Oh man this really bugged me back in the day! Hunting for skeletons and hoping for any kind of hint.

Could it possibly be that the translator for the game and the manual is the same person, or at least spoke to the manual translator, and mentioned it on the basis of redundant code left in? If you were just skim translating it possibly it could have made sense, and the translator thought they picked up on a secret they could let on for people to find.

A translator wouldn't have generally played the games so I don't know how else they would have thought of it. The UI graphics for example might not have been something they even looked at and wouldn't have known there was a lack of space for a 7th.

Nicely done!

Also to any future runners, do we need to consider moving to sub-second times? When this entry was added (not by me) it was prior to the sites embargo on sub minute games (there is some, but I know they try to avoid it where possible).

I imagine that as we have runs in a few seconds of each other, it may require frame perfect counting. We may also need to require visible timers on screen when you do videos - if you do a run in future can you make sure you have a timer on screen as well to help with verification.

Many thanks!

Sorry a few people have contacted me about this, I have now edited it to be the right order! A year late but hey XD

Hi everyone, sorry I'm not on the site much so I've had a number of people go "hey, its in the wrong order!"

Well finally I took a look round and yes, whoever made the original entry put it in time ascending. I asked for moderator access so I could upload my own score, and thought nothing of it (the other entry had a missing video, I shrugged my shoulders and didn't think anything of it, assuming it was based on video proof - I was new).

@RevisitedGames clearly has a run that is quicker than both our times, so I'm sorry that I didn't notice this earlier. Thanks to everyone who messaged me about it, but I totally didn't see it as I don't have notifications set on (whoops!)

Sometimes people come to troll about where you get the game, citing illegalness. You can get the rom legally through Atari Vault as its one of the included games. You can take the rom and put it in a romcart or other device, such as the Retron 77 which I used as otherwise I'd be playing on a PAL machine.

So there we go, I can't promise I'll approve any runs in any form of timely manner, you'll have to contact me offsite (Mikebloke in most websites will literally be me, just look for game related stuff).

All the best to any future runners of Stunt Cycle.

Well done to BOWIEtheHERO, got a sub 13 run the other day.

Guess its time to clean my Saturn up and give it another go.

Perhaps a Chapter 2 run should be next on our list :o

I did a post on the series forum about what could be done generally for the rest of the game, but I don't think anyone answered.

Although they are in effect different games, I'm wondering if Chapter 2 + 3 and perhaps a whole "game" run of all 3 chapters should just remain on one page. There is hardly a lot of categories / runners involved, it would probably be over kill to do another two entries for the other chapters. Hmmm.

Requesting modship for https://www.speedrun.com/Stunt_cycle , I have a run I submitted over a month ago now which has not been checked, it appears Nocapturecard the mod is completely inactive and does not even appear to have youtube account anymore which they used for their own run. I'm already mod for a couple of other games, and often submit 2600 runs, so I'd be happy to look after stunt cycle too. I'm relatively active and always check emails for submitted runs.

I can confirm that an NTSC atari 2600 cart can get the same in game time result on a PAL machine as an NTSC machine. I don't know if a PAL cart would change that - some developers tried to improve code (often by reducing graphical changes) to make PAL games less slow looking when compared to NTSC games. This often was the case for games reliant on speed such as beat em ups. I don't think it was common practice on the 2600, but it might affect the PS1 version. Would require comparisons to test.

Perhaps we could have a separate category? Is there any reason why the other 3 courses isn't an option either?

Hi Shining Fans, I was wondering what people thought of the 3 scenarios in Shining Force 3 and in the future whether they should have separate game pages or not.

This is a consideration for the future, as currently, the only person who seems to even "run" SF3 is... me, and only scenario 1.

I've been thinking about this for a long while, partly because I had only played through the other two parts once, and only on PC emulation. I now have the ability to play on hardware, which opens up the possibilities more as previously I was heavily effected by using the save game editor as my emulator / disk image didn't like certain parts of the game.

I'm usually anti-emulation when it comes to streaming games, and especially speedrunning them, however, SF3 does not have a base of runners to really grow from and emulation comes with just as many challenges with saturn games than running the game itself. I'd be very happy to see other runners in the game, and wondered whether scenario 2 might actually be quicker (or at least, have a more interesting start).

Here is the arguments I can think of for both sides:

Keeping in one page: a ) Realistically, there is not really "categories" that each scenario can be split into other than any% or 100%. Anything else would be for silly fun and count as a misc category. b ) While there is many many people interested in watching SF3 runs, as I'm currently the only runner having 3 separate pages for it might be obsessive. c ) Any multi-part run with all or some of the scenarios and premium disk would require yet another game page.

Splitting into multiple pages: a ) They are effectively 3 different games! b ) You do not need to play scenario 1 to play 2, or play 2 to play 3 c ) I don't really know any more

Let me know what you think shining fans!

Also - I'd love to be a mod for the current scenario 1 page, just so I can edit rule sets and things, but its not super important while I'm the only runner. I want to establish a proper start point (I'm thinking after naming the 3 characters) as well as when it ends (last boss hit).

Thanks Shauny! I did read the rules a couple of times but couldn't work out what the difference was, and had a dim moment when I thought "there isn't books in Azure Dreams!"

I've always been tempted to run the game, so the 10-20-30 floor categories might get me into it.

Sorry, I'm a bit confused what the "bookless" refers to, could someone explain it to me? Thanks.

Hi Guys,

Appreciate you are always busy.

Would it be possible at some point in the future to consider more search options for Series of games? At the moment we have a text box to search and an A - Z. I feel as a user this limits me to trawling through many irregular played or little known series. I appreciate that the site has a mammoth database of stuff, but if there was anything else we could have to search through series that would be really appreciated, eg:

Sort by number of games Sort by number of runs (full game runs as well?) Sort by latest release date Anything else that would be helpful

Many thanks if you take this into consideration.

There is a game currently listed without a console: https://www.speedrun.com/Drag_Strip This comes from the Fairchild Channel F which is not currently listed as a console: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F There is potential other games from its short library that could be included for speedrun.com

So the amusing thing is none of the videos for this is viewable for copyright reasons - for a webgame! The world has gone mad!

Would welcome other ideas for categories, here is a few I thought up / is obvious:

100% I think walkingeye is interested in this Low% No unnecessary pickups, this might have to be thought out if this is viable or not Spirit% Timer ends when all 6 spirits gained

If there is major differences in the difficulties, this can also be added.

Misc:

The minigame outside Airl's dungeon Boss battles? This would probably be a stretch without a boss battle mode (that's a shame!)

Feel free to support any of these ideas or provide your own, if there is a desire for any to be added we can go about discussing it.

My logic for setting in game time was to level the playing field for PAL users in the event of poor optimisation. Apparently, Story of Thor 2 is optimised for near to the same speed, and I'll try testing this myself if possible over the coming weeks. If it is similar speed, then I can switch it to prioritise real time - but I would like to keep in game time regardless.

Difficulty wise, I'd be interested to know if there is any major differences or if its just enemy stats / number of enemies. I think speedrunning wise easiest difficultly is traditionally the quickest so is generally preferred. If there is any major differences in difficulties then there is the possibility of just adding the other difficulties as other categories.

Sorry for the late reply, from what I remember casually, you get a ding noise but nothing else.

Thanks!

I've just submitted a run for the Atari 2600 port of the Arcade version.

In reality, I think the game is slightly simplified from the Arcade one as I don't think you can get quite as many enemies on screen at once, so will probably require breaking into its own category. I notice games like Centipede has some sort of sub-categories which is probably the best way to split this.