Hey everyone, just wanted to let you all know that there is an 11-frame framerule in this game that dictates various long timers. I haven't seen this documented anywhere so I am assuming this wasn't previously known to the speedrunning community. What this means for the speedrun is that the game can only proceed to the next stage in intervals of 11 frames. Therefore, the barrel stage and the elevator stage can be played imperfectly and still take just as long as a perfect stage. Since timing stops when the final rivet has been removed from the rivet stage, every frame matters there for 1 Loop speedruns. However, it's worth noting that the cutscene of Donkey Kong falling after removing all rivets depends on the framerule, so only on the final rivet stage completed does each frame matter.

Zero page address $34 is the 11-frame framerule that controls all long timers. This address is decremented every frame and when it wraps around from $00 to $FF, it is forced back to $0A (10) and all long timers are decremented. The long timer that controls stage completion is zero page address $43. It's set to $8D once you reach Pauline and transitions to the next stage once the timer reaches $7A. With this knowledge, it's recommended to split when the black screen appears after completing a stage rather than the moment Mario reaches Pauline.

To give runners an idea of how quickly a level must be played to match the optimal framerule, I created a quick patch for the Revision 1 ROM that displays the numbers of frames remaining in the framerule when reaching Pauline; you can grab it from the Resources tab. Hope this thread proves useful for speedrunners of this game.

Hey everyone! pellsson, threecreepio, and I are working on the 6.0 release of the excellent SMB practice ROM, and we're looking to expand the title screen so more than four faces can be included. This means that we will be able to include more top runners than just the top four. If you want to have your face included in the practice ROM, we ask that you submit a picture of your face in this thread to help streamline the process of including new faces. The picture you submit must have a width of 40 pixels, a height of 56 pixels, and use only four colors so that the picture is compatible with the practice ROM. Cropping your face and getting the correct resolution is best done in your imaging software of choice. To reduce the number of colors to four, I suggest you use the utility NESIFIER to do so. If you use NESIFIER, specify the palette to use as colors $30, $27, $17, and $0f, select "Floyd Steinberg" dithering and set the dithering level to 4 for the best results. The .BMP image format is preferable, but not required for the image you submit. Here is an example of the kind of image we are looking for: https://imgur.com/I8VQMs4

If you need help with cropping an image of your face to the right resolution or applying a four-color limit, you can feel free to reach out to me.

Hello everyone. I discovered the cause of the bug preventing the player from completing World 1-2, and was able to fix it. This allows the game to be beaten, since you can now go to 1-3 and finish the game. Now that I have made a version of the game that can be beaten, could this fixed version possibly be added as additional categories?

World 1-3 would make for an interesting level that would be tough to optimize in runs and would allow for individual frames to be saved, much like how individual frames can be saved in 1-2 in the standard version of Petscop !!. Not only could you make an "Any%" and an "Any% (Pipeless)" category for this new version, but you could also make an "All Levels" category using the Second Quest level select feature much like the "All Levels" speedrun of the hack "Super Mr. Krabs."

Here's a link to my fixed version of the game. Just use this patch on an unmodified ROM of Super Mario Bros. and you're good to go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p2XDBdL9t4G4Wy710PBel8QX7zta4dgs/view?usp=sharing