Hi - I just submitted a run for Captain Comic (NES). First off, let me know if I need to do anything differently about it, it's my first time every submitting a speed run for anything. I don't mind re-doing it and re-recording if I have to.

Second, I had a rule clarification. The rules say that the timer ends when you grab the third treasure. It didn't come up in my run, but there's a bit of a weird loophole and I was wondering how you count it. It's possible to get near the third treasure in the castle, get hit by a bunch of those weird bat/ghost things, and lose all your health. But, in the second or so that the game gives you before you actually die, it's possible to hit that third treasure.

If you do, you still die, and the game doesn't end. You start again at the first floor door, and can get back up to the second floor with the same glitch as usual. When you do, you then go into the ending sequence. So, my question is, in that situation, when is the run considered to have ended? When you grabbed the treasure, or when the game zaps you away?

My assumption would be that the timer stops right as you grab that treasure even if it doesn't go to the end credits since that's what the run rules state, but I'm not positive on that. A moderator would probably have to clarify, but it doesn't appear that there is one for this game. Is your run still pending moderation?

Now that I understand more about how the NES version works I’m torn.

If the crown remains after you respawn and you have to go collect it again before going into the ending sequence, the game doesn’t seem to believe you actually grabbed the final treasure so I’d lean towards it having to be collected again before time officially stops.

If the crown is gone when you respawn and the ending sequence is triggered by just getting up to the platform where the crown was, the game considers the item collected and I’d lean towards time stopping when you get the crown even though you’re technically dead.

I’m going to see if I can get this to happen with save states and check back in if I’m able to.

I tested it out with save states (if anybody wants to see how it works out, it can be found below)

The game does count you getting the crown after death, and the crown doesn't respawn. You end up getting automatically warped out shortly after respawning. Because of that, my thought process would be that should that happen in a live run, time would end when you touch the crown even if you die before warping out because the game counts any item pickups that happen within that extra second or so.

As far as this turning up in a live run, I don't know if that's something we'd really see. The ghosts didn't start spawning in the room until I jumped over the crown and started moving around to the left of it. It actually took a few tries to jump over the crown without collecting it, so I feel like the odds of that happening during a speedrun will probably end up being pretty low, but it's good to know just in case!