Here's a first pass at routing a glitchless category for NES:

By "glitchless," I basically mean "do all the mandatory steps in the main quest." That would disallow currently known glitches like:

• No item change glitch
• No walking backwards to skip mandatory events

One thing I do still do in this route is use teleport wraparound (e.g., teleport 3 steps east from 14,2 to reach 1,2). That could theoretically be construed as a glitch, I suppose. But given that it's possible in every version of the game I've checked, it's arguably intended behavior.

The route I use is basically derived from this DOS run by Septimus1993:

FYI, the old run on the board by ヴァーサタイル seems to be miscategorized. That video is actually a 100% run (it's labeled as "全要素回収, basically meaning "collect all points of interest").

This is that same runner's current PB in any% (28:44):

I've started running the MSX1 version of this game (), and will probably move on to the MSX2 version eventually. Should the MSX versions be included on this board, or should I request them as separate games?

My thought is that they should probably be considered distinct games, since they both have completely different game worlds from the SMS version, but I figured I should probably check in here first before creating a new board, just in case any other runners disagree.

I run games for a couple of obscure platforms—mainly the MSX—and I often wish that there was a forum specific to the platform rather than any individual game to ask questions pertaining to the platform in general. Like, if a platform is known to have emulator settings or particular hardware models that aren't good for accurate runs, it would be nice to have a central place to look for that information, rather than trying to figure it out for each individual game.

It would also be nice to search for recent runs by platform, in order to find the games for each platform that have an active community. You can search for games by platform currently, but that doesn't distinguish which games have runs specific to that platform. Most of the games listed for MSX, for example, are classic games that were released on every platform ever, but have never been run specifically on MSX, so it doesn't really help me when I'm trying to find MSX-specific information.

This past weekend, I spent 8 hours straight running the MSX2 version of FF1, so you don't have to. So I'd like to request a category for that version.

Here's the video, for reference:

I'm in the process of editing down a highlight video that focuses on explaining the differences between this version and Famicom, so I'll be including that in my submission when I finish it.

I also wanted to start the conversation around how to handle load times in MSX2. For my sanity, I ran this from disk images on a Carnivore 2 flash cart, so my run has very little load time. A run that attempts to use original floppies will have significantly more (by my tests, it would lose 4.4s every time it opens and closes the menu, and 7.7s every time it enters and leaves a battle, at least on the world map).

Are there best practices runs in this category should follow to control load times? I think disk-based games tend to try not to count them, but removing that many loads from an 8-hour game seems like it would take quite a bit of effort. Maybe it's better just not to worry about it, and assume that hardly anyone will ever run this category anyway, and the few who do will probably either emulate or use a flash-based storage format for the same reasons I did?

Just wanted to request that categories be added for the MSX releases of Romancia, since I've started running those and they are very different from the Famicom version.

The rules should probably also be different to reflect the version differences as well; there's no blue orb to mark the end of the game on non-FC versions. I'd propose something like this for the MSX rules:

[quote]Timing begins when Fan Freddy's sprite appears in front of the castle. Timing ends when the dragon's head leaves the screen after being slain.[/quote]

I'll submit it formally once the categories exist, but here's my current MSX1 PB, fwiw. Sorry for the missing audio! :-/

It looks like the submission page doesn't currently have an option for the JP version of the game. Is this deliberate? Are there enough differences in timing that JP isn't considered valid for the current categories? I'm interested in learning the run on the JP cartridge, since I already own it, but wanted to check on its validity before putting time into that version.

I'm working on getting a DOS run of this completed; hopefully I'll make it through Doom without any fatal mistakes pretty soon here.

As of right now, there are no explicit timing guidelines for either version, but the NES runs seem to consistently use the frame when "New Character" is selected as the start of the run, and the frame when you enter the mirror as the end of the run.

The one DOS run is just using the total length of the original video, though, which includes the title screen plus the full ending up to the congratulatory scroll.

So I just wanted to see if the mods think that the DOS run should use the same timing rules that are being used by the NES runs, and the DOS record's timing be updated accordingly. At a glance, it looks like the time for the DOS video would be around 34:16 if timed in the same way as the NES videos.