://ir3d.netgamers.jp/segarally2/Ranking/PC-r25_Rivi.htm

http://ir3d.netgamers.jp/segarally2/Ranking/DC-r25_Rivi.htm

These are tiny little html hyperlinks at the bottom of the PC download times page that I completely skipped over when I was first looking through this site.. but when you click them... This is the level "Riviera" for Time attack in both of the DC and PC versions.. take a look. They claim to be the "SEGA RALLY2 OFFICIAL RANKING LAST RESULT".

...are you kidding me?

The PC version has 525 entries taken 2005.10/09 ... the DC version has... TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTY SEVEN ENTRIES??? on 2004.07/05??

I've personally never seen anything like this in my life. Was this an extremely popular speedgame in Japan in the late 90s/early 2000s?? I mean yeah those are just arbitrary entries with a name/car/time, but come on.. 2337 entries for ONE IL??

This absolutely has to be a copy/backup of what I suspect "segarally.com" or maybe .jp was, I'll have to do some more research. Clearly at some point Sega must have hosted a leaderboard with some type of verification system. The numbers here rival the likes of massive game-specific leaderboard sites such as the-elite.net and heck even the SM64 sites and this site! Again you would have to assume here that there would be duplicate runs from the same user here, and maybe the verification was extremely lax hence the amount of entries. But even then... the sheer numbers alone are amazing, and the fact that it's all Japanese.. I don't doubt there is some decent amount of legitimacy here... I mean come on look at the times! 80%+ of every board I've looked at so far, are not times to sneeze at.

Something else to note, is that you see a lot of re-occuring "clan tags" in these entries, stuff like @ATComp and the "P205 BOMBERS".. just so cool to think this game really may have had big groups of people competing for times. Sega must have had some type of promotional event, or possibly integration into the DC /PC games themselves that let you submit records directly. Again that wouldnt surprise me, as PSO (Phantasy Star Online) had similar features iirc. It really makes me wonder if there's a more active version of this leaderboard somewhere in Japan internet land that we don't know of, it's starting to seem not out of the realm of possibility if I'm being honest, either something saved, updated or added to. Or maybe this is it.

This is nothing short of amazing, and I'm definitely going to have to look further into this and back these times up. Here I was yesterday thinking if I could get a 1'38"xxx on Riviera TT I'd probably have this really strong and maybe "world" record... Hah.. turns out there's 85+ people ahead of me.. no big deal..

I'll do you one better. As I may of mentioned, over the past month especially I have found a huge amount of resources and info for this game, and I think this may be one of the biggest. This is a "portable" version of the game (its not really "portable" by todays definition, as it still makes a local temp folder). This is by far the best and most complete/stable version of the PC copy I've been able to find, I have a rip of the original disk and I've tried the other mods (again some of those mods are included in this).

This guy made a fully enclosed PC version, it has a custom launcher, custom options, some old tools repurposed like a ghost save tool (you don't really need it) He's basically done a ton of legwork and wrote batch files and the like for all of mods and data for the game, and has patched the executable. I haven't even discovered all of the features yet that he actually included in here. Some of the readme's are a bit tough, though most things are well documented/easy enough to figure out with some common sense.

I can't explain how underrated and how high the lack of recognition is for this person and what they have created here. Truly this person has done god's work in terms of preserving this game on PC and doing the community a massive favour. I'm no guru coder by any means, but it seems like a lot of T.L.C. and effort went into producing this. The person does have an active twitter, and I very may well reach out to make a small donation or at least say thank you. I'll have to properly credit them if I add this to the resources section.

download this: https://ia803101.us.archive.org/zip_dir.php?path=/30/items/segarally2_portable.zip

Installation: Take the .zip file and extract it once into it's own folder. This main zip contains another zip inside, but I've never actually touched it yet, (it may be a modified game executable/diff version). All you have to do is double click the .exe that comes out of the main zip file and away you go.

I HIGHLY recommend muting your volume before opening the .exe as it plays a song in the launcher that is just a loud buzzing/screeching noise on my machine. VERY LOUD will destroy headphones lol!! There is a box in the bottom right hand corner to mute the music if you want to browse the launcher (and you should). I suspect this issue may be due to a lack of mismatched sample rates in the music the launcher is trying to play?

Launcher: There are a ton of crazy things in here, from some cool artwork and VB programming and displays, to game history and even some included PC cheat codes and a save file that has everything unlocked, and the alternate models for cars (I haven't full figured out how to utilize this yet). I could do a huge write-up on the launcher alone, but nevertheless if you hit launch it will take you to the games original launch menu where you can config a few options, I think the original ghost saving/loading tool is in there, some other things and then you can launch the game from the first option. After you run it, it seems to use a series of batch files to implement the patches/mods for music/framerate 60fps lock for game speed and some others I that I can't tell what they do yet. **DON'T touch anything as it starts and launches the batch files in DOS cmd windows, you'll see confirmations boxes pop up but don't click them, just wait and let it do its thing, and it will launch the game. **Also some anti-virus software may detect a false-positive when you go to unpack the .zip or run the .exe This is normal, I can verify there is no malicious software included (that I can find, use at your own risk of course) and the FP is just due to the nature of the mods being a type of memory inject.

Bugs/problems: nothing yet except one annoying, but not game-breaking bug. The screen where you save a ghost after a new record in time attack will crash the game when you try to exit. It seems this is because he programmed the pathways for loading menus and the game itself. Probably to replace the way the game used to call the next screen from menu to menu, but for whatever reason this exit is broken or missing, so it crashes to desktop. That being said it isn't game breaking; the ghosts still save and your progress prior does as well to my knowledge, just annoying as you have to restart the game every time you want to save a ghost. I'm trying to find a workaround, but for now that's my biggest issue.

Give that a try Brionac, I think you'll like it. Though it would be cool to see someone put some times up for the DC version. I'll still probably go back and dabble in the DC one, I'm trying to get original hardware set up with a copy of SR2 for DC and a decent RGB output setup. I definitely think the PC version is "superior" but who knows... maybe some of the cars exclusive to the NTSC and PAL DC versions are some of the fastest for certain levels, I need to comb over and compare more records from the J-records site to be more sure.

Enjoy! Hit me up if you have any questions or need help

It's beyond me as well. The levels I'm running right now, I can't figure it out either.. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the settings I'm using, I've noticed that there's little niche things in the settings that change the handling a ton with specific cars. Still though I agree it's a bit out of reach for me right now as well. All the levels I'm playing they have 3-4 seconds ahead of me and I'm struggling to just break 500 ms ahead of my current records which are still 4 second slower. But I'm on the PC version now and I have it running great, it's unfortunately a big improvement to the DC version (I wanted to play this on DC haha). But the PC version is hands down better in every way. I can use my PS4 or Xbox one controller and it runs at 60fps to start.

I think it's possible though. The times don't seem unrealistic, it just seems like they knew things we don't.

I've already been able to back up my own replay files on the PC version freely so I expect I should be able to load these up with no issue, I will definitely be testing that tonight and tomorrow (very exciting lol).

As for Dreamcast ghosts, I have little to no idea how it would work with console. I have a vast knowledge of consoles like the N64, but my Dreamcast knowledge is lacking as best haha. I do have ghosts working and I'm able to back them up and load them on the DC emulator "demul" though, as this is how I was most recently playing the game before PC. I can explain that process to you if you'd like, it's not very complicated. That being said the problem is actually GETTING them from this site. From what I saw, they had some type of system set up where you could directly email the ghost file from this site. I'm actually assuming they're referring here to emailing them directly to the player's console itself.. which is so damn cool. As I recall from the "PSO1 days" the dream cast definitely had web browsing software and capabilities.. I think it may have had a type of email client as well? Anyways if that is the case I have no idea if that system is still set up, it may have been an email server that was setup to send to down/upload the files directly. You could try seeing if the email server still works and just send it to a normal email and see what happens, I haven't got that far yet, as to trying any of that. If by chance you can retrieve any type of files though I can help you to play them on emulator. As for console, I'm sure there are ways, but I'm not entirely sure.

Here are a few quick take away's/confirmations I made from having a look:

• 4MT seem's to be the fastest transmission setting, you'll notice almost all the top records use it unless the car only has 5MT. There seems to be an order of priority : MT > AT and the less gears the better. MT definitely seems to be faster but I'm not 100% about 4 > 5 and so on, though I have found in other info sources that 4MT is faster than 5 or 6MT

• The DC and PC versions seem to be identical, at least in "IGT". You'll see that they don't list the times together anywhere on this site. Though they're ranked separately they're all very similar frames of time and the times on each respective platform are competitive to each other it would seem, but I haven't looked into this deeply just the few levels I'm currently playing.

• The main difference between versions is the available cars

One other thing of interest I've recently found is if you search up "セガラリー2" (sega rally 2) on YouTube you can find a ton of Japanese record videos, some very very hard to find they don't come up in youtube's algorithm or do so very rarely, so you either need a direct link or a ton of searching. I've found videos like this that have top 3 times even compared to times listed on this japan leaderboards site. There are especially a ton of arcade videos with that search term. If you try adding an english level name after you can get more specific sometimes, i.e search "セガラリー2 muddy". You can also try the level names in Japanese.

Wow. That's nothing short of amazing Brionac. What a great find, thanks so much for sharing. I just spent an hour going through the site, I'm not sure I've seen every little corner of the site but I'm going to make an effort to. This is absolutely amazing to see an old times page for a game still preserved like this. Seems as though the owner posted updated content on here as recently as 2019, so that's pretty interesting.

The legitimacy is obviously there, this dates back to pre-2000 and contains some absolutely wild stuff on all three versions of the game, but there's a ton of good PC/DC ghosts and times. I definitely think this is the highest tier of times I've seen so far, which is normally to be expected from Japan. These are nothing short of "benchmark" times.

There really is a large database of useful information here, from times to ghosts to strat's and recommended setups for every level. The guy's even got a full "diary" of his computers that he built.. almost a decade worth of upgrades and recommended PC setups for people to use to play the game back in the day. Interestingly enough it's worth noting that he seems to be advocating for the player base to switch from DC to PC if possible, in a manner of speaking anyways. It would make sense as the PC version runs a higher framerate and has more features, and of course came out later.

There's so much info on that site, I'm curious to see if there would be a decent way to transfer it to speedrun.com or at least back it all up somehow. It would be such a shame to see that site disappear, and by the looks of it it's held up by one or a small group of people, though its nice to see some newer dates scattered in places. Some "speed-communities" DREAM of old stuff like that for their games, as having past player goals to aim for/records logged, and a history/knowledge of the game is something that can easily be lost in time. I think it's cool to preserve it if possible.