Since I started speedrunning properly last year I've dabbed a toe in platforming with Flimbo's Quest, run and gun with Mercs, pure puzzle stuff with Lemmings, and sport stuff with Super Hang-On. I'm looking to get a capture card at some point so I can also run The Unholy War. These haven't really been optimised run at all before - there's something extra special about exploring and uncovering the secrets behind how a game works, how to optimise it, being the discoverer as well as the runner.

These games have a very well-defined strategic element, you can definitely imprint your style on to them in terms of what choices you make, and in which optional paths or methods you use to achieve your aims.

I looked through the list of all the games I used to play/own several times though, and nothing stands out as particularly well-made/interesting for speedrunning. As a crude example I had looked at something like Zool or Global Gladiators, but they seem quite inaccessible (the former for its controls and camera, the latter is just a horror show to run fast). It would be nice to end up running something Nintendo but frankly anything from C64 to PS1/N64 I'm open to as long as it's relatively unexplored and strategic, and not massively long - I could be comfortable with anything up to an hour maybe. The one proviso I want to impose on this is no excessive menuing. I was going to jump into Wonder Boy in Monster World but I honestly hate the idea of losing records based on menuing alone.

Can anyone make any recommendations of games they know and love which have some strategy and similar traits to the games I've played, and which haven't really been explored as far as being run?

I don't know whether it's just me but I really struggle with the poor boundary on SMD controllers between U, UL and UR, and that's using a mk-1650 with the ballbearing in it, and it's impacting my runs. I love the crispness and responsiveness of the face buttons though. Can anyone recommend a controller that doesn't have this d-pad problem?

To anyone who plays run and gun/platform shooter style games: if your frame rate was fluctuating between 59-61 quite a lot during a run, as opposed to a solid stable 60fps, would it possibly give you any sort of advantage at any points? I'm thinking you would end up with a bunch of points in game where you'd have slightly longer to react to things/deal with stuff.

If anyone else wants to chime in as a mod/runner of their game on what tolerances they allow in frame rates for such console games I'd be most grateful.

Hey, hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas! :D I've picked up the game and while doing some general research last night I found out about Rev 00 and 01. I did some stuff and the difference turns out to be about 15%. Pal/Ntsc is 20% so it does make a difference, especially for a game with reactions timing involved for errors/corners.

Then I looked at the leaderboard as is, and timed each run. What surprised me was that Defanged's run seems to be using Rev 00, whereas most others are using Rev 01. Three runners seem to have significantly faster frame rates than DFD(!); guessing that might be caused by individual machines.

Would it be a good idea to standardise which Rev is used going forward? I feel like it'd be better that way than splitting times into separate spaces, and since there are control differences.

Hey :) I've come across a lot of slowdown in Lemmings Master System recently. When I say a lot, I mean that up to 15-20 minutes worth of slowdown might occur in a full run.

I would love to hear about any other games out there which have comparable slowdown management to deal with, based on sprite limitations or other things that are humanly handled. I hope to get a good overview of the upper limits of popular games' management or extent of this issue since it's patently part of speedrunning, but with this much slowdown possible in my game I'm cautious about whether continue with full-segment RTAs as opposed to considering a switch to individual levels.

Hey! I want to run SMS Lemmings, the console contained the pause button in the old days, I run things using a Genesis controller with a start button built in. Do I need to map my PAUSE button to something on the keyboard to replicate real world play, or is use of the controller to map PAUSE acceptable?

EDIT: I noticed Baldnate's run has the required level percentages written within his splits - I noticed playing through earlier that I am utterly incapable of remembering the percentages, so clearly writing them somewhere would be helpful, but can you clarify where this falls regarding extra information? I might sound stupid to ask but I'd rather be sure since for me at least, having the percentages visible during levels would be a significant advantage.

Noticed no submissions for Original, wondering have any of you ever tinkered with it or tried speedrunning it, and might have info about weapon attack values and such - it'd be easy enough to use ram watches and work it out myself but if you have anything already known about original mode it'd be a great help. Is there a preferred emulator for this?

Hiya, I have a submission from a runner playing on emulator, but which features a glitch unknown to me since I didn't grow up with that console's version - on 2 occasions during run, rather than as usual having to kill a specific enemy for a required scroll, the scroll appears at random, and in a position incongruous to where he has been shooting at.

My inclination as the moderator for that game is to disallow the submission until the cause is established; whether it's a bad disk image, or something that happened to other players on Amiga consoles in real life too. While I have no reason to distrust the player, and he is the only player for the category currently, it feels way too important to let by until researched.

Any advice on this conclusion would be great, and more importantly, if any of you ever played Amiga Flimbo in your youth, did you ever have this happen to you? If you know anyone outside the forum who had this version I would really appreciate this being passed on, since I'm not the most technical guy and wouldn't know where to start.

Hi, I was advised to post here - I'm making an Alex Kidd in Miracle World ROM hack with the help of the kidded tool http://emulicious.net/kidded/ and I was wondering since speedrunners are typically very able gamers, would anyone be interested in playtesting a few level designs to help me calibrate the difficulty? The main difference in the game compared to the original is more fluid physics; squats are no longer slow and drawn out, most importantly I beefed up the jump a lot to enable long jumps, and even something approximating wall kicks, like in the mario series. I would like at the very least to be able to release something that will challenge excellent gamers, whether or not I also make something for the casual fan. Let me know if you're interested!

Hi, I'm making an Alex Kidd in Miracle World ROM hack with the help of the kidded tool http://emulicious.net/kidded/ and I was wondering since speedrunners are typically very able gamers, would anyone be interested in playtesting a few level designs to help me calibrate the difficulty? The main difference in the game compared to the original is more fluid physics; squats are no longer slow and drawn out, most importantly I beefed up the jump a lot to enable long jumps, and even something approximating wall kicks, like in the mario series. I would like at the very least to be able to release something that will challenge excellent gamers, whether or not I also make something for the casual fan. Let me know if you're interested! If you've speedrun AKIMW or similar platformers before you would be perfect to try this out.

Hi all, am new here!

I speedrun an old C64 game Flimbo's Quest and there are only two of us I am aware of who currently do this. Recently I discovered through memory watching and such tools that the game has item drops similar to Legend of Zelda [on a counter in each level] but more interestingly, that the rng for target enemies is very arcane. Since that discovery I've halted my speedruns because it's going to turn the whole game upside down.

-Game has a memory byte whose value runs between 00 and FF. -At the start of each level there is a fixed uneven distribution so that each value corresponds to a set enemy, and some have higher frequency. There are hot spots for particular enemies or groups. -Each time an enemy is pulled, all slots in the memory with it in, are supplanted by n-1 in the order.

The byte's incrementation is not fixed, I am working on mapping this because it means that there are 'dead' zones on each level where standing in a particular location can freeze or slow it. Because of the distribution this also means that one can sort of manipulate the byte to give higher probability of better enemies.

This manipulation can be achieved by normal means but much, much less accurately because it is not directly correlated with in-game timer. You would know the enemy targeted but have no clue where in the distribution you were, and so further manipulation would be sheer guesswork.

I am curious whether any other games have a feature like this where being able to view the memory [either a. only the byte's value between enemies, or b. the changes during gameplay] makes such a big difference to runs, and further, what those games' positions are currently on the rules regarding memory viewing of any sort, during speedrun attempts.

I am currently inclined to think that it would be reasonable to permit runners to view the static value between enemies, but not to see the changes during play. This would enable you to know what pocket of the distribution you landed in, but would mean you still rely on your skill to manipulate it. Thus the game remains outside of TAS bounds to my understanding. That would be as opposed to having the ability to mess around on screen until the hot spot approached in view.

Opinions, info would be greatly appreciated, the more info I have before consulting the game's other runners would be very helpful.