Hey! Just submitted a Mega Drive run. I guess the people over at Sega thought the game was too hard so they call the default difficulty setting "Hard" and added easier difficulties "Medium" and "Easy". These should be added as their own categories obviously (you get more lives to start with, it's easier to get extra lives with points and the enemies die with fewer hits).

My run was done on easy difficulty because it's the fastest and most consistent difficulty to run. So we could start out with just renaming the Mega Drive / Genesis category Single Segment (easy difficulty) or something and then add other categories if people start running the other difficulties too.

Hiya!

Been running the game for a few days now and noticed some differences with the Amiga version when I was trying to replicate the SNES runs:

• The Amiga version has a wider screen (you see more of the level).
• Some enemy patterns are different (for example the hulks in the top right corner of level 2-1).
• Gas patterns in world 2 seem to be slightly different (for example in level 2-3).
• Some firing patterns are different (for example the first square holes in world 3 don't seem to aim as well on SNES).
• Preacher seems to get the shield one skill level earlier on SNES compared to Amiga.
• On SNES you don't waste as much money on bringing your health up while using the "complete training"/"all" button. On Amiga you have to train the skills individually to have enough money for the shield by level 3-3.
• On SNES you have more slow-downs and longer loading times when compared to an Amiga HD installation running on A1200.
• The secret treasure room in the beginning of 3-1 only has silver coins on SNES. On Amiga there are some golden rings too.
• Most importantly: on SNES you seem to have a dedicated button for specials. On Amiga you need to stop and charge with the firing button to use specials. This takes time and makes the shield runs especially difficult.

There are probably more differences but these are ones that I've noticed. I recommend splitting SNES and Amiga to their own categories.

Another issue is that Eino's Amiga run has very long loading times due to it being run on Amiga 500 and floppy version (I think). The route and execution of the gameplay is definitely very close to the SNES runs if not better. But I run the game on A1200 with an HD installation which has almost no loading times or slow-downs. Do you have ideas on how to combat this? Can we time how much Eino suffered from loading times and (oh god) slow-downs or should such runs be yet another category? Slow-downs delay the runs but it makes execution easier.

I'm still grinding the game and will do more efforts with an even riskier route but this is my best so far: The time is 20:34 and it's not just the lack of loading times and slow-downs, I did work on optimizing the route (thank you so much for all the runners for the ground work) and minimizing the mistakes BUT it cannot be directly compared to the other runs due to those differences. I will post the run once the categories are set up.

Why are the Amiga runs on the same leaderboard? The game seems to be very different with jump mechanics, specials and so on. Enemy and platform patterns are different and boss fights are different too. On Amiga you die if you touch the flying bosses and for example the last boss fight is done on foot on the Amiga. Even the level designs differ.

I submitted a hard difficulty run but I was actually able to beat it faster when I didn't finish first on the season scoreboard. So is it enough to qualify from each race including the last one?