Looks like a WR record, and a significantly faster (several seconds) TAS, require getting a safety. There is indeed time to save. As far as the WR is concerned, I guess it depends on how mad the lads are. I expect the current WR will stand for a long time since it's such a slog to line up all the ideal conditions just to have an eligible run.

Of course, it has to be a safety, that's so much faster than a field goal animation! I'll have to revisit my TAS.

Congrats!

Galf

To think of all the time I spent on this game and see it completed in under 50 minutes. I know you've all seen comments like this, but it bears repeating.

And, of course, incredible run. If this game ever gets traction and more people start to speedrun it, it'd be interesting to see if there were any other major optimizations. Not getting the elevator flute, that's amazing. It looked like Luther was kind of axe-rappelling down the side of the wall, wild stuff.

HERE?

The exuberance NES has is a big part of what makes his streams so exceptional, awesome!

I was wondering if there was a word to describe when you align four or more pill segments/viruses of the same color, making them disappear. In reading the Dr. Mario wikipedia page, there doesn't seem to be a single word for this. So for the sake of discussion, I'll call this thing a "match". If there is already an established word, let me know.

I was thinking about combos. Eliminating two sets of four (or more) is fairly common, but getting a combo of three or more via falling pill segments is, for how I play, very rare. I am not aware of ever getting a combo of more than three, and I only recall a three-combo happening once, although I imagine it could have happened more than once in the several hundred games I've played this year and I wasn't really thinking about it.

Has anyone gotten a combo greater than three matches? If so, do you have a video of it? It might be a fun challenge to see how many cascading matches one could get on a single pill.

I use an emulator and I have an 8bitdo SN30 classic controller that I'm using (usb-wired). There is a lot of play in the d-pad, so it's pretty much junk for a game that requires precision. Are there any good controllers out there? I'd love to have an actual console and actual NES controllers but that's a bit outside the budget at the moment.

I would like to be a mod for Section Z. There are currently no mods for the game, so I suppose I'd want to be a super mod. For what it's worth, I'm ramping up to submit a respectable run and have not submitted a run yet. I left a message on the game forums and had a handful of views but no responses. If there is more due diligence to do, let me know. Thanks!

Edit: I see that I should have a pending run in place before requesting mod privileges. Not sure if that still applies in a game where there is no mod, but I'll get on that in any case.

Well, there has been one run submitted. That should be an indication of interest level. That said, I'm considering doing a run. Also, I am starting a collection of LoL:G sound bites, since I find Sean Masterson's voice work to be fantastic, and Vincent Schiavelli's cameo is pretty awesome, etc. I'll check out the site (I'm sure I've been there in the past) and see what we can contribute. The fellow with the run surely has, or had, an intimate understanding of the mechanics of this game. The run is astounding.

I see under the rules that Zsnes should not be used, nor Snes9x 1.4.3 and earlier. Is there a list of preferred emulators? Sadly, I don't have actual hardware and I'd like to be as legit as one can on emulation until I can get a console and cart/everdrive.

@AlexisDR dumb question, how does one re-time a run? I've seen this guy's page and used it as a way to re-time youtube videos: https://mattbraddock.com/yt-frame-timer/ My runs just aren't that good to warrant extreme precision, so it generally suffices.

I have also downloaded an mp4 from twitch and loaded it up in Lightworks to get time precise to 1/60th of a second (having set the fps at 60). Would this be the correct and/or preferred way of re-timing?

That's awesome! Fun, but instructive as well. Just for the heck of it, here's the Tecmo Super Bowl TAS I did, to compare and contrast. It's less entertaining than the one above though.

By contrast with NESCardinality's run:

• only three tackles (including a Tim Brown fumble resulting in a Bo Jackson recovery, I didn't know Bo was on special teams!)
• score was a touchdown (maybe a second or three more than an intentional out of bounds/play selection/field goal animation, I haven't done a time comparison there)
• a few fractions of a second going out of bounds on the first quarter

Time to save, but it wouldn't be easy. You need a lot of things going your way, like maybe only one tackle in the whole game.

For your amusement:

This should help to answer the question, what is the fastest run possible?

At 60fps, this is 7:21.25, but timed on YouTube, it's 7:20.5 or thereabouts, within +- .2 seconds, I think. Not sure what accounts for the discrepancy. Emulator is BizHawk.

A few features of this TAS:

• no tackles, including the kick returner
• running out of bounds right at zero
• no possession by the CPU
• getting onside kick return or kickoff fumble return

This run features Tim Brown not getting tackled on the kick return for the entire first quarter. I have been able to evade tacklers with Tim Brown for about 1:30 of game time, but doing this for a whole quarter is unlikely.

If I could have gotten a one-cycle kickoff resulting in an onside return, that would have saved a few frames, and if the CPU would have kicked a bit sooner, that also might have saved a few frames, but I'm not aware of any major time savings to be had. I tried to hike the ball and select the plays and so forth at the first available frame to do so. Maybe with trimming every excess frame, I might be just under 7:21, but that's about it.

The reason I ask is that brianwilliams42's timer seemed to stop a second after the scoreboard showed. Maybe the time was already adjusted for that. Probably. In which case, nevermind, you all know what you're doing. Nevermind the new guy :D

Just to clarify, is the end of the game when the final scoreboard frame shows? I can't tell if there is a fade-in or what. I doubt that level of precision is going to matter that much for me, but I was just wondering. Thanks!

You asked about the version, it's Mesen 0.9.9.

I suppose I should append my comment about save states. They are very helpful with many other games. With this game, not really. Every run is practice for the next run so I stopped using them altogether.

Follow-up: I played on two different machines and on both I got a fairly memorable starting line of 111111. I had recorded this previously as well as the eight lines above it. When 111111 showed up the second time on the second machine, I jotted down the line above. They matched: 353411. I discovered another first line whose line above was also the same on both machines. While not scientific, I'm satisfied that these things are predictable.

This suggests a few things:

• It supports my assumption that there is some kind of seeding algorithm that is predictable. One could perhaps memorize patterns if they were a crazy person. Which is kind of the nature of speedrunning, is it not.
• As both repeating rows were starting rows, perhaps the seeding works in such a way that a very small set of the ~46k combos are eligible for being starting rows.

Now, the real challenge is having the CPU get unfavorable patterns. The only way I know is to limit the dice they have to work with, and then pummel them with four- and five-lines until they're overwhelmed.