I just noticed the category rules now say "Timing starts from Samus first moving". Just so you're aware, when I first set up this page and imported runs from m2k2 or wherever, I standardised them to file select timing, as there was a mixture of both. If people want to use SDA timing, that's fine, but just so you know, most of the runs on the board will need to have ~7s subtracted from them.

I am of course an outsider but my personal preference would be to use file select timing for consistency with other metroid games.

The Metroid 2 community has been using SDA since i started running Metroid 2 back in February. I know Emptyeye and Kenta, and being as they were the big names and used SDA timing I assumed it was what was standard. (Sheepish i know but anywho). Its what everyone in the past year who ran Metroid 2 used. Some runs will have to be changed. Emptyeye's 100% is one that comes to mind (Actually 1:01:41 by SDA timing.) with maybe 3 runs being questionable. 100% for the most part is accurate though. As far as Any% goes i do not know, though its safe to say 3/4 runs there need to be changed

The timer offset that is used is 5.65 seconds. It's slightly inaccurate but not enough to really make any sort of difference. It's within .10 seconds (which should be added so any new runner would be able know that.)

That is good to know, but yes the M2 community actually agreed on SDA timing some months ago. That is what i know regarding the subject.

So I'll take responsibility for screwing this all up.

Funny thing about this: For many years, before I came along, SDA timing WAS from File Select (THAT'S how long it was between the last SDA submission and mine). The short historical version: After it was discovered that in-game time was useless (It was known many years back, even before I went more in-depth about some of the particulars, that the in-game timer was useless for segmented runs because it dropped seconds upon reloading, and segmented runs in general and relating to Metroid II specifically were much more popular then than they are now), it was one of the first games in the series to use real-time as the primary timing method (After the original Metroid, for the obvious reason of "The original Metroid completely lacks an in-game timer"). Radix, pre-maturation-of-SDA, decided to count from file select as a form of "segmentation penalty" for the game, whereas most other games on SDA counted from the time you first gained control of your character. For consistency's sake, he also applied this penalty to the "first" segment, which made "From hitting start on the title screen" the de facto "SDA timing" for Metroid II.

It wasn't until I submitted my runs sometime in the past couple years that SDA timing changed to match the rest of SDA (Because, well, it should've matched, and because being a single-segment run, I didn't think the segmentation penalty (As such) was necessary any longer).

Going forward, I don't particularly care which timing method is used (Forget "speedrunning Metroid II", when was the last time you saw me even stream anything), but I do agree it should be one or the other. I think someone should also probably come up with the exact offset (I think someone did, and it was something like 5.72 or similar)--5.65 was close enough to be "visually correct" in real-time, but I didn't do any frame-counting or anything like that to arrive at that number.

tl;dr: Do what y'all want, don't go along with what I did just because I did it and was the closest thing to a "name" the community had at the time.

Final thought on it. probably restated, but SDA timing should remain for Metroid 2 as it is whats been used regardless of if it is because one person did it. and not to be the arrogant one but i will continue to use SDA timing as long as i run Metroid II.

As an outsider I would prefer file select timing. It makes the most intuitive sense and is the default for most other games with a file select screen. As others can attest, I've never been a fan of the "this is how we've always done it" argument.

If you really want to use SDA timing, that's fine. But I probably won't be checking new submissions to make sure they're using that timing. Perhaps we should add FlipSide as a mod as he seems to be by far the most active M2 runner.

I started out using file select, and switched to SDA for my last few runs per Flip's recommendation. I personally prefer file select, as such I'll switch to that (whenever I get around to doing more runs). 5 seconds isn't going to make or break my position on the leaderboards, for whatever that's worth.