Hi. I am not aware of a definitive way to identify a v1.0 cartridge by its looks. It only works the other way around: The carts with the Million-Seller seal are always v1.2 of the US release: Carts without that seal can be both 1.0 or 1.2 That said, you mentioned punchmarks which lead me to examine my own 1.0 copy a little closer. It's a Japanese cartridge and resembles this one exactly: - with one tiny difference: on the Noko Bombette in the bottom right there's a punch mark of the number "23". In the picture above, you can see the letter "B" (might actually be "53B", hard to tell) just to the right of the Noko Bombette. You say that you have a Japanese v1.2 cart. Can you check if there's a punch mark somewhere around that area? Maybe numbers mean v1.0 and letter codes mean 1.2? Maybe the exact placement is an indicator: on the enemy = 1.0, next to the enemy = 1.2? Maybe only v1.0 carts have a punch mark and v1.2 carts don't? I have no idea, but we may be able to figure something out here.

I fully agree and want to add the following: Instead of "testing" moderators with cheated submissions, you can always go the more social way of making a forum post and point out things to look out for in submissions or share your findings in potentially suspicious runs on the board. Game moderators are only human and make mistakes. This whole site can only function because so many volunteers come together and try to make it work - so instead of working against this concept, better consider contributing in a positive way!

I haven't settled on an opinion yet, so I'll just provide my unreflected gut feelings:

1. Add high scores to speedrun.com.

Speedrun.com implies speedrun content. I could see an optional integration à la "☑ Show highscores" where data is pulled from the database, but I think it should be hosted under its own domain.

2. Work with the owner of highscore.com to try to improve the existing site.

I'm not a fan of the current site's style. Even though I'm in my mid 30s, I don't appreciate the late 90s design choices and the integrated game music that blew out my eardrums unannounced. I think there might be too much of a gap in philosophies there for a cooperation.

3. Try again to buy highscore.com (offering more money), make a completely new website in its place, while trying to salvage as much of the existing data as possible.

Probably the best solution, but only for a reasonable amount of money.

4. Make a completely new high scores website under a different name / domain name.

Hiscore.com seems available, but compared to the proper spelling, it does look a bit underwhelming, I admit. I agree that scorerun.com seems forced.

Hello there. I have recently taken over as a content moderator, and as such my focus lies particularly on the GB library.

Now, it's no secret that this leaderboard, in particular, is not easy to handle. There's the issue with the different platforms running at different speeds, there are runs potentially done on VBA, etc., many mislabelled runs and, last but not least, many runs without video proof.

The latter point is a philosophical one. I am aware that you require runs under 12 minutes to have video proof these days (which, however, is not universally applied to the current runs on the board). Personally, I find it rather outdated to not require video proof for ANY submission, since almost nobody should have trouble with at least pointing a webcam or a phone camera at a screen. Submissions without proof just carry less meaning and water down the integrity of the board overall. All that said, this is completely up to you as a community, though.

The other points are less ambiguous:

1. I'd like to ask of you to discuss time conversions to a common standard (preferrably, the standard that virtually every other GB game community uses, which is the GB's refresh rate of ~59.7275 Hz, which is universal to all official hardware releases - except SGB - and the accurate emulators). I have provided you with a raw conversion model for how to potentially deal with certain emulator runs (Dream Collection and 3DSVC), based on swordsmankirby's video footage, but have yet not seen a lot of response to that. As a runner, I want to be able to compare my own achievement to the others on the leaderboard on an even ground. Everything else just creates needless tension. It is unfortunate for us that Nintendo's focus is not on accuracy for their emulators, but that's how it is. We, as a speedrun community, have our own priorities and are able to fix the issue for our purposes.

2. I shouldn't even have to mention that runs done on VBA should not appear on a GB leaderboard.

3. The integration of platforms is not exactly well-done on speedrun.com, even at this point in time. On top of that, many GB games were labelled as GBC by default, initially. So the mess we see here is mostly due to that. We're not stuck with this, though, and it's also not the sole reason of mislabelled runs. For Super Mario Land 2, I use a workaround with a custom variable to at least differentiate between the emulators used. It's still not pretty, but it clears up things a lot more. The original platform variable was meant to show the platform the game was released for. Naturally, it was later used to specify which platform the run was PLAYED on, which lead to confusion and to missing options for emulator submissions. A few examples of misnomers:

• GBC[Emu]: should probably be GB[Emu]. It's arguable whether Gambatte could be labelled GBC[Emu], since it uses the GBC palette by default. Going back to the initial point, the platform variable was intended to specify the release platform and both Gambatte and BGB, of course, use their respective GB core to emulate GB games. 2 strong points to support GB[Emu]. Too many words for this almost trivial point, sorry.

• GBP[Emu]: doesn't make any sense

• Wii/WiiU/3DSVC: should be Wii[Emu]/WiiU[Emu]/3DSVC[Emu]. It's software emulation. Period. Doesn't matter if official or something else.

• GBA[Emu]: that would make me think of VBA, probably not what was intended during the submission

• GBC: most of the time probably just left on the default option and/or forgot to tick the [Emu] flag.

So, now it's your turn as moderators and as a community to make this leaderboard a place where people can find accurate information and compare their own efforts against other's. I will help where I can and if you want me to do the cleanup myself instead, I will. Before that, though, I'd like to see an open discussion about the points I brought up above. Moderators, active and inactive runners, people from other communities: anyone's participation is very much appreciated.

I support this idea. Like others have mentioned, I would also prefer this to be implemented as a centralized "official" suggestion, that the particular game pages can refer to. Not every game moderator is knowledgeable about emulators or even aware of emulation inaccuracies, so having a general guideline would help those out. Furthermore, there might be special cases in which a community can formulate exceptions for their game (e.g. categories with memory manipulation in Game Boy Pokémon games requiring a particular emulator). I assume there are knowledgeable people for pretty much every platform out there who can help putting this database together, initially. I have a lot of experience with Game Boy speedruns and the various emulators used for it. I manage 2 moderately active leaderboards with Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2 with between 1 and 10 run submissions per week. It still happens that people do not read the rules and submit a run on an inaccurate emulator; and they may have also ignored this information if it had been present in a speedrun.com knowledgebase, but putting it somewhere at least increases the chances of it being seen. If it spares even just one person from the disappointment and discouragement of getting their run rejected because they just didn't know better, then it is already worth the effort. And at the same time it educates those who are actively seeking out that information. It also can bring together people from different communities to exchange ideas and approaches and help each other out. More things should be standardized for particular games (e.g., framerate standards for Game Boy games). The Megaman leaderboards have had an automatic time conversion for years, depending on the platform the game was played on. Imo, no harm will come from having emulator standards. And just like the majority of this site is handled, sr.com should provide the canvas and let the specific communities provide the content - probably with some mediation involved.

Thank you! Fixed it in the document.

Hey there! I manage a few Game Boy game leaderboards on this site and recently have come across a few run submissions done on the 3DSVC. It quickly became clear that that platform was running the games too fast. Sadly, Nintendo doesn't seem to care too much about accuracy for their various emulators (=Virtual Consoles). In my opinion, speedrunning should be about comparing your skill at a game with others and not a race of arms of who uses the faster platform. This is a general statement and not meant to discredit anyone's efforts! E.g., the Game Boy community handles runs done on Super Game Boy according to that comparability approach and times are converted following this example: https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Super_Game_Boy_timing Out of my own interest and after talking to eBloodyCandy about the situation on the KDL leaderboard, I had a look at some data provided by swordsmankirby, where he compared clockspeed and load times between GBP, 3DSVC and the Dream Collection (on WiiU?). You can have a look at my findings here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13_Le7b0KgGA1tT_x-ta2Yfv5PrLWViauZ26XbVzgKhY/edit?usp=sharing

The speed differences on the 3DSVC are consistent with what I had previously encountered in submissions of Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2 so I'm confident that that data is correct. I'm not sure whether the Dream Collection footage was recorded from Wii or WiiU. A comparable recording from the missing platform would be nice. Data for the load times is a little slim and more and longer segments should be recorded to fill in the gaps. One last thing that I have not looked into yet (simply because it's so hard to quantify) is lag. Lag is a MASSIVE factor in KDL so a well-designed comparison could be interesting. All that said, I do not own any of the systems in question myself, so I can't collect any data. I just wanted to share my findings and let you, the KDL community, decide how to handle this. Cheers!

For general documentation: from the data that I have available so far, the VC on 3DS seems to run GB games faster than normal by approx. 0.1 fps. It doesn't seem like much, but over the course of a full run that amounts to 1-2 full seconds. That is not taking possible differences in lag emulation or load times into account. I'll need to collect more data before putting it up for discussion how 3DSVC should be handled on the leaderboards.

On one hand, it's an official Nintendo product - on the other hand, it seems to be just another crappy inaccurate emulator.

Anyhow, no further rambling before we have more (meaningful) data.

In fact, I've already started to discuss the matter of a few more miscellaneous categories on these leaderboards here. This particular one would most likely stay empty, though. As mugg can probably attest from experience, it takes a high level of knowledge and execution to even complete a run of this (faster than the Glitchless version). There is currently no high-level runner (nor anyone else) interested in running this. If someone did put in some work, finished a run and contacted me about making it an official (miscellaneous) category, I'd be happy to follow that suggestion.

https://tcrf.net/Super_Mario_Land_2:_6_Golden_Coins#Revisional_Differences

Requesting https://www.speedrun.com/sml2dx for the GBC romhack of Super Mario Land 2.

Edit: Game has been created. The game type should be set to ROM Hack.

Thx!

^This. The frustration factor of such a route would probably be very high.

The 2 main exploits would be the pipe glitch and the checkpoint bell glitch. The latter would probably only be used in the Space Zone boss level. Setting it up is a time investment of ~30 seconds. Performing it is not an easy task because of its frame-perfect nature. If you miss it it takes another 30 seconds (plus the time for the soft-reset) to attempt.

The pipe glitch (including the pipe death glitch) would be used in several places. Possible levels to set it up quickly are Macro Zone 1 and Pumpkin Zone 1. You would beat those levels, perform the pipe glitch and carry the glitched state to other levels. You'd then proceed to fall through the floor in those levels and find a trigger to complete it quickly. Consistent triggers to finish levels are rare and success is not guaranteed. Having to set up the pipe glitch again after failing it would take a variable amount of time, depending on the distance between the levels (setup level & execution level). Failing it only once can already negate the possible time save compared to beating the level normally, though. On top of that, only a certain number of levels even have an accessible out-of-bounds area where you can hunt for level end triggers - in many others you just drop into an empty copy of the original level without the possibility to beat it quickly.

To sum it all up: such a route is certainly possible, but to me it does not sound fun to run. I invite you to try it out yourself. Not owning the game is hardly an excuse, since you can pick it up for $5 pretty much everywhere (includes some trial and error, because you need version 1.0 of the game).

Max% (like in most other games) would be a snore fest. The initial idea of this thread was also quite the opposite. Only the 6 golden boss coins were meant there, and contrary to the regular glitchless route, you'd abuse OoB level clears and checkpoint bell glitches, making the run quite a bit faster than normal.

However, I'm gonna route something that picks up a part of the max% idea for this year's 25th anniversary of SML2: Kill at least 1 specimen of all different enemies. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but it will have a few interesting strats not seen in any other category. Low% Coins is another long-standing idea. While 0 coins might not be possible without major glitches, I've been thinking about adding a time penalty to the final run time for every coin collected to make it somewhat competitive.

BGB and Gambatte. Stay away from the rest, esp. from VBA and all its derivates.

For GB games, SGB is generally allowed. Times are converted to the original clockspeed (according to the SDA article that Ravetuba posted. A web app for that purpose by Nudua can be found here: http://nudua.com/convert ). As far as we know, the framerate differences are consistent over all GB games. The emulators Gambatte and BGB are generally allowed for running GB games. Exceptions may exist, since there are parts of the emulation that might conflict with certain memory manipulations in glitched categories of certain games.

That said, and contrary to what Breadpan replied first, SGB is not used by many speedrunners (due to the inconvenience of having to convert times and the skipped frames and distorted sound that result from the inaccurate framerate). Nintendo released an updated version of the module which runs at the correct framerate of the original GB: the SGB2.

I usually try to verify runs quicker, but unfortunately my PC broke down recently and that messed up my workflow. Apologies and thanks Ark for jumping in!

There are simply 2 different level clear flags in the game: supposedly, 1 for beating the level by taking the secret exit (the flag still exists in the code even if a level doesn't have such an exit) and one for beating it normally. Only the latter marks the level as completed.

With Super Mario (mushroom upgrade) you have to do a little jump on the pipe to be able to enter it. (Imagine there's an invisible switch ~2 tiles above the pipe and Mario has to hit it to open up the pipe below. With Fire Mario (flower upgrade) you just have to get to the pipe quickly and without falling too far down on your way to it and then enter it centrally or a little to the right of the center. Since you're on emulator, there might be different factors that we don't know about yet. Sorry for the very late reply!

I've thought about the optimal compromise for a bit and here is what I suggest for timing SML runs:

We've found out that the initial load time between pressing start and gaining control over Mario differs between SGB2 and all other systems. The difference is 8 frames in favour of SGB2 (see the other thread for how this number was determined). However, I wasn't happy with settling for one system as a standard over the other. I also didn't want to introduce a new standard in general. Luckily, the solution is very easy and we can apply an already existing standard to SML because the current timing has already been very close to that standard all the time. I'm talking about timing character control as used by SDA. We had already used the frame on which Tatanga explodes (or any of Mario's projectiles unload, alternatively) as the last frame. That frame coincides with the loss of control over Mario as per SDA standard, meaning the end point doesn't change one bit.

On SGB2, character control starts 8 frames after Start is pressed. On all other accurate systems it starts 8 frames later than that. The time between gaining control and the ingame timer ticking down from 400 to 399 is equal on all systems, of course. The timer switches to 399 exactly 41 frames after the player gains control over Mario. That's 1 / 59.7275 ¤ 41 = 0.686 seconds. So for uniform timing I'd use the 1st frame the timer shows 399 as the start point. The end point is the frame on which Tatanga explodes. Then you just add 0.686 to the time of that segment to get the total length of the run.

Another topic is timing accuracy in general. Currently, speedrun.com offers resolutions of either full seconds or milliseconds. I'm in favour of using 1 decimal since due to encoding artifacts (we're timing encoded material from Twitch or Youtube after all and not actual game frames) it's not reasonable to give the times in milliseconds or even only down to centiseconds. I'm fine with keeping the resolution at full seconds, too.

That said, I'll leave all of this open for discussion again. So please discuss! :-)

Edit: This is mainly interesting for board moderation. Runners can handle their splits however they want. If you're running on BGB, Gambatte or GBP and want to incorporate this into your live timing then you just have to subtract 0.268s from your timer offset and half of that if you're running on SGB2. Or just don't change anything because a moderator will time your run when verifying your submission anyway. :-)

Over the next couple of days I'll try to update the leaderboards, i.e. remove runs on inaccurate emulators, correct times if necessary and add information about which particular platforms were used for the individual runs. You can help with the last part by posting here in this thread which platform/emulator you used for your current best run on the board. That way a moderator can just add the variable and you don't have to re-submit anything. If you have reliable information about a run that is not your own, I'd appreciate if you shared that information as well.

Cheers! ö/

This thread has nothing to do with emulation. Apparently, there was an encoding issue with mugg's run that resulted in an inaccurate run length. Accurate Gameboy emulators that are allowed for this game are BGB and Gambatte. Runs performed on inaccurate emulators (like VBA) will be rejected. There is no way to retime or adjust such runs because the inaccuracies usually also concern load times and lag emulation. If you stick to the 2 aforementioned emulators on their standard settings you're good to go.