• Start the timer from Stage 1 after picking any character.
• Defeat Shiva in Stage 1 and hold the Attack button (normally the B button) until Stage 2 starts.
• The player loses lives without hurting enemies until it's time to continue, then selects Shiva with the timer still active.
• The run continues until Stage 7 is cleared like normal.

I think the run should just start from Stage 1 as it would for the other characters, but you have to switch to Shiva without hurting any enemies in Stage 2. By not hurting any enemies at that point, the player is forced to change as soon as possible, not being able to play the game any further with the initial character.

If anything, this could even be a miscellaneous category if not a regular one. However, with the case of misc categories, I wonder if hacking/cheat devices should be allowed as long as there's proof of only having only the code for Shiva or Ash.

Hopefully with these rules, we can at least have Shiva's category added either as regular or misc.

Yeah, just add Shiva to the boards, so we can post our bad ass runs. We want Shiva!!

I agree, it would be nice. A1Major and myself have been going back and forth on speedruns for Shiva and Ash. I think others would put in runs if a misc category existed for them.

There isn't anything that I say that doesn't sound like I'm complaining and wanting this category to cater to me. So take it as you will.

While I understand that this method makes it so anyone can play shiva, without messing about with game genies and such. It's still very messy, as you have to switch characters to get there. It's not really a representation of a Shiva speedrun really, since you have to pick the fastest character to stage 2. I think it will be a proper representation, if the start timer as soon as you gain control of Shiva.I only say it as I was one of the few people who actively play this character. I don't know the reason if players didn't play Shiva simply because there was no leaderboard.

There's a lot of different ways to play SoR3; from different endings, to hidden characters unlocked at different points, Game Genie difficulties and also unlocking characters through a Game Genie. You could put both Shiva (lvl 2 code) and Shiva (Game Genie) in Misc. as two different categories. It would be a way of having categories for people who are actively running the game but in a way that shouldn't be grouped with the main categories.

I wouldn't put restrictions on how Shiva was played. You might find it faster to run with Axel, waste lives on lvl 3, continue right before Robot-Axel and run Shiva for the rest of the game. It's slow to continue at the beginning of lvl 2 and Shiva might not be the fastest at getting through lvl 3 where throwing enemies into holes works really well.

I wrote down that the player should not attack enemies at the start of Stage 2 so that he/she is forced to switch to Shiva as soon as possible. If you could start using him in Stage 3, it wouldn't be the earliest point to switch and would kind of defeat the purpose of playing as Shiva as soon as he is unlocked. Not having Shiva playable from Stage 1 was a huge mistake by the developers, so this is the closest possible way to have legitimate runs for this character and use him as soon as the game could possibly allow. I don't think the mods will want to involve out-of-game methods such as cheat devices and modding, although I wonder if cheat codes should be shown in the runs and verified.