Welcome! Always good to see new runners and categories.

I'd be in favor of naming the category something more descriptive. Something like "Quest Mode - Good Ending - REST" (Rings, Equipment, Stats, and Traps).

I'll also say verifying runs sounds challenging, with moderators having to keep track of all the trap tiles that have been activated so far, whereas the other items are easy to spot check whenever the player pauses. I don't think this is a reason not to allow the category or anything, just something to be aware of.

It sounds like quite a large routing challenge. Good luck!

Did some more testing on my repro cart, this time on video. Timestamp links are in the video description:

• wrong map bug
• shouldn't be able to damage moldorm with sword without crashing
• the point at which I power cycle the system, which is also when audio issues start (constant clicking)
• can't reenter eastern palace

@crazyjesse can you please confirm that none of these are supposed to happen?

Thanks for the info, I'll do more digging!

I got a reproduction cart made by Krzy, but I'm not sure if it's working or not. I run into bugs, like sometimes not being able to reenter the first dungeon to turn on the speed glitch, or occasional vertical screen scrolls (it's not the console itself, I was able to verify this), or the screen showing the wrong map screen sometimes making it look like I'm clipping.

Have others ever run into these issues as well? I want to verify this is my repro cart failing and not something else.

I'm a bit confused here. Will this game work on an NES flash cart?

EDIT: I mean will it work well enough to be allowed for console runs.

(most of the credit here goes to mitjitsu)

There is a glitch to get 9,999,999 dyne at the beginning of the game by using a Panzer Dragoon 2: Zwei save file. It requires the PDZ save file to have 199 hours logged on it. Mine has 199:00 exactly. I achieved this by idling on the Zero Space mission which does not make the disc spin, allowing me to leave it on overnight. I also copied my save frequently to a memory card so as not to accidentally go over 199 hours exactly. There may be some wiggle room with the exact amount of time needed, but 199:00 does work.

When you start up PDS, you'll have -19868 dyne (or close to it). The important part here is the fact that it's a negative amount. After you gain a small amount of dyne with the first encounter, you'll then have 9,999,999 dyne, which is the max allowed by the game.

The game doesn't expect this number to ever be negative, so when it checks to make sure you don't have more than the max, it does an unsigned comparison. This treats your negative amount of dyne as a number much larger than the max amount, so the game hard sets your current dyne amount to the max.

To 100% verify this is happening, I suspect disassembling the game would be required, which I am not willing to do. But I am happily able to verify that early max dyne can be achieved with only a copy of PDZ and PDS.

1. It turns out in order to get the game to actually display 100% at the end, you need to actually collect all the level 2 weapons. In my first full run of 100%, I skipped level 2 bombs, and I was a bit disappointed when it told me I collected 99% of items. In light of this, I think we should require that you get 100% to display on the final screen, requiring all level 2 weapons to be collected.
2. There are 10 of each scroll and 7 of each gem.
3. As far as I can tell, you do have to double-dip The Mystic Room in order to do the wind rod race.

You would have to avoid taking damage until you get bombs. Tedious, but possible.

Help would of course be welcome on routing 100%! My plan was to compile the full list of items and their requirements. I think this list is close to complete: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/saturn/197768-the-legend-of-oasis/faqs/29754. Put those in a spreadsheet along with their requirements. If you want to take a stab at it or if you want to take another approach, feel free. It'll probably be another week or two until I start work on routing it out myself.

It turns out it's not too difficult to restrict your own rank artificially. The only forced healing is when you beat a boss, and you can time bombs such that you never actually hit full health so you never rank up. This makes Low% much more unique of a category compared to any%. That being said, I'm not exactly in a rush to run it, but I probably would take a few stabs at it sometime after getting better at 100%.

100% is something I'm planning on routing and running, as soon as I either hit 1:29 at any% or if I plateau before then.

Low% is fine but I would not personally have any interest in running this category. I think you would end up with L1 of all weapons except the L3 heavy sword, 1 holy rod scroll, 1 earth sword scroll, 1 dark bow scroll, and 1 wind rod scroll. For the wind rod scroll, it's really hard to pick up only one of the two that drop from the chest where you get them, so maybe allowing 2 wind rod scrolls is fine. It seems like a pain to restrict rank. The whole thing just seems a bit tedious.

That makes sense. I'd appreciate testing this. I've played a bit on both PAL and NTSC, and I didn't notice any difference, but I didn't get to play on PAL for very long. If there's anything I can do to help you test let me know!

I'll look into what the differences are in difficulties.

I don't think in game time by itself is a good way to measure for this game. When you die, the game reloads the last save, not counting the time in between the last save and the death.

I also think the difficulty setting of the game (which is "Middle" by default on the EU version) should be specified in the rules. This option only appears to be available after the game has been beaten once.

I realize this game isn't the most actively run game in the world, but I'm going to start submitting runs in the next few days.

According to https://segaretro.org/The_Story_of_Thor_2, it looks like the EU release was v1.0, JP was v1.1, and NA was v1.2. I'm surprised; I would have guessed JP was v1.0.

Besides text, I have no idea what would have been updated between each of these versions.

Are there any known differences between the JP, EU, and US releases of this game that would be relevant to running it?