Here's my swing at rules: "Your run must start from a power on or reset, which should be included in your video. During the attempt itself you may not reset or load from save."

I think those rules should effectively prohibit event preloading while still allowing craps seed exploits.

I didn't remove you. I think the admin removed you at the same time that they added me.

Sure, why not. Seems different enough.

I'd been kicking this idea around for a while, but this week I finally sat down to do it: Strider 100%.

That means:

• All boots
• All keys
• All disks
• Slide In and Plasma Arrow
• All the tricks
• Beat the game
• Otherwise, no limits. Zip, death abuse, etc. all allowed.

I was interested in this because I was looking for something longer than any%, but without the restrictions of the Zipless and TG categories. I thought it would be an interesting routing exercise, and that it would be different enough from the existing categories to stand on its own.

Here is my latest PB:

Here is what I've learned from the exercise so far:

1. Not all sequence breaks leave you in a state where you can still collect 100%. Ex: If you collect Disc 2 and kill the Zain in Kazakh in one trip, when you go to Egypt the Key 2 script trigger doesn't happen.
2. However, some sequence breaks are ok. My run above finishes China in a single visit, and afterwards I finish Kazakh in a single visit (in TG that would have been two visits for each).
3. You can skip the outdoors part of Africa since it is faster to go through Australia. As such, you visit Australia twice.
4. The glitched Yggdrasil kill is a little different. Namely, the top of Yggdrasil doesn't work quite the same way as in the any% route. I'm still working through that, but my muscle memory from any% results in me getting stuck on the top until I jump.

In terms of flavor, nearly every level has a zip in it now, or death abuse, or both.

If this seems worth creating a category on this leaderboard, then I'd be willing to draft of the rules and help verify runs for it. If not, well, I've had fun exploring more Strider!

Just checking to see if this board is still moderated. Cheers!

I share Latt's desire to move to a visual cue rather than an audio cue. Frame advance makes it easy to look for visual cues.

Also of note: it is possible to earn an extra life by killing the final boss, in which case the extend fanfare plays over the final explosions, leaving one to guess when the end of the run occurred.

Here are some other visual cues I've seen used in other games:

• final blow to last boss
• fade out (or in this case, perhaps when the protagonist collapses?)

I use BizHawk. I think it would work well for your purposes.

Thanks, and congrats on the new world record!

Thanks petaQ!

The arcade mode is using "SDA timing" (https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules#Timing). That said, I don't think it is too big a deal for the two categories to use different timing methods so long as they are called out clearly in the rules.

If we do want to unify the timing, then I'd favor the option that changes the least runs.

@petaQ: Your latest run's video link appears to be broken, though if I go to your YT channel I see it in the listings. Just FYI.

The spirit of the "Deathless" category seems more like "No Major Glitches". Even the rules today for deathless mention both death warps and wrong warps being prohibited. If it were called NMG, it would seem more straightforward to just add a newly discovered major glitch to the rules.

I'm not sure if you'd call the creative grapples in the run above wrong warps or something else, but they definitely feel like a major glitch.

Ah, in that case my Second Dimension runs are invalid. I'll delete them.

Since I have accidentally stumbled into the Any% category, I have a question about the Any% rules. Specifically, what is a linear warp?

From the Any% rules (emphasis mine): Can warp to any Dimension at anytime except for linear warps from stages 3, 7 and 15.

I searched around for more info about this but couldn't find anything. Anyone have more details?

I was just curious what was going on, and that's why I asked. New runners (especially those as dedicated to the grind as DAIKON) sometimes find new techniques in games, and that's what I was curious about.

DAIKON: I hope you reconsider. This game has few active runners, and fewer that play at the level that you do.

Since this has turned into a rules discussion, I'd say that explicit is better than implicit. If save states have always been permitted, then say so in the rules so all can be aware.

How do you setup your splits and start your timer from Contra? I thought I had something decent by copying what I saw in Toad's run (-9 seconds, start timer when you mash start), but over time I've noticed quite a bit of variance on when my timer hours zero versus gaining control in Jungle. Any tips? Should I just be manually starting at zero?

I notice in DAIKON's run that he has some way of resetting very quickly to the beginning of the all-star match that seems to skip going through the initial menus. Is this a version difference or some sort of soft reset? It looks like it would make the early game reset grind that much smoother. Any ideas?

Thanks! I started noting the number of lives in my submissions to help.

I've got two rules related questions, both related to things I noticed with Gallivanter's 9:29 arcade version run:

1. It appears that this run uses the bootleg romset. Does anyone know what gameplay differences there are between the bootleg and the non-bootleg set?
2. This run starts with 5 lives in reserve, whereas the default lives setting is to start with 2 lives in reserve. Is it acceptable to configure the dip switches for extra lives?

Note that there are opportunities to save time via death abuse, so additional lives would confer a speed advantage.