This will be a complete beginners guide of the 2 Players category. If you are new to the game and want to run 2 Player, then this is the place for you.
- PAL vs NTSC
The first thing that should be said is that the PAL version of the game runs slower than the NTSC version. Because of this, you should always do 2 Player, 3 Player, or 4 Player runs on the NTSC version of the game.
- Seeds and how they determine hands
Now we need to say how hands are "randomly" generated. The fastest hand known today was first seen in Contos's 33.983. In this hand you get a red 4, a red reverse, a red skip, a blue +2, a blue skip, a yellow skip, and a color change. Important things to note about the hand is that you will always get the cards in this order, the AI's name will always be Honey if you are playing the game in English, and you will always go first. If you want to get a top time I would suggest instantly resetting if 1 of these three things are not met.
The difficult part about hands is that they require a frame perfect input to get the one you want. Luckily, the frame that this hand is on is near the beginning of when you can press start. In order to get the hand, I would suggest just mashing start before the "dancing cards" screen comes up and hope that you press start on the correct frame.
If you do end up getting this hand, you want to play the cards in this order: Blue +2 --> Blue skip --> Yellow skip --> Red skip --> Red reverse --> Red 4 --> Color change (Mash A to change the color to red instantly)
However, if you are new to the game then I would suggest just pressing the start button at a random time and hoping that you get a good hand.
Edit: It has been found out that, at least on the NTSC version, you are only able to get the seed by freezing the starting screen for one frame (you are able to freeze these screens by holding down the start button) and then pressing start on the 2nd frame of the dancing cards screen. There is no super consistent way to do this but starting to mash start on the hotgen screen is the most consistent way to get the seed. With this method, it is possible to get the seed very easily, if you continuously reset if you don't see the correct name you should be able to get the seed in under 30 minutes and secure yourself a 27 second 2 player time.
- Game Set-Up
Once you press the start button on the "dancing cards" screen these are the settings you should choose: Make your name whatever you want, choose "Uno", 2 Player (Different depending on what category you want to run), Skill 1, Normal pack (Different depending on what category you want to run), 100 Pts
At this point press start to go to the next screen
The first option on this screen does not matter but I would suggest keeping it on Standard, music depends on personal preference but I would suggest turning it off as the music in this game is not the greatest, effects is also down to personal preference, turn Anims off, keep the speed on 9, press the start button and begin your timer
Once again, if you do get the hand mentioned earlier you should play it in this order: Blue +2 --> Blue skip --> Yellow skip --> Red skip --> Red reverse --> Red 4 --> Color change (Mash A to change the color to red instantly)
- Score Screen
Once you play all of your cards you will get to a score screen. If the points that the AI has is not over 100, I would suggest resetting your run as the game will not finish.
Once you get to this screen wait from about half a second to a full second (you can also wait until you see the points coming in) and hold down on the D-Pad. If this is done correctly the points will scroll faster. If this is not done correctly then let go of the button and just hold it down again.
Once you reach 100 points and a checkmark replaces the 0 next to your point count the game is over and you should stop your timer.
- Other
That’s pretty much all you need to know if you are a beginner to this game. There is obviously a lot more to this game that can be learned by playing the game and a lot of more complicated things that not even I can explain well.
If you want to run the game or have any questions I would suggest joining the Uno Speedrunning discord (https://discord.gg/KcveDTMjty).
As for just playing the game in general the only emulators that are allowed are BGB, Gambatte, and BizHawk. Any other emulator is not allowed on the leaderboards.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope I see you on the leaderboards soon :)
