After playing this for a bit and reading the SNES manual for the game I figured out what the different stats and collectible gems mean. None of this is explained in the game, so here's a breakdown of how the game works to help you play faster. Good luck out there!

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To start playing the game press the SELECT button at the title screen. If you press the START button you will be taken to the Training Mode race, which is what the Any% category uses.

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The controls are:

• B — Turbo speed. This uses up energy.
• A — Brake.
• X — Jump.
• Y — Jump.

Energy is the white bar next to your player icon that is drained by using turbo.

Braking is important for effective cornering, especially on ice.

Jumping into other racers will prevent your racer from being stunned on contact.

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These are the four stats represented by single letters:

• (A) Acceleration — How quickly your racer gets up to top speed.
• (S) Speed — The top speed your racer can run.
• (G) Grip — How well your racer controls on the track.
• (F) Fitness — How effective turbo is (higher fitness means energy drains more slowly).

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The six different gems you can collect during the race are:

• White — Currency that is spent between races to increase stats.
• Blue — Temporary boost of (S) Speed.
• Yellow — Temporary boost of (A) Acceleration.
• Green — Temporary boost of (G) Grip.
• Red — Temporary boost of energy level.
• Black — Virus that can be transmitted by touch. If infected you cannot pickup gems.

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Between each race you can spend your White Gems on increasing stats by pressing one of the following buttons:

• X — Increase (A) Acceleration.
• Y — Increase (S) Speed.
• B — Increase (G) Grip.
• A — Increase (F) Fitness.
• L — Convert some energy into a White Gem.
• R — Increase energy bar.

You should try to spend all of your gems between races on increasing your stats. (A) Acceleration and (G) Grip are a good starting point, but where you should first focus your gems will depend on the characteristics of your racer.

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Each of the racers has different characteristics:

• Top Cat — Good grip. Average elsewhere.
• Quick Draw McGraw — Best top speed. Slow acceleration.
• Yogi Bear — All around. Low fitness.
• Snagglepuss — Best acceleration. Low grip.
• Hong Kong Phooey — High acceleration and fitness.
• Huckleberry Hound — Best fitness. Good grip. Low top speed.

I found out that after beating the Rabbit Cup and coming in first place you unlock a hidden/secret Augie Doggie's Cup, which can be manually unlocked with this password:

YELLOW, GREEN, PURPLE, RED, RED

If you enter those colors at the bottom of the menu it will make the new cup appear.

I think this should be added as another category along with Gorilla/Turtle/Rabbit given how easy it is to unlock with the password.

Though if this were to be added I don't think All Cups should change and that it should remain as the three default cups.

Sorry about the late response.

I listed EverDrive and PowerPak only because I wasn't aware of KrzysioCart existing as a NES flashcart. There doesn't seem to be anything about that flash cart to justify excluding it so I approved your runs and will add it to the list of acceptable flash carts.

I also thought that the NES version for this game was abandoned because I could only see SNES and Genesis updates on Kickstarter (the NES updates are just buried/old) and I didn't notice that a digital version was available on the dev's personal/custom web store.

Anyway, the version available here is the full game on NES so far as I can tell: https://www.second-dimension.com/store/eyra-the-crow-maiden

Your previous runs were accepted in error, as I was focused on the frame counting and not on the actual completion of the run, which is that the final day is triggered and the ending sequence begins.

That's really what my contention is: the restriction is so inconsequential to the spirit of the speedrun—which is to play the first day as fast as possible—that you didn't notice.

It is not clearly stated that the game must be completed. There is a reference to a "final day" without clarifying what that means, such as specifying that the fade in should lead to the scene with the parents. The word "final" here is ambiguous. It is also not uncommon for speedrun categories to be for only a portion of the game without completion.

This category is really a Day1% speedrun which is what I did.

However, if you insist on rejecting my 2m 05s 767ms WR for these leaderboards because I didn't use a cheat code that doesn't affect the speedrun then I can't stop you. I'll come back and use this cheat for a run if somebody does it faster.

I believe my run should be accepted because it is legit as per how the rules were written when I submitted it, and because not using the cheat code didn't give me an advantage.

As well, I believe the rules should be rewritten so they state that using the aforementioned cheat code is a requirement and not something that is simply allowed.

Hello,

I recently had my Any% runs rejected with the reasoning being that my runs did not follow the rules, which I believe that they did.

One of those runs rejected was also a new Any% WR which was very difficult to set, so this is extremely frustrating for me given that from my perspective my runs were legitimate.

There are two bits from the rules that I made note of when I read them:

"L+R+Select code is allowed."

"Timing starts when you select a new diary."

I didn't see an advantage to using a cheat code and the rule says it's merely allowed and not REQUIRED, so I didn't use it, and the second part explicitly says a NEW diary is required, which is what I selected in my runs. I chose the in game NEW DIARY option.

The rules allude to sleeping on the "final day" but given that the rules also say a new diary is needed I had no way of knowing what this specifically meant nor can I see any difference in the timing in this regard.

Given the above not saying the cheat code is required, and the rules explicitly saying a NEW diary is required, that to me is saying the final day is the end of the first day which is the final day for a one day speedrun.

So far as I can tell this is an arbitrary restriction. There seems to be zero advantage to not using that cheat code that the rules don't even say is required.

Nowhere in the rules does it say you are required to use a cheat code yet me not using a cheat code is why my runs were rejected.

Can somebody please explain why a cheat code is required, despite the rules not saying it is required, even though the use of this code doesn't affect the timing of the speedrun?

edit:

I should also point out that 3 of my runs were previously accepted, none of which used any cheat codes, setting precedent for my runs being legitimate.

Hello,

The WR run for Championship Mode starts out with Lulu Valentine already unlocked and trained and I am unsure how this is done.

I know of the in-game chearts of naming your gym BRONZE/SILVER/GOLD/CHAMP to unlock characters, but doing this will have them with no training so all stats are at 0%. The WR run has Lulu with nearly max stats.

Is increasing fighter stats done through GameShark codes? Are those permitted?

Is there a way to have the fighter be trained with high stats and 0% experience like in the WR by playing the game normally?

Thanks.

Hello,

I'm planning on speedrunning this game, but I play the NES release, not the PC release that came out on Steam. Could a mod please add NES as an available platform?

Thanks.

Howdy,

The new Any% WR has an impossible time of 3m 220ms entered. So far as I can tell the fastest possible time is 3m 233s.

I also framecounted the Any% WR submitted as 3m 220ms and it is indeed a 3m 233ms time so it should be updated.

Hello,

The rules for when the run ends has been updated. Now the run ends when the "You've made it!!" screen appears before the "Sweet Score" screen.

All existing runs have been re-timed to use this new timing rule.

@FistaGames Yeah, absolutely. That works. I'm happy to clean up the rules and go through the existing runs and retime them to make sure they're accurate.

Hello,

I noticed after zarc0nis submitted his run that he ended timing as soon as the "Sweet Score" screen appeared. This was slightly before Tishero and I ended our timing, which was after we entered the door in the "Sweet Score" room that leads to the credits.

After this zarc0nis noticed that half of the runs currently on the leaderboard ended time on the "Sweet Score" screen and not on the credits screen like Tishero and I.

There is a two second difference between these two timing methods so they can't both be used.

I think the rules should be updated to make it clear where timing is supposed to end: is it on the "Sweet Score" screen or on the credits screen?

Thanks.

Howdy,

I've updated the rules for the Any% (NOOB) category to allow all glitches/exploits that do not cause Out of Bounds clipping. Previously any and all glitches were banned in the Any% (NOOB) category.

This is to keep it in line with what a speedrunner will expect from an Any% category, as well as allow the glitch that opens the locked gate without having to talk to the king.

Oh cool beans. Thanks.

Also, just an fyi @Cephla: I framecounted your 1m 11s 967ms run to check if I was timing correctly, and using https://somewes.com/frame-count/ it's giving me 1m 11s 933ms so your run was 34ms faster than the SRC time.

Hello,

I noticed that my submitted run was changed from 1m 10s 950ms to 1m 11s 000ms by @Cephla the moderator.

From my understanding of the timing the starting frame for my run was 780 and the ending frame 5037, which is 4257 total frames, coming out to 70.95 seconds.

I double checked my timing on https://somewes.com/frame-count/ and I'm getting 1m 10s 950ms each time.

Am I using the wrong starting/ending frames?

Just trying to make sure I'm timing my runs accurately.

Thanks.

Regarding the suggestions by @Zarc0nis:

I have no dog in this race because I was not planning on running the Any% (NOOB) category, and from I can tell the Any% category is fully optimized with no time save remaining—Ryu's 10s 033ms time I found above notwithstanding—so I'd have no reason to do any more attempts.

Having said that it looks like removing milliseconds is the only tenable solution, which will unfortunately remove competition/challenge from the categories. If we keep milliseconds we have the problems I found above with the calculated times not making any sense.

Without us figuring out what is causing the discrepancy in the emulator-powered run times I don't know what else can be done.

I had an idea and took a look at both the Any% Underground Adventure runs for @RyuHayabusa89 and @Zarc0nis which both have visible framecounters. I took the sum of the frames, which gave me:

• 356 frames for Zarc0nis
• 342 frames for RyuHayabusa89

With the games running at 60 frames per second, dividing by 60 will give the time in seconds, which results in:

• 5s 933ms for Zarc0nis
• 5s 700ms for RyuHayabusa89

Both of those times exactly match the submitted times.

So, I did the same thing for Drunk Traveler and got these frame count totals:

• 621 frames for Zarc0nis
• 602 frames for RyuHayabusa89 on FCEUX
• 602 frames for RyuHayabusa89 on MesenRTA

When converting these to seconds, however, the results do not match either calculated time:

• 10s 350ms for Zarc0nis
• 10s 033ms for RyuHayabusa89 on FCEUX
• 10s 033ms for RyuHayabusa89 on MesenRTA

Based on this I can only confidently say that RyuHayabusa89 cannot have gotten a time faster than 10s 033ms and I cannot figure out what is causing both the runs for RyuHayabusa89 and Zarc0nis to be inaccurate versus the time given by Somewes.com or Avidmux or whatever tool is used to count the frames.

Honestly, this is very confusing, and I believe this game is the problem. There must be something in its codebase that is causing issues with emulators.

@RyuHayabusa89 Thanks for taking the time to use MesenRTA.

I framecounted @RyuHayabusa89's 10s 000ms run on MesenRTA and when his player falls down the hole and the screen turns solid black he is exactly 1 frame ahead of the 10s 067ms time set by @CritRocket and me. There is also a dropped frame at the very beginning—frame 83 is skipped without a delay—which accounts for the speed increase.

After falling down the hole there is no possible way to save any time versus the 10s 067ms time because it's a free fall—going faster would require falling faster, and there is no game mechanic that allows an increase in fall speed.

As well, I also framestepped through @RyuHayabusa89's entire Any% run and the first three levels of his 100% run for Underground Adventure, as that is another homebrew title he has been running, and I found no frame skips in either of them. Those have no issues that I can find.

So, given that we have frames being dropped on Drunk Time Traveler runs for @RyuHayabusa89, @Zarc0nis, and @JoePulito using emulators (regardless of there being any advantage form the frame drop) and there being no frames dropped for them while using the same emulators on Underground Adventure, I think the problem is this game. This title may simply be too janky to be accurately emulated without a few frames being dropped, which is significantly affecting the Any% run because of how short it is.

I fully trust that @RyuHayabusa89 is doing legit runs and this is a technical problem outside of his control, so I'm not sure what the solution is here.

@CritRocket I don't think the Any% WR should be invalidated because so far as I can tell it's a fair 10s 067ms run because RyuHayabusa89 didn't slow down for any frames, which is what is required to get the 10s 067ms time. From what I can tell it would be fair to update it to be 10s 067ms rather than invalidating it.

@RyuHayabusa89 If you're able to get a sub 10s 067ms time using MesenRTA I'd be confident there's no frame drops causing an impossible time. It can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/threecreepio/mesenrta/releases

I am pretty sure it's being caused by FCEUX inaccuracies, though, because I checked JoePulito's Any% run, which is also using FCEUX, and it also has frame skips (which doesn't really matter much for a non-podium time).