The coin areas are reused per level, the exit pipes are loaded based on the level you're in. The only place where you would be able to save time that I'm aware of is in 1-1, where the unused coin areas send you to the end of 1-2. In all the other levels I believe they send you to the start of the current level.

But yeah, wouldn't expect anything like that to be found.

It does remove lag which should definitely not be allowed, which seems to put Mesen in a similar position to RetroArch which afaik is disallowed primarily because it has this setting..

edit: Mesen has been banned!

Hey, didn't want to start any big issues. :)

When I timed it while talking to TheCrit yesterday it came out to the same as the autosplitter, but I'm not a timing-person so I'm sure it's all good!

Also @mruns05 the autosplitter he's talking about is for one particular emulator, and only works with the softlock category, that's all it does.

Yeah it's right under the 'leaderboard' on the left side, I think that's a pretty reasonable spot to have it.

Yep I've also had this happen on pellsson 5, but nowhere else.

@KilleDragon I think his powerpak had some issue when loading the gravity subroutine, it's not possible without an issue with the game cart.

Yeah it's not only underwater:

I can't seem to find which IPS i should apply for the NES romhack (the rules link to one and says it's not allowed.. which is helpful.. but not as helpful as a link to an allowed one..)

Based on xerox video it seems like it's this version: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/527/

SuperMegaDav's looks like it's: https://www.zophar.net/hacks/nes/super-mario-bros-13/Super-Mario-Bros-Special--844.html

I've used Mesen quite a lot, in my experience (primarily as a developer) it's a very accurate emulator with good performance. Of course I've primarily tested for emulation accuracy not so much speed accuracy.. I think doing speed and lag comparisons would be a good idea. Unfortunately it doesn't have a TAS editor last I checked, so it can be a bit of a pain to work with.

Also not sure how accurate tasvideos emulator test is, there are still inaccuracies in Mesen's emulation (but there are also inaccuracies in bizhawk and fceux, so.)

Yeah I'm not suggesting to remove it (especially since Pellsson made it available again, I doubt he minds,) just wanted to clarify HitzCritz message since it could be read to mean the current setup was actually legal! :)

Anyway, ending offtopic, sorry!

The illegality is in distributing copyrighted work, not any particular file type. Pellsson never specified a license for the IPS he made so it's under no license, which by default gives him exclusive rights to the work. ( https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/ )

I don't expect he minds too much though, since he recently started distributing it again himself.

Related to HitzCritz message, it's also illegal to distribute the Pellsson IPS. :)

Thanks for all the notes!

@AndrewG Yeah I always expect most things I could come up with to actually save frames have already been checked out pretty thoroughly by others. :) Never know, though. Minor safety strats without losing framerules aren't quite as laboriously explored. You can also just run off the edge in 4-2 and hold left+down, which will always give you a wall jump pixel. Harder to perform imo, and seems to be exactly the same speed as a normal no-pixel 4-2 warp room.

Using it in 1-2G sounds like a good idea.. fortunately i'm quite a ways away from worrying about that. :)

I added a video to try to provide a better explanation, I hope it's clearer now Mars!

But yes as xerox says, you definitely can (and do!) use diagonals in runs.

There's a couple of things I've noticed that don't seem to be in guides, which were useful to me after I found them and that I've noticed over the last few months that many people have not heard of when I bring them up.

I'm not claiming to be the only person to have found them (they're both pretty obvious) and I wouldn't be surprised if they've already been mentioned somewhere around here.

1. In the 4-2 warp zone, if you hold down+left instead of just left as you graze the wall you can save the framerule even if you hit the walljump pixel. After you're clear of the wall, release down. This will make you fall backwards instead of forwards, letting you accelerate back up to speed quicker. A 4-2 walljump pixel normally costs 8 frames, while with this method it costs 3 frames if you hit the pixel (it does not slow you down if you don't hit the pixel.) Example:

2. For 8-2 BBG, if you have a practise rom that shows a frame counter when you jump (like pellsson's rom,) you want the frame counter to show an odd number while you're falling toward the flagpole. If the number is even you won't hit the bullet in the right position and can't get the trick. Mostly useful when you're getting comfortable with the inputs.

That sounds reasonable to me. Now that non-emulator can be mapped out (even if it's a bit painful,) I'm not sure if there's still a reason to disallow emulator.

If you submit an any% on emulator we'll decide then if it should be it's own category / subcategory or what, it won't be removed.

Tested in 3 other levels, works anywhere and with any enemies.

This time the store worked, but all the prices were maxed out.

Nope, only tried that spot. Done it several times.. and the particular outcome from that video is not what normally happens, most of the time it garbles the 'base' enemies and sends you straight to the boss for the level. So that was unexpected.

Unfortunately it also stops all shops from spawning in the game after that point, so it's hard to think of any situation where it would be useable. Other than that, the game seems to carry on like normal.. Did a few levels and the only difference was that there were no shops. I wonder what would happen if you get to the shop in the boss rush.

A little tricky to get a good setup for testing in other levels.. especially since i don't have save states for master system. :)

This may already be well known, but I hadn't seen it before.. Seems like if you hit an enemy on the same frame as you enter the store, it triggers some kind of peculiar behavior.

Not useful for speedruns, but, interesting.