Cumbria, EnglandA few years ago, an edit to the ruleset came about. Its intent was accessibility for runners who would be unable to play with RF off. Thanks to this we added four new runners to the board. My intent behind this rule addition was that a runner would change to Normal/RF off when ready. Originally the board had a firm rule against RF. When I first started speedrunning the game I found a run by HitSponge which used RF and was 8 seconds ahead of the WR at the time. It seemed reasonably clear to me after some play/experience that this feature makes Arcade Mode easier in a variety of ways, and top runners continued to keep RF off.
A run was submitted by GrayWarden, who currently holds second place on the board using Normal/RF OFF. The submission had Easy/RF ON with a time of 10:05. The runner is already capable of WR without using RF. I am disappointed not to have had the opportunity to discuss the options with you prior to your submission, as you so thoughtfully raised the use of Switch service to me recently in a separate thread. There is a post in the forums regarding precisely this from the time of the change. I am sorry for the lack of total clarity in the written rules however, and I'd be happy to discuss these with the community, as well as any other talking points.
Use of RF with grenade launcher can be a handicap against grunts at times, or an additional lag factor if misused. In my view however this is overridden by an overwhelming advantage on bosses and other stationary objects. This is reasonably clear, both from fights such as the panzer in stage 2, and because the run in question has several uncharacteristic errors for a top runner submission which do not lose time as expected. I invite readers to compare the runner's rejected run, and the 10:11 on the leaderboard.
Let us also look at a very old run by HitSponge using RF, of 10:07, which was for quite some time 8 seconds faster than fletchr's 10:15 wr, and was performed in 2013.
If I were applying the letter of the law alone, I would be forced to accept the new submission. However, with the points above considered, I judge that the runner has contravened the spirit of the ruleset in view of his existing second place time with RF off. The runner is at fault for failing to broach this before submission, however, I am also at fault for failing to make the ruleset crystal clear. For these reasons I reject this run. Please forgive the long nature of the post, but I should rather be transparent especially since as super, and wr holder, there may be seen a potential conflict of interest in my actions, which is not my intent.
I feel like the current ruleset suffices, perhaps we might add a rule recommending runners switch to Normal/RF OFF from approximately sub 10:50. All thoughts and feedback on the ruleset welcome.
Ty! I have no way to know whether the emulation for that version would have differences, so for top runs I'd much prefer people continue as they have on a known Genesis emulator. I have verified an easy setting run by a new runner using switch though and I'd welcome any info/research on differences.
Great, thanks for clarifying fred!
Death warps? What are those? ^^
Hiya, planning to run the game without any desire for a super optimised time. Just wanted to create a space to ask/discuss about the permission to use Red Code, as I noticed it's only used in the WR so seems to be a recent rule change. I would value other runners' thoughts so that a consensus is reached before I run with or without it.
I ran Owlia any% for NissanTV marathon #2!
https://www.speedrun.com/support/tickets/new and just add your own username/info in the drop down rather than someone else.
I respond as a runner of SMS. If mods/site staff decide to limit involvement from me or other second parties to prevent stress/site fires I would be happy to withdraw.
- Quoting SRC:
"Site Bans
The following are examples of bannable behavior. It is by no means an exhaustive or complete list.
Account impersonation
Splicing and/or faking/falsifying runs for any reason"
On this basis I request you to report yourself, simply because this is preferable to me as an outsider to the issue doing it, or worse, forcing a game mod to do it in the circumstances outlined above. I would object to your self-removal of any such run under these circumstances since it has broken src rules and should be dealt with by them not us.
When I request this, I do not intend to overwrite or ignore the concerns presented in the appended document, rather, I wish to clarify that the course taken to highlight them is itself actionable.
As a layman to other ports of the game I cannot comment much on the specifics of the platform mentioned. I can glean/suggest that there may be a benefit to discussing adding mods with knowledge/experience of these other platforms where necessary. I think this might just be a case where a game has sufficient variety across many ports that any of us with knowledge in one area might recuse ourselves from modding unfamiliar ports. Perhaps better and more public communication on these issues would be of help.
Having said all the above, I am aware I may be repeating or parroting any discussion in the Discord linked in the game page info. Although I am not in this server I would like to request that any discussion takes place here, rather than there; again to enhance transparent communication and make judgements/information more readily available for passing runners and viewers.
I've submitted a run for Beat the Game - I started timing on gametime select and ended on the whistle when the final game was won.
Thanks for sharing that Theus! I had no idea. Board Boosters has been running the game in February 2025, so I've signposted that port to them as someone might be interested in it. However, it would require checking whether any differences exist or it's just a code port of the original versions.
Thanks threecreepio! Sorry I didn't respond sooner, inertia is a hell of a thing.
I intend to retime all runs in the coming days for consistency. I'll make a sticky post about this once I'm done. It will make timing clearer for future reference across any platform.
Realised after I submitted my run that three of us on the board unwittingly ran the game at NTSC even though it was PAL exclusive on SMS. The Game Gear port was worldwide so there's a reasonable argument to grandfather in permission for that. It's a common practice in many other SMS/GG games (Marble Madness, Trivial Pursuit etc), but can I just say sorry to Oreb for not realising - I'm sure you'd be easily able to equal your performance on NTSC if you wished, however, if you feel like it'd be fairer for the rest of us to re-submit at 50fps, I'd be very open to that. Discussions welcome :)
I'd be interested in running this, if you could do a guide/tutorial!
So the trick is easy and very safe. Here's a setup video.
Get to the gnome screen.
Go DOWN as far as you can so you're hitting the rock.
Move LEFT to the river screen.
On any of the frames where the screen is fully black, change to holding DOWN RIGHT. You MUST do this before any fraction of the screen loads in
Then you have infinite time to press 1 and transition back to the gnome. Once on the gnome screen, press RIGHT. Boom, Gnome Skip.
So basically you have always got an 11 frame window to achieve this. You can also PAUSE while the screen is black to be super safe if you want to.
Hello all!
I will be running the C64 any% Secrets Allowed category for RGLtv's Jankuary! https://horaro.org/jank25/schedule
https://www.twitch.tv/retrogaminglivetv
I have no idea if this is the first EVER appearance of FQ in a marathon but I'm utterly delighted and I'd love to see any of you there cheering along.
