Hello!

I'm a moderator of the Ico (https://www.speedrun.com/ico) leaderboard. Recently we created a Co-op category with 2 subcategories in it (called 50hz/60hz for game version differences).

For some reason, every time a run is submitted to this category it omits one of the runner's names and it never appears under any of the subcatgories, no matter which one it's set on when the run is submitted. The runner confirmed to set themselves as "Player 2" when submitting the run. Furthermore, when I edit the run as a moderator, correcting these "errors" changes nothing about the submission. Example of this issue is in this latest submitted run https://www.speedrun.com/ico/run/yd9qw2jz

Hope anybody can help us here!

Hey there! I just casually raced this with a friend and by accident found a setup for a boss quick kill on stage 4-4. I played the game on Easy but I checked out the run in the boards and it seems he follows the same pattern, so it might be useful. Playstation version, as well.

I've noticed the game barely has any activity and sadly I'm not really planning on learning this game, but I figured it'd be good to document!

I'll just do my end rant here.

As Squid said, there's no other decently populated PS2 leaderboard that allows emulators for a reason. They're hard to get running, heavily depend on your computer's power to run properly, and they're most of the time not accurate. This is already pretty restrictive and doesn't really work as an accessible option to run this game on (I don't understand why people try to put this as a reason to defend PS2 emulation in the first place), but even if you can make this game run fine on emulator the biggest problem is the shorter loading times, which would make emulator the "fastest" way to run this and isn't fair for anybody else in the leaderboard right now.

I'm 100% against PS2 emulation. No platform should be allowed that ends up faster than official hardware. If it somehow ends up being allowed, I think hiding emulator runs by default should be the way to go. We've had enough category discussion in the past and I don't think we should go through the same again.

I think the current end point is fine. However, what I'd suggest instead is a bit of a rephrasing on the rules, since it's a bit confusing still:

Personally I think the fact that it says "either this or that" could potentially be confusing. This run is too long to be timed down to the frame, so I think just rephrasing it to "the frame in which the health bar explodes" makes it concise enough.

Like I mentioned in the discord server, it's a bit of an issue if it's possible for klonoa to die at the endpoint, and if the player respawns at the fight, the run would be invalid. I still think the current end point works just fine, so what I'd suggest instead is adding a note on the rules stating that the video proof must contain at least a portion of the final cutscene to verify that the game has been beaten.

There is an alternative you could learn which would avoid any crashes (and is faster), found relatively recently, here's a timestamp of a video with it:

The jump around the house to go up the roof is a bit tricky (you gotta use the peak of the door frame to help you) but I didn't find it harder than the original method. Hope it helps!

Hey! No problems about the late reply, I'm doing the same right now, haha.

The time difference could be something about cutscenes, but I'm not sure if it'd be that or something else, I'll try to see if I can find something more :p in the meantime I think it'd be enough to just list both RTA and IGT on the leaderboards.

Thanks for changing the categories, by the way! They look a lot better now~ Also I wouldn't mind being a mod for this game :D thanks a lot!!

So I noticed that my time on the PAL leaderboards got verified as a 1:00:12 (this being IGT) as opposed to the 1:03:16 I submitted as RTA.

Both of these times are real, so there's nothing wrong about the times themselves. However, I've noticed that using In-Game Time as a reference for this game might not be the best thing, as the timer seems to not be accurate enough.

This last PB I submitted, 1:03:16 RTA, had an IGT of 1:00:12 () My previous PB (that I didn't submit here), 1:03:28 RTA, ALSO had an IGT of 1:00:12 ()

So I think it'd be better to have RTA as the main time to show, rather than IGT. The thing is, in these boards you can show both RTA and IGT as reference times and this is probably the best idea to do (but still having RTA as the main one), hopefully it's something easy to change~

That's all :3

"...and end their timer upon collecting the final gem, orb, etc in whichever level they choose to finish in."

To me this is completely arbitrary and it would make (almost) every run end in a completely different point, making it really confusing at the end.

If fighting Ripto early is allowed, then we need to set a common point to end the run and not let each player decide where they want to end their run at.

I'm not against the idea of fighting Ripto early, but I am against the idea of ending the run in a random gem/orb/talisman. It just feels weird.

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