Colorado, USAIt's rather difficult to see unless you can see it at the right angle and fairly close up. If you're trying to buy from eBay, keep in mind that the one pictured may not be the actual cart that is sent if they have a decent amount of inventory. I'd ask the seller to see if they can find it for you.
Here' s a pic I just took from one of my SFC games to show what it looks like. This one is "22A." I used "35" as an example, it very well may be a different number. What actually matters is if it has the letter tacked on the end or not.
There are two Japanese versions of the game 1.0 and 1.1 with 1.0 being the fastest. Here's a quick overview of what makes it faster for each game.
SMB1 - By hitting a powerup block in some levels, when you grab the flagpole, you will already be on the right hand side thus saving a few frames of not having Mario swap sides before he runs into the castle. This doesn't work on the US versions and I don't think it does for J 1.1 either.
SMB2 (Lost Levels) - Only difference is the continue dialog to continue on after beating 8-4 is a little over a second faster than the US versions.
SMB2 (US) - The pause menu opens and closes much more quickly on J 1.0 and US 4-game cart. This allows you to do fanfare skips much more easily when defeating bosses. J 1.1 and US 5-game cart have a much slower pause menu.
SMB3 - Pre and post-airship cutscenes are faster on the Japanese versions due to text.
If you're looking to acquire a Japanese version of the game, here's a couple of ways to check which version it is. You can fire up SMB2 and start the first level. Start spamming the start button to open and close the pause menu. If you can do it quickly and it kinda looks like the screen is flashing on how quickly you can do it, it's J 1.0. If it kinda freezes and won't let you close it for a second or two each time, it's J 1.1.
If you're looking to get a physical cartridge, you can additionally look on the back of the cartridge for an imprinted set of numbers and/or letters on the label. Two numbers (ex. "35") means it's a 1.0 cartridge. Two numbers followed by a letter (ex. "35A") is a 1.1 cartridge.
Hope this helps.
Probably an oversight when they were split up. Should be fixed now, sorry about that.
If you're not using a brand new save file, it will keep the player mode it was started with. Either pick a "new" file or delete one and you should be able to select it.
You can use any controller that you'd like (unless otherwise specified in specific categories). If it does have capabilities that you won't find on a standard NES controller (such as turbo), you can still use the controller, just not the additional capabilities.
"Appears to be fine" is not proof. We need proof and enough demand to consider adding that. You're maybe the second person in the past 6 years I've heard mention this platform.
The MiSTer is honestly the next platform we should consider adding as we do have a fair number of requests for that.
Hello,
After hearing some feedback from several community members, I wanted to bring up a few potential rule changes that we can discuss if they should be implemented. I'm looking for thoughts from runners who already have times on these boards.
NES Trilogy, Famicom Trilogy and Pentathlon Currently, these categories have a fixed game order. I have had several requests asking to make the game order free like most of the SMAS categories are.
Super Marihour Implement a 30 second penalty-free threshold to switch between games like most of the other categories do. Current runs would be retimed to remove up to 30 seconds between each game. Removing the switch times between games puts more emphasis on the gameplay rather than having an advantage or disadvantage due to your setup. People playing on emulator or hardware using flash carts and AV switchers would definitely have an advantage over someone who has to physically swap cables between three different consoles.
Decathlon This is mostly just my suggestion, but I have thought of suggesting we add some "break time" that can be utilized for these extremely long categories. I don't know what a reasonable amount of time would be, but sitting for 8+ hours and getting penalized for taking a bathroom break or wanting to get up and move around occasionally seems a bit brutal to me.
Let me know your thoughts on these potential changes, as I'd like to have community feedback.
The rules state:
An original or dogbone style NES/FC controller must be used for this category.
You don't have to use OEM, but it needs to be the same style.
Sub 3:20 is the threshold that's set to start showing milliseconds. It's the same idea as SMB1 where the threshold is 5:03. Getting all the times down to exact milliseconds is a lot of extra work for little to no benefit.
Any% categories in most games are generally understood to begin with a clean slate. No continue codes, save files, etc. While that's not explicitly listed in our rules, it's a generally understood concept and isn't really a loophole.
We could document every single little nuance to the rules, but that would likely end up being excessively long that nobody will bother reading it all anyway.
We've known about these devices for a few years now and yes, they do pose a concern for sure. I won't disclose specifics on what we look for (for obvious reasons), but I will say that there's generally a few things that stand out when cheated runs are submitted.
Honestly, this is a "use your best judgement" stance for verifying runs. If we aren't reasonably sure a run is valid, we'll reject it. If there's no concrete proof of cheating, but we're still uncomfortable accepting the run, we don't have to approve it (this has happened before).
Could there be cheated runs on the leaderboard already and they got away with it? Sure, that's entirely possible. To be honest, you can argue that unless the mod team was physically in the room with the runner when they got their PB or WR and checked all the hardware/software, that there could be a way that it was faked.
Assuming people wouldn't spend $100 to take the "easy" road to get some recognition without putting in the work is a bit naïve. There are people out there that would absolutely do that. We don't know how many people have these devices. It could be a lot more than we think. If they're gonna use one for cheating, it's pretty unlikely they'd tell someone they have it.
I disagree and think that key bindings DO matter. I think a key bind setup similar to the following would be much less awkward and feels more natural than what's done with an NES controller (granted I do not play on emulator).
Z = B (run) X = Left C = Down V = Right Spacebar = A (jump)
Additionally, this is a CE category, they're not really meant to be taken that seriously.
Anyone is free to run an IL board elsewhere if they so desire and run it however they desire. We can't stop you from doing that. Make a website or use a Google Spreadsheet. However, it seems that these types of projects are lucky to make it a few months before the creators decide "this is a lot to keep up with and it kinda sucks" after the novelty wears off.
Just to say that I did it, I'll ask the rest of the mod team if they are interested in putting ILs back, but historically, it's been a very definitive "no" since we initially removed them.
That's pretty much it, yeah. We did have ILs (outside of 1-1 and 8-4) a number of years ago and removed them. So did the other NES 2D Mario leaderboards for similar reasons.
We did have people who would throw down a warpless time and submit every IL in the run with it. That's 33 submissions, from one person, all at once and it started to get out of hand. A large portion of the ILs don't really provide much value to have leaderboards for anyway and it leads to burnout from the mods.
It is something we probably should consider, we just haven't haven't had many requests for this. I do know it's becoming more popular though.
I may get with you to ask some questions, gather some data, etc. since I know you're pretty knowledgeable about it. We keep the accepted list of platforms/emulators fairly short due to the level of optimization this game has where individual frames are significant.
