It was made aware to the mods that there could be a difference with how the AI is handled with the SNES version of the game. With most games, when you change the difficulty and exit option, the AI difficulty is set. However, there may be a possibility that this is not the case with Primal Rage SNES. It seems that with some quick testing done by me on Emulation and Real Hardware, I changed the difficulty either to 1 or 16 and started playing. The AI was the same as if it was on 10. When I powered off the game, went to options to change the diff to either 1 or 16, exited the options, and then rested the game the AI was in fact different. For 16, it was more aggressive and for 1 it blocked even less. I did try this on genesis and the AI did change by changing the difficulty. There could be other systems that may be like this or it is simply restricted to the SNES port. So, I feel there needs to be more testing done by others other than myself to make sure, but if indeed this is correct, then there will need to be a rule change for SNES requiring the system or emulator to be restarted after changing difficulty when doing a run for either Any% or Hardest. I am interested in knowing if this is indeed the case with this port. Help would be appreciated.
After doing more testing, I am convinced that this is the case with the SNES port. So, from here on out, all runs currently on the board will be grandfathered in the hardest category. The default category really doesn't matter as much. Any runs from now on that submit to the hardest difficulty for SNES must show the difficulty settings being shown and do a soft reset afterwards or to do a reset of the game and show settings confirming the difficulty has already been changed to 16 as the number will be the color of white. This applies to both hardware and emulation. Any runs that do not will be moved to the Default category as the AI is still on Default and not 16 (Hardest) even though it shows in the settings. The reset must happen for this to trigger the proper AI for that category. Further testing will be had on other platforms to validate if this is SNES only. Please feel free to share your findings with the community and if it turns out the same, then the same rules will apply to those platforms as well.
On a side note, I would recommend doing this for Any% as well, because if not, your runs will be at a disadvantage with the Default difficulty and not that of 1. Also, rules have been updated to reflect these findings.
Okay, so... load the game, set to difficulty 16, start the game, reset, THEN play? I want to know, because I always just loaded the game, set it to 16, then started.
I'll do it again if I need to.
Yes, just load the game up as usual. Go to options and change difficulty to level 16. Exit options and soft reset game. The AI should now be level 16. To confirm this you can go to options and see that the difficulty does saves with a soft reset and will be level 16. I would recommend showing this before run attempts to be on the safe side. No need to go to character select screen until after a soft reset.
