Flobeamer1922 submitted this video today: (Link=)

I tend to think he successfully found a way to execute the "Die with health win" I've speculated possible in the past. If you indeed managed that, congratulations on finding the glitch.

1: Myself and the other mods are trying to understand exactly how this route works. At a basic level we need to be able to reproduce it to know if it's legitimate. If you want to, you can just link us the movie file and specify the emulator version used, and that should be enough for us to confirm the route itself is legitimate. Alternatively, a set of things you are required to do would help us reproduce this.

2: The recording mechanism here is rather non-standard, and I'm not sure if we would want to allow this recording mechanism or not. The run is played back from an emulator movie file, and the sound is out of sync and/or sped up. This is possibly a result of bad capturing (use sync sound maybe?)

I'm not really accusing you of TASing this, because the movement doesn't look particularly crisp. It seems more like a demonstration played in real time and played back from a recording for simplifying capture. Playing the run back from a movie file is somewhat questionable as it leaves runs very susceptible to being TASed, and I'm unsure if that's something we would want to allow as a precedent.

If you can clarify point 1, the moderators can come to a consensus on point 2.

We can discuss how/if this affects categories after we sort this out. I would tend to think this just becomes the new "any%"

Hello.

This is a glitch I've known about for more than six years. As you probably know, if you lay down C4 on the roof, a series of explosions occur, and the final one is supposed to kill you. But for whatever reason, if you run to the very top of the screen before this happens, the final explosion won't kill you, and it'll take you straight to the end screen.

Here's the movie file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j9uxledeghtexqc/Die%20Hard%20Attempt%203%20%282%3B47%20WR%29.vmv?dl=0

The emulator I used is VirtuaNES, which is definitely not the best choice of NES emulator these days, but I was off on vacation when I got this run, and it was the only thing I had.

So this is the route:

1. Use the staircase to get up to the 35th floor
2. Get the roof key from the key holder
3. Use the staircase to get down to the 31st floor
4. Run down the in-game time by going back and forth between the 31st and 32nd floors until there are only about 30 seconds before the second lock opens
5. Get the detonator from Heinrich
6. Pick up the C4 in that room in the top right of the 31st floor
7. Use the staircase to get back up to the 35th floor
8. Get up to the roof
9. Use the detonator to set the C4 down on the helipad
10. Run to the very top of the screen before the C4 goes off

I understand that filming my VirtuaNES movie file playback with OBS is far from the best recording method, and if necessary, I can try to get a live sub-2:50 run on a different emulator since I'm back home now. I just wasn't exactly certain if what I did would be acceptable on the leaderboards since it's not specified in the rules.

I reproduced this, cool stuff. Getting to any "good" ending qualifies as any% in my mind. If you could do a recorded run that isn't played back from a movie file, I'll accept it under any% if the other mods have no issues with that. You should also probably record from reset or power on to not inadvertently manipulate the RNG via save state.

Recommend changing rules to the following and then retiming all the any% runs:

Time begins at hitting start on beginner and ends on first frame the text is readable on a "good" ending. Double KO on final boss does not count as a victory.

Thanks for taking the time to explain Flobeamer. I do believe we definitely need either live recorded runs or you need to set your emulator up to show that you're not just showing a movie. My biggest question is if this would go under a wrong warp category or not. You essentially get blown into the good ending credits lol. I'm good either way but I'm curious as to what others have to say about it. I'll have to try this out myself. Seems a little more exciting overall than stair% anyways haha.

I don't particularly view it as a "wrong warp" at least in the traditional sense. We didn't really corrupt memory or get the game to load the wrong screen or anything like that. All it does is end the game with health remaining. Basically we avoided dying in a scripted death sequence. The game has multiple endings with various triggers. One of the big triggers is "Do you have health?", which we can see by hacking our health to 1 and dying anywhere, which triggers a given "good ending" depending on what other things you've done.

It also kind of depends if we consider "Beat Hans" an ending condition. If the game was designed slightly differently, beating Hans might not even be required to get a good ending. Or maybe some crazy theoretical thought like managing to turn another crook into Hans's ID and killing him. (You can sprite glitch in this game by alternating 2 frames left two frames right, but it doesn't do much.)

It seems more like "A Boy and His Blob" or "Link to the Past" than "Super Mario World" I'm not opposed to a "Beat Hans" category, because it's also a relatively interesting/(hilarious) route compared to "All crooks" which is much more standard.

GameFAQs lists these endings: -Dying -Time running out -Winning -Calling the police and winning -Calling the police, doing the helicopter sequence -Calling the police, keeping the detonators, and winning for an animation of Powell shooting! (True Ending IMO)

There's also the "You both died" ending

I uploaded a new run (2:42) to my Twitch page today. This was done live on Nestopia.

I think we agreed to make this any% so I went ahead and added it.

We either need to retime the existing runs (which I did not do yet) or make the rules read something like "Time ends when player loses control leading to a good ending", which would actually make Flobeamer's run timed a few seconds faster, and might actually be more sensible.

Just piggybacking on this conversation. I feel msecs should be opened up for the runs since once the route gets heavily optimized it's going to come down to frames in the end.