Hello all, Pell here!

I'm glad to see a recent surge in runs for this game that I love so much. The new crew is making things very interesting and I hope to share the love everywhere we can (if y'all are interested in joining that Anime Speedrunning Festival, definitely let them know). However, we've got something to discuss that I wanted to bring to the attention of anyone joining in on this game from anywhere -- translation patching.

I'm no expert in patched speedruns. It's not something I've ever had to consider before this game, and as a result I tentatively allowed use of the translation patch in the Complete the Game category (the only category) when I first started running the game, since it was likely to be only me playing. However, with the increase of players, some amount of information has come out that shows that the original translation patch and the new translation patch are significantly faster in terms of text speed out of combat than the original hardware. This left me with a difficult choice: allow emulated patched runs to outpace runs on actual hardware by miles (yes, it's really that much), disallow patched running overall, or split the boards to allow those who can't run games in Japanese to still enjoy running the game while not taking away from those running the game on official hardware.

The answer I ended up on was to split the boards, so as of this moment, we've got two boards: one for official Japanese versions of the game, emulated or official hardware, and one for those using the translation patch. Hopefully this satisfies everyone, as competing on official hardware against literally impossible times is unfun.

For community outreach purposes, I would also ask that those running JoJo in any marathons NOT run using any translation patches. This game is great and should be experienced in its original form, especially now that we know there is a significant time difference between patch and unpatched.

Thank you all so much for your support and I'm glad to see so many of you here! Keep going fast, speedgamers!

• Pell