Thinking of picking up the EWJ games on Genesis in future, I have some experience with platformers and pretty precise stuff. Should I look at Jim 1 or 2 first?

I timed my runs with bizhawk frames so check mine against your understanding for a start, then if there's a discrepancy that's more evidence. Scarcely massively important for a meme run though.

I was wondering if anyone else of the top runners was interested in doing a 150% speed speedrun - playing at 90fps. I fiddled around with it in the past and I feel like it's manageable. I put some work into it and churned out a 3'14 in Africa which I was quite pleased with. If anyone wants this as a category even just for giggles then let me know.

I'm having typical Windows user gripes with my machine causing lagging making speedrunning difficult, and I was thinking seriously of investing in physical equipment to do my runs on. Some input from SMS/SMD runners with expertise in the accuracy comparisons of region mods v native consoles would be greatly appreciated. I am told that an NTSC console would be more accurate, but do not know just how much the difference is. The games I run have very small communities so I should prefer to be maximally accurate as far as timings go since a good investment will pay for itself. And if I go ahead with one or other of these things, what else would I need to handle recording and hookup to a modern tv? Thankyou for reading.

CoKami and I had a best of 3 race on Friday, and we plan to do it again so if you're interested give us a follow on Twitch/Twitter to hop in on the fun! I personally would be happy to race against anyone and Zeroth, we are both now sat tantalisingly at 14:10 - wondering if you'd like to race me at some point! If anyone wants to do this just shoot me a message somewhere. Heck even if I have to get buttstomped by btrim or thiaguin I'd value the opportunity!

I hear what you are saying, though my vid shows 768 as no-input. I've made a number of attempts since then recording at 50fps and haven't achieved the perfect run again yet xD Not sure if any current 9.88s are recorded at 50 so perhaps replaying my vid above in sync with a 9.84 and with a 9.88 would help. I'll keep trying with a 50fps recording, no idea when I'll get it again, but I can say that 8bitbeast's original 9.88 from his youtube seems to be 493 frames to me which is just as confusing.

Being a technological Luddite I just found a way to record 50 and 60fps in OBS, so I'll make some attempts to replicate this now so that there is no uncertainty, and get back to you.

This is possibly a very stupid question but I'd rather ask and be sure. Based on the timing rules currently shown I appear to have a run without pauses that comes to 9.84, and as an example, if I frame advance 16bitpanda's run it appears to end earlier than his notes state which would corroborate that. Is there some software I can use that will retain 50fps recording as opposed to 30 with vlc? I by no means doubt what has been said about the timings but I can't explain the difference. I can try to replicate it with inputs showing but as I speak any attempt to record that is killing the 50fps on bizhawk. I hope I'm not missing something very obvious.

Frame 770 for the start and frame 1262 for the blue screen. I imagine one of you who mods can sync this up with a 9.84 if need be.

Wow, that was a real howler on my part xD Thankyou very much for pointing out the error! Since then I made sure to look at the end screen for the IGT so other runs aren't affected and I've corrected your time, no more freebies 😅

Hi Barsie! I'm sorry I couldn't get to you sooner, my internet had cut out but I'm back now and I've verified your great new Asia run. I'm not sure what run you refer to in your post, can you link me the run directly? Then I'll double check the timings and write them out here.

Just wondering if anyone had a similar experience, and can give any advice, not necessarily from speedrunning. A month ago I was running and a tiny break in the side of my thumbnail grew out and turned out to be the beginning of a separation of the nail from the bed, so I had to mostly stop gaming for a while. I was recommended to get a cushioned thumb cover. I can't be certain the problem came from thumb on d-pad, but I have noticed that my thumb stays nail-up when moving left and then rolls over when I have to switch to right, which I doubt would be fixable really. Has anyone got any experience of buying such covers, can they recommend a particular product?

I found a few runs on Youtube that completed Expert which I can add to the board, but I agree that at the speed of the Arcade version sometimes you just get trashed no matter what you do. A lot of the top runs have used easy difficulty and I think it would be fine if you wanted to do that for all the courses, especially if it's hard to even finish :)

I agree with everything you say except for separate difficulty options. I think that would be a bit arcane since the RNG is going to prune a lot more good runs and it's already quite a slog to get something respectable on easy with the way bike positions change. Probably it's best to just recommend all new runners play on Easy in here, and stick to defaults over in Genesis.

@MilkToast I feel like the Amiga/C64 versions could have their own leaderboard as the gameplay is going to be so different based on control options and slower speed. If you make a run, submit it to SRC for a new leaderboard and please check whether these versions have the same IGT bug as you can see described in the stickied forum post.

Hi Zexton, if you submitted a 3ds run I would be glad to add it to the correct track layout board and keep track of the times. :)

In general I absolutely agree with you, but since I've only been playing Arcade for a week or less I wanted to double-check in case you guys saw anything odd about it. I was able to get Anthopants to submit his Expert run from a similar Youtube trawl. Unsure whether you understand Japanese but would you be interested/willing to search nicovideo for anything else that we could add here, to upright or limited or ride-on?

They both seem entirely legit. I attempted to contact someone who knows the player to get permission to add the runs to the site, and to find out whether they were done on an actual bike, or via MAME. Site rules say that a top time can generally be listed without permission. Does anyone have any objection or point of order to raise about the validity of these runs besides the method?

Did anyone who has a time on the leaderboard do it with an actual bike? I would greatly value any feedback on whether that makes it a bit easier to react on such a fine level as you see above without shintysix squillion resets.

https://www.speedrun.com/Mercs_Genesis#Original_Mode_-_Normal if you look at the speedboat section in Mission 4 (Original Mode), we often have had massive lag through that section which is thus far impossible to manipulate reliably. It can cost runs because it takes a few seconds away. We know how to reduce lag once in the water but if there's anything else we can do it would be great to know so that it isn't a runkiller. Beyond that, will be interested if you find anything related to the pickups, or any tricks with boss health and such.

To streamline the board and avoid confusion I have created a Variable to show the romset/track layout that runs were done on. Sitdown/Upright is the default, to view Limited Edition/Mini Ride-On you can use the Filter. By doing this we can group all runs across arcade and modern console conversions in the same place without overcomplication. Please do not worry about selecting the right option in your submissions, I will always double check everything.

Limited Edition/Mini Ride-On is the same track layouts that are present on the Genesis version. LE is generally considered the easier option as it has a longer time limit and tends to have less traffic of AI riders. Sitdown/upright has a more challenging beginner's course and tends to be more ubiquitous and popular. The console ports for PS, Xbox, and Wii all have the option to use either set of track layouts, and you are not restricted in what you choose! The Asia course is the same in all layouts, personally I think it's the best one as it's short enough that you can push hard without having to play a long tactical game or avoid risk. Or am I just saying that cos I stink at weaving in traffic 😂

On timing: Super Hang-On has a bug in the In-Game timer, present in: -Genesis (Rev 00 and 01) -Arcade (all versions) -PS3 -Xbox -WiiVC

across both real and emulated runs.

The second part shows a comparison on the Arcade version with a slower sector 1 against a faster. Both runs follow precisely the same path with speed locked, yet end up with different sector 2 times. I have also verified this bug by syncing playback of different runs' sectors where IGT says run A will reach checkpoint first, but the real time and visual evidence show run B reached it first.

Here are a couple of quick clips of the PS3 and Xbox versions. The timer goes from 31.9 to 32.88 in one frame.

The timer goes from 1:26.29 to 1:26.55 in one frame.

When a checkpoint is passed, the clock is zeroed and that time is written to memory. But then the timer starts counting from whatever fraction of a second was left over.

Due to this, all runs' times have been corrected. It's very simple to work that out: just remove the fractions of a second from each sector time that shows up, except the last sector of a race which doesn't show anyways. Add these up, and subtract them from the IGT. Then you have your True Time. I will always double check these. You may in future wish to complete any run which is close to your PB or a WR: typically an IGT is off by 2-3 seconds in Africa, increasing to 7-8 seconds in Europe.

Here's an example of how to do this from a race in Africa:

S1 35.93 S2 33.1 S3 34.8 S4 31.93 S5 35.8 (S6 time not shown on screen)

IGT showed 3'29"59. 0.93 + 0.1 + 0.8 +0.93 +0.8 = 3.56 3:29.59 - 3.56 = 3:26.03

Thanks very much for reading!

Requesting moderator for Super Hang-On Arcade: https://www.speedrun.com/sho The active moderator Jesse_Lee has asked me to help him run the SHO boards. As a Super he granted me Moderator of SHO Genesis, but he lacks this ability on SHO Arcade. PinkPanther01 (mod) and Kusanagi765 (Super Mod) have been inactive on SRC for 1 year, and 7 months, respectively. Earlier this year I spoke to Kusanagi on Twitter who told me he has effectively nuked his account here and been too busy to do any mod work.