Hello everyone, As the title says I am a complete noob and am just getting started at speed running. I have just purchased the original game (5 screw version) and have never speed ran before. I have been reading the forums and have watched the beginner video (which was awesome). My question is what equipment would you recommend I get for starting out? I would like to stream or at least record at some point and I have seen some players using the Powerpak cartridge. I have looked it up and will probably purchase it. But I know the community would know what's best to invest in and what's a waste of money, so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Also if you do recommend the Powerpak or something like that, where would I get the ROMs? I have played with MAME for old arcade games but wasn't sure if that was the same place to get the NES rom or if there is another type of ROM I need to get. Sorry in advance for the dumb noob questions.

I completely understand on the ROM (cptwenky@gmail.com) And thank you so much I didn't know that about the early version of the game. I have heard of the Everdrive but wasn't sure which one was recommend, thanks so much.

I see the Link to speed counter in the resources but that is only for each boss and i can't seem to get it to work without pausing the game and starting it then going back into the game. Do you have a guild on how to setup the speed counter?

You probably just need to turn on global hotkeys in the timer's settings. It'll vary depending on which one you use, but it's probably just not recognizing the split key while you're in an emulator window.