Hello everyone. Ninja Gaiden II is in need of an overhaul in the way the game is timed. To get into the specifics, splitting on 000 at the demon is inaccurate. Due to the way the game handles HUD updates, splitting on 000 can vary by up to 12 frames.

The minutia: $A0 is the status_update_index which decrements 6-0 over every 7 frames and determines which element of the status bar (score, ninpo, max ninpo, lives, timer, the two health bars) gets updated at the start of the next frame. Except that can get preempted by other graphical updates so in practice the cycle can take some frames longer. On the frame boss HP hits 0 a 305 frame countdown ($50E, $50F) starts for the tally (so if timer remaining + ninpo remaining is greater than 305, all the points don't get tallied!) and the first frame of fadeout is the frame after that countdown ends.

0.2 seconds might not seem like a big deal, but with top times as optimized as they are, this is an issue. There are a few ways we can handle retiming this, but unfortunately they would add time to everyone's run on the leaderboard, which can affect "milestone" times (namely "license" and sub 10). The most consistent and "runner friendly" way to retime would be to split on first frame of "fade to black" after defeating the demon. Retiming would affect Arcus' run the most, as he would no longer have a sub 10 time. The mod team have contacted the top runners and they are all fine with a retime. What does the community think?

Hello everyone. The mod community would like to approve and encourage the use of the new emulator MesenRTA. It keeps the highly accurate emulation of Mesen, and also has some features that will give moderators assurance there is no funny business happening in the background. Check out SpaceColonizer's video here :

You can find the emulator here: https://github.com/threecreepio/mesenrta/releases

It should also be noted that capturing the entire emulator window for video submissions is not necessary in the latest version of MesenRTA, as the history viewer has been altered so that inputs coming from that window will turn the input display red. Vanilla Mesen and any version of MesenRTA older than the current version will still require capture of the full emulator window for runs under 10:25.

Hello everyone. The mod community would like to approve and encourage the use of the new emulator MesenRTA. It keeps the highly accurate emulation of Mesen, and also has some features that will give moderators assurance there is no funny business happening in the background. Check out SpaceColonizer's video here : You can find the emulator here: https://github.com/threecreepio/mesenrta/releases It should also be noted that capturing the entire emulator window for video submissions is not necessary in the latest version of MesenRTA, as the history viewer has been altered so that inputs coming from that window will turn the input display red. Vanilla Mesen and any version of MesenRTA older than the current version will still require capture of the full emulator window for runs under 12:10.

The moderator team has decided to unban the use of Mesen. There are some Mesen-specific rule changes. Please consider those and any other emulator rules when submitting runs with Mesen. Happy Speedrunning!

The moderator team has decided to unban the use of Mesen. There are some Mesen-specific rule changes. Please consider those and any other emulator rules when submitting runs with Mesen. Happy Speedrunning!

Hey all! I'd like to remind runners that use of overlay tools that cover the game screen like streamlabs, triggerfyre, and mixitup are generally a bad idea for submitting speedruns. Mods need to be able to see the game in its entirety without obfuscation of gameplay. This includes a whole slew of things like follower/raid/host alerts, sub/bit/donation alerts, chat commands, channel point redemptions, all that good stuff. If it covers the game, it's a no-no, and could result in your speedrun submission being declined. Please consider this when submitting your run. GL and HF!