Hola fellow runners. I'm brand new, just dipping my feet into speedrunning this, and I had some questions. I was told today, that running on Cartridge can cost between 3-4 seconds per race. Just wondering if that is correct?
I'd also like to preface my next question with the statement that I know I'm new, and not practiced, so I'm not asking this because I believe it would give me any edge. I'm genuinely curious why this game doesn't offer a cartridge category, and one for digital. There's a few categories that have a cartridge runner in the top 5, but the vast majority of the top runs are digital. Would it serve the community better the separate submissions moving forward? Assuming a 4 second loss for loading for cartridge players, that's a 1 minute four second loss just over the course of a Nitro Run. Like I said, I flat out just need to get gud, and I look forward to improving as I play, but curious as to why the separation hasn't happened before now? Other prominent games have done so in the case of games that use original hardware and those run on emulator, in cases where the emulator is shown to run faster or slower.
Honestly just looking for discussion here, not trying to ruffle feathers.
i just timed the loading between MS and WP (after hitting next track) on the cartridge its ~9 seconds and now my game is installed on the switch its self and the time for the same loading screen is ~7 seconds. times can vary per switch tho so allow the game installed on the switch like you can expect 2-3 seconds on the loading screen alone. but the time from hitting start and loading in to MS is the same 14 seconds, so that is unavoidable. As to your second question, this has been requested many times and answered, the times saved between the loading screens can very easily be lost due to either items, bad corner taking, course hazards, or bad coin routes. In my honest opinion that is why there isn't a separate category for digital/cartridge. For example on the bonus tracks for 150cc items, the second best time is done on a Cartridge version of the game, same goes for the 48 track run 150 cc items for 3rd place, and special cup 200cc items 3rd place. There is probably more but I am lazy and don't want to list them (haha). hope this helps!
Tristnal, thanks for asking that question. I realize now I never explicitly answered this in my FAQ even though it’s a good thing to clarify. I’ve updated it, and you can view my full answer there (it’s the last question now).. In short, everyone is capable of obtaining digital version, there are no gameplay differences, and (as you said) you can improve your time to a very large degree without switching game copies. Thanks again for an intelligent question :)
(Just to point out some erroneous info you’ve been given, though, the time loss for cartridge is only 3-4 seconds on the initial loading screen. After that it’s roughly 1 second per track. Nitro is only affected by 20 seconds or so.)
