greetings, all. im starting this thread to stir discussion regarding recent developments in the Super Mario 64 FPS meta.

Lets start with the easy stuff first: as brought to my attention in the "how do you beat this game fast" thread by user 'gamestabled', there is a bug involving your respawn location after voiding, that can be abused to access areas of the game earlier than intended on a new save file. the obvious question is, since this involves some amount of setup beforehand, how should this kind of Respawn Bug Abuse (henceforth referred to in this post as 'RBA') be treated in terms of leaderboard submissions?

For example, the theoretical way that gamestabled mentioned to RBA into Bowser in the Sky currently requires a semi-completed file that has access to that area already, so any runs done with that respawn location would clearly fall under 'New Game+' (a category I have added to the leaderboards).

However, the case is not always so simple, as with the current accepted BIG PIANTA RTA route. here, the RBA setup DOES NOT actually involve any semi completed file, since you can wall crawl and access the Lethal Lava Land respawn point without collecting any stars or saving at all. So is this NG+ as well, or no? Should the setup be included in timing the run? if you did the 'MARIO GUN UPSTAIRS EARLY AETHER JUMP (PAUSELESS) [JRB SECRET WORLD] --KEY 2 SKIP + EARLY AR--' trick, and theoretically were able to skip the 50 star door and access the BitS respawn point without saving, would that still be NG+?

let me know how you think these category splits should be handled. hit me back. also, if anyone has just two quarters they could mail to me, that would be great i would super appreciate it, im just short of being able to do a full load of laundry and i need your help. my home address is 1000 Colonial Farm Road, McLean, VA 22101 if you wanna mail them really quick id really appreciate it.

greeting fellow mario fps gunslinger,

after thinking about it for a bit, running the numbers, and verifying my results with top scientists and getting them peer-reviewed, i would also agree that the RBA setup should be counted in the timing. I would, however understand the counter-argument, that keeping the RBA in keeps the time short, and thus prevents big pianta from becoming lonely.

i would be fine with banning RBA from BIG PIANTA RTA if it came down to it and making it NG+ only. i'd also be fine with allowing it, but under a subcategory as well if consensus leaned toward wanting that. I can understand not wanting it, as it makes the run... kinda bland from a repeated runs perspective and removes a lot of challenge from it.

this is just my half dollar on the matter

we could have two main categories for every dumbass RTA idea that comes up, with and without RBA. or we could blanket ban NG+ RBA for all main categories, and make an 'individual level' category for each RTA category that does allow NG+ RBA. i prefer the later, as it would look cleaner and also make use of the IL categories on here. in fact, im going to do that, because i can, and someone can change it if they violently disagree. gonna try and move all the time over without fucking up. iwhs me luck hit me back\

edit: just kidding. i was just jokinh. what im actually going to do is make the NG+ categoriez under the Misc. tab. just learned about this! sorry guys,. im a new mod