Your assumption is correct.

The prize counter doesn't care if three bombs actually explode. It counts hammer swings on tiles that have or used to have bombs.

Yeah, absolutely! Good idea.

Of course, if you do a run I'd be happy to get it added as a category1

Can you provide the MD5/SHA1/SHA-256 of your ROMs? http://onlinemd5.com/

Maybe then dunnius can compare it to theirs.

Thread for any Boss strats.

It looks like the only required lizard powers for bosses are Surf for the water dragon and Swim for Shaft., and maybe Bounce for getting to Bowie.

TANOOKIE TRIO (STEAM ZONE) If you have Stone you can get a very quick kill on the tanookie-trio since the flames that fall from the sky cannot hurt you, allowing you to stay on the piston longer. I think you should do the pistons from LEFT to RIGHT; there might be some sort of "travel time" for the leftmost piston to be registered as complete so this is the fastest order (personal experience/guess, not fully tested).

BOWIE (VOID ZONE) For Bowie, it looks like you can bait her into taking the crown off as her next attack by jumping and screen wrapping once or twice after the first hit (via Gari)

FROG (PALACE ZONE) Obviously, having PUSH allows you to push the blocks onto her eyes stopping the eye-rings for the rest of the fight. Doesn't appear to help speed it up though unless we discover the rings cause lag (doubtful, but needs testing).

Thread for any hot movement tech or skills.

Presently I only know of first-frame jumps courtesy of Q talking to the moose a lot.

FIRST FRAME JUMP (aka FIRSTIES)

• While in the air of a jump, hold A/jump again. You will instantly jump off the ground on the first possible frame.

There are couple cheat codes that are fun and some that can be really useful for routing and practice.

• Big Head Mode Hold DOWN and jump/press A. While in the air, press and hold UP and jump/press A again. Press and hold DOWN in the air and, then hold UP and jump again, etc. Repeat this DOWN-jump, UP-jump three times and you enable Big Head Mode. Repeat the same come to revert to normal Lizard size.

• EASY and Soundtrack Modes Press SELECT on the title screen to bring up an options menu enabling you to select easy mode, turn music off, or enter a Music Test to listen to the soundtrack without playing.

• SHART mode idk what this really is or does, but in the options menu if you press B the title screen says PRESS SHART instead of PRESS START.

• SWITCH LIZARD ON PAUSE Pause the game and enter RIGHT, UP, DOWN, DOWN (RUDD) and hold the second DOWN input, then press SELECT. This will unpause the game and you'll be the next lizard power. It's sequential in order (knowledge, bounce, swim... I forget the rest of the order)

• DEBUG MENU / DIAGNOSTICS ZONE Pause the game and enter DOWN, UP, LEFT, LEFT (DULL) and hold the second LEFT input, then press SELECT. This will transport you to DIAGNOSTICS ZONE. Here you can fiddle with various settings about the game. It shows your current IGT, deaths, jumps, coins collected, and continues (aka the number times you used the warp/password door). You can also mark which coins have been collected and certain game flags. Use the SELECT button to toggle between COINS and FLAGS. Use UP and DOWN to select the memory address (00-7F, aka 128 potential coins and flags each). Then jump and git TOGGLE to swap that memory space to 1 or 0. Each pair of digits represents 1 byte.

For example, FLAGS 0A,0B,0C,0D,0E,0F represent the bosses killed and light the torches that open the final boss portal. Set these all to 1 and you can enter the final boss. (I'm working on mapping which COINS and FLAGS represent so hold tight!)

• WARP TO ANY ROOM So technically you can warp to any room with any lizard costume using the password screen. The game naturally only shows you the password for the room of the last save point you hit and with what lizard power. If we ever reverse engineer how the password system works, you can warp to any non-save room by holding SELECT+A, then pressing up on the password door. I've tried random codes and gotten to non-save rooms with this method. This can be useful for practice once we figure out how the codes work (i.e. warp instantly to a room with the desired lizard power instead of walking all over the place)

• BOSS RUSH MODE Enter password 32186. This takes you to a room with three bosses, and a door to the other three. There is also a toggle switch to pick any lizard power. Each side also has an entrance for the final boss rooms. This code can be gotten naturally by being the vanilla game quickly (I've gotten it with ~25mXXs IGT; maybe it's under 30 minutes).

Playing on emulator is fine! :)

The any% run basically hinges on skipping the unlock of Cher's Believe.

In normal gameplay, you would unlock this song after a certain number of points. By doing poorly enough on every song to just barely pass, you will avoid unlocking the song. If the song becomes unlocked, it is then required to clear it in order to finish the game.

It's not necessary so get the "secret" endings (fail all in-song gag scenes but still pass in the end), but it helps keep you on track for skipping the unlock.

This is also why any% runs should be done from Clear Save Data as this will re-lock the bonus songs.

But consider the battle you are picking. It's one person making an LB for a game they like with a reasonable time. With no competition. I'm not scouting SRDC for easy WRs. I'm just putting the game on the site. I haven't played the game in a year and I don't care to. I never even "ran" it, I just played it a lot and kept track of my times.

There is such as thing as respecting the hobby, but I feel a lot of people on this thread and SRDC in general are just trying to pick fights where there is none needed. Not everything has to be super serious all the time. I don't think anyone is inherently wrong here. It just baffles me that everyone is so insistent on picking on a single time for a single game that a single person has run. It's all useless.

My issue is that it the slower recording isn't the best known time. I insist on having the current time up without video because it is the actual best time.

If I as a moderator were having an issue with someone else's run on these grounds, I could understand this thread. However, there is still no competition or any other known runs. This is just a pretty useless discussion IMO until anyone else submits a run.

Do you honestly think I'm just grandstanding this for my own sake? I like the game so I made a leaderboard and put the best known time on it and a general strategy. That's all.

WhiteHat, I see you're a moderator of several other NES games. Are you interested in taking moderation of this board? Then you can do with it what you please.

TwoGood: I'm sorry that making a game leaderboard that lists the actual best known time makes you sick.

KyhYang: Yes, if someone similarly posted a time without video but was of good reputation and had two others or similar reputation put their work behind it, I would allow it. The best known time is on the leaderboard. A video demonstrating the run and strategy is on the forum.

There are ¤ZERO¤ other runners of this game. You all are making a way bigger deal of this than it needs to be. I encourage anyone to at least play the game and do a speedrun and submit the time. That is the goal here: to get more times on the LB and encourage others to play the game. It has nothing to do with me or world records.

Video submission is certainly a requirement for the leaderboard and should be enforced when possible.

But I also believe in taking in all context and circumstances rather than blindly abiding by rules 100% of the time.

The current best time of 10m36s was done live with two witnesses watching in a public space. The time was actually achieved twice as well.

Regardless, the game doesn't have any competition yet. I created the game so that other's might get inspired.

The time is definitely beatable. There simply is no basis for comparison yet from anyone besides myself.

So I chose to list the best time that has been achieved even though it lacks video evidence for these reasons.

I think some leaderboards don't require video if it's not a top X or competitive time. That's how I feel about this. It's not competitive or optimized yet. This is just a starting point to show people what is achievable and what to aim for.

The RNG is seeded by the frame counter when you press start on the title screen.

You can get the same seed every time by holding start and resetting the game. This guarantees that start is pressed it on the first frame of the title screen.

It always yields the same pattern on day 1 as seen in this video:

It seems like the coworkers in Day 2 and beyond also increment the RNG so I haven't found a way to have any other days "solved" like day 1.

Agreed with what dunnius said; "You should ignore the ending game stats for the sake of speed and safety."

There are certain rooms that reset/get rid of the alert phase. An easy example of this is the second room in the game. After you get the binoculars and keycard 1, and go back down to the start, people tend to walk to the left and punch the guard before going down. I'm pretty sure you can just walk by him, get the alert, and then the next screen will automatically dismiss the alert. There are several other places like this in the game, but I don't have them documented. Need investigation.

So what I'm getting at here is to intentionally trigger some alerts and ignore enemies and get the alert dismissed by entering specific rooms. Could save some time.

All codes yeah... not sure if you have to call them to record them in the transceiver. If so, Schneider can be called in the first camera room or the room before the first gas chamber. Diane can be called as soon as the hostage (3rd in my routes) give her number to you.

I'm not sold on "forced alerts only" because taking some intentional alerts might be faster. I think it would depend on what is the Fox requirement. Eagle is two or three below Big Boss, so I think if your time improves (most important factor for rank I believe) and you get a few less alerts, Fox should be achievable. I think the Fox rank is sufficient over specific numbers.

The ranks are something like: Big Boss Fox Panther (special zero rations rank I think) Eagle (max you can get on Easy) ...etc.

Otherwise, I think it's good. Even if the first few runs aren't Fox rank, let's get them up on the leaderboard. I'd rather see some runs up there than not.

I'm pretty sure an All Item restriction inhibits Big Boss rank because the Antidote item is protected by a scripted alert. ()

Since there isn't a percentage counter for this game, coming up with arbitrary criteria is pretty hard.

But I think of a few specific things.

Based on item screens, it's pretty obvious to include: -All Weapons -All Items

in the "spirit of the game", I think the following additional criteria should apply: -All Hostages (including Madnar and Ellen, but not Fake Madnar) -All Bosses defeated (this is tricky. I feel like Tank should be explicitly killed because it doesn't despawn when you leave the screen. However, I am unsure if Firetrooper needs to be killed. I think just skipping him/walking out the door will cause him to be defeated. Needs testing)

Then in terms of the end game screen, it's unfortunate Big Boss simply isn't possible. The best possibility might be Fox rank. Zero kills and 1 ration might be very difficult considering the extra alert that will be encountered. Not sure when it alert would subside without kills (need to get to certain screen to turn it off while dealing with enemy RNG).

I'm inclined to say the exact end screen numbers are irrelevant and it should just be Fox rank (or whatever the highest possibility turns out to be). I don't want to feel forced into applying Big Boss restrictions like 1 ration or 0 enemy kills on a category that cannot even achieve it in the first place. Fox requirements should apply (whatever they are, who knows exactly).

So in summary, I personally think 100% could be: -All Weapons -All Items -All Hostages (including Madnar and Ellen, but not Fake Madnar) -All Bosses defeated (strictly meaning they don't respawn) -Fox Rank (doesn't matter what the specific numbers are)

And of course, I'm in favor of Real Time instead of Game Time because any death incurred resets Game Time backwards (so just don't die and you'll be fine :)

This is my personal stance/opinion. I am absolutely open to discussion.

I've actually routed this game for RTA using the Golden Hammer.

Here's the vid if you are interested in watching:

This run is not legit though because I used a game genie code to keep the golden hammer on death.

It will be very hard to complete a true run since making any mistake can lead to death and loss of the golden hammer.

The claims of "you are running the game at 30 fps" is unfounded. Why can't you prove my run accelerated as you claim? Why can't you show me a single gameplay difference this would yield?

How is my run different that your on console? Show me.

Please read all PAL EMU runs, including my own.

Your claims of 50Hz/60Hz or 25fps/30fps are completely unfounded and unsupported.