I was wondering if there was a word to describe when you align four or more pill segments/viruses of the same color, making them disappear. In reading the Dr. Mario wikipedia page, there doesn't seem to be a single word for this. So for the sake of discussion, I'll call this thing a "match". If there is already an established word, let me know.

I was thinking about combos. Eliminating two sets of four (or more) is fairly common, but getting a combo of three or more via falling pill segments is, for how I play, very rare. I am not aware of ever getting a combo of more than three, and I only recall a three-combo happening once, although I imagine it could have happened more than once in the several hundred games I've played this year and I wasn't really thinking about it.

Has anyone gotten a combo greater than three matches? If so, do you have a video of it? It might be a fun challenge to see how many cascading matches one could get on a single pill.

I use an emulator and I have an 8bitdo SN30 classic controller that I'm using (usb-wired). There is a lot of play in the d-pad, so it's pretty much junk for a game that requires precision. Are there any good controllers out there? I'd love to have an actual console and actual NES controllers but that's a bit outside the budget at the moment.

I see under the rules that Zsnes should not be used, nor Snes9x 1.4.3 and earlier. Is there a list of preferred emulators? Sadly, I don't have actual hardware and I'd like to be as legit as one can on emulation until I can get a console and cart/everdrive.

For your amusement:

This should help to answer the question, what is the fastest run possible?

At 60fps, this is 7:21.25, but timed on YouTube, it's 7:20.5 or thereabouts, within +- .2 seconds, I think. Not sure what accounts for the discrepancy. Emulator is BizHawk.

A few features of this TAS:

• no tackles, including the kick returner
• running out of bounds right at zero
• no possession by the CPU
• getting onside kick return or kickoff fumble return

This run features Tim Brown not getting tackled on the kick return for the entire first quarter. I have been able to evade tacklers with Tim Brown for about 1:30 of game time, but doing this for a whole quarter is unlikely.

If I could have gotten a one-cycle kickoff resulting in an onside return, that would have saved a few frames, and if the CPU would have kicked a bit sooner, that also might have saved a few frames, but I'm not aware of any major time savings to be had. I tried to hike the ball and select the plays and so forth at the first available frame to do so. Maybe with trimming every excess frame, I might be just under 7:21, but that's about it.

Just to clarify, is the end of the game when the final scoreboard frame shows? I can't tell if there is a fade-in or what. I doubt that level of precision is going to matter that much for me, but I was just wondering. Thanks!

There are 6^6, or 46,656 possible row configurations from 111111 to 666666 and everything in between. I am assuming all of these combos can happen during the course of the game.

I have observed that there have been no repeats in looking at about 100 such rows. That is to be expected as my sample is pretty small. I was expecting that if I got one row repeating, every other row would repeat.

From doing some TAS on this game, there seems to be a dice row seeding algorithm that, as far as I can tell, is based on whatever dice are visible, or possibly just the top-most row. For example, if I let the dice fall on me without removing rows, the rows will consistently be the same. If I rewind and remove, say, one row, the remaining hidden rows will be different. I believe the CPU's drop area is governed by the same rules. As far as I can tell, the human's actions don't affect the dice rows that fall for the CPU and vice-versa.

I would say that it would be next to impossible for an average human brain to be able to do real-time calculations to predict the next rows, but I am guessing someone could figure out the next hidden row given the top-most row. Just a guess there.

My TAS took about 8 minutes and change. This suggest that there is a significant RNG component, or I'm not great at TASes, or some of both. I reckon I maximized the rows I got and the CPU did seem to get a good number of five-lines.

The current WR appears to be a combination of good RNG and even better execution.

Some rules would be good. Maybe describe the run as a three-set tournament. It might be good to have a five and seven as well. And of course to describe the start and end events, just for verbosity.

I see there is a silver stud for fourth place. How about a ghost stud for fifth place? Or is that just ridiculousness?

I put speedrun in quotes because I'm not that fast with it. Anyway, I got 10:22.99 with my cheesy timer (unrecorded). I'll probably do a few streams just so it's recorded. My goal for now is just sub 10 minutes. Having watched a few runs that are actually fast, I think I have a good handle on what to do. I don't have the motivation nor the time to be a serious speed runner.

I actually think this game makes for a pretty interesting speed run. It has built-in suspense with running around and all the near-misses from tacklers, getting that onside kick back, etc.

If a turnover in downs lead to a safety, I wonder if that would save time. It might be a tall order, though.

I was considering speed running this game. Just wondering about some of the conditions: Is it ok to use the GOG version? Finding the CDs would be a challenge and I don't even have a CD/DVD player on my computer.

Thanks!

On this run

https://www.speedrun.com/portal/run/y6526r6z

There is an asterisk by the time but no corresponding note. Is this the right place to post about such things or is there a better way to let a mod know? Thanks.