South Carolina, USAFor the purposes of 100% runs on the Multiple Classic Mario Games leaderboard, All Stages (FDS) is considered 100% for SMB2J.
For the purposes of 100% runs on the Multiple Classic Mario Games leaderboard, Warpless is considered 100% for SMB1.
No. If you want something like PAL on NTSC, where the game runs faster but is still at a consistent framerate with the same controller and input restrictions in place, we can consider that. But making a category where "anything goes" for controller and console used is a horrible idea that will only lead to imbalance and domination by certain console/controller schemes.
We don't currently allow the Animal Crossing version of Super Mario Bros. for leaderboard submissions, primarily because that version of the game does not have any restrictions in place to disable pressing left and right simultaneously.
Walkathon with Any% route is already a category: https://www.speedrun.com/smbce?h=Walkathon&x=jdz540gd
Basically what yeabruh said. We aren't opposed to adding additional categories, but there needs to be demonstrable interest in a category idea for us to consider adding it to the leaderboards. Such a situation isn't impossible, as Crash was added to the Super Mario Bros. Category Extensions leaderboard recently, but that was following unanimous approval of the idea from several members of the community and a good handful of runners performing runs of the category. If any future ideas gain enough traction, we can certainly consider adding them to the leaderboards, but considering that Coinless Pacifist is simply an amalgamation of existing categories, I'm not certain if the category idea is popular enough to warrant its addition.
NES Classic Edition is allowed, yes. Do note that the NES Classic Edition (as well as Nintendo's other emulated re-releases of NES games) has a slightly slower framerate than the original NES or emulators available on PC, but you would only be losing about half a second every five minutes by playing on NES Classic.
While it's true that not all black frames between 4-4 and 5-1 are frames where the game is actively loading data from the disk, I'm not sure if anyone wants to actually go through the trouble of retiming hundreds of runs just to account for the ten standard black frames between the 4-4 and 5-1 transition? It's not entirely accurate, but it's a lot simpler to just count all black frames between 4-4 and 5-1 as load frames, especially since all black frames are visually identical and that method of timing has been used for so long.
Interestingly, it's actually a 1/8 chance. Even though the bright coin lasts for 24 frames, coin palette updates are triggered every eight frames; there's three separate entries for bright coin in the coin palette data, which is why that color appears for 24 frames.
Curious to see what others think of this CE idea. Personally, I like the idea of a Crash category for SMB1 since it contrasts the Crash category for SMB2J quite nicely; while the SMB1 crash takes much less time than 2J crash, you can perform it in more ways and the fastest method of crashing SMB1 requires more precise execution than any of the 2J crash setups. In addition, there have been quite a few runners practicing and attempting the SMB1 crash so there is a fair degree of interest in the category. If it's worth anything, I've done Crash speedruns using the -1 crash method (shown in the post above) and the 1-2 method:
I believe the way the G&W version works is that whenever you enter a new world, world select is enabled for all worlds up to that point; for example, if you got to world 7 for the first time, you can now world select up to world 7. Obviously world select caps at world 8 because that's the last valid world, but the minus world being world 36 internally still triggers the unlock behavior.
Note that this behavior isn't consistent with the NES original of course. If you beat the minus world as is possible on the FDS version of SMB1, you do get the full world select as if you beat the game proper and this does have certain use-cases in certain CEs, but no applications for main board categories. Even if enabling world select this way would save time, it would be against the spirit of the Any% category (for example, you could theoretically use the cartridge swap trick to set the continue code for 8-1 but this is obviously disallowed).
We do not permit runs of the G&W version on the leaderboards due to that version having significant alterations as previously described (and that version apparently runs faster than the NES original according to testing by Periwinkle), but your find is still interesting nevertheless.
To be fair, it's been known that 1-3 and 1-4 are still in Super Mr. Krabs, it's just that I doubt if anyone wants to run Warpless since you would have to do TAS clip as Big Krabs just to even play the category, and the All Levels category is more interesting as-is because you have to play 2-1 through 7-4 in second quest.
If only slots 0-3 were filled, the star flag would spawn in slot 4 (which is consistent with the original NES version). But the flagpole flag is always going to get loaded before the star flag, and when the flagpole flag spawns in slot 4, as it does in that patch I shared, slot 4 is considered occupied so the star flag cannot spawn there, and if slots 0-3 are filled too, it has to spawn in slot 5. Hopefully that makes sense?
Unfortunately not, that patch makes flag despawn impossible. The way the star flag is spawned, the game checks for slot 0 through 4 to be empty, and if none are, it will force itself into slot 5. Because the patch moves the flagpole flag to slot 4, the slot 5 override cannot affect the flagpole flag.
I posted my findings on that topic in the Super Mario Speedrunning server a while back: https://discord.com/channels/599131748143464459/599134046404214784/999728789686857919
But if you would like me to give a brief explanation on why that happens, it has to do with the code that forces you on the right side of climbable object if you are less than 16 pixels from the left edge of the screen. The way the code works in the NES version is that the position of the left edge of the screen is subtracted from player X position, and if the resulting difference is less than 16 pixels, the player is forced to face left, which puts you on the right side of the climbable object. In the Japanese version of Super Mario All-Stars, this code was altered so the player is only forced to face left if the result of the difference is negative instead of less than 16, but the X position of the power up slot is used for the calculation instead of player X position due to some sort of error; because flagpoles are climbable objects like vines and the X position of the power up slot is not reset when the power up is unloaded, you can manipulate this value so the result of the difference is negative and the player is forced to face left as soon as the flagpole is grabbed. International versions of Super Mario All-Stars restore the code to be identical to the NES version (besides different RAM addresses), so the bug was fixed.
The pipe is a strange color because coral blocks in underwater levels use those colors, and both color blocks and vertical pipes are set to use the same set of colors (they share a color palette). The sideways pipe used to exit underwater levels is set to use the same colors as the ground blocks so that pipe does not have the strange colors.
Mario and all enemies are either set to appear on top of or behind the background layer. In the case of Piranha Plants, they are set to always appear behind the background so the part of the plant inside the pipe isn't visible. Normally, this approach works perfectly fine because the sky is transparent, so the part of the plant outside of the pipe can be seen. However, the water area background is not transparent, so that the water is a different color than the sky. Because of this, the 8-4 water room Piranha Plant appears behind the water background, making it impossible to see. This is also the same reason Mario becomes invisible the moment he enters the ending pipe (he is set to appear behind the background layer when entering a pipe).
