The current WR holder for Arcade version of this game has a obvious spliced run, first of all there's no transition to the next round, aka the black bars, it just skips right to when it says "Round 1, and Round 2" There seems to be almost little lag from the game, which he claims that his pc is bad. The timer is recorded after he did his run as well. If i am somehow wrong, please tell me in the forums! (Also weird that he picked akuma.) Thank you! https://www.speedrun.com/sf3ts/run/m3o3rwqm

Hey dude, thanks for pointing this out. We are currently investigating..

While on the surface you may be correct ... theres also a chance that this is a result of an emulation innacuracy simply "not showing" the black bars transitions. Notice how at the END of each round even though the black bars are not displayed over the switch to "Akuma's face" they quickly appear/disappear as if its some kind of glitch.

Now this doesn't mean we are not going to reject the run.. even if it is "just an emulation inaccuracy" that could very well be grounds to remove it as well. We just want to thoroughly investigate all angles before making a decision. We don't take removing runs lightly .. even on a board as small as this.

Thanks for your patience and diligence, we will keep you posted as to what we find and to what our final decision will be.

So after a thorough analysis of the run I can confirm the following:

1. The missing black bars is a mere "emulation glitch"
2. The run is not gaining any time or unfair advantage by the glitch, it is visual only and the rest of the run and gameplay are completely unaffected.
3. Because there is no time gained this also implies that there was no actual "cutting" of the footage, or at the very least it means that the missing black bars is NOT evidence of splicing.

I did my own comparison vid here:

My run on the left, WR run on the right

The 3 comparisons I made:

1. From Vs screen to "Round 1 fight" on Elena, as you can see no time is gained
2. From the end of round 1 to round 2 in a non-perfect round synced up based on the frame in which the win icon appears (the V)
3. From the end of the match to the post fight screen, again synced up from the frame in which the win icon appears (the V and the S)

Important to note:

• On the first comparison its important to compare the same character and opponent, because the intro animation differs the timing. As you can see here with the same characters, the timing is the same.
• On the 2nd and 3rd comparisons its important to use the WIN ICON as a timing measure as the amount of time taken from the "final hit" on the opponent from the moment you KO is different depending on how you finished them. The Win Icon is the most consistent timing measure and as you can see here it lines up in both cases.
• If the WR run "actually had black bars" but cut them out to splice the run, It would be impossible to line up the transition sequences as I have done here as the amount of time spent in the transition would be shorter on his run.

We have gone over the rest of the run in detail but have noticed nothing else sketchy or suspicious about the run. Neither the run in question nor any on this board is really highly optimized.

On a side note, I'm not sure why you thought it was wierd he used Akuma, hes one of the most powerful characters in the game and his Raging Demon is a huge time saver if you use it correctly. More SF Speedruns should be utilizing him wherever possible.

Under light of these facts we have decided to keep the run on the board. A minor graphical glitch from emulation is not cause for concern, it happens all the time. As long as no unfair advantage is gained, we see no threat here.

Thanks for your patience, I hope you understand our stance on this matter.

I use the fightcade emu as well, and it seems to run perfectly on my part, same file and everything, I don't know why this run differs from any other run, plus the splices are consistent, the "emulation glitches" aren't. Other runners of this same category aren't affected by this.

If the dude has problems with his system, or if his system has cheaper hardware then that could produce graphical anomolies we can't reproduce.

Care to explain what you mean by the "emulation glitches are not consistent" ? Because as far as I can tell, none of his transitions have the bars .. that's pretty consistent. I also showed you how the bars missing were not evidence of a splice. If the bar's missing was evidence of a splice .. his transitions would be shorter in time because footage would have to have been CUT.

In fact, it would be EASIER to splice if the bars still existed because its easier to splice a black screen. Your logic is completely flawed.

Furthermore, with all due respect, you haven't even submitted a run nor are actually part of this community. Judging by your profile you have never ran anything remotely close to this game or any fighting game.

Unless you can provide more concrete proof we are done here. Thanks.

Ah, I see this has been investigated already.. 2 months ago? Then why is the run still up? It's glitched, and the CPU behavior makes no sense. Take it down.

How about you read the discussion and find out why?

The glitch is visual only and gives the runner no actual advantage.

There was no discussion about CPU behaviour making no sense. This is completely false, I literally used the some of the same strats in my own run and came close to beating it within 2 sessions.

The run is not cheated, its completely beatable. Why are people who have never run this game coming into here and making rediculous assertions about the top runs with no knowledge or experience?

If you have a claim to make, back it up with knowledge and/or proof. Tell me exactly what about the CPU behaviour in his run makes no sense.

Edit: I hadn't read your other post before reading this message, see follow up in other post.

There is a fix for the black bars, so you never get them. Its basically standard in fightcade these days

@Tekrat Thank you so much for pointing this out. Everything makes sense now!

For those wondering: Its a workaround they implemented for playing online due to a glitch with netcode rolling back during a transition (I'm assuming this caused something wierd, like the black bars being stuck on the screen during the fight). It further proves my point about it being visual only and not being of any effect to the run.

Thank you for this information.

On a side note ... this is kinda getting rediculous. Like, I don't want to bad mouth the current WR holder .. his run is "good" .. but its by no means optimized to any kind of extreme, nor is my run (a whole 6-8 hours experience and I almost beat WR twice lol) or any run on this board for that matter. This board is currently stagnant and has had no real community built yet and conversely, no highly optimized runs submitted.

The fact anyone is going through any kind of measures to claim the WR is cheated is laughable ... people should run the game first before making these kinds of claims.