Hi there!

Thanks to puri_puri for making me a mod of the Shenmue series, and sorry I couldn't reach out to contact you. I'm a big fan of the games, WR holder for any% and Glitchless Shenmue I, and not-very-good runner of Shenmue II (which is the main reason I don't submit times).

As the re-release of Shenmue I & II draws near, we'll see an influx of runners, and new platforms which will outperform the old ones.

My intentions are three-fold; firstly, I'd like to split the categories into subcategories based on version ("Dreamcast", "Xbox" for Shenmue II, "Re-release"). This would allow us to account for differences between versions (beyond load times). There's also the fact that the Dreamcast and Re-release versions of Shenmue II allow you to load a save file from the first game - at the moment, this is not recognised in any manner (because the Dreamcast version is slower anyway), but we'll need to account for this.

The second thing I'd like to do is to add clear rules to categories. I've been talking to A1Major about this and while it seems the community as a whole generally agrees on what the rules for each category is, they are in general poorly defined. I'd add clarifications to all categories (such as explaining what glitches are banned in glitchless, and clearly defining start/stop times).

The third thing I'd like to do is a (very minor) revamp of categories. I've seen a couple of other people running Shenmue I Bad Ending now, and if there's any demand for it I'd be happy to add it as a category.

On the Shenmue II side of things, Duck% is poorly defined and arbitrary, and puri's run no longer even has a working video - I'd suggest replacing this with the shorter and more clearly defined Duck Racing (goal: any% rules, earn the Gold Medal), as again I've seen a couple of people actually try this.

I'm not just going to go ahead and do it - I want you guys to let me know what you think of this direction and voice any concerns you have, or any suggestions for improvements.

Thanks for reading.

I think these are all really good ideas! The console subcategories especially and defining rules will help out a lot.

Okay, so I've made some changes!

Every category now has clear rules. Timing start and stop times are defined, glitchless categories explicitly list banned glitches (we should perhaps describe these glitches in the Guides or Resources categories), Paparazzi now has an extra rule for verification (I'm not going to remove SeductiveSpatula's run, though - having made my own attempts at the category I'm confident it's valid), and I've added Duck Racing and Fangmei (note: I'll remove them again later in the year if nobody runs them).

It's possible to choose Xbox One, PS4, or PC as a platform when submitting a run. If you try submitting an Xbox One run now I'll give you a swift kick. ;)

Different versions of the game do not yet have subcategories - I'm waiting to confirm exactly how the re-release handles various things as there could be the need for a shuffling of categories yet. Alternatively, a run on a different platform currently only obsoletes previous runs on that platform, so the filtering system can be used instead of subcategories - this will however need to change if re-release versions are comparable (and it's likely they will be).

I haven't removed Duck% yet - if we get some clarification on the rules and why they exist then I'll leave it, otherwise I'll remove it in a few days.

And we still need to have a discussion on how starting Shenmue II from a completed Shenmue I save should be treated - which categories should this be allowed in? Should it be a separate category?

Again, if there are any further ideas, or any objections to any of this, feel free to raise them.

Some more somewhat major changes since my last post:

I added a "Patch" variable - this is because the Re-release is still receiving patches; these patches can enable or prevent some glitches, and more notably enable or prevent some cutscenes from being skipped. Having subcategories for every patched version of the game would be ludicrous, not to mention pointless, so we're still keeping all Re-release runs in the same subcategory (as the versions have no significant effect on the run).

We now have a Bad Ending category for Shenmue I, and an All Achievements category for both games. Since the All Achievements category is valid only for the Re-release, I've also gone ahead and made the subcategories specific to each individual run category.

I removed Duck% - nobody knows what it is, and it's been replaced with a more clearly defined and less arbitrary Duck Racing.

At some point we'll work on load times and how to deal with them - this is still something being debated with no concrete solution. (Also when I add a time without loads column speedrun.com assumes all the runs belong in that column and I have to change them all manually...)