Realised after I submitted my run that three of us on the board unwittingly ran the game at NTSC even though it was PAL exclusive on SMS. The Game Gear port was worldwide so there's a reasonable argument to grandfather in permission for that. It's a common practice in many other SMS/GG games (Marble Madness, Trivial Pursuit etc), but can I just say sorry to Oreb for not realising - I'm sure you'd be easily able to equal your performance on NTSC if you wished, however, if you feel like it'd be fairer for the rest of us to re-submit at 50fps, I'd be very open to that. Discussions welcome :)

So the trick is easy and very safe. Here's a setup video.

Get to the gnome screen.

Go DOWN as far as you can so you're hitting the rock.

Move LEFT to the river screen.

On any of the frames where the screen is fully black, change to holding DOWN RIGHT. You MUST do this before any fraction of the screen loads in

Then you have infinite time to press 1 and transition back to the gnome. Once on the gnome screen, press RIGHT. Boom, Gnome Skip.

So basically you have always got an 11 frame window to achieve this. You can also PAUSE while the screen is black to be super safe if you want to.

Hello all!

I will be running the C64 any% Secrets Allowed category for RGLtv's Jankuary! https://horaro.org/jank25/schedule

https://www.twitch.tv/retrogaminglivetv

I have no idea if this is the first EVER appearance of FQ in a marathon but I'm utterly delighted and I'd love to see any of you there cheering along.

Never played the game, would love a guide that explores weapons pros/cons, general strategy, etc!

Played the game as a kid, so quite familiar with it, but would love a tuto that expands on routing options, safeties, potential hazards/solves etc :)

Never played the game before but very interested in learning it! Would love a guide/tuto, cliff notes on hazards/solutions, anything useful for a newcomer.

Now that someone has finally given me a mod job to do, I've updated timing rules to what seems most sensible, and retimed the existing run.

Time starts on fadeout of title screen. Time ends when the baby counter shows x00 in the music stage.

I'd love to hear any thoughts/feedback on this in case it can be improved.

Secondly, I wondered does anyone have interest in a money category that involves actually playing skilfully in the bonus stages. If you successfully glitch the level one for baby grabs at the tube, and prevent damage, with perfect play it is possible to reach $20,000 before game end. However, that is inconsistent. $15,000 might then be a fairer goal.

Thoughts welcome!

I noticed from playing that the hostage count ticks down really quickly on a first pass and yet we've been waiting at the helipad at the end of levels. Checking this out, it turns out as soon as you despawn the hostages on screen, they'll count immediately and you can advance slightly faster.

With that in mind, I think it makes sense to change the run end point. I'd suggest the frame hostage remaining count reaches 0 as an unambiguous point. Thoughts welcome!