First of all, why does it say his best time is 2′05 yet he only submitted a 2′13?

Anyway regardless of that, watch the second boss fight. Tanuki with penis. He kills the boss in like 10 less shots than anybody else in the world does, and everybody else always kills the boss at the same time consistently (to the point that makes me think the boss has some sort of “timer” that you can’t kill him before). Compare it for example to AwesomeNick94’s run:

He kills with the single shuriken after the 3rd jump, which is what happens every time I’ve ever seen that boss being killed. You can watch any of my runs or PMniac’s (although we do play on the original version rather than DX…) to confirm that.

Everything else looks like he could just be a really fast masher, but his mashing in that boss fight doesn’t look any better than anybody else’s and yet he kills an hour sooner than everybody else.

I’m not saying that he definitely cheated but his second boss fight looks really weird and I wanted to point that out. Maybe someone good at video editing can make a frame-by-frame comparison with other kills and show whether or not his quick kill makes sense.

I have known Syena for a while from Dustforce and I will vouch for him. I have noticed weird timing things with the tanooki boss where the door will not start dropping for a while. I know he told me that he specifically took damage in that fight to get more shots in and he does mash double the speed that I can mash at. In his 2'05 he actually got a 1 cycle dragon, but it lagged a little in the fight and he thought that wasn't fair.

I found the 2:05 run:

^1 cycle dragon with shots to spare? What the fuck? lol

What’s his technique to mash?

Edit: His 2′05″ video shows that his previous best time was a 2′26″… I don’t know man, it’s hard to see any semblance of legitimacy in this guy. lol

You should see some of the insane stuff he has done in dustforce.

http://dustkid.com/level/exec%20func%20ruin%20user/all/0

He is one of a handful of people in the world to ever get a full completion on the hardest level in the game.

I thought it was weird as well, but approved the run because I don't have any way of determining whether or not cheating was involved. IMO the best course of action would be to keep it that way until proven otherwise, but let me know if you disagree. Thanks for keeping a close eye.

I found an exploit to mash really quickly. PMniac got a 2′02″ with it. I guess he’s gonna go for sub, he got a sick 1 cycle Dragon.

Regardless of whether or not Syena even knows the exploit and is using it, his run still looks terribly odd. It all happens in the Dragon fight (2′05″ run). The Dragon’s movements are much slower than the movement I’ve seen in other videos (I guess that’s what he meant with “lag”), and at the end of the fight he is able to shoot something like 10 Shuriken in a row, when the game has a maximum of 3 Shuriken on screen at a time. I tested whether that count for bounced-backed Shuriken, and at least in the original version it does, so the amount of mashing Syena does is impossible unless DX was changed to allow for throwing more Shuriken when they’re bounced back.

I can’t really do more than that without even owning the game. PMniac or someone else needs to figure shit out.

Edit: The exploit probably only works on PC btw, also PMniac got the quick Tanuki kill on DX with the exploit, I haven’t been able to do it in the original game. Can’t say whether it’s possible or not unless he tries it.

Edit: Nevermind PMniac is an idiot his run was 2 players. Not legit but it still proves the things it proved I guess.

Alright, the verdict I've come to then is that these runs which are seemingly faster than normally possible (new one today from PMniac) will need to be rejected until they come here and describe what it is they're doing to mash so effectively.

I don't think an exploit like using multiple gamepads should be legal. Also if the game isn't running at the intended frame rate maybe there are some quirks that can be exploited, so if that's the case, a run would only be valid if the game is not lagging, which shouldn't be much to ask for NSDX.

And thanks again for the research, ALAK. I've tested it with another gamepad and a keyboard, and can confirm that the exploit is only on PC.

ALAKTORN and I discovered today how to mash rapid as Syena. All you need to do is press shoot button on both gamepad and keyboard.

ALAKTORN and PMniac told me about the strategy using a controller and keyboard to shoot shurikens simultaneously, and I can confirm it works for me on PC as well. It's weird that the game lets you do this. Is this strategy going to be allowed here on speedrun.com? It's legitimate as far as I can tell since you just use two input sources that are naturally allowed by the game to gain an advantage. The only downside is that it won't likely work on PS4/Vita, due to only one input source allowed at a time (I think?). That will explain my strategy, as far as my case goes. Perhaps there might need to be a version split for the charts, or will this strategy just be disallowed?

Personally if it weren’t for the fact that it’s unfair to PS4/Vita players (because the exploit likely doesn’t exist on those versions) I would be for allowing it I guess. But maybe it should either be banned or PC charts should be separated in this case.

Edit: I didn’t want to explain the exploit straight-up because I still wanted to hear what Syena was doing to mash that quickly from himself… but I guess he’s never going to post anyway.

You're right Pokemon, there should be a split for the charts. And it doesn't work on PS4. I'll add more categories to cover this. Sorry to make you guys re-submit your runs, PMniac & Syena.

EDIT: For the future, runs using these exploits should go under Any%'s, or Boss Rush. I'll rename the current Boss Rush category as Glitchless Boss Rush.

On a side note, for whatever reason I didn't think Boss Rush would be a popular category. If you'd like to post your time as you recorded it rather than using the in game time, feel free.

done with the new "Exploit/Glitch". Dragon didn't even breath fire. I didn't even see this until messenger told me just now. I never used any cheats or that glitch in my other run i just mash that fast. And yeah the 2:05 was not submitted because my game dropped frames which allowed me to 1 cycle dragon which only happened 3 times without any frame loss. Up to you if you want to believe me or not.

^Do you have a video of that? If not, can you make a vid of a 1′4x″? Or at least breathless Dragon. Edit: Actually, was that run done with external remapping software to make the exploit even easier to abuse? I guess so. I consider that cheating.

Your 2′15″ run still has you shooting 4 bounced-back shuriken at the Dragon, so can somebody test whether that’s possible or not in DX? It’s impossible in the original.