I am a little confused as to the official stop time of the run as both current runs by GoBonsGo and JYAGARantaro are timed to a different stop point. I did a frame count for both runs (to the best of my capabilities after seeing the frame count off of my inputs) for the start (3 frames before the screen starts to fade off NEW GAME) to both ending positions which seemed to have been 27.033 seconds for GoBonsGo at the exclaimation point ! of SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT ! or 23.867 to the first frame the first pixel of the S showing up and JYAGARantaro's run at around 42.100 for S and 45.083 for ! (from what I could discern from hardware recording). My own run submission was 19.800 for S and 23.000 for !

I don't want to surprise too many people with some changes coming to this board, but I will be retiming the board to a unified starting/ending point that is also now specified in the rules, as well as clarifying that runs need to start from a New Game (to avoid any possible saved game runs being submitted). After seeing that many runs were submitted with a -29 second start timer, I verified the exact time from input press on new game start to when the first dialogue box appears (not first possible input to shift the dialogue as -29 was). -28.333 is 4 frames before the first frame of fade out after the input for New Game until the first frame the dialogue box appears. I will also be unifying the ending time to the first black frame after leaving the throne room via the south exit after defeating the final boss.

I want to thank LovenityJade for their moderator time on this board, and I will do my best to keep things fair and simple here. If there are any questions, feel free to DM me or post here.

It's not as widely known, or as easily available from rom sites, but the version 0 of the game has a few exploits many of the top runners are able to utilize in the run. Most notably - the FPS section dinos have smaller collision boxes that let us just pass them by in areas that the Rev 1/A does not, for example the dilophosaurs in the raptor pen B1 at the door after the elevator, the one next to the NVG battery and the one just before the floor meat can all just be passed by running along the wall/door next to them. In Revision 1, these specific dinos are impossible to pass by between them and the walls.

In terms of hardware, the version 0 cartridge can be identified by the Made in Japan on the back of the cart/box, revision 1/A has a Made in Mexico/Assembled in Mexico instead.

If there are more runs that are on other systems other than SNES, I will be happy to separate the boards into those consoles as all 3 versions are different in terms of cutscenes and events (or lack thereof like no mines in SNES). As it stands, with only my run being on Genesis, I'm fine with leaving it as such.

There are 8 frames from input press until the black screen for the screen transition off the main screen used for timing the start of runs (for runs with no input reader) and time stops on the final frame of movement/color change (not grayscale) of the final alien fight. It had been "on alien scream" but an audio cue is not a precise point to time from.

So, I "completed" a run of low% JP. There is a major snag in the theory in stage 5, the copper ammo between floors on the left side to the egg on the ship (timestamp 19:35) and the ammo at the beginning of electric room 1(timestamp 21:05). I unloaded all the shots into the wall so I had none of it (kind of like how Ninja Gaiden low% runs deal with oops candles). I only avoided the yellow ammo in the lower right corner of stage 4 where there's the huge walk around (timestamp 13:15 range), but I ended up having to pretty much pacifist% stage 6. I think it would be better to actually grab that ammo and take extra pot shots at eggs later than to skip any ammo drops. There is a 40 pack of yellow in stage 6, but it's inside the last building. I have it highlighted on my channel for now, but I kinda want to give that ammo a shot, and to see how possible it is to skip the ammo in electric room 1. I think that we should allow green ammo on compy's ONLY on stage 5 ship and 6 in the case of a continue, if only for the sake of not having a RIP run or having to pacifist% 95% of stage 6. It is incredibly difficult to make it through the ship in pacifist mode without 3 lives.

I have been looking into getting a rom-hack set up that would allow the starting character to be set (ideally this would be the only change that resulted from the hack) for hardware/flashcart runs. During the initial investigation phases, it was found that at a minimum, Bizhawk 2.8.0 was always Wolverine on hard reset, cyclops on soft reset, 2.9.1 was always Nightcrawler on either reset, and Mame 0.264 was always Beast. Retroarch and Gen-GX were random.

I was also curious if this kind of hack would be allowed for the single character/any % runs since the only goal is for it to reduce the amount of resets before a run could start (and also allow for other emulators to be used in runs as the initial testing has shown). If there has been any other research into this type of thing, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

I am planning on running this game some time next year, so I at least wanted to put feelers out for this kind of project or if I should just reset mash the cart.