Motivated by chaos_defrost's latest 10 round run coming extremely close to being a 4:44 instead of a 4:45, I have learned how to use external tools to count the length of a run with frame-perfect precision, and as such, I think it's high time we make the timing rules more precise to make this easier. Here's what we have now:

"Must beat rounds 1 through 10 of Normal Mode. Run begins once the player exits the game select screen to the 1st round of Normal Mode and ends when the last block disappears from the screen on the 10th round."

I noticed that the blocks in the playfield disappear a fraction of a second before the next piece disappears, so whether the next piece counts as a block or not will affect the timing of runs. In chaos_defrost's latest run, the cursor disappears off of the game setup screen at 13:14:50.925, then the last block disappears from the playfield in Round 10 at 13:19:35.892, and then finally the next piece up in the upper right disappears (and, simultaneously, "ROUND CLEAR!" appears) at 13:19:35.959. Thus, it might be ambiguous whether it's a 4:44 or a 4:45.

Here's a proposed re-write: "Must beat rounds 1 through 10 of Normal Mode. Run begins once the player exits the game select screen to the 1st round of Normal Mode (that is, when the cursor disappears) and ends when "ROUND CLEAR!" appears on the 10th round."

These same rules could be applied to 30 rounds, 80 rounds, and even Puzzle Mode. A similar rule looks good for Vs. CPU runs, except the message is "1P WIN!" instead. For Max Score, the rules are pretty unambiguous as they stand.

I feel like it's best to run this idea by the other mods and the community before making any real changes, especially since it opens up the question of whether to grandfather in old runs or to retime them all to make sure they're not one second too slow or too fast.

I don't own the game (yet), but it seems to me that the in-game timer stays at 0 seconds until you make a move. On the Level Leaderboard, I am of the opinion that in-game time should not be used if you're allowed to look at the cards forever and plan your first move without the timer advancing.

I was reading the 100% rules, and I noticed this:

"Prior to the 29th March, 2020 the ruleset included dumping 999 moons into the Odyssey and ended timing on the secret cutscene on Peach's Castle. Runs done under this ruleset were grandfathered in."

I haven't played this game in years, and I know very little about the intricacies of its speedruns, so I'm sure there's a good reason the community came to this decision. I can't find any information on these forums or anywhere on the rationale behind the change, though, and I like learning things. :)