Hello,

Originally the board combined N64 hardware and emulator runs onto one board but after recent submissions it became impossible for runs performed on hardware to achieve a new WR due to the significant advantage emulator's provide due to them not lagging (this is particularly noticeable in the underground stage).

It's difficult to say exactly how much of an advantage emulator has but based on how much this game lags, which it does a lot in every stage, it will come out to several minutes across the entire run. Given this it no longer makes sense to combine hardware and emulator now that an optimized emulator run has been submitted.

So I've added an additional category variable to split the boards up by both difficulty level and hardware/emulator.

Cheers.

Howdy,

I've completed a run of Crazy Shuffle so I've added it as an available category.

Have at it!

Hello,

We now have completed runs for Operation Full Moon so I have added it as an available category.

After playing this for a bit and reading the SNES manual for the game I figured out what the different stats and collectible gems mean. None of this is explained in the game, so here's a breakdown of how the game works to help you play faster. Good luck out there!

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To start playing the game press the SELECT button at the title screen. If you press the START button you will be taken to the Training Mode race, which is what the Any% category uses.

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The controls are:

• B — Turbo speed. This uses up energy.
• A — Brake.
• X — Jump.
• Y — Jump.

Energy is the white bar next to your player icon that is drained by using turbo.

Braking is important for effective cornering, especially on ice.

Jumping into other racers will prevent your racer from being stunned on contact.

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These are the four stats represented by single letters:

• (A) Acceleration — How quickly your racer gets up to top speed.
• (S) Speed — The top speed your racer can run.
• (G) Grip — How well your racer controls on the track.
• (F) Fitness — How effective turbo is (higher fitness means energy drains more slowly).

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The six different gems you can collect during the race are:

• White — Currency that is spent between races to increase stats.
• Blue — Temporary boost of (S) Speed.
• Yellow — Temporary boost of (A) Acceleration.
• Green — Temporary boost of (G) Grip.
• Red — Temporary boost of energy level.
• Black — Virus that can be transmitted by touch. If infected you cannot pickup gems.

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Between each race you can spend your White Gems on increasing stats by pressing one of the following buttons:

• X — Increase (A) Acceleration.
• Y — Increase (S) Speed.
• B — Increase (G) Grip.
• A — Increase (F) Fitness.
• L — Convert some energy into a White Gem.
• R — Increase energy bar.

You should try to spend all of your gems between races on increasing your stats. (A) Acceleration and (G) Grip are a good starting point, but where you should first focus your gems will depend on the characteristics of your racer.

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Each of the racers has different characteristics:

• Top Cat — Good grip. Average elsewhere.
• Quick Draw McGraw — Best top speed. Slow acceleration.
• Yogi Bear — All around. Low fitness.
• Snagglepuss — Best acceleration. Low grip.
• Hong Kong Phooey — High acceleration and fitness.
• Huckleberry Hound — Best fitness. Good grip. Low top speed.

I found out that after beating the Rabbit Cup and coming in first place you unlock a hidden/secret Augie Doggie's Cup, which can be manually unlocked with this password:

YELLOW, GREEN, PURPLE, RED, RED

If you enter those colors at the bottom of the menu it will make the new cup appear.

I think this should be added as another category along with Gorilla/Turtle/Rabbit given how easy it is to unlock with the password.

Though if this were to be added I don't think All Cups should change and that it should remain as the three default cups.

Hello,

I recently had my Any% runs rejected with the reasoning being that my runs did not follow the rules, which I believe that they did.

One of those runs rejected was also a new Any% WR which was very difficult to set, so this is extremely frustrating for me given that from my perspective my runs were legitimate.

There are two bits from the rules that I made note of when I read them:

"L+R+Select code is allowed."

"Timing starts when you select a new diary."

I didn't see an advantage to using a cheat code and the rule says it's merely allowed and not REQUIRED, so I didn't use it, and the second part explicitly says a NEW diary is required, which is what I selected in my runs. I chose the in game NEW DIARY option.

The rules allude to sleeping on the "final day" but given that the rules also say a new diary is needed I had no way of knowing what this specifically meant nor can I see any difference in the timing in this regard.

Given the above not saying the cheat code is required, and the rules explicitly saying a NEW diary is required, that to me is saying the final day is the end of the first day which is the final day for a one day speedrun.

So far as I can tell this is an arbitrary restriction. There seems to be zero advantage to not using that cheat code that the rules don't even say is required.

Nowhere in the rules does it say you are required to use a cheat code yet me not using a cheat code is why my runs were rejected.

Can somebody please explain why a cheat code is required, despite the rules not saying it is required, even though the use of this code doesn't affect the timing of the speedrun?

edit:

I should also point out that 3 of my runs were previously accepted, none of which used any cheat codes, setting precedent for my runs being legitimate.

Hello,

The WR run for Championship Mode starts out with Lulu Valentine already unlocked and trained and I am unsure how this is done.

I know of the in-game chearts of naming your gym BRONZE/SILVER/GOLD/CHAMP to unlock characters, but doing this will have them with no training so all stats are at 0%. The WR run has Lulu with nearly max stats.

Is increasing fighter stats done through GameShark codes? Are those permitted?

Is there a way to have the fighter be trained with high stats and 0% experience like in the WR by playing the game normally?

Thanks.

Hello,

I'm planning on speedrunning this game, but I play the NES release, not the PC release that came out on Steam. Could a mod please add NES as an available platform?

Thanks.

Howdy,

The new Any% WR has an impossible time of 3m 220ms entered. So far as I can tell the fastest possible time is 3m 233s.

I also framecounted the Any% WR submitted as 3m 220ms and it is indeed a 3m 233ms time so it should be updated.

Hello,

The rules for when the run ends has been updated. Now the run ends when the "You've made it!!" screen appears before the "Sweet Score" screen.

All existing runs have been re-timed to use this new timing rule.

Hello,

I noticed after zarc0nis submitted his run that he ended timing as soon as the "Sweet Score" screen appeared. This was slightly before Tishero and I ended our timing, which was after we entered the door in the "Sweet Score" room that leads to the credits.

After this zarc0nis noticed that half of the runs currently on the leaderboard ended time on the "Sweet Score" screen and not on the credits screen like Tishero and I.

There is a two second difference between these two timing methods so they can't both be used.

I think the rules should be updated to make it clear where timing is supposed to end: is it on the "Sweet Score" screen or on the credits screen?

Thanks.

Howdy,

I've updated the rules for the Any% (NOOB) category to allow all glitches/exploits that do not cause Out of Bounds clipping. Previously any and all glitches were banned in the Any% (NOOB) category.

This is to keep it in line with what a speedrunner will expect from an Any% category, as well as allow the glitch that opens the locked gate without having to talk to the king.

Hello,

I noticed that my submitted run was changed from 1m 10s 950ms to 1m 11s 000ms by @Cephla the moderator.

From my understanding of the timing the starting frame for my run was 780 and the ending frame 5037, which is 4257 total frames, coming out to 70.95 seconds.

I double checked my timing on https://somewes.com/frame-count/ and I'm getting 1m 10s 950ms each time.

Am I using the wrong starting/ending frames?

Just trying to make sure I'm timing my runs accurately.

Thanks.

Howdy,

I noticed that the runner RyuHayabusa89 managed to set a new WR for the Any% time, which was surprising because there is no apparent way to save even a single frame's worth of time in that category—it is fully optimized so far as I can tell.

So, I framestepped through Hayabusa's entire Any% run and found that there are dropped frames.

Mods, you can confirm this for yourself using the FCEUX framecounter visible in the bottom left:

• Frame 399 goes right to frame 401, skipping frame 400
• Frame 405 goes right to frame 407, skipping frame 406

There are also the following frames skipped, but these also have a single frame of delay, so likely no advantage is gained from these drops (from what I can tell):

• Frame 401 goes right to frame 403, skipping frame 402
• Frame 407 goes right to frame 409, skipping frame 408
• Frame 410 goes right to frame 412, skipping frame 411
• Frame 419 goes right to frame 421, skipping frame 420

Some of these skips have an additional frame of delay between animation, but some of them do not.

This is not the first time I've seen a run performed on an old version of FCEUX that resulted in an impossibly fast time. We ran into this same issue with The Great Gatsby due to FCEUX being inaccurate and had to ban old versions of FCEUX as a result.

Accounting for the 33ms gained by frames 400 and 406 being skipped entirely would make the run have a time of 10s 049ms but there is more likely than not another frame skip in there that I cannot find.

I believe RyuHayabusa89's time should be updated to be 10s 067ms as those frame drops make it difficult to accurately determine the true time, and there does not appear to be any possible way to go faster than the 10s 067ms time.

After investigation it is imperative that the emualtor FCEUX version 2.2.3 be banned, and quite realistically all versions of FCEUX other than the latest as well, which is the 2.6.2 version.

The time submitted by muten_pizza had an exceptionally fast Stage 1 framecounted to 54.067 which is faster than all three of the Stage 1 times that are currently podium.

We looked into it and after having muten_pizza switch to mesenRTA and perform the identical route the timesave was immediately lost and he was achieving the expected times that the rest of us also get. The version of FCEUX that was being used, for whatever reason, is not accurate enough to lag correctly and will give the player an unfair advantage.

For the reason outlined above I and zarc0nis both strongly believe we should only allow FCEUX version 2.6.2 to be used.